A Day With Vinny

I do believe that Momma's reach a certain point when they start considering more children even when their first child is still young. It's like we forget everything we went through, everything we're going through, and everything we would be setting ourselves up for by having another child. While preggo, I used to be really concerned with the pain of child birth and I questioned if I would be able to handle it or not. My Mom used to continue to tell me, "I'm going to be honest, because it definitely does hurt, but it's a pain you forget." I kept thinking she was crazy, how could you forget it? How could you ever want to put yourself through that again? Well she was right, you forget it. And remarkably almost instantly, right when they place that little human in your arms. From that point forward you are faced with a million new concepts, a million questions that weren't covered in the books you've read, and dealing with emotions that take over and force you to tears for minuscule reasons... of course you forget the child birth pain, because now you have too many other things to think about.
I feel that the more Mom's I talk to the majority (however not all) would prefer to have their children close in age. Close in age, meaning 1-3 years apart. Considering a 9 month long pregnancy we're talking becoming pregnant pretty close to after your first child is born. Along with pain, I think we forget the work that goes along with every day in raising a newborn.

I had my first taste of what having a second child around would be like this past weekend. A really good friend of mine asked me to watch her son (4 months) while she was at work. I eagarly agreed, as I was excited to have a baby in the house again! But let me tell you, even though Vincent is a very easy going baby, we had our struggling moments and those struggling moments stemmed from my son. At 15 months he had no idea what was going on, who this little person was, or why the hell he was here, therefore resulting in major jealousy. He wanted to be held, he wanted to "help," and he wanted to "play" with the baby. There was a lot of  "No Eli, be gentle! He's just a baby!" or "I will get to you in a second Elijah, the baby needs his diaper changed" (as he is hanging on my legs). I realized that having your first child be so young with a new baby around makes it very difficult to get through every day tasks or to explain things to him so that he understands what is going on.

Elijah: "C'mon, lemme just touch your nose!"

On the controversy, after raising an infant and now toddler and then going back to an infant, I quickly learned how easy it is to in fact take care of a newborn. I realize now that I should have taken time to appreciate the naps with the baby on my chest, the constant sleeping throughout the day (even if the naps seemed short), the fact that the baby usually does one of three things; eat, sleep, poop and there's not much in between, the down time and the fact that if you leave the baby laying on the blanket he doesn't move! At the time this was all clouded with exhaustion, and my focus was on how tired I was and how hard this really seemed to be. Now, whenever the time comes for us to expand our family, the infant stage is not going to be as seemingly low key as before. From this point forward there will always be another little human running around trying to "help," wanting attention, probably not napping while the new baby is, and when that baby is laying on the blanket without rolling off, he may be possibly being moved by his older brother.

Note: Elijah has had zero interest in this play mat
for months, until of course Vince was in it!

Moral of the story: This is dedicated to the new Momma's out there or the Momma's to be. ENJOY and APPRECIATE your delicate time with your newborn, even though I know it gets cloudy when you're sleep deprived and you haven't showered. Unless you're choosing to only have one child, it'll never be as easy as it is now to raise a newborn.