“Hmm, should I start walking today?”
My baby is nine months old today! While I reflect on every monthly anniversary, this one seems particularly special as it means she has now been with me in the physical world about as long as she spent growing inside me.
It’s a symbol of how fast time goes by. It won’t be long before she’ll no longer be a baby at all and then, because she is my last child, this magical “new mom” chapter of my life will be behind me forever.
So what’s it like to be nine months postpartum with two babies under three? It’s a combination of intensely chaotic and sublimely charmed. Rare is the moment I’m free of a child demanding something from me. Even time alone in the washroom is a rare occasion.
On the other hand, raising a nine-month-old is a blessed, life-affirming privilege. It’s enchanting to watch this little human mammal come into her own as an intelligent, socialized being.
Though she doesn’t yet have words, Larissa is an effective communicator, looking at what she wants and grunting with tightly balled fists until she gets it. She finds it intensely amusing when she discovers her older sister sleeping and squeals with delight to find herself in this position of power over her usually dominate older sibling.
Larissa has discovered that the food her family eats is more interesting than her pureed, organic vegetables. She spends much of mealtime moseying up to her elders for handouts (or spillage). Muffin crumbs and spaghetti are her favorites.
Larissa has been cruising around the house with the support of furniture for more than a month now. She is very steady on her feet and is now taking small steps forward without support. I suspect this is the month she’ll officially begin walking, a prospect that makes me equally proud and terrified (two kids running in opposite directions! Heaven help me!).
What’s changed the most in the last three months is my anxiety. While I still have frightening fits of “what if?”, there has been a vast improvement over the last few weeks.
I’m now convinced that those gripping episodes of gut-wrenching panic were, at least in part, a result of postpartum hormones. Interestingly, the pharmaceutical treatment for anxiety and depression are often the same, so possibly what other women experienced as postpartum depression, I experienced as episodes of anxiety.
To anyone going through postpartum anxiety now … hang in there! It does get better!
