A Fable: The Baby in Your Bosom

At night, when the sun has gone down, some people like to go to sleep in their warm cozy beds. One such person, a young mother, was ready for said repose. She put on her warm pajama pants, threw her blanket over her shoulders, and snuggled into her soft clean sheets.

When she had closed her eyes, she could finally sleep, and her heart swelled with joy.

Then she heard a cry at her feet. Looking down, she saw a baby. Before she could move, the baby spoke: “I am suffering! It is too cold for me out here, and I am bored. There is no milk, and I am starving. Put me in your bed and feed me.”

“Oh, no,” said the mother. “I know your kind. You are a baby. If I bring you into bed, you will puke on me, and I will have to change the sheets before I can go to sleep.”

“Not so,” said the baby. “I will treat you differently. If you do this for me, you will be special. I will not puke in your bed.”

The mother withstood for a while, but this was a very persuasive baby with beautiful coloring. At last the mother brought him close to her breast and carried him to bed. There she laid him gently on the sheets.

Suddenly, the baby shuddered, coughed, and puked, showering her bed in sour milk.

“But you promised—” cried the mother.

“You knew what I was when you picked me up,” said the baby as he hurled again.

Comments

What Works for Us: Room Time

I've decided to do a new series of posts on how I make parenting work for us. Every parent does it differently--which is great!--but I have a hard time keeping my discoveries to myself. The things I do may not work for anyone else but I want to record them and remember them. Hopefully, it will also help me vent my soap-box-y-ness so that I'm not always imposing my ideas on other people. That will be what "What-Works-for-Us Posts" are about. One of the things that we have always done, but has made a HUGE difference in the move from one to two children, is Room Time . When Soren was 6 months old, I started having him play alone (in a safe place) every day for a few minutes. At first it was only five minutes in the port-a-crib but we quickly worked up to fifteen, then thirty. At that time, I used those precious minutes to do housework or relax on the couch. When I was pregnant with Carl, Soren would play alone for about an hour in his room and I would usually tak...

Surrounded by Love

One of my greatest worries about having four children was that I would not be able to welcome and love my new baby as well as I had the others. Now that he is here, I feel that he is perhaps the most welcomed and best loved of all my sons. More on that in a moment. I struggled to bond with Leif in utero, in part because pregnancy was old hat to me and in part because life was busy with too many other things. The new miracle growing inside of me was the most normal thing about my life. There were a few good moments that helped me prepare mentally: doing guided meditations during Christmas vacation, my blessingway on January 6th, and a really good conversation I had with Scott about my hopes and worries. But mostly, my mind was elsewhere. And then there was the birth. I should have known that it would be a totally unique experience and that it would prepare me for this totally unique child. Needless to say, I'm crazy about the little guy. ...

ABCs

A couple of months ago I was trying to encourage Soren to draw. For 15 or 20 minutes every afternoon, we would sit at the coffee table with paper and pencil. I would draw stick figures and doodles; Soren would watch, his own paper untouched. After a couple of days repeating my usual pictures over and over, I ran out of ideas and started writing the letters of his name. One day I wrote and drew pictures of all the things I could think of that began with S: Soren, snake, superman, spider, stars, etc. The next day we focused on the letter O. It gave me ideas for drawing, which kept Soren entertained even if it wasn't fulfilling its original purpose. A couple more weeks went by and I didn't put any effort into reinforcing the letters. So I was very surprised when, one day while reading a naptime story, he pointed to the page and said very distinctly, "ess". He was, in fact, pointing to an S. And he was very excited about it. So, instead of reading the book, we sp...

Mom Remembers

Search This Blog