Rockabye Baby! is happy to introduce our newest guest blogger, Lorelei Hill Butters, seen here with her baby Julia. Go here to read more about her. She’ll be posting about her adventures in motherhood. Her first article is below, so please give her a warm welcome!

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Our little girl, Julia Grace came early. Five weeks early, and to say we were surprised is an understatement. I hadn’t packed a bag, we hadn’t put together her pack ‘n play (we planned to use the “bassinet” portion for sleeping), and her nursery was still half an office. Still, our little life changer came home from the hospital with us anyway and we had to adjust.

Born at just 5lbs 9oz, she was way too small to float around in the center of that giant pack ‘n play bassinet insert so the first few nights she slept on its attached changing station. This wasn’t going to work for both safety reasons (it’s clearly marked NEVER to leave a baby unattended on the changing table), and because I could not adequately monitor her breathing with her perched above the level of our bed. Yes, I am one of “those” moms who felt the need to check her baby’s breathing every few minutes. My husband even gave me a mini flashlight so that I didn’t have to turn on the overhead light when the urge hit me.

Those early days blended into a  blur of changing, feeding, burping, worrying, staring, not sleeping, watching her sleep, changing, feeding, burping, etc., etc.

My sister Sabrina, a mother of a 6 year-old girl and a 4 year-old boy, would come over to help out a lot. While she was over she’d talk and make crazy faces and sounds for Julia, which I thought was silly, since Julia was still what my husband called in her “larval stage.” She didn’t seem to hear or see us, especially over her frantic wails for whatever it was she needed, and my voice never seemed to calm her, so I wasn’t using it. I just gave her whatever it was she was after and waited for her next cue.

Then I read in one of my baby books that it’s never too early to talk to your baby, in fact they said it was pretty much a must right out of the gate. Oh man. Had I been stunting my child’s development by not talking to her for these many weeks? Did I interfere with our bonding process by exercising my right to remain silent? I panicked. I felt like a failure.

I tried.  Really, I tried. I would do another thing the books said to do, which was to just run a narrative of whatever you were doing or had done that day, but in a lilty, sing-song voice. I recited the grocery list, described the process of changing her diaper as it happened, and I told her about her crazy birth (beginning with her literally clawing her way through my bag of waters as Adam Lambert screeched out “Born to be Wild” during movie night on American Idol).

It felt so false and so “put on.” I really did not enjoy doing it, and felt ridiculous the way someone who has no desire or talent for it might feel taking a performance art class.  Julia had no reaction, no connection, and after many days of this, I again felt like a failure and collapsed into the kind of woeful tears only another hormonal mommy can understand.  Still, I woke the next morning, and while changing her diaper forced myself to do it again.

I began talking to her when the most miraculous thing happened. Julia smiled. She smiled! I talked more and she smiled more. I was IN! I’d broken through! I’d cracked the code!

…or, maybe babies just start smiling at a certain age and we’d hit it. No matter. Her smiling had broken my wall of self consciousness. From that moment on I now feel free to make silly noises, ridiculous faces, sing made up songs full of nonsense words and she eats it up. Yes, she does. She eats it up! She eats it, weets it, peets it up up up uppy up! My widdle bitty baby waby eats it UP!