My Second Born Chill Pill

If you don’t follow Ana from Time Flies When You’re Having Babies, your life might be not as fun as it could be. No, really. So, pop your little self over there, subscribe to her blog, then come back and celebrate the arrival of my due date with a baby already born by reading about how relaxed she is. I think I am starting to swallow some of these pills she is talking about…

On the occasion of Jenna pushing baby number two out into the world, I thought I would talk a little bit about one of the many benefits of our second born for me. Congratulations to Jenna, Mike and Ellen on your new sweetie- he truly is amazing!

When I had my first born and we would go back on breaks to visit my family, I would be aghast at how laid back my siblings were with their kids. I am one of eight children, and the fifth to marry and have kids. By the time I had my first, all of my older siblings had at least 2 kids.

Naomi is the baby in the colorful striped sweater in the back 

I couldn’t figure out how my brother and sisters could let their youngest little babies cry for anything more than a couple of seconds before rushing over to pick him or her up. I always did a b-line to where ever Naomi was at her first peep!

As I watched their kids run free through my parent’s giant yard, with half-eaten packages of fruit snacks in one hand, mulch in the other and totally covered in dirt I kept Naomi always in my line of sight and could barely imagine her joining the ranks of all those ragamuffins.

“No really, I am not letting her go. Ever.” 

I would never be ok with her eating multiple packages of any fruit snacks, with a chaser of mulch from my dad’s garden area. I’d look at how grimy my nieces and nephews were and think about how I would never let Naomi go more than a couple of days with out a bath- in fact I bathed Naomi every single day for most of her life as an only child. I would pull her away from any room where the television was on for no child of mine would have her little brain poisoned with that Dora smut!

Yes I was that mother. That hyper anxious, kind of judgmental, got-it-all-figured-out-because-I-had-all-of-one-kid first time mom.

Then we had another kid, and only 18 months after our first. I am so glad they came so close together so that I didn’t have too much time to carry on in my irrational state, freaking out and obsessing over stuff that really, in the end, didn’t matter.

As soon as Bernadette was born our trips home started to look a lot different and we started to blend in much more naturally to my group of siblings and their multiple child families.

Sure, kids should not subsist on fruit snacks, and I would never let that happen (cough cough) but once we had a second kid in tow, I just couldn’t freak out if Naomi got a hold of her own package or 5 while we were back for a visit. And I think that mulch has a lot of protein in it. Or iron. I’m pretty sure it’s nutritious.

And while it is good to bathe a child now and then, every day is just nonsensical. These days I try to do it once a week unless they have dirt clouds over their heads from not just playing in it but pouring on their heads as they are sometimes wont to do, especially at my parent’s house.

And immediately upon visiting after we birthed our second, if Dora came on in the other room, there is no flippin way that I was going to get up from my cozy nursing perch with my newborn and cut off a lovely conversation with my sister who I never see to shield Naomi from having her brain fry from too much TV. Because her brain was not going to fry from too much TV, she was going to be just fine.

“I just want to put this one down and finish my wine!”

You get the point, having a second baby did a number on me– and a good one at that. I needed to take a chill pill and thankfully, God had a prescription for the best one in the form of Bernadette Martha.

And the pills just keep coming.