Skip to main content

So many questions. So little time.

Ah, babies. They generate so many questions: How was it made? How will it come out? What will it do when it gets here? What do I do when it gets here? How will it change my life? These are questions even grown-ups wrestle with.

But can you imagine being 4, witnessing your mommy expanding exponentially, wondering what the heck is actually going on in there when you see the ripples and hear Mommy giggling (or sighing/moaning/whining) about it? You can barely imagine sharing your toys with your cat, let alone a whole other person -- so you know this is going to be very hard but you'll do your best because it will make Mom and Daddy happy. You keep hearing about how you have to be a big brother, how you have to learn how to get your own sneakers on, how you will have to set a good example. You wait and you wait and you wait, then they tell you that Mommy has to go to the hospital for a few days, where the doctor will help her get the baby out. Hmm. But they still haven't told you, how did the baby get in there, anyway?

Oh boy.

Last night we tried to address some of Sweet Boy's questions about how the baby comes out (we still haven't come clean on how baby got in there -- I've chalked it up to "God knew we wanted another child" and left it there for now). Because he was a C-section delivery and because we've scheduled a C-section for next Wednesday, I took out the photos from Sweet Boy's first moments of life. I wanted him to see Mommy smiling on the strange table and Daddy with the silly hat and mask on. I wanted him to see himself screaming hello to the world, the nurses wiping the goop off him, his family smiling and cooing when they first met him. Of course he loved these photos. We looked at them at least four times. We talked about belly buttons. We talked about how cold and bright the world is when you're a brand new baby. (Yes, we even talked about how new-baby penises look different than big boy penises.) And we talked about how now he'd prefer a baby sister to a baby brother.

Then we talked about how Voo (my dad) will stay with him while Mommy's having the baby, but Daddy will come home every night to be with him while Mom's in the hospital. And I told him I'd call him every day and send him pictures from my phone. We counted on my fingers and on the calendar how many days until Baby Day. When he went to bed, he said he couldn't wait until "his baby" gets here, and he drifted off to sleep as I laid there next to him, tracing my finger along his perfect nose and cheeks, wondering how that smooshy-faced screaming red infant turned so quickly into this smart, happy, overflowing-with-love boy child.

Around 1 a.m. Sweet Boy padded into our room carrying his beloved Jodi Bear. "Can I just snuggle for a little while, Mommy?" Sure, buddy, let's snuggle; I can think of nothing I'd enjoy more.

At 6:30 this morning, I woke up to a tiny tapping on my shoulder, and a bright-eyed little boy with a hopeful-fearful-happy-anxious expression on his face, an expression like Christmas morning mixed with first day of school. "Mommy, is today the day the baby's coming?"

So again, we counted on our fingers how many days until Baby Day.

"Can you tell me again, Mommy, how is the doctor going to crack your belly open to get the baby out? I'm scared it's going to hurt you."

It's quite possible that none of us will sleep well for the next 6 nights.

Comments

  1. This made my heart hurt in a good way. A very good way.

    ReplyDelete
  2. One more sleep till baby! So excited for you all!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ottomania!

I've been spending a lot of time thinking about ottomans. A ridiculous amount of time, actually, given the number of other things I truly should focus my thoughts on. I find, though, that when the world outside gets scary (and scary is a truly relative term these days) I turn to online shopping for things I don't really need. Actually, it's more like online browsing; I rarely purchase. I spend hours searching for, oh, erasable colored gel pens or standing desks or all-natural curly-hair gel or the perfect black sweater. (Yes, these are things I've fixated on over this winter; I still haven't clicked "buy" nor settled on any of them.) This week, it's ottomans. By the way, my girl  BrenĂ©  Brown would call this behavior numbing . I'm okay with that. Because online browsing is way less detrimental (so far) than chain smoking, which is what I'd really like to do when the world is scary. It's a way to escape, to daydream, to focus on things tha

If the brain-mouth filter turned off...

"Mommy," he asks, reaching for my hand as we walk out of the grocery store, "wouldn't it be cool if we had some kind of a hat that when you put it on your head, you start to speak all of your thoughts?" His eyes are wide, hair fringing the blue. He's letting it grow until spring (exactly 21 days away, as he explained this morning) and he looks shaggy and wild. Like one of Peter Pan's lost boys in sweatpants and a Star Wars t-shirt. We've just ordered a cake for his birthday party - celebrating 8 years at a trampoline park this weekend. "Can you imagine it?" he asks, "if everyone could hear your thoughts all the time? Ha!" I love ideas like this. They pop out of his mouth in unexpected moments, little gems that generally begin with what if? or wanna know something? I hope his mind always asks those questions. But wow...can you imagine it? A hat that turns off that brain-to-mouth filter? What would he hear from me, right in thi

Lost between books

This is kinda what the inside of my brain looks like right now...a big see of books that don't interest me. I'm in a restless state between novels right now, and it's really uncomfortable. You know that feeling when you finish a really good one and don't know what to do next? I needed a couple days to process the book I finished last week ( Everything I Never Told You , by Celeste Ng), but then suddenly found myself without a Next Book. It doesn't happen often (I usually have 4-5 books going at once, all different genres and types), but every now and again I get stuck in this drift. Nothing really interests me enough to invest money and time in. So. Weird. I've spent way too much time over the weekend downloading samples to my Kindle, reading reviews on Goodreads, and perusing the library reading lists. Me without a book is like a guitarist without her guitar or a soccer player without a field to run on. I just feel a bit lost, even irritable. I'm just