3 months of Aidan

Dear baby boy,

The past month has been nothing short of amazing for me. Yes, I still struggle with your lack of naps. There are times when I doubt myself and wonder if there was anything I had done wrongly to lead to this. I wonder if I could have tried harder to instil a routine in your life. I wonder if I should have worked harder at making you an independent sleeper.

But I am learning to let it all go. I have done everything I could possibly have. All I can do now is to hope that this is a phase that you will outgrow and work around this quirk of yours.

And I have been so much happier since! True to my word, I have taken you out of the house every single day. We have gone for walks around the neighbourhood, had breakfast at Ikea, chilled at Raffles City, shopped at Orchard Road, explored Tiong Bahru, attended mothers’ group and visited Daddy in his office. You’ve been an absolute angel, sleeping soundly in the Boba wrap and nursing under the poncho that Aunty Yuling had thoughtfully passed to Mommy. When we meet up with Mommy’s friends, you turn on the charm, smiling and ‘chatting’ to them.

Oh the chatting! How you love to talk! The mornings are magical. You wake up grouchy from hunger but once fed, you turn into a chatterbox. You babble in that sweet, breathy baby voice of yours and smile with such unadulterated joy. Once, after a middle of the night feed in the midst of your 3-month growth spurt, we put you between us in our bed, fully expecting you to crash into exhausted sleep as we were intending to but no. You started talking out loud, as if you were having an animated conversation with, hmm, the ceiling lamp? It would have been hilarious, if not for the fact that we were dead tired!

(For the record, you only fell asleep after I ‘force fed’ you. Don’t ask how.)

These days, you seem to finally recognize that I am your mama and not just a pair of milk taps. Your eyes follow me and you turn your cute, over large head to keep me in your sight. You cry rather loudly and sadly when I leave you to attend to my human needs and you reserve your cheeriest smile for me.

I look at you and I think back to that night when I realized that we were expecting. That positive pee stick, the little blob on the ultrasound – it was you. And now here you are, lying sweetly in my arms. How surreal.

And I’ve been doing my best to remember all these little moments with you: the peaceful sigh you emit right before you sleep; the way you stare at your legs and move them around, trying to piece together the fact that those chubby things are YOURS; how you suck at your fist loudly and enthusiastically and then cry when you move it away unwittingly; your big smiles and the energetic way you wriggle your body when I sing to you; your puppy eyes and pout right before you bawl.

All the mamas told me that the first three months of your life are the hardest and that it gets better. They were right. This IS such an amazing, fun and wonderful period in your life and I feel so privileged (albeit really, REALLY tired) to be sharing it with you. I am going to be missing you so terribly when I go back to work.

How I love you. I love, I love, I love you.

Always,
Your mama