Truth be told…
We are nervous about another baby. Very very nervous.
There, I said it. Boo, hiss. Throw stones at me and tell me I’m a rotten mom.
The angry mob coming to get me!
We are now 21 weeks pregnant with a very healthy baby. We feel blessed, we feel grateful and we feel like our “someday” dream of a family of four is actually happening. It’s pretty darn cool, but yet we can’t shake that question of how will we handle this? Somehow during our “someday” dream of a family of four we conveniently failed to think about the long days of a screaming baby factor, the even longer nights of a sick toddler following by a full day of work obligations factor, the two kids in childcare factor and the how the heck will we be able to manage two babies with a house, two careers and two imperfect adults who sometimes just need to recharge their batteries factor.
Along with the nervousness comes guilt because I will never forget the feeling of being in the emergency room on a cold November night three years ago when we realized that our first pregnancy was ending 32 sooner than anticipated. I know just how incredibly lucky we are to be having another baby, but yet I feel nervous. And then there’s the guilt because I didn’t feel nervousness before Makenzie arrived. I gleefully counted down the days to meet our sweet baby girl. I organized her socks, color coordinated her bows and spent hours rocking in her chair envisioning the nights when I would hold and sing to her. I was clearly unaware of what was about to happen.
What actually happened was that we had a beautiful little girl. She was and continues to be AMAZING! But that beautiful little girl cried. She cried a lot. She cried all day and she cried all night. I was exhausted. I was failing at nursing and I was slightly losing it. Burning eyes, cracking nips and melting-down mama… what happened to the Hallmark scenes I envisioned?
Instead of soundly sleeping and cooing, Makenzie cried… and then I cried… and then she cried more… And then I cried more. It was that awful c-word. You know, the c word that rhymes with frolic, except there was no frolicking in the beginning with Makenzie. Struggling, yes. Frolicking, not really.
Poor baby at one month old. 🙁
So now with baby #2 quickly approaching his or her arrival date we can’t help but feel slightly apprehensive about how we’ll handle a very fun & adventurous big sis Makenzie, and a possibly non-frolicking-yet-colicking newborn. Is that bad to be nervous?
Then I think of Makenzie today. The way she giggles uncontrollably, the way she holds our hand in her face and says “Yove You,” and the way she melts our hearts time and time again. I’m thinking that two kids means that we’ll have two times the good moments. Right? Perhaps it means double the coffee, double the meltdown moments and double the stress at times, but beyond the colic days I think we’ll come out smiling, right?
This girl sure did!
So bear with us. Tell us we’re not the only ones who have ever felt this way (even if we are). Buckle up extra tight. And neighbors, get the ear plugs. It’s about to get a little crazy around here!
But I think that maybe, just maybe we’ll be able to handle it, and at the end of the day, spend some time frolicking with our two cutie pies.
I was scared to death!! I cried all the way to the hospital to be induced. Mostly though I cried because I knew Abbigail had no idea what was going to happen really and her life would never be the same. But we survived and you will too! It’s ok to be nervous! No one knows what it is really like until baby two arrives!