The 3-Month Update

How do you avoid motion blur with a bouncy baby?

Perhaps a milestone more significant than Allison’s new ability to hold her head level with her body when pulled to sitting - which prompted unrestrained celebratory woo hoos from me and an instant SMS to her daddy at work, and a delightful smile from the performer herself - is that we, a made-in-heaven pair of a sometimes-neurotic-mother and sometimes-challenging-kid, have made it to the 3-month mark, through trying times of indecipherable (hence inconsolable…no diagnosis how to treat?) crying, parent-seeking poo missile  - in the middle of the night at that and spit-ups.

Today I am a somewhat more confident mother. It’s a steep learning curve, and I don’t think I have been pushed this hard in life - not even during those stressful times as a house officer or preparing for my postgraduate exams. A large part of it comes from anticipation of her needs, and meeting them before she even has a chance to wail her request or protest. There’s a faint semblance of a schedule - it takes a stretched imagination and a tonne of optimism to recognise it, but it’s there, some kind of order forming in our daily lives. Wake, feed, play, fuss, nap, wake, feed, play, fuss and fuss, play, nap, wake, feed…it’s at least irregularly regular, not regularly irregular.

Today she is definitely a more sociable creature. On good days, waking times aren’t announced with hungry cries. On good days, she entertains herself for an enchantingly long period in her cot while her mother, still in bed, peeps with half-opened eyes praying fervently that she’d go back to sleep, or at least not break into a cry. On good days she naps! She coos and razzes and squeals and hates to be left out of a conversation - how many times has she yelled to be included when mummy and daddy talk to each other? She flashes toothless grins that reduce us to pulp.

Today I am a 3-month-old mother with plenty of work in progress.

Today Allison is a 3-month-old baby, and I can’t wait to hear her utter her first word.