When I found out I was pregnant with Bailey, I did feel thrilled and elated. I felt like finally...finally...I was doing something I was "meant to be" doing. I felt connected and felt that bond pretty much immediately, and I enjoyed every second of my pregnancy and her birth. I was expecting the same feelings when I found out I was pregnant for the second time and felt, in a way, ashamed when I didn't.
I spent weeks after finding out we were expecting again just waiting for those feelings to come. The complete and utter "one-ness" with my body and my baby. The fragile yet overwhelming peace of realizing that I get to do this all over again. The joy. I waited and I waited and...it never came. Unlike my first pregnancy, I was working from home this time around, running my own daycare. For 12 hours a day I was the only adult around surrounded by tiny little tyrants who, while very adorable, were sucking the very life out of me a little bit at a time every single day. And then when daycare "closed" for the day I was 100% in Mommy Mode, getting dinner cooked and ready, playing with Bailey and diffusing any boo-boos or tantrums, getting her bathed and then enduring the almost hour-long production that was bedtime before passing out myself. It was the holidays and Scott was working his part-time job, so the parental duties fell almost entirely to me just about all of the time. I was busy and exhausted, and so focused on soaking up every single moment with Bailey before she became a big sister that I didn't get much of a chance to sit and attempt that bonding with Gerry. There were times, of course {many of them}, when I sat down with my hands on my belly and tried to feel something. Something that let me know that this baby and I were connected...that this was meant to be...that he knew, even on the inside, how much he was loved and wanted. And it never came. Sure, I was excited. Of course I wanted this baby. And I absolutely loved him the minute I got that positive pregnancy test. But I was busy raising my first baby and working 60 hour weeks. I was in pain a lot of the time. And I was tired -- so very, very tired. I'd feel Gerry rolling and kicking and, in that millisecond before feeling a rush of love, I'd feel just the tiniest flicker of annoyance because it only exacerbated the pain I was already feeling.
In the weeks before he was born, I worried so much about my ability to love another child. I adore Bailey and I worried about how she would handle having a younger sibling taking some of the attention normally reserved for her. I worried that this baby would grow up feeling like I didn't love him as much as I loved his sister. I had nightmares that I just left him all alone in his crib until he was old enough to climb out and fend for himself. I worried that I wouldn't have enough time to try and create some sort of bond with him after he was born because I was only taking a week's maternity leave. I worried that I wouldn't be good enough. I just worried.
The night before Gerry was born, I cried. I was scheduled for an induction the next day and Bailey was staying with my parents so that Scott and I could just head to the hospital as soon as daycare closed for the day. I missed her and I was sad that she was spending her last night as an only child away from Scott and me.
Gerry's birth was somewhat unexpected for me. My epidural failed, and I wasn't prepared for a painful delivery. My focus during the hustle and bustle at this point was less on the sweet moment of meeting my baby for the first time and more on getting him out so the pain would go away. When he was born and the nurses took him across the room to weigh and measure him, I felt nothing but relief. Relief that it was over, relief that I didn't have to lug around a huge belly anymore.
Relief.
I didn't strain my neck to see him and my arms weren't itching to hold him like they did in the first few moments after Bailey was born. Truth be told, at that moment, I would have rather taken a nap. But then the nurse brought him over and laid him in my arms. I looked at his tiny little face and there it was. The love. The joy. The bond.
Your hormones are all over the place after giving birth and in that moment I was just hit with wave after wave after wave of love for this little boy. For days afterward I would just gaze at his sweet little face, drinking in his big blue eyes, his tiny little bird mouth, his button nose that was so much like his sister's when she was born. A case of jaundice left us with strict instructions from the doctors to keep him near sunlight as often as possible, and I'd snuggle up with him by the window and talk to him about life and how much I loved him. I caught up on all the bonding that we'd missed out on in the previous 10 months, and it was wonderful.
Today, Gerry is 14 months old. Scott and I call him a beast because he's into everything. Any opportunity he gets to make a mess, open a door, or throw something he takes. And he takes an obscene amount of pleasure in being mischievous. But when he gets hurt or scared or overly happy, guess what? He comes toddling over to me. He follows me from room to room, lifting his arms up for me to hold him. He giggles when I tickle him and he's just started to give hugs and kisses unprompted.
That bond that I was so worried about not feeling a year ago? It is absolutely there. In every smile, in every tear, in every single time he walks over and sits in my lap or raises his arms to be held. It's there.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Who loves comments? I do!