The Second Time Around

The second pregnancy is different. Some things are the same: I’m still referred to as the happy, pregnant woman, I’ve still never had morning sickness, I still didnt have to shop for maternity clothes(thanks Amy). God has seen fit to bless me with easy, wonderful pregnancies both times, and I am so very grateful for that. The difference this time is more in how we’ve prepared for Sammy’s arrival, or not prepared.

With Wren we had four showers and the child had more clothes than Dennis and I combined before she was born. We spent $500 on a crib that has now become a glorified doll holder since we co-sleep. We took natural birthing classes for eight weeks. During the first pregnancy, we had time to do these things because we didn’t have a child yet.

Yesterday I bought Sammy clothes. This puts him up to a total of six pairs, more than enough I say until we see if he actually needs the newborn or zero to three months size. Sammy is getting a bassinet from my sister that she received from a friend because we know another $500 crib would be empty anyway since he will be in our room for night feedings and, when he’s big enough, our bed. We haven’t even been able to squeeze in a refresher course for our birthing class, but thankfully our birthing coach from last time has offered to doula if we need her. Between that and reading our birthing book from last time, we’re considering ourselves ready to go.

It’s not that we care less about this pregnancy or this child; it’s just a more mellow attitude the second time around. Sleep deprivation? Been there, done that. Putting together a nursery my child spends no time in because she’s attached to us all the time, which I love? Did that too. I have friends who decorate for fun, but I decorate because people walk in my house and think we’ve lived there for two weeks instead of over two years. It does not rank high on my priority list. If I thought Sammy would be in his nursery a lot, we’d be working on turning the office into a nursery a little bit faster. I know where he’ll be though; attached to me nursing or riding in his baby sling so he can hear my heart and get acclimated to the outside the womb world in his own time.

This time around, I want no showers. Wren’s clothes are now separated into three bins: two are full of clothes that still don’t fit and one is full of clothes she outgrew before the tags came off. I’ve already given away two bins of never worn clothes. When Sammy is given toys, we will have to start using our kitchen cabinets as storage space because Wren’s are already flowing freely out of her room and to every other corner of our house. Plus, most of Wren’s are unisex, so Sammy will have his fair share of toys just waiting. Dennis and I feel like we’ve hit the jackpot because my school has offered us diapers and wipes in leiu of cake and punch, and being second timers, we know how awesome this offer is!

I think for us it comes down to seeing our reality. Despite the fact that Wren has been showered with material possessions, and I’m sure Sammy will be too, it’s not what means the most to her. We mean the most to her. Our time spent working on puzzles, reading books, chasing her around the house, going to the park, is all she really wants. It may just be that she is too young, but so far she has never attempted to take a toy she likes from the store. She plays with it at the store, puts it on a shelf and walks out with nothing more than mine or Dennis’ hand and never throws a fit about it. If we were to detach her room from the rest of the house, I think she would honestly care less. As long as dad’s there to play and I’m there to sing, she might not even notice.

Our reality looks different than I expected because I was more of a boundaries person before we had kids. I thought there would be places in our house that were off limits or grown ups only. I cannot imagine it being like that now. Somewhere in between feeding a child from my body, watching her sleep, and obsessing if her temperature was 99 instead of 98.6, I lost all boundaries. I am like one liquid woman who feels connected and flowing through every member of our house. It’s amazing. Dennis and I were watching her sleep last night and he said he couldn’t imagine her not sleeping in our bed. Me either, and I know the time will come when she doesn’t want to.

I don’t want Sammy to feel like the hands me down baby or like we didn’t care enough to do all the first baby things with him. It’s not that way at all. Like I said, it’s just a mind set difference and the fact that we were so overly prepared with Wren that we can still use what we have to avoid being wasteful. Sammy and Wren are already distinct, unique, perfect little beings on their own, and any difference in how we prepare for them is not a reflection of our love. It’s just us meeting their needs. Every child is different. You don’t prepare for them or raise them exactly the same. It doesn’t mean you love one more than the other or expect more or less from one than the other. It means you are looking at them as individuals and making your decisions accordingly instead of adopting the one-size-fits-all version of parenting. Though I’m sure we’re destined to make mistakes everyday, I am comfortable with where we are now and how we got here. And I can say this: the excitement of adding another person to our family is just as awesome the second time around.

