The Full Gamut of Feelings
Doula Tee, Ring Sling and MotherWit Hoodie resting after a long week
I have been working for this family as their postpartum doula since Joshua (not his real name) was 4 weeks old. Today, he is 8 months old. Yes, my postpartum cut-off age is usually 6 months. I will occasionally go a few months beyond that if I’ve been working with a family for a long time and have established a lovely rapport. It’s a really special thing to work with a family once or twice a week for a stretch of months and to become woven into the family’s attachment tapestry.
Like many babies, Joshua requires significant downregulation in order to sleep. If he’s not nursing to sleep (always works like a charm, but doesn’t help me since he can’t transfer from mom to me afterwards lol), he needs vestibular input (movement) and sound input to drift off. He often whines a bit in the process, even while snuggled in my ring sling, as many littles do. Joshua is one of those babies that cannot abide stillness, even while asleep. That means I will be on my feet for his entire nap unless I manage to lower myself into the rocking chair without him noticing - which - even that is a dodgy move with this little one. My first baby was like this too. He’d be full-on floppy PTFO in the carrier and I’d decide to risk sitting down - sometimes even just leaning on something. Instantly awake and screaming 😳😭. I always feel like it’s the smartest babies who have such a hard time sleeping. The outside world is too alluring.
So for a good 6 months I’ve been delicately stewarding this bright little monkey through his afternoon contact nap. These days, he has dropped a nap and rarely sleeps on me anymore. Only if he missed his other nap or is unwell. The other thing that has been going on lately with Joshua is that he has developed strong feelings about his parents walking away. I know it is not personal as I’m the shoulder he feels comfortable burying his face in as he wails his grief over his parents “cruel abandonment”. Giant air quotes - his parents are actually so distressed at his developmentally appropriate discernment of his favourite people.
So this past week, I showed up for our afternoon visit to two very exhausted parents and one very cranky baby. Evidently, baby had fitful sleep and kept them all awake all night. Suspect: teething or ear infection. Baby was eating some strawberries when I walked in and immediately dropped them, and started dramatically losing his shit in his high chair over my sudden appearance. That’s the thing about these super-smart babies. They can tell by my very presence that their parents are going to walk away soon.
On this particular day, Joshua’s dad was on his way out of the house and his mama desperately needed a nap. Joshua screamed bloody murder as we said bye-bye to his parents. I knew he needed some snuggles, so I broke out my ring sling and popped him in. We stood in the living room, swaying, as I gently hummed a tune to him for a good 30 minutes. His forehead was warm, I could tell something wasn’t feeling right in his body. As he downregulated, he finally accepted the bottle of formula he’d been refusing. A few minutes later, he sniffled, looked up at me, cracked a little smile, then reached for my nose ring.
I took this to mean he was ready for a little play, so I sat myself down in his playpen with him and took off the ring sling, draping it over the edge of the enclosure. This little love bug proceeded to have the best 40 mins of independent play. Me sitting there allowed him to regularly “check in” to make sure a safe grown-up was witnessing his diligent work. He’d crawl back over to me, crawl up into my lap and show me what he was working on, give my nose ring a little twiddle, a quick attempt to remove my apple watch, then back to work.
At some point the check-ins got closer and closer, reminding me that he was clearly not feeling on top of the world. He started rubbing his eyes. I started contemplating how I might coax him to sleep even though he’s not much of an afternoon napper anymore.
THEN, my friends, THEN … Joshua did a magical thing. I didn’t clock it at first. He crawled over to where my ring sling was draped and grabbed a big fistful of it, looked at me and stated “nnda?” I replied “yeah Bud, that’s my ring sling.” to which he responded “DA”. We do a lot of him showing me things and telling me what they’re called (they’re all called “nnda” or “nnngo” these days). But just then, he decided to pull the whole ring sling into the playpen. “Ah, you want to play with the ring sling”, I observed. He then crawled over to me, dragging the ring sling. He crawled up into my lap, stood up and put his arms around my neck. “Are you telling me you want to go to sleep?” I asked, flabbergasted. He responded by rubbing his face all over my shoulder, smearing snot on me.
So I picked him up, slipped the ring sling over us both and tightened it. He did not protest for one single moment. Within 5 minutes of walking around and humming songs to him, he fell sound asleep in my loving arms. When I relayed to his rested mom at the end of the visit how he had brought me the ring sling, her jaw hit the floor. Neither of us questioned the intentionality of it. Joshua is a baby who has always communicated his needs very clearly and we as grown-ups tend to miss these beautiful moments unless we slow down and let babies lead. Thank you for he reminder, Joshua.
