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As I sat and reflected on my experiences of the infant observation program and tried to recall what I could of the process that happened three years ago, three moments came foremost to my mind.
November: I arrive through the cold of a wet afternoon in late fall. The baby, now nine days old, lies asleep in the crib on the sitting room table, looking peaceful. His mother is staring out of the window at the rain falling on the grey brickwork in the backyard. She looks depleted. She describes her experience to me: the world is not the same, her labour was very long and complicated, physically traumatic. She tells me that it is as if her life before was a colourful dream that now seems inaccessible and foreign to her.
December: I am sitting listening to the baby's crying in his bedroom, which is becoming more intense. The mother comes back into the sitting room holding him at arm's length. “He's not dirty,” she says. She tries the bottle but he doesn't want it, and the howling continues at full force. Exasperated, mother phones father at work, but he doesn't answer. She comes and sits down beside me, obviously trying to hold things together. As I watch them I feel anxiety as she tries to soothe her baby.
February and later: The mother is proudly showing me her baby banging the stuffed toys hanging from his overhead canopy, and he's working at rolling over. She elicits cackles of laughter from him via kiss-attacks. Two months later he is howling with delight while repeatedly pressing the button that activates the siren on his fire truck. Mother is in the kitchen, preparing a bottle. In our last sessions he's zooming around the apartment on his hands, sliding his legs along with him, fully mobile.