The Fanaticism of New Motherhood

So as not to bombard the world with my absolutely new and shifting mind, body and spirit, and the correlation to the idea that my physical world has grown closer, though far more vast within, I feel like I should make my estaticism an optional choice for gawkers, and

they should gawk, as I am kind of raving and wild right now. I feel like I think Rumi would feel; I feel like I've abandoned myself to an absolute joy that has created a more momentous spirit. 

In short: my happiness is probably verging on the appearance of nuttiness. Mostly, this is through the idea that the most insignificant, or maybe even the grossest things, make me happy.

The other night, I think it was Friday, I was a little worried because Langston had not had a poopy diaper since we left the hospital. Then my dad held him for a while, and Langston started to get this funny, gummy grin, and he let it all go, over and over; after what seemed like a safe distance in time,

Tim changed his diaper. Watching Tim, who has never been around kids much and babies never, and my parent's, who have not been around a baby in almost thirty years, be bamboozled by Langston was hilarious.

Without the worst of descriptions, Tim ended up catching a third poop in his hands, so it would not get on the leather sofa, which my dad had just said he was replacing. Needless to say, I laughed so hard, with a pillow pressed to my tum, 

that I thought my stitches would rip out. Langston plays these funny games when I am breast feeding him too. He gets the face of a lion and comes at me like Rocky. And he took to it right away; the moment I finally saw him, he claimed these breasts as his own. 

He giggles and blows bubbles at them. I will never tell him this when he gets older, but his tenacity for breast feeding is a riot.

His cooing and noises are funny too, and Langston is a baby that has already developed solid comedic timing. Last night, Tim and I were talking about something that was nutty, and I said, "you know?" and Langston said, "mm-hmm."

He loves music; he is obsessed with Tim and Tim's made up stories and made up songs and the elaborate voices Tim makes up when he reads to Langston. 

Also funny is when Tim reads Langston Hughes; apparently, Hughes is the only one who can curse around the baby, and oh does he curse in elaborate voices.

Whenever Tim picks him up, at those heights that are so thrilling for a baby (I know, as I too have a tall father and I LOVED being picked up by him), Langston gets wide-eyed and still.

Sometimes he looks like a pirate, sometimes he is milk-drunk; sometimes he looks like Bukowski or like someone is catching him doing something he should not be doing.

He loves having his diaper changed, and Tim and I, at least so far, readily jump to change it because it's apparent that a diaper change is a real bonding moment for Langston, which feels good. He's peed on me, pooped while I changed him, and it all makes me laugh.

However, if there is anything I've learned so far, it is that nothing is worse than when he cries. Last night, at 2a, Langston was inconsolable, so in my silk nighty and a sweater, I went for a ride with Tim and Langston.

Sitting in the backseat, Langston was finally silent and cooing, sometimes snoring like a little frog. Holding Langston's hand, the world was peaceful and silent. 

While Tim drove, I rubbed Tim's neck, and he kept his arm extended into the back seat, rubbing the soft part of my ankle.

We listened to music from the 50s and 60s, stopped at a gas station; I had a decaf coffee and Tim had a coffee danish. He ate in the car until Langston got fussy, 

then we drove around again. When we got home, Tim and I made out in the car, Tim leaning over the backseat; Langston asleep next to me.

I could easily say, it was one of the most romantic moments in my life. Jane Fonda famously said that "with discipline comes freedom," and I've never felt so free.

There's the romantic feeling of pulling all nighters, the electric buzz of sleep deprivation; the estaticism of being at the start of something wonderful,

where one just has to trust herself to know what to do. There is romance in the confidence of it, in the necessity of instinct and love.