• Preparing to transition out of the infant stage is a turning point for many parents
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My baby just turned one and a half years old, or 18 months, for those who prefer counting age by months.
“Do we stop counting his age by months now?” my husband asked on the day. Just like me, he is not a fan of counting the baby’s age by months. It was cute before he turned one, I even had a special way of counting down his months by baking (sometimes buying) a cake every time he turned a month older until he turned one.
Fortunately, it is a common practice to stop counting a baby’s age by months when they turn two years old. There are some who take the practice too far by counting their children’s age by months for much longer than necessary.
Although my baby is only one and a half years old, technically, he has been in the physical world for three years. Part of 2021, the whole of 2022, and now 2023. It certainly does feel as long as that, since we can hardly recall our childfree years.
I have been with my child everyday since he came into this world. There has never been a night we have spent apart. Even when he was in the NICU, I would trudge painfully, post-surgery, from my room to the baby ward to feed him in the dead of night. I have had the immense privilege to be by his side since then.
As such, I sometimes forget that my growing boy is still a wee little baby. That indirectly proportional to his height and mischief is still a young infant still lingering in the baby stage.
Because our lives have been so intricately intertwined for the last 18 months, I often mumble and grumble about the difficulties of motherhood. I sometimes feel overwhelmed in my new role as a mother. The breastfeeding, the constant companionship (even in the bathroom), the sleepless nights… For the past 18 months, I have been living in an endless loop of doing the exact same things.
I've been so preoccupied with my own feelings about time going by that I overlooked the fact that, at most, I have six more months of my child still being my little baby. The days are long now, but in six short months, my infant son will be a self-assured toddler who doesn't need me as much.