My little girl is all grown up

[motherinferior]

DD1 is four today. And I feel a bit sad.

It's not that I feel the last four years have 'just flashed by'; far from it, they've been a long hard slog, and have frequently reduced both DP and me to weary tears. But four is so very definitely not a baby or a toddler any more - and she isn't, she's a definite, funny, articulate, clever little person. I can see (as her lovely childminder said this morning) just how ready she's going to be for school, and how much she'll get from and enjoy that - which is an enormous reassurance to me as she sets off into the future. But that's just it: the future. I can do babies, and I do love having babies (slog and tears admittedly involved). This is something very new, and I do feel sad at saying goodbye to what we've had before. DD2 is getting on for two, and really babyhood's a thing of the past in the Inferiority Complex.

I do realise that my misgivings are also to do with my own history - my parents are good at very small children, and then everything goes to pieces, and our relationship deteriorated pretty well permanently from my early teens. I know that doesn't have to repeat itself - that this isn't necessarily the start of a long, permanent and harrowing goodbye. But I'm still worried.

So please reassure me that four and five and six year olds are utterly fabulous, and that this is the start of something really special!

I think four is a fantastic age - a little more independent but so funny, interesting and interested: I really thought of ds1 as my little friend and companion at 4.

But I know exactly what you mean about feeling sadness too. I listened to this a few days after ds1 started school, and I sat on the kitchen floor and wept...so if you feel like a great big cathartic sob-fest, dig out an Abba album...

Slipping Through My Fingers

Schoolbag in hand, she leaves home in the early morning
Waving goodbye with an absent-minded smile
I watch her go with a surge of that well-known sadness
And I have to sit down for a while
The feeling that I?m losing her forever
And without really entering her world
I?m glad whenever I can share her laughter
That funny little girl

Slipping through my fingers all the time
I try to capture every minute
The feeling in it
Slipping through my fingers all the time
Do I really see what?s in her mind
Each time I think I?m close to knowing
She keeps on growing
Slipping through my fingers all the time

Sleep in our eyes, her and me at the breakfast table
Barely awake, I let precious time go by
Then when she?s gone there?s that odd melancholy feeling
And a sense of guilt I can?t deny
What happened to the wonderful adventures
The places I had planned for us to go
(slipping through my fingers all the time)
Well, some of that we did but most we didn?t
And why I just don?t know

Slipping through my fingers all the time
I try to capture every minute
The feeling in it
Slipping through my fingers all the time
Do I really see what?s in her mind
Each time I think I?m close to knowing
She keeps on growing
Slipping through my fingers all the time

Sometimes I wish that I could freeze the picture
And save it from the funny tricks of time
Slipping through my fingers...

Slipping through my fingers all the time

Schoolbag in hand she leaves home in the early morning
Waving goodbye with an absent-minded smile...

Oh, moo - I had never even heard of that song - I just looked it up on google and got the lyrics with the tune and now I'm sitting here with a huge lump in my throat.

marthamooo, never heard of that Abba song, but now I really want it.

MI I love your post. I feel it too. My children are nearly five and 2.5 and the end of babyhood is something I've been thinking about a lot. I had a bit of a scare yesterday and thought I might be pregnant again and was ridiculously disappointed when I found out this am that I'm not. I think it's wanting to cling on to the baby stage even while enjoying going forward with my older ones.My ds started school in September and he's utterly wonderful but I'm very aware that he has taken that first big step away from me now. But I think it's natural to feel like this - you are going into the unknown! I just cling to the fact that for me I have always just enjoyed my children more and more the older they get as their personalities emerge and their characters form - as they become their own person.

MI - my DD was 6 yesterday so I understand how you feel - I feel like this at every milestone but now instead of dragging my heels and wanting to hold on to them as they lurch off into the world (DS just started nursery too) I gallop behind them with enthusiasum. DD had a party yesterday with all her friends from school and her cousins and we had a great time, and I didn't dwell on the fact that she's getting bigger, she'll always be my baby!

it's not often that I read a thread on MN with a lump in my throat but this one has really got to me. For a while now I seem to have been constantly irritated at my dd1 (3.8) but, having now taken a step back, I realise how much she has changed and grown up in the past few weeks alone. I feel both sad at the sudden passing of time, despite all the tears and tantrums, but am now really looking forward to enjoying her continuing enthusiasm for learning and life. And before I get too cheesy I shall go and immerse myself in 7 month ds's wee/poo/crying/sleeplessness etc just to remind myself what she is leaving behind!

I completely understand this MI - my twin DDs will be 4 in three weeks and I feel very emotional about it, more so than previous birthdays. Where has the time gone! I do look at them and feel as if I missed their baby years in a haze of sleep-deprived mania, just muddling through and not really enjoying them enough.

There are a lot of things that are better now though - one of them wrapped her little arms around me this morning and said "I love you to the moon and back mummy".

Read this poem years ago in The Guardian and I loved it then and love it now. MI, you are not here yet but I am sure the poem speaks to mothers whatever age their child.

Outgrown by Penelope Shuttle

It is both sad and a relief to fold so carefully
Her outgrown clothes and line up the little worn shoes
Of childhood, so prudent, scuffed and particular.
It is both happy and horrible to send them galloping
back tappity-tap along the misty chill path into the past.

It is both a freedom and a prison, to be outgrown
by her as she towers over me as thin as a sequin
in her doc martens and her pretty skirt,
because just as I work out how to be a mother
she stops being a child.

MI, dd is 15 and ds is 4 and personally, ime, the feelings you describe are reawakened at every new step along the way; starting school; first overnight school trip without one;bridesmaid; poem printed in a magazine; how birthday parties change as they get older; secondary school; boyfriends; exams looming.... but every stage brings it's own rewards too making up that precious store of small, beautiful memories that collectively and individually make happiness so tangible

winnie, couldn't put it better!

loved this bit, how true!

"because just as I work out how to be a mother
she stops being a child".

winnie, that poem made me cry! But thanks

And me too

Anchovy, that solution had occurred to me too but somehow I think it's NOT a good idea.

Blubbing like a big lame baby here. DD is at nursery and watching her little 2.5 year old frame (although admittedly she's as tall as the 3.5 years olds in her class) stumbling down the corridor with her My Little Pony schoolbag on her back for the first time a few weeks ago left me feeling very indeed...

Wah, wah, wah. I'm off now. My dd is 3 in 2 weeks and am already wondering where the time has gone and how she got to be such a remarkable little person almost without my noticing and seemingly without my help!

Lovely poem (almost as good as my Abba song - which you must hear if you haven't got it, it's lovely)

Does no-one write songs and poems about boys growing up?

I'm sure they do.

This is the one that makes me cry about babies...

A CRADLE SONG
The angels are stooping
Above your bed;
They weary of trooping
With the whimpering dead.

God's laughing in Heaven
To see you so good;
The Sailing Seven
Are gay with His mood.

I sigh that kiss you,
For I must own
That I shall miss you
When you have grown.

It's Yeats.

my ds is 10 and I can't bear the thought of him going to secondary this year I haven't started a thread on this as i never expected to feel like this and other mums I've spoken to don't Every year bar the 1st has been bliss with him

I don't recall the Abba song but am intrigued... will have to go on a search

My dd also turned 4 this week ... she is so proud to be 4. It is clearly such a milestone for her. As for me, I've been sneaking into her bedroom to gaze at how big she is in her bed ... and marvelling at where the days have gone!