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I have officially begun the ambivalent countdown to my return to paid-outside-the-house work. It’s four months and counting, which means that I am the proud mother of an 8-month-old. How on earth did that happen?? It seems like only yesterday that I was lugging around a person inside of me, anxiously awaiting any sign of contractions. My sense of time has been forever altered since I became pregnant and had a baby, and I’m pretty sure this is common to most parents.

I remember feeling that I would be pregnant forever - my body would never be the same and it was hard to remember that I used to be able to bend over, and not require a crane to get me off the couch. And I thought a lot about the fact that while it seemed I would never have the baby, I knew that once things started happening, I would find myself in the position where I one day was pregnant, and the next day had a baby. And that once I had a baby, I would never again not have a child, if that makes any sense.

It was like I would go through a life door that could never be reversed, and that the time of stepping through that door seemed very quick - out of sync with the monumental life change that would happen. Because while there’s supposedly a reason for nine months of pregnancy to allow you to prepare for being a parent, once you’re there it’s a whole other ball game. In fact, it’s a whole other sport. And that’s exactly what happened, of course. Despite a seemingly interminable pregnancy, things moved towards the inevitable conclusion. Which turned out to be just the beginning.

Our first days at the hospital seemed to go quickly for me, although I suspect my husband’s impression of that time was that it lasted forever: I was on drugs and he slept three nights (or portions thereof) in a chair. Once we got home, though, I swear that each day was about a week or seven long.

All three of us were awake the entire night, taking turns becoming hysterical as we more and more frantically tried to get Junior to latch and drink to no avail. That night lasted an eternity for all of us, and I’m sure took a few years off my life!

We arrived home on a Friday evening, and our god-sent doula/lactation consultant came over to ensure Junior had a good feed before we all settled down to bed around 10 pm. That was the last time he ate until 9 am the next morning (when she returned, along with our midwife and her student, a lactation feeding tube and some formula).

I remember my sister coming over a while after we came home and me asking her to help me put away the unused home-birth supplies I had carefully arranged, as a priority instead of eating, showering or doing laundry. In my mind they had been cluttering up the room for days on end, and yet when I looked back in my notes from that time, it was only on the Sunday morning, 36 hours after we returned home from the hospital.

Being up around the clock, and not having much of a distinction between day and night in terms of sleep, as well as mostly eliminating the usual daytime activities in one’s life makes each day an eternity! Making it through the first two-and-a-half weeks of Jack’s life seemed like enduring a lifetime, due mostly I think to very difficult and extremely painful breastfeeding. What marked that segment so vividly for me was that it was at two and a half weeks that we switched to supplementing Jack at each feeding with glass bottles instead of a lactation tube or medicine cup. Which made such a difference that the tears I was still shedding were mostly those of relief instead of frustration.

I can remember how each task with or for baby, no matter how simple or small, took forever, but in between tasks, when I was rushing to get a load of laundry in, or the kitchen tidied before the baby needed attention again, went so quickly. Each day was divided up into 2-3 hour segments that went on and on, based on baby’s eating schedule that just repeated itself, linking each 24-hour period into the next, instead of an 8-hour workday, followed by six hours of leisure time, followed by eight hours of sleep that marked the end of each day, with a new start in the morning.

I started using “This too shall pass” as my personal mantra a while back when going through a stressful time in my paid work while planning our wedding. It seemed a fitting thought to keep in my head, to remind myself that while the stressful moments would sort themselves out in time, and I shouldn’t worry so much, the enjoyable moments were also fleeting and that I should enjoy them while I could.

I’ve found this to be even more helpful in my parenting journey. Babies are only babies for a limited time. This realization was difficult at the beginning, but it has become more clear. While you can’t count on much to stay constant in life, especially with babies, since abilities change, nap times change, moods change and diapers must be changed, the one thing you can count on is change itself. As Raffi himself sings, “everything grows,” i.e., changes. Time is inexorable in its march forward, despite my varied perspective of it.

W ith this tiny (but growing every day) clock to mark the passing of time I call my son, I’m forced to consider my own growth, which at this stage of my life we call age. I suspect that those who are parents think about time and growth and age differently than those who have never had children. While babies and children grow and change more quickly than adults, our cells are still growing and dying and time marches on in a way that is hard to ignore.

Now that I’m at the two-third mark of my maternity leave, time seems to be speeding up. I’ve realized that there are still things I haven’t done while on leave that I had planned to do, like go to Movies for Mommies, which I think now is a no-go since I doubt Junior will lie quietly on my lap the way he might have at 3 months. Now he wants to be crawling and exploring most of his waking hours.

At the same time, I realize that I will only have four more months of this daily time with him. This has made me appreciate our afternoon naps together instead of being anxious to make sure he naps on his own. I will only have this time to cuddle and watch his sleeping face next to mine for a small window and I intend to enjoy it as much as I can.Time marches forward, and I know that while the bad days, the crying days and sick days and horrible-weather-inside-bouncing-off-the-walls-baby-yelling-I-think-I’ll-lose-my-mind days will seem long, there will come a point when years will have passed so quickly I can’t believe it. All this too, shall pass, and I intend to do my best to enjoy it.