On top of the many blessings of now being a family of four with two healthy beautiful children we are also a big family of extended aunts, uncles, and cousins and both sets of grandparents living nearby for our kids. I mean, how lucky are they? How lucky are we? And we were really lucky that for the first few days of Wally's life, we were able to have our in-laws watch Alice while we were in the hospital. Alice definitely had more fun than we did. She was with her beloved gamma and papa and her aunt Emily and uncle Jason and her two cousins Madison and Nana from Friday to Monday and came home on Tuesday morning to her new addition.
The most amount of crying and worrying I've done about becoming a mother the second time was about how it would affect my perfect first child. Alice has been a total dream child and she's got her set schedule, her habits, her quirks, and here we are about to ruin it by adding some element unknown to our life. She would no longer be the center of attention, she would have to wait for mom's attention, she would be affected for the rest of her life. And being a big sister myself and having it be my pride and joy type role and responsibility, none of that consoled me as I tried to make peace with it. Yeah, my brother is one of my best friends. Yeah I freaking love my sisters more than anything and yeah it'll be amazing for Alice to have a sibling but I was still so scared and worried.
Well, so far... things are going as good as can be expected. She's curious about the baby in the right ways, she hasn't tried to smack him or anything, and seems to accept that he belongs to us now. She wants to "hod baby" and she looks very proud while doing so and then she's over it and goes about her business. I wonder if that's her independent spirit like yeah okay cool, back to doing my book reading and toy playing. Putting her down for naptime showed us the one thing she was not into which was me holding the baby as I walked out of the room for the nap. She was crying mama! mama! with tears and everything so I handed the baby to Matt and walked back in by myself and just patted her and tucked her in and that was good enough for her, knowing that I was still hers too.
Overall the experience of having a second child has been so much easier physically than last time. On top of the labor not having wiped me out completely, I was up and walking less than 24 hours after the surgery and made it a priority to be moving around and take care of myself both by eating and drinking on time, taking my medication in a timely schedule, and napping when I can. Right now unfortunately Mr. Wally is partying at night only. He wakes up every two hours sometimes three to eat during the day but at night he's doing the constant eating thing where as soon as he's done eating, he falls asleep but then he's up again and hungry again. It's a little torturous at night and I'm sure that won't be forever and it might be just a growth spurt so I'm just doing what I can and not feel like I'm losing my mind. At night he does that thing where he just wants to be held so sometimes the only way I've gotten sleep is by holding him while sleeping. We have all contingencies prepared in the room: a cozy bassinet, a swing, and a co-sleeper and anything he's willing to be put in that will let me sleep, I'll take. The mamaroo in the living room meets with his approval as well thank goodness.
Baby ees drint milt. He so tiny. Hi baby.
Emotionally I've been in baby bliss and high on whatever hormones cause a nursing mother to feel high. I'm full of milk praise God and I feed that kid as much as he wants. I really want to make it a full year with him nursing so I'm gonna make that extra effort to keep my supply up. And do you know how else I know I'm doing well? I've been thinking about normal things. I've bought shoes for when my feet stop being so swollen. I've done minor decorating feathering around the house like making Matt snip branches from the blossoming peach trees in the back and putting them in vases around the house. I want to put out cute spring decorations. I've made myself breakfast. Twice. I've written blog posts. I've thought about different dining chairs that are actually comfortable. I'm feeling almost human despite being in mild to moderate pain, land locked and with swollen feet. We're hosting friends tonight and Matt is gonna go out to the movies, we're slowly becoming human again.
This current state of mind is brought to you largely by the fact that I'm not pregnant anymore. Seriously, pregnancy is the pits for me. Even while sitting in the hospital bed, nurses around me taking my vitals, checking my incision, I turned to Matt and said "You know what I don't miss? Being pregnant" to the laughter of all the nurses in the room. As soon as I wasn't pregnant anymore the nausea, the food aversion, all of it was bye bye. Replaced by tiredness but overall this is a way better state to be in for me. Again and again I will say that I am BEYOND grateful that I was able to get pregnant in the first place and that while I was a hot mess, the baby has been healthy and thriving. Even at our physical he was almost back up to birth weight which was a big relief. Everything about the second time around has been smoother so far and we can't thank the Lord enough for that.
And here we are... a perfectly imperfect tired and happy family of four. Each one of us putting in our gifts and personality to this family and I feel so incredibly blessed that I wanna pinch myself but then I remember that I've been through enough and have an oatmeal cookie and milk instead.
Everyone else is napping right now. I think I will join in the fun.
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