A One Year Old Baby Is As Big As Hell

Like, as big as a medium sized dog, a small chair, a mini fridge…

Before you have a baby for the first time, most people don’t know shit about babies. Maybe you babysat, sure. Maybe you even took care of siblings and changed diapers. Cool. But being the mom is a whole. Different. Ball. Game.

I remember clearly the tiny-ness of my infant son at 3 days old, one week old, 2 months old, 5 months old. Then all of a sudden, somewhere along the line, he just got fucking huge.

Now he is a year old and he is like 3 feet long. He fits into some but not all of his “size 12 month” clothes. With every outfit he outgrows my soul gets crushed a little bit.

I did not know that my baby growing up would make me feel sad. Add it to the list of things new moms don’t know shit about.

The slings. The carriers. Boba, Baby Bjorn, whatever you have. They hold babies up to 32 pounds. That’s a lot of weight to have strapped to your body. My 1 year old is about 22 pounds now and he is heavy. When I pick him up, I stand more slowly now than I did when he was 2 weeks old, trying to use inertia with the lift to help get him up and then sticking my hip out as a chair to perch him on. No wonder women need hip replacements in older age.

The days are flying by now. My window for having a second child is closing if it hasn’t already closed. I don’t have the same confidence to think I can handle two as I did to think I could handle one. He is a big boy now. Soon he will be walking. Soon I will be even more tired than tired. Soon I will be watching him go to school. Soon I will see him graduate. My life has unfolded before my eyes. I can see the road’s conclusion, for the first time. It doesn’t scare me, but it gives me pause like what.

Like what.

Jessica Delfino is a comedian, musician, writer and new mom who writes about life with one baby, one husband and one cat. She is currently developing a TV show about motherhood and writes about #momlife at Mommyish.com, VH1.com, her blog Jessy Delfino’s Blog, on The Coo on Facebook and Twitter, and more.

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