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ourtland Whaley, my sweet baby,

Today you are 11 months old. Just one month away from marking your life in years rather than months. And just one month away from your daddy and I marking our sleep deprivation in years rather than months.

Milestones all around!

On the night you were born, you entered the world so quietly and peacefully. You didn’t cry. You were placed on my chest and we enjoyed a minute together in silence and awe before you experimented with the use of your vocal chords.

You have yet to stop experimenting.

We lay in the hospital, in the early hours of the morning of August 11 (as you’d been born mere minutes before midnight on the 10th), listening to you wail and cry and carry on. I distinctly remember looking over at your father and saying, “Holy shit. We’re screwed. How do we make her stop?”

You see, your sister spent the first 48 hours of her life sleeping, and then continued her Olympic snoozing habits upon her arrival home. You, my dear… not so much.

I keep hoping that we’ll see improvement, but last night daddy and I found ourselves lying in bed from 2:30-4am serenaded by those very shrieks and wails and oral protestations that we first heard in those early hours 11 months ago.

I’ve heard many of my friends’ babies cry, and I am always struck by how soothing and relatively peaceful I find their lamentations. It’s as though they’re sobbing, “Oh, excuse me. I’m very unhappy here. Would you mind terribly paying attention to me. Perhaps changing my diaper and filling my belly, if it wouldn’t be too much trouble.”

Your cry, on the other hand, is more of a “HEY ASSHOLES! I AM CRYING HERE! THERE ARE MOTHERFUCKING TEARS IN THIS MOTHERFUCKING CRIB! FIX THIS SHIT!”

Who knew a strawberry blonde, milky-skinned baby could feel such kinship with Samuel L. Jackson?

And it’s not just when you are unhappy that you shriek. Oh no, when you are completely blissful you delight in shattering glass with your screams. Last week, promptly following bath time, your most joyous time of day, you lay on your changing table squealing and screaming and mimicking a donkey making love to a feral cat. Not surprisingly, your daddy called up stairs and inquired, “Is everything okay up there?”

Oh just fine. Nothing like a game of peekaboo to inspire our baby to imitate animal porn.

And yet, despite all this noise noise noise noise, you provide us with constant joy and entertainment. The way you wag your head up and down for yes, and ferociously shake side to side for no. The way you quake and shake and wiggle and stomp anytime music hits your ears, namely the Dora The Explorer theme song. The way you hug and snuggle. The way you cruise around the house to stay close to your Mama, and have been adventurous enough to take your first bold, albeit shaky, independent steps. The way you chew your food with your whole head, not just your jaw. The head nod seems to ensure proper maceration. You even drink independently, adeptly cradling your bottle and relaxing into your nap time or bed time routine.

You see, we stopped breastfeeding two weeks ago and my heart hurts just writing that. Admittedly, I’m filled with a mixture of guilt, relief, regret, nostalgia, and FEELINGS about this huge developmental milestone. You and your sister both weened on your own right around 10 months. And while the weening was completely natural and easy and dictated on your terms, I know that it is because of the huge life transitions that we all were facing as a family that caused this self-led weening. For both you and your sister, weening was prompted because of physical moves that put pressure on my time and schedule, and thus limited my time physically present and thus able to breastfeed. I could have continued pumping, and here is where the guilt and feelings of regret come in, but I was too overwhelmed and strapped for time, and so it was far easier and less stressful to stock the house with formula.

Formula. My F word.

I know I shouldn’t be, but I’m still embarrassed anytime I fill a formula bottle in public. As though the entire world is looking at me thinking, “Well look at that mother, poisoning her baby.” Obviously, OBVIOUSLY!, it’s not poison. I drank formula. Your daddy drank formula. Heck, your big sister drank formula for those two months before I transitioned her to whole milk. And we’re all healthy, happy, intelligent people, and yet, the guilt. The shame. The regret. It’s still there. Irrationally there. It’s as though I need a T-shirt that reads, “I breastfed. I swear. Stop judging me! I judge myself enough already!”

It’s not fair that we beat ourselves up like we do, we women, we mothers. And yet, it comes with the territory. I hope it will be different for your generation of women. For you and your sister. I’m doing my best to fight against this guilt and pressure. And I’ll always fight for you.

I know that the hardest part of this past month was not the sleep deprivation or the guilt and regret, but rather the tension of joy and yearning, pride and nostalgia. The acknowledgement that with each shaky step, with each independent bottle, with breastfeeding behind us and a mouth of teeth before us, you are becoming more and more your own amazing little person. And it truly splits my heart in two, one as a mother aching for her innocent newborn and another as a mother filled with dreams for her child.

And that’s exactly as it should be.

I love you, darling. Happy 11 months.

143 Mama