The Best Distraction
My 13-week-old daughter recently decided that a global pandemic was the ideal time to cut her first two teeth.
All the signs were there – excessive drooling, jamming her hands in her mouth, tugging at her ears, nighttime fussiness – but I chose to ignore them and feign ignorance. No, it couldn’t be. She’s too young. Impossible.
The world is proving to us with each passing day that things that once seemed absurd and not even worth entertaining can happen. Will happen. Are currently happening.
So, when I finally rubbed my (very, very clean) pinky along her gum line and felt her teeth poking through, I felt icy panic course through my body. This is a feeling I’ve grown quite used to the past several weeks as the Coronavirus has increasingly taken over life as we know it.
I thought, “This is just too much.”
A worldwide health crisis with no end in sight AND A TEETHING BABY? Surely, this will be the thing that breaks me.
Surprisingly, it’s had quite the opposite effect. Anyone who’s ever had a baby knows they are pretty much all-consuming. Babies need their mothers in the most pure, intimate, and overwhelming way. We are their lifeline, their meal ticket, comfort embodied.
And once that baby starts teething, that neediness increases exponentially. Now, instead of being glued to the television and the endless hours of COVID coverage, I’m glued to my child. Or rather, she is glued to me, screaming a scream so loud that it causes actual ringing in my eardrums each time I try to put her down. So, I choose to hold her and do the “mom rock” while she drifts in and out of sleep in the crook of my arm.
When she wakes, the first thing she wants to do is make eye contact as if to say, “Oh good, you’re still there. I was just checking. Also, feed me. Like now.”
When I look back into her eyes that are the exact shade of blue as mine, I don’t see any fear at all. When I look into the eyes of any adult lately – my father, the man who pumps my gas, the grocery store clerk, the kind lady who caffeinates me from a drive-thru window while wearing gloves and a surgical mask – I see weariness and uncertainty. And when I dare look at my own reflection, I see exhaustion – and if I look hard enough, I see terror.
Who wouldn’t be terrorized by the dumpster fire that is the whole world right now? I’ll tell you who. My baby. And your baby too. And really all babies who are safe and fed and cuddled and unconditionally loved.
Babies don’t have a clue about current events. Their needs are so basic, so primal. What use is there in relaying to them the details of some super scary virus that has made us all feel like we are living out our version of the Upside Down? There is no use. None.
So, for any of you mamas lucky enough to be in good health and have the privilege of caring for a baby (bonus if that baby is teething and I never thought I’d say that), enjoy this distraction.
Take a good hard look at that miracle in your arms and remember that we are responsible for creating the next generation. Of course we’ll survive this; we’ll do it for them.
– Kaysie, Woman of a Certain Grace