Those Precious Newborn Days (Or So I Hear)

In fairness, some people didn’t know my daughter had colic. But some people did, and still said it.

“They’ll never be this little again.”

“They won’t always be this cuddly.”

“One day they won’t want to be held.”

They said it like it was a bad thing. So why was I thinking “good!” ?

I remember thinking there was no way I’d look back on these days and feel like I wish I had appreciated them more.

In fact, I was pretty sure I’d look back on them and feel down right ripped off that I wouldn’t miss any of those moments. Sadly, I actually remember saying to my husband that if we ever had a second child, we’d have a do-over with the newborn days and then maybe get to see what people were talking about.

I counted down the hours, minutes and seconds until my daughter was no longer a newborn. And now, 2 and a half years later, the only thing I mourn of those newborn days is that, no matter how hard I tried, there simply wasn’t much beyond her actual birth for me to look back on and wish I could relive, hold on to for a second, or appreciate.

And I don’t regret that. I don’t even feel guilty about it. One of these days I’d love to do a proper poll of parents who had colicky newborns and find out if any of them miss anything about those days.

A lot of my friends say they loved the newborn days. Their kids slept all the time and were just so tiny, sweet and helpless. They looked forward to their next pregnancies so that they could do it again.

Meanwhile, I feared having a second child and having to risk going through colic again. I wished I could find something in those days to hold onto. But I couldn’t.

And unlike the bonding issues I had, I did not think something was weird about the fact I hated those days. I knew it was an unreasonable thing to expect me to feel.

I will never forget the day I turned to my husband when my daughter was about 7 or 8 weeks old, saying through tears that I hadn’t felt an ounce of joy since she came home. She started screaming out of the womb. There was no ‘3 week lull’ you hear of before the colic kicked in.

How can you find a moment to enjoy anything when the rare moments of calm are usually more a relief than a joy?

I am in no way ungrateful for the fact I have a beautiful healthy child. I am lucky and I am blessed.

None of that changes the fact that my daughter’s first months of life were among the hardest days in my own life, and I am proud to have come out the other side, and I am proud to have found the joy. But, I don’t miss her newborn days. I honestly don’t think I miss a moment of them.

And that’s okay.

I’m glad I didn’t put any pressure on myself to try to find the joy. I know it would have been a futile effort and just made me feel worse about the fact that those days were about endurance, not joy.

Luckily, as the newborn days wore off and a real little person started to peak through, I was able to start to find enjoyment. There were still challenges. There are always challenges. There always will be challenges. There is no stage of life that doesn’t have challenges.

The difference with those newborn days is that there is no return on your effort. And there is nothing you can do. It is a time when no interventions will matter.

There is no ‘fixing’ colic.

So it’s okay. When people wax poetic about the sweet cuddly newborn days I just smile and nod.

And when I had my son, and he was a fussy newborn, I gave up my hope of ever knowing what my friends were talking about. I knew that while some people enjoy the newborn days, I wasn’t going to ever be one of those people.

Thankfully, after having my daughter, this time I had perspective. This time I knew that the newborn days were, in fact, short in the grand scheme of things.

And somehow, this time, it made it easier.

Leslie lives in Toronto with her husband, her 2 and a half year old daughter and 6 month old son. She is presently on maternity leave and enjoying the hectic and harried life with two young children.

Photo Credit: Stuart Miles