BABY | Elizabeth Murray was born on a Sunday.

Daddy and the fresh one, skin-to-skin.

She came into the world just after six am, weighing around six and a half pounds. And at this very moment, she is nearing six months old. (Now we are six … months?)

​The labour was easy (as far as labours go). It’s already hard to remember the details. The uncontrollable shivering. How much it hurt. The oozing, gore-smeared placenta and sac that my doctor, Rachel, held up for me to see. (So small?)

For weeks afterwards, my torso felt like a hollow, gelatinous void. (It takes time for the uterus to shrink, and for the organs to shift back into place.)

I bled for a long time.

Sometimes I miss the before, even though I can barely remember it. It hasn’t even been six months, and yet my pre-baby life seems as distant as high school. I know I experienced it, but it’s so far away now, I can’t recall the day-to-day.

Remember before? Nathan and I will say to each other as we watch closed-captioned television on mute with a tiny person sleeping on one of our laps.

Baby looks just like Mario.

Remember before? we say, as we climb into bed at 9 pm, exhausted.

Yes and no, I guess. I remember, and then again, I don’t.

The before seems like a dream.

I found pregnancy difficult. Various complications left me worried and tired and in pain for much of those nine months. Friends ghosting for no apparent reason left me sad. I didn’t have a lot of support. But those first few weeks with the actual baby were harder. Overwhelming. Confused. Nathan would have to leave the apartment and I’d cry, I was so afraid to be alone.

Breastfeeding wasn’t easy (I didn’t know how to do it, and neither did she). Our already-small baby was getting smaller. A nurse employed by the provincial government called to give me a hard time about it. A couple of days after coming home, I spent a full night sitting up with the light on, with her in my arms. I was so afraid to put her down. When we slept, it was in a tangled pile in our double bed, for stretches no longer than an hour at a time.

It was hard to wake her and hard to keep her awake.

The Wiz.

We’d have to shout, hold her tiny, worm-like body up to the light, and spray her little tummy with water to get her to suck even an ounce of milk an hour. When all else failed, we had to shoot squirts of it into her mouth with a syringe. She seemed barely alive. Not like a real person at all. My sister said she looked like a wizened gnome and we started calling her The Wiz.

We must have been delirious with fatigue, because our conversations were strange.

Somehow we got talking about the early-90s, puppet-populated sitcom, Dinosaurs. Nathan hadn’t seen it. I found a YouTube video and we watched it over and over again. We couldn’t stop laughing. Nothing had ever seemed so funny. Even now, months later, we still sing “Not the Mama!” to each other on a regular basis. I have no idea why. Neither of us can remember. But it still seems funny. (Scroll to the bottom to see the video.)

The baby is so different now. So alive.

Mama and baby fish faces.

Still a bit small (hasn’t made it to 15 lbs yet), but long. She laughs a lot. Strange things seem funny to her, too. She loves cars going by, birds and squirrels, zerberts, music (Robyn, old Riot Grrrl, and 80s pop are her faves), her Dad’s beard, baths with the Mama, making faces for the camera, and her Uncle Gunk. Her little worm self – The Wiz – has disappeared and she has become Beth, Murmur, Murmelur, the Mur, Elizabeth Moo, etc. We talk nonsense to her on an endless loop. Strangers always think she’s a boy. I’ve already had to take her to the Emergency Room in the middle of the night. I already want to kiss her more than she wants to be kissed.

It turns out we are relatively crunchy parents. We’re cosleeping, bedsharing, cloth-diapering, and babywearing. We’ve started baby sign language this week, and I might try both elimination communication and baby-led weaning. We’re accidental attachment parenting. I didn’t expect this. We don’t have strong political feelings about it (do what’s right for you, folks — every baby is different), but we’ve faced a fair bit of criticism (usually from boomers who did it differently, or millennials who are sure they will do it better). But honestly, it just turned out this way. Sometimes I forget I’m a mother now. I rarely have time to write. We don’t have a lot of help or support with the actual caregiving, but I have a lot of new friends and that is a nice thing.

Things are different, but good.