So we are looking at roughly 5 to 10 weeks until Baby 2 makes his debut. A huge variance? Sure. Drew was 3 weeks early, if this baby comes at that same time, then we have 5 weeks to do……………well, EVERYTHING. We have done a sum total of absolutely NADA in terms of getting ready for this baby. We set up Drew’s Big Boy room, freeing up the nursery furniture, which remains stuffed in the nursery, unassembled, and totally unaccessible because there are so many boxes of various junk we don’t use but for some reason can’t get rid of in there.
If the baby decides to hang in there, the doctor will let me go two weeks overdue, putting us at the 10 week mark. Honestly, I have no idea how that would work. I am already unwieldy and massive, in 10 weeks I may have reached “They had to use cranes to get her out of the house to the hospital” proportions. Even though I am steadily LOSING weight at each visit, I do not appear to be getting any smaller. I’m no physics guru, but that seems wrong.
But, this isn’t about my impressive girth or even the new baby, really. It’s just that the closer we get to the birth, the more I notice how many littel things in Drew’s life will change. I really totally believe that siblings are an amazing gift to a child, and I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I want another child. My experience so far with Drew has been the most amazing, humbling, gratifying time of my life. I have discovered wells of patience and love that I never dreamed existed within me.
But I am so afraid of the inevitable moments where Drew feel supplanted by the shinynewbaby, and feels left out or less loved. There will, no doubt, be moments where both kids need me and I have to choose, and thus someone has to cry. How much will the simple limitation that I can only be in one place at one time change how I choose to parent? I hope not at all, or at least very little, but I also understand that there is a certain inevitablility in the evolution of my mad parenting skillz.
In the meantime, while we wait, I find myself treasuring more and more the moments I have with Drew alone. When we lay down to go to sleep at night and he whispers to me and pats my face. When I watch him read a book and can just admire the sweetness of his face and the charming way his hair sweeps across his forehead. Those moments where he seems so much like a kid and then swiftly morphs back into my baby once more.
Please forgive me in advance, Little Man, for turning your world upside down soon. Please find the patience to wait and see — see that someday your sibling will be one of those people in life that you can always turn to, you just have to hang tough with mommy during the initial storm of adjustment. I love you more than words can ever say.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Monday, January 19, 2009
Rock a bye, baby
Not that Drew’s a baby anymore. Not really. At almost three, glimpses of ‘baby’ are harder and harder to find.
I do lay down with him for bedtime every night, still. He only just stopped nursing to sleep a few weeks ago. That transition seemed to drag on forever, but in the end, I am really thrilled with how natural and gentle and beautifully it all wound down. So now we turn on our blue lamp, we turn on our “moona” (moon night light) and we crawl into bed together. Some nights Drew talks about the moon or his day, some nights he plays with his Dora or Diego doll, and some nights he just immediately cuddles up to me and rests his head on my arm and whispers, in that warm, wet toddler whisper, “go seep, mommy. go seep.” and his eyes close and he drifts off, my baby once more, if only for a fleeting minute.
I get a lot of “he has to learn to go to sleep on his own!” and similar warnings, all with dire consequences should we fail to teach him to sleep “properly”. And I am just going to call it all Bunk. There is little in my day more precious than those minutes I spend with him, hearing about his day, him dragging my arm around him just so, right beneath his ribs, his arranging my head so that we lay together, cheek to cheek, when every other thing in life seems so small, so insignificant. When the new baby arrives, I know I will treasure those moments even more, and when he grows out of the need and desire to have me there with him as he finds slumber, I will not for one second regret that we didn’t force him to think that his days had to end all alone in a big bed by himself.
I do lay down with him for bedtime every night, still. He only just stopped nursing to sleep a few weeks ago. That transition seemed to drag on forever, but in the end, I am really thrilled with how natural and gentle and beautifully it all wound down. So now we turn on our blue lamp, we turn on our “moona” (moon night light) and we crawl into bed together. Some nights Drew talks about the moon or his day, some nights he plays with his Dora or Diego doll, and some nights he just immediately cuddles up to me and rests his head on my arm and whispers, in that warm, wet toddler whisper, “go seep, mommy. go seep.” and his eyes close and he drifts off, my baby once more, if only for a fleeting minute.
I get a lot of “he has to learn to go to sleep on his own!” and similar warnings, all with dire consequences should we fail to teach him to sleep “properly”. And I am just going to call it all Bunk. There is little in my day more precious than those minutes I spend with him, hearing about his day, him dragging my arm around him just so, right beneath his ribs, his arranging my head so that we lay together, cheek to cheek, when every other thing in life seems so small, so insignificant. When the new baby arrives, I know I will treasure those moments even more, and when he grows out of the need and desire to have me there with him as he finds slumber, I will not for one second regret that we didn’t force him to think that his days had to end all alone in a big bed by himself.
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