My next-door neighbors, who just welcomed an infant daughter into their lives, had to make a trip to the ER today because she appeared jaundiced. She’ll be fine, the doctors said. She won’t need to be readmitted. They were lucky.
I was glad for my neighbors. But as I heard their story, I also flashed back on my Tiger’s first days. (This may be why parents sometimes seem overeager for their friends to reproduce: through them, we relive moments in our lives that might otherwise be lost forever.)
The Tiger, too, was slightly jaundiced as a newborn. But while today was a sunny, crisp slice of fall, he turned yellow in the late days of a golden June. The treatment was to take him outdoors, naked but for his diaper, and let him bask in the sun. The sky was cloudless. The air was dry and hot. I basked, too.
Medically, it worked. We, too, were lucky,. I was grateful. But what really sticks with me is the memory, etched into my flesh, of snuggling with him as he relaxed entirely into me, as if he were trying to approximate the warm watery cave he’d just left a few days before. In some ways, I felt closer to him than before his birth – maybe because he was now clearly his own person, and I didn’t take our closeness for granted. I no longer assumed a symbiosis. And that made the momentary blurring of boundaries all the sweeter. Also, it surely didn’t hurt that I, too, was finally warm enough.
Sometimes I think it’s those body memories, intense but often buried under the sediment of visual and verbal memories, that make us who we are. I realize I’m privileged to have had lots of good body memories. I would wish that for everyone, because the habits and memories of the flesh constitute our deepest selves, and yet we are largely at their mercy.
Patron cat of Kittywampus (1985-2001)
Thanks for this Sungold. I can tell you that one of the supreme pleasures of having an eight-month-old grandson is reliving, through him, the great physical pleasures of having and holding my own sons. Sometimes makes me just a tad melancholy. But deeply joyful at the same time. Much like it was actually.
I can imagine that it’s lovely to snuggle when you don’t have to do it all night long, too! It’s not that I resented co-sleeping (I did it with both my babies while they were still very small) but I enjoyed snuggling more when I’d had a decent night’s sleep.
I’m so glad that you’re getting to experience this wonderful, melancholy joy. I imagine he’s getting pretty mobile by now, so those long snuggles are growing shorter already. Which is one source of the melancholy.
Amen to that Sungold, and your wish for others.
Holding a new baby always gets me close to or over the verge of tears. That little cuddly scrap of life embodying all that future, good and bad experience, and hope.
As to good body memories, I’ve been quite lucky there after a poor start, and I’m now well placed for more and better, for which I’m extremely grateful.
“God bless the child”.
I’m glad you’ve been mostly lucky, Reg – and that things just keep getting better.
Thanks for a beautiful post. Ok, medical me needs to say: Jaundice is remarkably common among newborns, and is usually not serious. (Of course, a medical professional should make this determination).
Now here comes mommy me, which is why I really wanted to reply. Your post brought back a strong memory of sitting on my small patio with my mildly jaundiced newborn. It was so quiet, so peaceful and so real to have him outside of my body. I can still feel his wrinkly flesh – he was so much more wrinkly and small than I thought he would be.
I’m glad you inserted the medical info – thanks! I know it’s quite routine and rarely serious, but my neighbors were afraid they might have to be readmitted, just at the point when they were happily nesting as a family of four. So they were relieved to come home again the same afternoon, and I was relieved for them.
You’re farther south than me, so I only had those newborn pleasures cuddling outdoors with my second baby. My first one came in November while I was still in Berlin, Germany – we were all deprived of light and mild air. I have to wonder if postpartum depression is less common in the summer, just due to the sunlight?
I wouldn’t be surprised if SAD had some effect on some post partum depression. There is a complex interplay of hormones and moods at all stages, including sex hormones, light exposure, oxytocin, etc.
Yeah, I remember my little one fiercely holding up her little head, and now I know how “particular to her” that was. Nurses in the hospital warned me she was spunky and that I’d have BIG TROUBLE with that one! (They were right!) “Look at her hold up her head!”–she’d fight so hard to keep erect and upright then *collapse* on my shoulder.
I remember so well, thinking, ‘wow, she’s ready to go’.
I miss her little head collapsing on my shoulder, after the herculean effort of trying to keep it up…I remember the feeling so well, a body memory, as you describe.
Gosh, Daisy, I can’t imagine you of all people giving birth to a spunky child!!!
My firstborn had similar tendencies. He wouldn’t sleep even during those first 48 hours in the hospital. And he, too, fiercely fought sleep and gravity and anything else standing between his will and reality. That hasn’t changed yet. I’m about to tell him to stop reading and turn out the light, and I fully expect he’ll come downstairs at least twice before he finally gives in to sleep …