Rubber Ducky, You’re the One

I tired of the idea of multitasking months ago. Honestly, I believe that I can have 10 things on my to-do list and I will get them done faster if I work on one at a time, not five at the same time. What I finish is actually quality, and I’m not losing my mind trying to juggle returning a phone call while answering email and cooking dinner at the same time. I usually end up emailing the wrong person while not listening to the person on the phone and burning dinner. It’s not quality.

Apparently I even need to stop multitasking on some of the tasks that should be somewhat intuitive, at least while I’m pregnant. This realization came courtesy of an unfortunate bathtub incident on Sunday. I was running bath water, stepping in the bath water while having a conversation with my husband and trying to reach for my daughter who wanted in the bath with me when it happened: I was violated by a rubber ducky! Wren has about six rubber duckies, so I’m not completely sure who the culprit was, but I sat my tush on a ducky beak, flung my whole body backwards and sat in shock. Luckily, this fall did not lead to contractions and an emergency room visit, though it did lead to some laughs from husband and daughter.

It was amusing, but it did bring back the thought that multitasking is a myth. The brain needs to focus on one thing at a time to truly comprehend. It’s safer(that’s a shout out to all you crazies who text while you drive) and I feel healthier when I’m not doing the chicken-with-my-head-cut-off dance. It took me a long time to realize the root of my disorganization was just my tendency to take on too much and not prioritize what needed to be done first. Even if I could get it prioritized, I still never felt like doing one thing at a time was good enough, like I was cheating because I wasn’t 100% stressed and ready to scream. Luckily, I’m over that feeling.

I have to credit one huge change in our lives that has helped me eliminate the need for multitasking and that is pretty much doing away with our cell phones. I know, this is blasphemy for most people, but it is absolute bliss! We installed a home phone in June, went on a prepaid plan where we have so few minutes a month available that it has to pretty much be emergency only and life became much simpler. Here’s why:

People can’t find you, therefore they stop looking:
I remember when my phone would ring and it always seemed like I had to answer it. There was a sense of emergency revolving around the fact that someone was calling me right then and what if they needed something. Even if I didn’t answer, I had their voice message or text just waiting and this lent a feeling of needing to respond when a need wasn’t really there. Now, people call my cell, it’s usually off or not with me, and then they call the home phone if they really need something. I check the home phone at the end of the day and call back who I want when I want. And when people don’t really need anything, they stop calling and this frees up a ton of time you spend calling them back just to find out they only called you because they were bored.

Relationships are better when they’re not casual:
Speaking of people who call when they’re bored, don’t you just love the people who call because you’re their from here to there person? You know, that person they call on the way to the grocery store or to pick up their kids? They don’t need to talk to you, maybe don’t even want to, but they are so used to doing something all the time that sitting in the car in silence or with only the radio freaks them out. They call you, fake interest until they reach their destination, and then you don’t hear from them again until they are going somewhere else and happen to see your number in their phone. Yeah, these aren’t quality conversations. I am now a fan of the old school style phone conversations that involve putting my child to bed, getting something warm to drink and having a conversation with a person where this is no predestined time for it to end. Those are good, and honestly, I don’t have as many phone conversations as I did before giving up the cell, but they’re better when I do.

Texting…I just don’t have words:
I hate it. I am not a technology hater, but I hate texting. I realize this confession will make me unpopular with 99% of the population, but I'm ready to be honest. I hate it because 8th graders think you spell you as u, and cause as cuz, and they get seriously offended when this is not accepted on a formal paper in my class. I hate it because on a regular basis I am having conversations with people who then pull out their cell phones and respond to a text from someone else. By the way, this is not multitasking, it’s just rude. Really, if I bore you that much then just walk away. It would be less irritating. I hate it because by the time I type out one text, I could have called and said what I needed to say therefore making it a huge time waster. I just hate it.

Anyway, that’s my rant for the night. Rubber ducky bum violation = bad. More time with family doing one thing at a time and not living glued to a cell phone = good.