The Conscious Parent

time no longer belongs to us, we come to the profound realization that
our very life is no longer ours to call our own. Someone else is in the
driver’s seat, someone else’s needs more pressing.
The relationship we share with our infant can only be described as a
deeply intimate energetic dance in which souls unite and destinies
merge. As we open to this realization, with tiny steps our infant then
waltzes us straight to our core. We feel with a new intensity: love, guilt,
fear, heartache, confusion, insecurity, unbelievable exhaustion. Never
having had to care for another being in this way, we are thrust into the
orbit of incessant giving, which confronts us with both our highest and
lowest self. We discover parts of ourselves we didn’t know existed— our
capacity to love, give, and serve, and correspondingly our desire for
control, power, appreciation, and perfection.
Since infants live in the moment, free of any agenda or desire to
manipulate, we can’t hold onto fantasies of what “should” be happening
if we are to engage with them. Because for an infant each moment is
radically new, there’s no agenda and no predictability. Up for hours one
night and sound asleep the next, colicky and irritable one moment and
gurgling in delight the next, a baby’s first six months especially mandate
that we open ourselves to constant upheaval and chaos until a routine
develops. Infancy is truly an is-what-it-is landscape, where being
attached to wishing it were otherwise is a hopeless quest and huge waste
of energy. As helpless as infants may be, it’s they who are in full control
of their schedule and needs. We exist simply to serve.
In serving, we do ourselves a service. Through the daily tending of our
baby, we discover the boundless expanse of our heart, touching upon our