Solo acts
Reading Julie's One and only post last week got me thinking about our family size.It took us years to grow from two to three, and there was a time when we were fairly certain it wouldn't ever happen. Heck, two months before I got pregnant, I was busy remapping my vague future plans to fit a childless lifestyle. Not, I should stress, without a certain amount of bitterness and bile simmering just below my attempts to find infertility's silver lining.
After all those years of trying, I have one child. I'm content to leave it there.
One is all I ever wanted, and after our less-than-peaceful pregnancy, the boy's pretty happy with that number, too. I do not, by the way, recommend a high-risk pregnancy complete with bed rest, medication, and all the trimmings (short of an emergency C-section and a NICU stay--we lucked out in that regard) as a way of coming to agreement on how many kids you'll have.
I have one child, and yet I am still occasionally struck with a baby longing so fierce it knocks me backwards.
For a while, I wondered if I'd gone completely off my rocker and decided I wanted a second. Leaving aside the potential health risks, babies are the opposite of cheap, and I have my hands full with just the girl.
Then it struck me today: I have baby longing, but it's a very specific sort, and there's no satisfying it short of hijacking a TARDIS. The baby I yearn to touch and hold is the one sleeping next to me right now, only younger and smaller. When I think of a newborn, the one I picture is the one she was, the first smiles and first teeth and first solid meals I see are hers.
I don't want a second baby, I just want to be able to reach back in time and savor all the little moments with this one that passed by too quickly. As trite as it sounds when you say it, it really does go so fast. At 9 months, I see the toddler-to-be more often than I see the newborn-that-was. I look at her first pictures and try to remember what it felt like to hold something so small.
I never can, not really.
But lord, I wish I could.
posted by mohmlet @ 11:41 PM
2 Comments:
Zen Lily was very cute. I can see why you would want her back. (Of course, current-day Lily is very cute too.)
So maybe I should make this my own post, but it's such a relevant topic. Last October, when Ellie was about 4 months old, I started thinkng about having another baby. Joe looked at me like I was crazy and sometimes I agree with him. Then in December my neighbor had a baby boy. HE's exactly 6 months younger than Ellie and looking at him makes me miss her.
I actually had one of the easiest pregnancies and births I've ever heard of, although I've paid for it since. The doctors never found anything wrong with me, but it took us two years to get pregnant with Ellie. That, plus a miscarriage, came close to destroying me. I mention this because I want to have more children, but there are no guarantees that it will happen or be easy.
I'm not really sure where the desire for another baby came from. Part of it was, like you mentioned, realizing that Ellie was growing and not a newborn anymore. She used to be so tiny. I"m so excited every time she does something new, but I miss newborn Ellie too.
In my case, I feel a bit like I missed her first two months of life. My mom was here, and I really needed her, but I deferred to her so much. I was so busy trying to study for the bar and so worried about Joe that I feel like I missed out.
I also feel like I could do it so much better the second time around. I've heard moms of 2+ say everyone things this and it nevers works out this way, but I still want to say "let me try again - I could do it better a second time".
One of the (totally irrational, I know) things that bugs about Ellie's coming-home-from-the-hospital experience is that I wore the T-shirt and shorts that I wore in and Ellie wore the white T-shirt abd baby blanket they gave her. I had other clothes for both of us but her's were way too big and I was afraid of bleeding on mine, so we just wore what we had on. I find myself thinking that not only do I want another beautiful little baby, but I would do it so much better the next time. It may be that I'm forgetting some of how tired I was afterwards.
I also wonder how I could ever love baby#2 as much as I love Ellie and whether it's fair to Ellie to divide my love/attention. Flea mentioned this to me before Ellie was born and I remember thinking "you just do it". But now I get it. I love Ellie so much - how could ever make room for #2?
Well, that's enough of my own thoughts in your blog. Obviously, it's a topic I've been pondering.
Oh boy, do I know that feeling. I had it when Jake was about eight or nine months old, and I realized it was exactly what you said -- I didn't really want *another* baby (not yet, anyway), I wanted tiny, newborn Jake back. The one who slept so peacefully on my chest, the one looked up at me (and everything else) in absolute newborn wonder. They really are days that you wish you could capture and bottle and store away.
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