The Second Time Around

When I was pregnant with Avery, I spent a lot of time thinking about being pregnant and reading up on pregnancy, birth, parenting, babies, etc. I also had the "luxury" of having a boring and mindless job which gave me plenty time to think about things all day. For example, I would wonder if the baby was a boy or a girl, what he/she would look like, what my baby could hear, what he/she was feeling, how was my birth going to go. etc. I basically thought about nothing else for nine months and in return, I was super prepared for the pregnancy, childbirth and parenting. I was really educated on a lot of different topics I never knew much about, like unnecessary medical interventions, breastfeeding, babies' sleep cycles, co-sleeping, slings, and attachment parenting. I was ready to be an awesome mom (and would like to think I am doing a good job!).

Now that I am pregnant again, I discovered how little I think of baby #2. The obvious difference is that instead of sitting at a desk doing data entry for 40 hours a week, I am now taking care of a toddler full-time and clearly don't have as much time to daydream about whose eyes my baby will have. But is that really the only reason I don't think about it that often? I wonder if it's because it's easy for me to think, "I already read all the books and did it once before so now I'm a pro and know everything." As I was thinking about this today, I realized that it is really bugging me that I don't feel as connected to my baby yet like I did with Avery (in utero I mean) because I think that since I was reading all the books while I was pregnant I learned about things as they were happening and could relate. Now that it's been almost two years since I've read some of those books, while I've retained a lot of the knowledge, all of the little details are what I feel like I'm missing about my baby's developments and milestones.

I am suddenly worried that I am short changing my second child already and he/she hasn't even been born yet. I never want to do that (as I'm sure most parents don't want to do!) and while I'm sure I'm being overly paranoid about the effects this is having on my unborn child, I still feel like he/she deserves more attention, at least mental attention, than I am giving him/her now. I have therefore decided to go to the library (hopefully tomorrow) and get some of those books and read them again (Go Dr. Sears!). I know that it's going to be impossible to match the excitement and novelty of my first pregnancy and birth because everything is so new and you don't know what to expect. But that doesn't mean I know what to expect for my second child, or any subsequent children for that matter. While my medical knowledge and parenting style will remain the same, each child is uniquely different and I need to start remembering that now, yes, even in utero, so that my second child can feel special and unique from the get-go. I'm not giving birth to Avery #2; I am giving birth to another child. Yay!

What I learned: I have been too busy to realize and fully appreciate the presence/miracle/person-hood of my second child (coming soon!) and there is no good reason for me to not be actively thinking about this child as I did for Avery. I need to get on it!