Despite being a great sleeper, Marina always wakes in the morning with a scream/yell/cry, demanding someone come get her. I keep telling her just to say “mama” and I will come. But she still prefers to use the scream approach. So, the other morning, like all the others, I was led on by the screams of my 1-year-old as I walked into her dimmed room.
Immediately, she stopped yelling, pleased that her efforts once again brought me to her location.
I opened the blackout shade, shut off the sound machine, and hoisted her little body out of her bed. “She’s getting so big.” I thought to myself. I laid her down on her changing table and she finally said “mama.” Her voice was a bit scratchy, tinged by sleep and the efforts of her previous screaming. As she said my name, she reached up to grab my neck and her soft strong arms pulled me down to her.
Marina held on tight, hugging me. I nuzzled my nose into her neck, smelling the scent of her skin. I just breathed.
Where did this come from? This wasn’t a normal part of our routine. After screaming to prompt my arrival, she usually then yells at me to speed up the diaper swapping so she can go start her day. She doesn’t like the need to lay down and be bothered with silly things like changing a 15lb diaper soaked in pee. She wants to play. More importantly, she wants to eat.
She never wants to just lay there and snuggle me in the morning.
But this day, she did. She held on to me, strong and insistent.
“You are a wonderful soul,” I think into her.
I’ve tried this with all my kids when they were babies. I would focus all my energy on them and try to speak my thoughts into their brains. Just to see if we might have some sort of magical, telepathetical connection. I’m not sure if it has ever worked, but I still do it.
“We are two waves from the same ocean,” I say to her with my brain. “I feel like we are meeting together right now.”
She doesn’t openly acknowledge my brain talk but we stay like that for a few more minutes. Me just relaxing into her.
After a while, my brain starts to worry I am crushing her with the weight of my upper body. So, I go to stand up and give her space. She doesn’t like this though. Marina immediately pulls me back down into her hug. She says nothing. She just holds on to me.
Another minute goes by. I feel the stresses of my life kind of melt away. Not that I had been feeling overly stressed that morning. But like any adult, there are constant worries, to-do’s, and thoughts just swirling around in my brain. A consistent feed of stress that plays even when I am not aware of it.
But in her hug, I feel a sense of quiet come over me. How does she do this? I’ve never had one of my children at this age just abruptly hug me and hold on for minutes like this. Like she is trying to take something away from me that I wasn’t aware I was burdened with. She knew I needed this hug even when I didn’t.
Maybe she’s an empath? Maybe she can sense things that can’t be seen. I’m not sure. But all I know is that I will cherish that unexpected hug forever.
I nursed 3.25 out of 4 of my kids. Marina is the .25 because I nursed her only for the first two months or so of her life. We had issues. Likely because my 40-year-old titties had their day and were not providing her the nourishment she needed. Point is, she didn’t have the bond of nursing with me that my other kids did. Because of the nursing bond, my other babies were basically up my ass all the time. Wanting to be held, needing to sleep near me, always wanting the snuggles. Marina, because she refused to nurse, didn’t have this connection. She was and is totally fine sleeping apart from me. She was cool as a baby being put down with her bottle and me saying “deuces.” Though this independence has been wonderful, it’s also been bittersweet because I kind of miss that connection that nursing gave me with my other kids.
So, when Marina gives me moments like this, I feel the weight of their importance. It fills my heart to have them because inside my mind thoughts nag me that my body failed her somehow and that she will lack something because she didn’t get what my other kids did. Her displays of connection to me, like this hug, quiet those thoughts. But these moments also whisper of what type of person she will become and how remarkable she already is.