Healing

Smiley’s first birthday is just around the corner, less than three months away at least, and I’m starting to feel a little more myself. Yesterday I listened to the Neil Young’s Harvest, which I played over and over while I labored and rocked in my glider, and it didn’t take me back to the day (and a freakin’ half) I was in labor as it had the last time I played it just a few months ago. I really should thank Neil Young for helping to make it possible for me to zone out for 10 to 15 minutes a handful of times last March 18th. Those were the only times in the first 24 hours of my labor that I could bear to do anything other than stand up during contractions, and I was so very tired.

I still can’t rock and listen to that album, but we danced to it yesterday, and I told both the kids that it was my Smiley Face music, and it felt like smiley face music instead of oh-god-it-hurts-oh-god-it-hurts music. It’s not that Neil doesn’t still remind me of being in labor, and it’s not that I don’t still remember how much having my uterus nearly rupture hurt, but it does seem that distance from the event has helped.

It probably helps me to know that I never have to do that again. I’m done, and I’ve got such a nice baby out of the bargain. He’s a sweetie pie. Lately he has been crawling around after Tulip, who stops every few steps when she’s running down the hall to call for him to catch up. It’s so cute to see them grow into playmates. Just a week or two ago, she was always complaining that he was trying to get one of her toys when he so much as looked at what she was doing from across the room, but now she’s frequently eager to have him join her, and if she isn’t, she has learned that she is welcome to move her game onto the bed where he can’t reach but that she can’t just demand that he go away.

He’s still not particularly verbal, but he is signing “milk” and “more” now, and he has the best rhythm for a baby. If he hears a beat he likes, he starts bobbing his whole body to the music. He danced with me yesterday and seemed to like Neil just fine, but not so much that I regret too much not changing his middle name as I had thought about doing while rocking my way through the best moments of his labor.

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