The Second Power

Let me preface all of this by saying just how much I love and adore my little boy. I couldn't imagine my life without him. He's a beautiful, blond-headed, chubby-cheeked angel (sometimes disguised in a devil-toddler body). However, he was not an easy baby. In fact, my pediatrician says she often uses him as an example of how every once in a while there's a baby that NOTHING works for. He's made her list of the world's worst criers. I, having little to NO experience with babies, had a rude introduction to motherhood. In fact, for quite sometime, I did not like being a mother. If somebody had offered me an "undo" button, I probably would have pushed it.

Not only did I have a child who screamed day and night, who puked constantly for the first year of his life, who required surgery at 5 weeks old, who never made cute, cooing baby noises, who preferred my mother-in-law to me, and who offered (and still does) his best smiles to his daddy, but I had a difficult time recovering from delivery. It was long, painful and eventually required a D & C to end the 4 + months of bleeding I'd endured. Add to this that I'd had about the worst pregnancy EVER... I threw up for about 20 weeks (not just once in the morning--all day, every day.) I actually had a whole blueberry come out of my nose at one point.

At any rate, it took about 7 months for me to eventually be diagnosed with post-partum depression. Prozac is now one of my dearest friends and I'm not ashamed to admit it.

I digress... What I'm getting at is that I never experienced that euphoric new-mama high. I could not say that little C was the light of my life at first. I felt like a failure as a woman and as a mother. Sadly, I think I passed on some not-so-happy words of advice to my mother-to-be friends. I was more worried for them than happy.

It took me about a year to see why people had more than one child. I finally realized the beauty in being a mother. It took me another 6 months to decide I wanted another one.

I had another hugely unpleasant pregnancy, and I prayed every night for God to give us an easy baby. I just didn't think I could handle another baby like C-bear.

I was blessed with my baby girl. She's not "easy," per se. She has had her fair share of issues, namely reflux. But, she's such a happy girl for the most part. I had no idea that parenting a newborn could be so enjoyable. The toughest times I've had since she was born have been dealing with C adjusting (or not adjusting I should say) to her taking some of our attention.

Little N just makes me SO happy. She such a smiley girl. I think I actually made her really laugh today. :) This is why parents have lots of kids.

(By the way, I'm convinced that the Duggars haven't had a baby like my C yet!)