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2002-03-01

This being a mom business is growing on me.

When I first got married I felt so self-conscious each time I heard myself refer to "my husband." I've felt the same way saying "my son" but it's staring to feel more normal. And when talking to the baby, I sometimes call myself mommy. As so many verbal habits, it started as kind of a joke. Not really a joke, but there was a hint of irony there. But now, when he's crying, I say, "Oh, honey, mommy's here" in complete earnest. And it feels good.

I feel such love and tenderness for him. It's been slow to build, and I know that it will continue to deepen. That this is the tip of the iceberg of maternal love.

I have a friend who told me if anything happened to her kids, if either of them were to die, she would kill herself. She has a tendency toward the hyperbolic, but still. I don't feel that way right now. I wonder whether I ever will.

I guess what I'm talking about here, what I'm thinking about, is the degree to which I have changed, the degree to which I am still my old self.

I was pretty confident that the act of procreating would not turn me into some kind of assimilated breeder, eliminating all my distinguishing characteristics. (The reason I even considered this possibility is that B seemed far less certain.) So, it's no great surprise that I still feel like me.

I think I feel less neurotic, though. Maybe that's because I've been in kind of survival mode these past nine weeks; the kind of worrying I used to indulge in feels like a luxury now that my mental energy seems so precious. Or maybe it will be this way from here on out.

As I suspected would be the case, I am not finding myself particularly worrying about the baby. Since he was six weeks, he's been sleeping in a crib in his own room (which is connected to our room via a bathroom--it's very easy to hear him). Once I have put him down, I tend not to go back in for fear of waking him. Occasionally B comes to bed and asks how the baby is. I say I haven't seen him in a few hours (he's been sleeping ridiculously long stretches for his age). B wonders why I haven't checked on him, how I know he's still breathing. "I don't," I reply, and invite him to go and check on the baby himself. By this time he's usually comfortable in bed, though, and decides the baby is probably fine.

We're working on the daycare situation. (The tentative arrangement I had lined up, my friend with a baby of her own caring for Clay as well, has fallen through.) For a while we were considering a nanny, and are in fact interviewing two women tomorrow for this position. Nannies are very expensive, well beyond our means without seriously eating--or depleting--our savings. I just didn't feel great about the daycare centers I thought had openings.

But then I found out about a small daycare, kind of midway between a home-based operation and an a big institutional one, that has a space for him. About 14 children total, all ages. Aside from a ten-month old, Clay would be the only baby, and I think he'd get lots of attention.

I had a good feeling about the place which was confirmed by speaking with two parents whose names the director gave me. They had no end of good things to say about the director and the center. And the amazing thing is that the fee is significantly lower than the going rate for good daycare around here (and about a quarter of what we'd be paying an experienced nanny). So we are leaning pretty heavily toward this option; yesterday I sent a check to secure his spot.

(It's kind of amazing to me that she has a spot, but she operates only on word of mouth, is not listed in the yellow pages and has no sign out front. I actually learned about her from another good, small daycare with a waiting list so long the director had to supress a chuckle when I told her we were looking for care to start in April. I got that reaction from quite a few that I called. "This April?" they'd ask.)

One of the women I talked with lives really close to us, way out here in the sticks. (The center is in town, near our old house, not the most convenient location for B bringing him each morning and me picking him up on the way home from work, but not too bad.) We chatted at some length and even made a plan to get together. If I make a new friend in the neighborhood out of this, it'll be icing on the cake.

Things seem to be falling into place.

(Oh, by the way, lest you miss out, shortly before posting this, I posted another entry. In it, I wax rhapsodic on a vegetable.)

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