THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, November 6, 1994 TAG: 9411060171
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: ELIZABETH SIMPSON
LENGTH: Medium: 64 lines
I am shedding baby clothes.
Last week it was a nightie with rocking horses on it. The week before a green velveteen dress.
I'm also shedding baby equipment. A baby stroller. A highchair spattered with strained carrots. An infant seat with the lining frayed from babies tugging at the sides.
Most of this is done with a great deal of delight. ``Here, take these bibs,'' I smugly tell my friend, Betsy, who's expecting a child in May. ``I won't be needing them any more.''
There's more room in the closet. Less junk cluttering up the hallway. Less time until the youngest is out of diapers.
I am counting the days.
I was, that is, until I got to the crib. I promised it to Betsy months ago, even before Gracie had outgrown it. A ``grown-up bed'' is supposed to arrive next week.
And suddenly I want to put on the brakes. Because casting off the crib, more than anything, means my baby days are numbered. And when it's your last child, that's enough to make you cling to the wooden rails and sob like the baby who isn't there anymore.
Lately, I've taken to tiptoeing in several times a night to see Gracie sprawled out across the miniature mattress, her hair spiraling across bunny sheets. I remember when she was just a tiny ball curled up in the corner, her feet tucked under her diapered bottom, her lips pursed in slumber.
Now she takes up three-quarters of the bed, her arms and legs splaying out as if she knows the world is hers to stretch her limbs across.
The thought of moving her into a bed both excites and saddens me. There's something about a baby in a crib that's different from a child in a bed. In a crib, they're sort of captured in babyhood, dependent on you to lift them out first thing in the morning, set them back in last thing at night. There are sides on their lives, which you control.
Once they move on to a regular bed, they're free to climb in and out of bed at will. It doesn't just make naptime a challenge - ``You WILL stay in that bed'' - it makes you realize they're not as dependent on you as they once were. They're making that slow, steady separation that growing up requires.
The ambivalence about the crib goes a little deeper in Gracie's case. I'm gloriously happy about the family I have - two girls whom at one dark point in my life I worried I couldn't have because of medical problems. Yet there's a tiny flame of desire for just one more. The child who would embody everything the other two don't. The boy in a family of girls. A third one who, I'm sure, would cuddle for hours, while my two girls hop off my lap as quickly as they climb on. Another child who would give me one last shot at getting this parenting business down perfect.
But age, money and time - too much of the first, too little of the last two - conspire against this mythical child.
Friends keep telling me how the physical part of child-rearing gets easier as kids get more independent, even though the head part gets harder. They talk about newfound energy once the kids can dress, feed and entertain themselves.
I look forward to that.
And if that doesn't convince me, well, I'm hanging on to the bassinet, just in case. by CNB