Sunday, April 6, 2008

So Big, So Little

I sit here looking at my sleeping baby, who will be 15 months old next week, and realize how big he is, and how little.
My mother had a sibling 14 months younger than herself, as did my father. One of my cousins is 15 months apart from his brother. I am 18 months older than my next sister. It is a common story for the second child to follow closely behind the first, so it seems. Since Wolf is adopted, my body perceives Bear as my firstborn, and I expected a second child to be in the oven by now...but nature had other plans, as my post-baby fertility is still MIA. 14 or 15 or even 18 months was closer than my ideal--I was hoping to get about 21 months apart, but even that timing has come and gone now. Part of me is a little sad, because I want a large family and feel the biological clock ticking...my mother had three children and a fourth on the way when she was my age...I had expected something similar for myself...but miscarriages got me off to a later-than-expected start, and now my night-nursing baby joins with nature to assure generous child spacing.
But perhaps it is better this way.
As I look at Bear, I cannot imagine if I already had another newborn. I would love to be pregnant soon (I would love to be pregnant now), but I am also glad that I won't have children less than 2 years apart. Bear is so big--he walks and runs, he climbs everything, he has clear preferences and personality, he communicates verbally and is beginning to use words. But Bear is also so little--he loves to cuddle, and almost always needs nurn [nursing] for going to sleep. He sleeps in my bed and nurns at night. He loves daddy, but still needs a lot of mommy time.
He is, after all, still a baby...even though he is also a big boy.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

ah yes... I had all these 'ideals' on how far apart in age my children would be, but life always seems to have other plans! My first two were less than a minute apart and the third one more than 3 years later... not at all what we had planned but strangely it seems so right now that it has happened...

Jenni said...

Between my third and fourth there are 30(trying to conceive) months. I do love having my kids close together, but those 30 months were mighty special!

Jessica said...

My kids are sixteen months apart and only now that my youngest is going on 21 months do I realize how much we did not let the older one be the baby that she was. She seemed so much older and bigger than "the baby", so we treated her more like a toddler or child and kind of cut off the baby stage. Now I wish I had babied her more just because I see now how quickly the time goes by.

Quinn said...

I am learning to have faith in the Lord's timing/spacing.

I hope a new baby is on its way very soon for you.

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