A few days ago, Facebook was nice enough to show me my pregnancy announcement from 7 years ago, complete with ultrasound pictures. [I hate you more and more, Facebook.]
The calm before the storm.
We waited until we were "safe" at 12 weeks to announce it. We were so excited. I spent weeks garage-sale'ing for gender neutral stuff and hours agonizing over cribs and baby gear, none of which we ended up needing. My garage sale "finds" are in a box in the basement where they've been for 7 years and I think the box will be moving to our new house with us because I can't really bring myself to get rid of it, even now.
I binge watched all of Grey's Anatomy this winter (my first time watching it, and spoiler, they have babies die lots of times in the 12 or 13 seasons..) It turns out there is a spinoff from it, Private Practice, which features a high risk doctor and therefore lots and lots of pregnancy issues. I'm only midway through season 2 but I was watching it the other day while Lucas was in the room playing a game on the tablet. I didn't think he was paying attention to the tv, until all of a sudden he asked me,
"When we have our next baby...a girl baby...can you make sure we have lots of medicine?"
Ugh. After telling him there were no guarantees for a 'next baby' and definitely not a 'girl baby', and evading and asking more questions, he wants us to make sure we have lots of medicine handy so 'our next girl baby' DOESN'T DIE TOO. We talked a little but I mostly changed the subject because I didn't really want to have an in-depth conversation with a five year old that sometimes babies die even with all the medicine. (Actually I'm pretty sure I took the easy out and said yeah, I'll make sure we have lots of medicine). It's bad enough that in his 5 year old reality, sometimes babies die. Oh, and he also wants to name the next baby Olivia. I ignored that because it's assuming we have another baby, a girl, and explaining why we can't name this hypothetical baby the same name as his sister just didn't seem worth the discussion in that moment. If we have another baby and it's a girl we can tackle it then.
It's crazy how much Lucas talks about Olivia while Matthew mostly seems oblivious still. Then again, Matthew just now started caring about his baby brother Ethan so probably asking him to have opinions/thoughts on an abstract 'sister in heaven' who was here and gone long before him may be asking a lot.
The challenges are very different now then they were several years ago when the grief and loss was so new, but they are still always there, lingering.
Monday, June 27, 2016
Tuesday, May 10, 2016
Five
"Let me love you a little more before you're not little anymore"
A couple weeks ago, our rainbow baby turned five. I have no idea how we got from bringing a 7 pound baby home from the hospital to watching him graduate preschool today in the blink of an eye, but here we are.
Yesterday when I went to pick him up from preschool, he came over and gave me the usual hug that is our routine when he sees me, but then burst into tears. He told me he was crying because today was going to be the last day of preschool. I had to suck it up and not cry myself too even though I totally felt like it. THANKFULLY his preschool teacher was right there to tell him how much fun he's going to have in kindergarten and that he's going to do so well. Today we both held it together until we walked out the door, it took me awhile to get the picture of him outside the building because he kept crying.
When I graduated high school 10ish years ago[let's pretend it was 10], I never imagined I'd be walking the same halls with three kids in tow three days a week, leaving one of them with my old child development class teacher who still looks and acts exactly the same. But then again, I never imagined we would have a baby die or that I'd be a stay at home mom or basically most of the things that have developed over the past seven years. And holy cow, I definitely could have never imagined how fast these five years could possibly go.
I had to drag Lucas crying through those halls the first day of preschool two years ago. And even though it killed me to leave him, his teacher swore he would be fine. [I wasn't so sure after he spent the 3 hour sessions crying the entire time the year before, for a month, before we finally pulled him out.] After the second day, he never ever cried about going to school again, and in fact I would get him ready faster in the mornings by threatening to not let him go. [Not my finest parenting/former teacher moment, but he loved preschool so much that saying "Get your shoes on right now or I am telling your teacher you aren't coming today" worked better then anything else, always.]
This year is a bit overwhelming, we have so many big changes we are all going through and the changes are only getting bigger in the months to come as we move into a new house, I go back to school, and Lucas goes to school full time. But whenever I find myself getting too stressed about it, I remember how quickly this year went by, and remember how overwhelming it seemed to have to drag a newborn and a toddler through the high school three times a week, two times a day, back in August, but we survived it and it went by so quickly.
As overwhelming and exhausting as being home with three kids can be, I am going to miss it, these days when we can decide on a whim to go to the park with some uncrustables for lunch, or to go hang out in the children's zoo for three hours watching them play in sand tables and on the slides or today we went strawberry picking after preschool graduation, just everything. We only have a few months left for these fun days of mostly doing whatever we want, I definitely intend to take advantage of it.
It is definitely bittersweet, this growing up stuff.
A couple weeks ago, our rainbow baby turned five. I have no idea how we got from bringing a 7 pound baby home from the hospital to watching him graduate preschool today in the blink of an eye, but here we are.
Yesterday when I went to pick him up from preschool, he came over and gave me the usual hug that is our routine when he sees me, but then burst into tears. He told me he was crying because today was going to be the last day of preschool. I had to suck it up and not cry myself too even though I totally felt like it. THANKFULLY his preschool teacher was right there to tell him how much fun he's going to have in kindergarten and that he's going to do so well. Today we both held it together until we walked out the door, it took me awhile to get the picture of him outside the building because he kept crying.
When I graduated high school 10ish years ago[let's pretend it was 10], I never imagined I'd be walking the same halls with three kids in tow three days a week, leaving one of them with my old child development class teacher who still looks and acts exactly the same. But then again, I never imagined we would have a baby die or that I'd be a stay at home mom or basically most of the things that have developed over the past seven years. And holy cow, I definitely could have never imagined how fast these five years could possibly go.
I had to drag Lucas crying through those halls the first day of preschool two years ago. And even though it killed me to leave him, his teacher swore he would be fine. [I wasn't so sure after he spent the 3 hour sessions crying the entire time the year before, for a month, before we finally pulled him out.] After the second day, he never ever cried about going to school again, and in fact I would get him ready faster in the mornings by threatening to not let him go. [Not my finest parenting/former teacher moment, but he loved preschool so much that saying "Get your shoes on right now or I am telling your teacher you aren't coming today" worked better then anything else, always.]
This year is a bit overwhelming, we have so many big changes we are all going through and the changes are only getting bigger in the months to come as we move into a new house, I go back to school, and Lucas goes to school full time. But whenever I find myself getting too stressed about it, I remember how quickly this year went by, and remember how overwhelming it seemed to have to drag a newborn and a toddler through the high school three times a week, two times a day, back in August, but we survived it and it went by so quickly.
As overwhelming and exhausting as being home with three kids can be, I am going to miss it, these days when we can decide on a whim to go to the park with some uncrustables for lunch, or to go hang out in the children's zoo for three hours watching them play in sand tables and on the slides or today we went strawberry picking after preschool graduation, just everything. We only have a few months left for these fun days of mostly doing whatever we want, I definitely intend to take advantage of it.
It is definitely bittersweet, this growing up stuff.
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