Turbulent joy

I had a visitor a few days ago. This person's visit resurrected a few memories: she was my house guest at the time I had my first IUI (in total secret). I had to drop her off at 7 am on a Saturday to a conference an hour away, and drive back pell-mell to be on time for my IUI appointment. I vividly remembered all the impatience and the excitement of that time. She left midway through the agonizing two-week wait, and I remember my huge relief  that I could then savor the anticipation out in the open. I remembered the surreal and utterly joyous moment I got that positive test, and the utter anticipation in the 2.5 months that followed, and finally, the crushing realization that it was all going to come to nothing.

Four years later, as I watched this visitor play with Gauri, my thought process shifted. It was not for nothing. Each painful step of the way was a step in the journey that was bringing me to this baby, each step helped lay the foundation to help me figure out what I had to do to make her come into being. That line of thought dispatched that sad sense of futility. Nonetheless, even in my wildest happy dreams, I could not have envisioned the miracle that is this child.

I had always wondered if the souls of the babies I have lost would return to me one day. Here is a line of thinking that will never culminate in any answers, and I guess its value is in whatever comfort we can draw from it. It was probably my second loss and my second baby that lingered with me the most strongly: I had a nickname  for her: Turbulence, because boy, did she make her presence felt.

Gauri has that same quality. She LOVES people. Loves, loves loves them. Loves talking to them, smiling at them, playing with them, and oh, that curiosity about the world. It is the most beautiful thing to see. She started crawling rather early (6 months) and has such ambition and energy. She immediately wanted to pull up to stand, even before she could sit steadily, and figured out how two weeks later. She now yanks herself up using furniture, determinedly tries to open cupboards (the ones by her play area stick, thank god), crawls all over the place, and shows a decided interest in climbing stairs, and nibbling at my slippers, and attacking my cell phone, and oh, the object of maximum fascination, my laptop. Sigh. She has to be shadowed constantly, with a hand at the ready to catch her. I've forbidden people from grabbing her hands and encouraging her to walk towards them, because I want her to crawl as long as possible. 

We went with something called baby-led weaning (without meaning to), which skips purees totally. This kid can eats mashed-up food versions of grown-up food. She gnaws on whole pieces of fruit and eats chapattis confidently. At seven months, she now wants to self-feed. She has never gagged, to my astonishment. She lunges towards food, attacking our plate if we eat in front of her, and if she sees us eating or drinking, her mouth moves in anticipation.  The most cruel thing to do is deny her grown-up food and give her a boring bottle of formula instead. I am really, really looking forward to almost every culinary restriction being lifted when she turns one.    

In short, this child is such a force of nature. I look at her and marvel at her, and my mom tells me that all babies are like this...that curiosity, that joy. They probably are, but I've never spent real time with any other baby before, so it would be hard for me to fathom. My brothers and cousins better get cracking reproducing, so all of us get to experience this joy again. I could have never imagined that anything will light up a household like this.

I post so rarely, and I have work stuff and immigration stuff and life decision stuff to talk about too, but sigh, who wants to go there when you could be talking about babies throwing food on the floor? Nonetheless, I will say that freelance scientific editing is a good fit at this point in my life. I am slowly starting to accept more work, and I'm on the prowl for companies that will pay the most. While it is rather tempting to not work at all, I do have nest eggs to build up, in preparation for their rapid depletion for when I return to the US. Sigh.