I count my blessings in many ways: by the number of lobster ravioli slathered with lemon butter I just called 'dinner', by every crumble of golden wax I plumb from Henry's perfect ear, by the many fabulous people who have graced my life. And now there's a new way in which I count my blessings: In seven months of out-of-the-womb motherhood, I've only had the urge to shake Henry -- as in "shut-the-fuck-up-I'm-so-tired-I-could-sleep-through-Sting/Johnny Depp/Jeff Goldblum*/Dexter Filkins/Andrew McCarthy-in-the-80s-naked-in-my-bed-and-I'm-desperate-to-get-something-done-that-has-nothing-to-do-with-you" twice. And I took deep breaths, walked out onto the back porch for a few moments, and imagined myself smoking a cigarette. Both Henry and I survived that horrible urge thankfully never transformed into action.
They say you forget the pain of childbirth. Hogwash, I say, I'll never forget the sensation of daggers dive bombing my uterus, but fortunately I have mostly forgotten the feeling those two terrible primal moments when I wanted to shake Henry. And primal it is: even though I've read a million times how dangerous shaking a baby is, and of course I cried the one time I hurt him trimming his nails, there I was, crazy with lack of sleep, desperate to take a crap or brush the moss off my teeth or God forbid take advantage of that Kiehl's shower gel I'd stockpiled for moments like this, that's what I wanted to do: shake. Not smack, not throw, but SHAKE.
Which makes me wonder where on earth that clutching, frantic urge comes from. It was like I was an urban spaniel who shakes a toy, still bred to shake a bunny even though likely the closest he's ever come to wildlife is a copy of "Where the Wild Things Are." I felt like an animal. Later, it made me wonder if our primate cousins, when they too are driven to psychosis by mothering, shake their infants.
And yet, for me, that's been one of the tenderest, most profound and most humbling aspects of becoming a mother: the every day reminders that I am an animal. When I nurse Henry, I'm no different than any other mammal, and somehow that recognition is deeply fulfilling and reassuring. When I'm stressed over or overly micromanaging some bit of baby care trivia, like in the first days when I switched a bracelet from one wrist to another to try to remember which breast I last nursed from, I remind myself that baboons, rats, elephants, and meercats don't wear bracelets. I quickly learned to not even think about it: Raising your child to the breast that needs to be drained does not demand conscious thought.
Still, it shocks me sometimes that we humans manage to perpetuate our species by raising babies: it is dull, dull work spiked with occasional fury. In the early months, baby care amounts to hours and hours of tedium punctuated by an occasional moment of joy, or the prospect of a moment of joy. It's like slogging through a bowl of skanky rice that never ends, forced to eat it with a serving spoon, because just once in awhile, you get a teaspoonful of chocolate mousse.
But back to the shaking thing, and the fact that I resisted the primal urge, in the end I think experiencing it just those two times made me more compassionate. Who knows how else my life could have unfolded -- indeed, how it has unfolded for other men and women -- where shaking a baby, regressing to spanielhood, felt inevitable.
*It's true. I heart Jeff Goldblum, even though he's apparently now dating a 12-year-old. Whoopsie, I inverted the numbers, she's actually 21.
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