The Conscious Parent

traditional means, which makes our task all the more challenging. To
respond to this challenge requires us to suspend all previous ways of
knowing and relating, and instead enter our infant’s pure energy.
An infant exposes us to a rhythm of life that has been lost to us. The
need to experience oneness with our infant requires us to look at this
early stage as a time of slowing down. We have to still ourselves and
hold ourselves steady while we nurse our baby, rock it to sleep, or
change yet another diaper.
A period of non-productivity, this stage in our child’s development
asks us to drop all attachment to where we have been or are going,
instead clamoring for our realization that this moment, here right now, is
the only moment of relevance. A baby invites, “I am here. Be here with
me.”
To be fully present to our infants’ needs requires us to rank all other
demands with a lower priority. Only by complete surrender to our
changed situation can we embrace the beauty of the place we are now.
Those of us who respond discover there is nothing of greater significance
—not our hobbies, friends, lifestyle, or career.
Because of an infant’s slow pace and tiny developments, we are
challenged to change the speed, intensity, and direction of our entire way
of living. We quickly realize that “success” in an infant’s life is
measured in an entirely different way. A “big” thing is a smile, the
shaking of a leg, or holding a rattle. These are milestones.
For some parents, reconfiguring their sense of “big” and savoring the
tiny and ordinary can be a leap indeed. Yet it’s in this dismantling of ego
from its attachment to the extraordinary, the wonderful, the dramatic,