06 December 2011

My Baby Is Gone! And I'm A Mess.

My. Husband. Cut. My. Baby's. Hair. And now my baby is gone.

In case that didn't get the point across, I've seriously had a hard time with Jaron getting his first haircut.

Jake did it with my grudging permission, so it's not like he snuck off and chopped off those baby strands, but I wasn't ready. I knew that he was going to need one soon and figured it would be in the next couple of weeks since his hair was starting to get close to being in his eyes. Jake's been mentioning cutting it for months now. So I finally caved and let him cut it.

We just did it here at home because Aedyn's first haircut came out horrible even though he sat perfectly still and let the stylist do what she needed to do. And it was at a kid's place, the only one in town. I wasn't doing that again and Jake knows his way around a head of hair, so we just went that route.

Bad idea.

Not because Jake didn't do a decent job (although cutting hair on a Mexican jumping bean might have been easier than cutting Jaron's). But because he did the job in the first place.

*Rabbit trail: A book that I read before we were married described men's and women's brains as visual and emotional respectively. As an example, the book said to think of a rolodex, at any point in time that rolodex can flip open to any moment in the past and the person has no control over that happening. For men that can be pretty much anything they've ever seen that made an impression, for women it's emotions. Any trigger can set off emotions from that past that are as potent as the time they were originally experiences.*

I was upset all day long. Mad, fuming, hurt, upset. I came up with a dozen different reasons for my reaction. The slight unevenness above Jaron's ears to dishes being in the sink to Jake not saying thank you for something the week before (I didn't say they were good reasons...).

I finally realized what was really going on. I wasn't ready to cut his hair. I felt like I was being bullied into doing something to my child that was unnecessary and that what I wanted for him wasn't even being considered. I was reliving my c-section. Don't ask me why cutting Jaron's hair was a trigger, but it was.

And I felt like I was losing my baby. I still feel that way. Every time I look at him. He looks like a little boy now. It feels different when I look down at him while he nurses. I'm struck by how old he looks and yet how tiny he is while he plays with his brother. He looks completely different.

I know that he can't stay a baby forever and I'll never be 100% ready to let him grow up. But I wish I'd held out for another week. Until he really and truly did have hair in his eyes and the need for a haircut was undeniable on every level.

I miss my baby. I wonder if it really was different with Aedyn or if I took out my emotions on the unknowing stylist as I blamed her for ruining his hair. Maybe with the next one, we'll risk the stylist...just so I'm not unexplainably angry at my husband for the following 24 hours.

Have you ever had such an emotional reactions to something that seemed simple and routine? How did you handle it?

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1 comment:

  1. Aww! If it's any consolation, he looks adorable! And Naomi, though she won't be getting a haircut anytime soon, is starting to look more and more grown up. Her face is changing. I think it's the hair, and the teeth, and losing some of the baby fat and getting taller and being more mobile and a whole buncha things that just hit me all at once. I have a ONE year old. Not an infant anymore. She's closer to being a toddler than anything else, though she still nurses and can still ride in her infant car seat and still sucks on a pacifier sometimes, and still takes two naps. It's tough letting them grow up, and even more so when you feel forced into a step that makes them seem all grown up at once. But it's ok...Jaron is still your baby! Love ya, girl!

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