Between settling in and learning to breastfeed and pump and
returning to the hospital for another night’s stay and welcoming visitors and
learning to hold two babies at once, and figuring out weight watcher points for
new mommies, I have been WRITING! What I
ended up with was a bunch of “scraps” of blog posts that somewhat relate. I’m calling them Vignettes, which only my
English teacher friends will appreciate. (A vignette is a “brief description,
account, or episode that can be read alone or as a part of a collection for
additional meaning")
Baby A
When we first got Baby A, I wasn’t sure how her mother would
feel about my sharing her story. I knew
a lot of fancy/famous bloggers used pseudonyms for their own children, so I
thought it best if I used one for her, too.
We called her Baby A a lot when we first got her. Now she’s got about a million nicknames. We call her “little bit” and Layla “tiny
bit.” I call her “Mo-Mo” and “girlfriend”
a lot while Skip usually sticks to “precious” and “princess.” More and more everyday, she’s becoming less
of a baby and more of a big girl. When I
sat down to write after bringing our newest baby home from the hospital, I
realized that as much as she’s learning and changing everyday, and since she is
now a big sister, I should probably stop referring to her as Baby A and start
calling her by her real name, Amoura.
Just like That
This morning, I was changing Layla’s diaper and I could hear
Skip upstairs through the monitor getting Amoura out of the crib and talking
silly with her and telling her how loved she is, and the thought ran through my
mind, “we’ve got it all.” A beautiful,
healthy baby girl who has my nose and her daddy’s everything else. A toddler who gets funnier and smarter every
day who ended up saving us in our darkest hour while simultaneously making us
look like her heroes. And just like
that, the face of a tiny baby boy popped into my mind and my eyes filled with
tears. Because the truth is had Levi not
died, we would’ve “had it all” last September.
What we wouldn’t have is Layla or Amoura. It’s impossible to reconcile these two facts,
and yet they’re my reality. Had I not
been pregnant with Levi last summer, I would’ve never met Amoura’s mom and had
he not died, I probably never would’ve met this girl that calls me ma-ma and
filled my broken heart with joy. As much
as I would love to have all three of my babies here with me, I will be forever
grateful to my first baby, a boy, my Levi, for giving me the gifts of these two
precious girls.
Vomit
We’ve never been lazy Saturday morning people. We are I am a routine person and our
Saturday routine involves eating out for breakfast and then running errands
until midafternoon. Since Layla is so
new, yesterday was supposed to be a lazy Saturday, like the ones I see
glorified in Face.book statuses every weekend.
I got up before Skip and the girls and cooked breakfast and got some
cleaning done. After breakfast, I was
snuggling with both girls in the recliner and realized that I hadn’t had my
picture made with both of them since we got home. I asked Skip to take the picture below and
before I could even send that beauty out to the masses, Amoura started silently
vomiting ALL OVER both of us. Somehow,
Layla managed to avoid getting retched on even though she was tucked in my
arms. Skip hopped up and took Layla, put
her in the swing and came back to finish watching the show. I’ve never seen so much puke in all my life
much less coming out of something so small.
She never cried, just looked confused and wanted to snuggle. I tried to sit still and just let her finish
since I had already become the receptacle.
I peeled her clothes off and then mine and started using the wet towels
and washcloths Skip fetched us to clean us both off a bit. I was soaked down to my underpants and
smelled terrible, but it was past new girl’s feeding time, so I made do with a
“spit bath” and came back to scrub down my recliner and feed her. Skip held Amoura for an unscheduled morning
nap, and by the time she woke up, she was good as new. What was not good as new was my
recliner. It still smelled strongly of
puke. Before we had a chance to
rescrub, we had visitors, so the smell lingered. When they were gone, Skip took over the
cleaning and scrubbed with 409, then vinegar, and we thought the smell was
gone. But after sitting in it for a
while longer, Skip decided it was not and I had to agree. He went to cleaning and digging deeper in the
crevices once more and then we decided the smell was really gone that time. Long
story a bit shorter, I am sitting in said recliner right now and the smell is
not gone and short of throwing the darn thing out, I don’t know what it’s gonna
take for it to smell clean again!
Is this your first?
