On Patience

Night-time nappy changes are like trying to bag an ebullient octopus. His limbs multiply, his torso stretches out, he releases his siren call. He dips his heels into the mustard yellow pool in his nappy and merrily kicks it across the room, and while you reach over to grab a towel he happily fountains wee straight into the air, across the change table, into his own mouth.

All the while he is screaming bloody murder.

My boy was born with a strong set of lungs, and he will happily tell you how he feels. One friend likens it to an on/off switch. He doesn’t have the nuance to tell you what’s wrong, but by god will tell you something IS wrong, and once you’ve run through the laundry list of possible problems – does he require inputs or outputs? He turns off the alarm and leave you wondering which of the things you tried worked.

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I thought having a baby would bring me patience.

A slow life, the newborn bubble, hours spent staring at my child watching him grow into a human being, and me here with my new magical patience just letting the world drift by.

Instead it’s just made me frustrated, and wondering if I was meant to bring my own patience to the table. Maybe I should have developed it in my own time, but I missed that boat, so I guess I’ll dive into the harbour now and swim after it.

This was meant to be easy.

And in many ways it is. Our baby sleeps most of the day. Feeds relatively easily. I’m off work till July so I’ve got an abundance of free time, but I’m realising now that the baby IS a baby, not tied to any of my expectations. He just is, and that means I have to adjust to him.

My son loves a late night rave,  he wakes at 1 am most nights, and where feeding him during the daytime conks him out, a happy chipmunk with fat cheeks full and head lolling back and forth, the late night feeds just seem to energize him. He starts to side eye you and the next thing you know he’s flailing about, eyes swivelling erratically, legs kicking like a champion kangaroo.

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It’s hard to tell which of his senses are working at that point.

His eyes are mostly cross-eyed, something the midwife tells us could last up to six months. He does love staring at bright lights, he’s infatuated with the black and white cross hatch patterns on the bassinet sheet, and he will occasionally stare straight into my eyes, but it doesn’t feel intentional, more a happy accident that his eyes stopped where my eyes start.

He has a strong startle reflex to loud noises, but no response to anything intentionally auditory. Still I’ve been playing him lots of music, first to develop his ability to sleep (blast Amyl and the Sniffers when he’s dead to the world), to educate him (a little bit of Joni Mitchell, here’s Jaco on the bass), and mainly for my own pleasure. Last night we listened to all of the Bela Fleck and Abigail Washburn albums, a bit of Vashti Bunyan, some Fionn Regan,  Christopher Coleman’s live album.

He enjoys a walk. There’s a really strong visceral reaction to going down stairs, and I wonder if it’s like a rollercoaster ride for him, the stomach sink we all grow to crave, or if it’s that the house downstairs is cooler than the house upstairs.

As we’ve been wandering around the house I’ve started pitching the various hums from kitchen implements. Our microwave hums an E, but the end signal beeps are at a F#. The oven is a G drone. The steriliser sings a D. When everything is on at once it’s a cluster chord of white noise. If we ever sold the house with everything in it, we could market it as a giant white noise machine. We’d put that on the billboard out the front and tack an extra 10k on to the reserve price.

In an effort to get him to sleep last night I tried running my hand down from his forehead across his eyelids, bringing them gently closed, and with each sweep he got closer and closer to sleep. I wondered if it was a combination of the Bela Fleck and the recent feed and the nappy change and the gentle touch, but whatever it was he happily dozed off, until I tried to stand up to bring him from the couch back upstairs to the bassinet in our room.

Then he started squealing like a stuck pig, so I had to sit back down and start again.

Is this how i develop patience?