Did I tell you how much this baby likes to eat…. And when he’s not hungry he still likes to suck. I’ve always frowned on pacifiers, but we’ve been using one because he will make himself sick by eating too much. I produce way too much milk. I hear the constant feeding/sucking impulse is a boy thing. Is that true? I must admit he’s mellowed out a bit and is definitely having more time just hanging out now that he’s more alert and not working so hard at the eating/sleeping/pooping routine.
He’s very sweet, though. He looks like a combination of his two older sisters (and very much like his Dad). He LOVES the bath. Loves it. He relaxes and starts turning his head to drink the water. It’s as if he remembers what it was like in the uterus and the water reminds me of his amniotic fluid.
Did I tell you how much amniotic fluid came out of my body during labor? No? Too much information. Okay. Let’s just say that this little guy had his own swimming pool. I will write about my labor one of these days.
Right now Little Brother is sleeping on my lap and I’m having to do a yoga twist in order to type this post.
When my hands are full with baby and the girls are in school I often watch movies, Not a bad existence. I’m watching Little Women now - the Winona Ryder version.
I’ll end this with a few funnies.
–Rachel keeps asking me if we need to fertilize the pacifiers (sterilize). (There will be no more talk about fertilizing here.)
And here is an excerpt from an e-mail sent by my older sister. Her son, Ieremy, is about 2 and a half.
“The other day we were sitting at dinner and Jeremy had cajoled himself into my lap. He then preceded to try to stand up in my lap and balance on my knees, one of his favorite games. As that kept me from my meal, I tried to convince him to sit back down. He said, “I’m a little heavy. I’m big. I’m a big boy. I’m a man. Jeremy’s a dada.” He then transferred happily into his father’s lap.”
“Mom, do you love the baby?” Rachel asked me several months ago when I was walking around in my giganto pregnant glory.
I gave her an honest answer. “Well, I don’t really know the baby yet. When I meet it and get to know it, I’ll love it.”
This answer seemed to worry Rachel. “You want me to love it now?” I asked her. “Yes,” she answered, with a concerned look on her face.
I know that there are those that fall in love with their babies in pregnancy. I guess I’m not one of them. I can’t even say that I love my babies when I see them for the first time. Are the feelings overwhelmingly happy, positive, life-changing? Yes. I am in awe. I am in gratitude. I am joyous. I am relieved and deeply renewed when I meet them. But do I love them immediately. No. I don’t know them.
There are some people, though, that fall in love at first sight. Take Rachel, for instance, my just-turned-seven year old.. When she first set eyes on Little Brother they lit up. It was instant love. A lightbulb had gone off. I saw the same look in my mother’s eyes in the months after her first grandchild was born.
Hannah, my four year old, was very excited when she met Little Brother, but was even more consumed with me and her separation from me while I was in the hospital. Four, I am convinced, is a hard time to swallow a new baby in the family. When Rachel was four, she craved my attention, especially my physical attention. It’s as if the four year old senses that they are becoming independent, so they cling to Mom closer. Their needs are greater because they sense that things are changing. Hannah is extremely attached to me right now and late in my pregnancy, she started rethinking the big sister thing. When we first told her about the baby, she literally jumped up and down with excitement. Come February, however, she started clinging to me a little desperately and telling me she didn’t want to be a big sister anymore.
I’ve taken many wonderful photos of Hannah with the baby. Most often she’s beaming in them. There is a part of her that is truly excited about her brother. During the baby’s first weeks, she seemed thrilled, on the surface. She ran around the house enjoying time with both of her grandmas and planting kisses on the baby. However, I could see in her eyes something unsettled, something not right. She started having meltdowns, until it finally came to a head in a tantrum at a time when she was supposed to separate from me. Since her behavior was horrendous, we punished her, sending her to her room and taking away some of her favorite toys for a day. I took some time, though, to go into her room to talk to her about it. “I wish you never were pregnant,” she explained to me crying. We talked about her feelings. A little while later I brought Little Brother into the room and encouraged Hannah to tell him how she was feeling. Things seemed to settle down after that. It helped that I started stepping it up and adhering more to the old routine. Driving her places, rather than having her Dad take her to school and activities.
Still, Hannah’s feelings are all over the place when it comes to her brother. She holds him and genuinely is amazed and excited about him. But, there is a part of her, I think, that wishes, like she said, that I never had gotten pregnant.
Then there is the question of love. “He doesn’t really know who we are,” she sometimes says to me, and of course, she is absolutely right. And we are only starting to know who he is.
“I don’t love you,” she told him one day when we were sitting around. Coincidentally, he started crying at that precise moment. Rachel and I speculated that maybe he was crying because of what she had said. “I do love you,” Hannah then said. Coincidentally (I’m assuming) he stopped crying at that precise moment. Now every time Little Brother cries, Hannah says, “I love you” to get him to stop crying. Sometimes it works. Sometimes she says “I don’t love you,” testing, I think, to see if those words will start him crying again.
Yesterday, Hannah, Little Brother and I had an evening all to ourselves while Dad was out and Rachel had a sleep over. I tried to make the night as special as possible, with lots of cuddling, and it was really nice, but I did get interrupted by LB more often than I’d like. When it was time for Hannah to go to bed, I talked to her about her and her brother and told her that things would be a lot more fun for her when her brother could interact more with her.
“I love him this much,” Hannah told me, holding up her index finger. “Really!” I said, smiling.
“No, this much,” she answered, showing me her pinky finger. I told her how great that was, and told her that I thought that one day she might love him two fingers worth, and then three, and that maybe someday, she’d love him five fingers worth. “Will you promise to tell me when you love him a whole hand?” I asked. She promised.
Later that night, she wandered out of bed and kissed the baby goodnight. “I love you this much,” I heard her say. Then she turned to me and showed me a whole hand.
Now she shows me different amounts of fingers throughout the day. Sometimes, she’ll hold up her pinky, sometimes two fingers and sometimes a whole hand.
And honestly, I think she’s probably telling the truth every time.
Pssst. After a month of getting to know my son, I think I finally love him a whole hand.
Just a woman with many layers. Come sit with me at our regular table, our Stammtisch, and I'll try to show you as many of them as I can. More about me on my introductions page.