I’ve read a lot about how painful and awkward this question
can be for baby loss moms, and although I didn’t get asked too often during my
pregnancy, my stay at the hospital is a whole other story. Before the hospital, the question didn’t
really bother me. Depending on the
person asking, I would explain the complicated answer. At the hospital, however, it struck a nerve
every time a new person would ask. And I
felt compelled to explain the last year and a half of our lives to them. As much as sometimes “yes” would’ve been the
easiest answer, I could not silently disregard Levi’s existence anymore than I
can Amoura’s. So, my answer became,
“well it’s not my first, it’s kinda actually my third, but hopefully, she’ll be
the first living child I’ve given birth to.” Because that is not at all
confusing. I told Skip after one person
asked that I had to come up with a better response, but he assured me that the
truth, which is what my long, drawn out answer was, was perfect.
There’s a song we sing at church “Christ in Me” that has the
line “I would praise you with my life, let my story lift you high” and as I
kept repeating our story of baby loss with Levi and baby found with Amoura and
our newest little miracle, that line played over and over in my head and
heart. So, as touchy as “is this your
first” can be, and as awkward as the people asking often feel when I’m done, I
never want to miss the opportunity to say “you won’t believe what our last year
has been like, but I’m gonna tell you anyway.”
The God we serve wrote a beautiful love story for our family and
although it began with tragedy, He meant it for our good. He gets the glory for our happiness in this
chapter of our lives, and I hope we won’t fail to accept an opportunity to give
it to Him.
My Vintage Pearl Necklace.
Hormones
A few weeks before we had Layla, Megan asked me how I could
listen to people talk about our loss and our faith and not cry a river every
time. She said, “What are you thinking
about? Cupcakes? Laundry?” Honestly, I am not really sure. I just know that I hate to cry in public and
avoid it if at all possible. I cannot
count the times in the last year that I have cried all the way to work, dried
my face in the school parking lot and cheerfully went on about my day. I am a crier, but Skip is about the only
person I don’t mind crying in front of, so I usually do my best to find a time
and place when I am alone. Many of my
friends have told me about how weepy they were after they had their
babies. Layla will be two weeks old
tomorrow and I can count on one finger how many times I’ve cried. I was starting to think I was broken, and
then last night at 11:30, Amoura started crying upstairs. I was holding a sleeping newborn and Skip was
trying to sleep off a terrible sinus headache.
I gave the baby to him and headed upstairs to calm my big girl. We
rocked and I sang and put her back in the crib (which made her cry again) and I
was rubbing her back when Skip texted me “Layla is hungry.” Since I am literally the only one who can
remedy this, I had to leave Amoura screaming, all alone in her crib, come back
down stairs and feed Layla. I asked Skip
to go take Amoura some Motrin, but before he could get out of our room, I was
bawling. It was the first time I had to
choose one girl over the other and it was devastating. I know Layla NEEDED me and Amoura really just
WANTED me, but it broke my heart. I
cried until my eyeballs hurt (they kind of still do) and thought of a thousand
(irrational) ways to fix the situation (which was really not a situation at
all, but a totally normal, easy to remedy fact of being a parent to more than
one child). I wanted to bring Amoura
down to sleep with us. I wanted to call
my mom to come sleep with her. I wanted
to tote Layla up the stairs and hold both of them in the rocker all night. Ultimately, I just cried and let Skip be the
amazing daddy he is.
After a few more tears from Amoura and a lot more from me,
both girls were asleep. I just lay there
and thought about all the love in my heart that was coming out of my eyes. When I was pregnant with Layla and falling
more in love with Amoura each day, I remember thinking early on, “I wonder if I
will love this new baby as much as I love this one.” That probably sounds crazy, but it’s
true. My heart was so full with love for
Amoura that I could not imagine loving another baby (especially one I wasn’t super
convinced I’d ever take home) as much. As my pregnancy went on without a hitch,
I started wondering if I would feel differently about Amoura once “my own” baby
came along. The answer is no. I don’t.
As an only child, it has always been hard to imagine how parents’ love
multiplies and they make room for all their babies in their hearts, and now I
know, it just happens. Ultimately, we
know that Layla is our baby and we don’t have to drop her off for visitation or
lose sleep at night over one day having to give her up, but my feelings for
them are the same. This parenthood thing
is a trip, and I am so thankful are finally on it!
