Baby Smell Therapy

A day or two before James left I came downstairs after half an hour of nursing Johnny and rocking him to sleep for a nap. James wrapped his arms around me, gave me a strong hug, then released me and said, rather matter-of-fact-ly, “You smell like baby.” He could have been trying to tell me, only in nicer words, that I smelled like curdled milk, or poop, or spit-up, or diaper rash crème. But I chose to take his comment as a compliment.

There’s no smell like baby smell. You all know what I’m talking about. I think that most people- or most women, at least- would agree that baby smell is delicious. If I knew what it was comprised of then I’d make a fortune bottling it in little glass jars and selling it to expectant mothers, lonely empty-nesters, and proud grandmas. It’s a soft and sweet scent. It’s also the best remedy I know for sleep deprivation, stress, exhaustion, depression, loneliness, frustration, etc. …… Basically, baby smell makes everything better. But, take heed, because a big waft of baby smell is also the leading cause of baby fever!

I took Jamie’s baby smell for granted. Just before he turned 6 months old we decided that it would be best to wean him from the breast to a bottle. Our primary reason for this decision was that we wanted to start trying to get pregnant with our third baby so that he/ she would be born before James’ reassignment to a ship. (In retrospect, it was a great decision. We never could have predicted the difficulty we would have selling the house or how soon James would have to deploy, and if we had waited any longer Johnny would have arrived without a daddy to greet him or quite possibly might never have arrived at all.) Despite the positive outcome, weaning Jamie was very hard for me. For one thing, the engorgement was physically agonizing. I also didn’t realize how expensive the formula would be. And the biggest reason, what I never saw coming, was that my baby boy’s smell changed. My breast milk had given his skin a sugary sweet smell and the formula changed it to an almost hard and bitter one. It took me several weeks to adjust to his new scent and for a while it felt like I was holding and cuddling someone else’s baby. Anyone who is a mother can imagine how emotionally trying it was for my baby to feel foreign in my arms, after I’d spent six long months getting to know every intricate detail about him. It made me sad.

So this time around there will be no formula, no bottles, no weaning. I’m keeping Johnny breastfed for as long as we both want and I’m soaking up as much of his smell as I possibly can. I love to rub my cheek on his little peach fuzz covered head and breathe deeply, filling my lungs with his aroma. It’s therapeutic and invigorating. And I’m pretty sure that God designed it that way. He knew that mothers would face some of the roughest and toughest emotional plights known to mankind and gifted them with baby smell to help them persevere through it all. Now that I’m staring down many months of single parentage, I think I need that baby smell a little extra. So I didn’t mind one bit that I was awake with Johnny more than normal last night due to the onset of a nasty head cold. In fact, I deeply valued it as baby smell therapy.