Didactic

While I was pregnant this past time, I would often catch myself thinking the most illogical things. I could be watching Will run wildly around the yard, feel the baby kick, and actually think for a brief moment that it was Will who was the baby, the one doing the kicking. It was, I still think, one of the oddest feelings I've ever had. But now that I've had some time and distance to think about this and other strange things that I did/felt/thought, it makes a wee bit of sense. I guess.

Will has been, as all firstborn children are, our game-changer. He made us parents, helped us to see ourselves and our lives in a different light, gave us a totally new perspective on pretty much everything it's possible to have a perspective on. It's such a tired turn of phrase, that having a baby changes your whole world. But it's completely true. I vaguely seem to remember a time in our lives when adult conversation actually occurred and going out to eat didn't involve booster seats, numerous distractions and the ever-present, looming threat of going back to the car as an incentive to behave. And now that we're two babies in, that person I was, eating in some restaurant with her husband without a care in the world? Well, she's gone. And while there are certainly times where dinner (a quiet and uninterrupted one) and a movie would be nice, I can't really say I miss her or the way things used to be.

All of that to say that, in a world where most things were changed with his arrival, what didn't change at the time was that he was the only baby who was mine, who had kicked and turned and shifted around inside me so that I was constantly aware of him. I could look at his face and see my mouth and his Daddy's chin. I could hold his hand with its dirty, rough fingernails and smell his hair and his sweaty little boyness. He made sense because he was real. And right there in front of me.

But this new baby, this new little girl, she was a different story. A whole new set of expectations and sugar and spice and all that madness. So while she rolled around in the comfy confines of my uterus, I first thought of her brother but I also thought of her. She wouldn't change our new normal the way Will did. She wouldn't be the first baby to come squalling from my body. And so I wondered what it would be like, to have a daughter, a second piece of us to love (and shield from her big brother's particularly rough brand of "love").

I wondered if we would have enough of ourselves left over for her after the daily care of a pretty demanding little boy. I wondered if I would I know how to be a mother of a girl, if I could give her strength and confidence and the idea that a little femininity isn't always a bad thing. I wondered if, perhaps, I was wondering a little too much.

Then Laura was born and I didn't have to wonder any more. She was right in front of me and she was real. Those first few days together, I held her a lot and thought, "So this is who you are." And, surprisingly, she did change my world.

She wasn't surgically removed from me and so I got to hold her right away. She showed me that, however insignificant it may seem, I could also give birth normally, that this is what childbirth (for me, at least), should be like. She showed me that nursing wasn't nearly as complicated the second time around (but still just as painful at first, unfortunately). In her almost-three months here, she's taught me so much, more than I could ever put into words, just like her brother before her.

When I think back to how they both felt moving around inside me, logic still kind of flies out the window. I know an embryo/fetus isn't really capable of complex thinking, but I like to think that Will and Laura always somehow knew each other, that maybe the eggs that later developed into these miraculous little beings one day years ago gave each other a wink and a nod, elbowed each other and said something along the lines of, "She has no idea. We'll show her."

And show me they have.

Both of them, in equal measure.