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| Chunker Baby 2 |
Seriously. SO precious.
It also got me thinking about how different I felt at the births of each of my children. Stinky was born 6 weeks early via emergency c-section. I remember the nurse showing him to me and thinking, "Well...it's a baby!" He then spent 2 weeks in the NICU and refused to ever nurse. Bonding with him was a slow process (hampered by his hospital stay, I'm sure). To this day, we still tend to have power struggles and personality clashes. My mom, however, said she felt like she recognized him and that he felt familiar from the start. They've always had kind of a special bond.
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| Skinny Baby Stinky! |
When Baby 2 was born (also via emergency c-section), I KNEW him. They put him on my chest and I thought, "Oh THERE you are!" At age 4 he's still a total mama's boy. We joke that he's our Buster (complete with juice obsession).
I adore both my boys and it's so interesting to me that one could feel so familiar at birth while the other one felt like a stranger that I had to slowly get to know.
Fellow moms- did any of your children feel "familiar" to you? Did you feel differently at each birth? I'm super curious if other people experienced what I did!
I found it easier to bond with the first one than the second. My husband had the opposite experience. I was surprised by how quickly I felt like I knew my older one, and how much harder it was to figure out the second kid. Nursing may have had something to do with it since the first one was excellent and the second one floundered a bit.
ReplyDeleteBoth of my babies were born without any complications, and nursed relatively easily, but it takes me a little bit of time to feel that loving bond right away. The protective one is there (just ask the nurse who came to stick my second for the 6th time in 5 hours since he'd been born), but I feel like I have to come down off the adrenaline before I can really feel anything except relief.
ReplyDeleteI had that same "Oh there you are!" thought with my first. My second's birth was not what I was expecting and she didn't look like I expected her to either, so I felt less swoony and more caught off guard. We bonded quickly, but the process felt very different than with the first.
ReplyDeleteWhen they slapped Gwen on my chest all I could think was "GET. IT. OFF!". But then they gave her a bath and all was well :) With Bentley as soon as I could tell he was out I couldn't wait to see him, even though he was covered in the same goo Gwen was. I think I just realized that another person (not just a slimy baby) was entering our family and I knew that we would just love watching him grow. Same with Ivy. This baby I feel like has been trying to kill me from the inside since conception, I am kind of nervous that she has it out for me. But I hope I'm really wrong and that things will go well! I can't believe baby 2 is FOUR, wow. Time flies!
ReplyDeletei loved this post! i still feel like i'm getting to know grey. i didn't have that instant connection to him until a couple months later.
ReplyDeleteThis totally describes my relationship with my oldest vs. my youngest/second. I always attributes it to expecting too much from my oldest and hardly anything from my youngest (obviously these expectations are unconscious, I don't treat them differently on purpose) but that familiar feeling with the second is something I felt too...it's funny we had a list of a million names for my daughter, our first baby, and it took us a few days to decide on one. For our son we knew the name from the beginning and it fit perfectly when he was born.
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