Tiny new person

[liv]

So my partners and metamour had a baby this week! It's very exciting, but also very weird because we are quarantined apart. I had been a bit nervous and a lot excited about forming a relationship with a child from birth (I suppose that was the case with my siblings, but the period when I was aged 2-6 doesn't count in quite the same way.) But now that's not really going to happen; I'm planning to carry on waving to her from 2m away, but babies don't bond to people who occasionally wave from 2m away.

There's no point being sad about no baby cuddles; I'm already properly sad about having to stay physically distanced from my actual partners and the middle two children whom I miss desperately. Family life during a a pandemic is weird, but that's hardly news.

I started spending extended time with her older siblings when they were 2 1/2 and 6 (now 8 and 11). The thing I found most difficult about interacting with younger children is how emotionally intense they are. Does anyone have any advice (from personal experience or theoretical knowledge) about how to cope when people you care about find every small setback or frustration devastatingly upsetting? It's something I want to do better this time. Note that I don't want advice on how to prevent small children from inconveniently expressing emotions around me, I just want to find better ways of handling my own feelings.

It's probably a skill worth learning in general, because with a terrifying global pandemic everybody is more emotionally on edge than usual. And of course it's something that all parents must manage somehow. I just... don't see it talked about a lot in eg parenting guides.

Comments

[lilacsigil]

Congratulations!

I'm not a parent but I am an aunt and the two things that I had to learn were:

1. sometimes only the parent will do (and sometimes only a specific parent) and that's nothing to do with me, it's just developmental. And you can still help the parents by staying present and being calm and making sure the child is warm/fed/safe until parent is available.

2. a crying baby is really emotionally distressing, especially if you're not the person there all the time and aware of what different cries mean! I had to remind myself a lot that this was the baby's only way of communicating, not the immediate PANIC STATIONS that the crying baby invoked in me!

That said, I never did get to like the baby stage particularly, they were much more interesting from the age of 1!

[mrissa]

Seriously sometimes only the parent will do. Seriously. Seriously.

Although...as a godmother sometimes I am also indispensable. Less often than their parents! But sometimes only Auntie Mrissa would do. (This is still true, but they express it differently as teenagers. It's all part of learning that people are not fungible, which is a great lesson.)

[liv]

Yes, very good point! I am completely chill with the notion that only actual parents, and sometimes only the (currently) preferred parent, can fix things emotionally. I'm ok with holding the fort until the actually comforting person is available, I think. And sometimes you just have to wait it out, because even the right parent can't console them.

Also worth remembering that crying, or later forms of expressing intense unhappiness, might be communication rather than a panic signal.

I am far more interested in older children than babies, but I was somewhat hoping to form a relationship during the window before the youngest starts rejecting unfamiliar people, if only to make things easier later on (though I still won't be a real parent, of course.) That might still happen but I'm a bit sad about the possibility that I might miss the whole infant phase.

[marymac]

Just on the relationship forming - it's harder and takes more work, but long distance can be done. My best friend's youngest nephew was born at the start of lockdown, and her sister makes sure that the baby is there when she's video chatting to the older ones in the evenings, so he knows her voice. He's starting to smile when he hears her. Similarly, H has video chats with my parents and sisters and his Nana nearly every day, and didn't make strange at all when we finally got to see them last week.

It'll work out.