I was thinking last night that there are two things I've felt "this time around" that I didn't experience with Saben.
1. The pure bliss of holding a new infant in my arms. The contentment I felt right after Annika was born was amazing and for a couple weeks I thought "I really want to do this again, no way are we stopping with just two kids. I'm ready to get pregnant again right now!" With Saben I was just really nervous that any second something was going to go wrong or he was going to get colicky and it was still wonderful, but different not knowing what to expect.
2. However, I don't remember Saben causing me the encompassing anger and frustration I've felt while spending HOURS trying to get Annika to sleep. Now I've been thinking "No way on earth am I EVER going to do this again. Two kids is plenty and if this one doesn't fall asleep soon I am chucking her out the window."
The funny thing is, I would definitely say that Annika is MUCH harder than Saben was, but I vaguely have this feeling that I had a few tough weeks with Saben too. I just don't remember.
What is fascinating to me is that Kyle remembers all the hard parts with Saben, while I only remember the good parts. Part of the reason I write down the difficulties of raising my children is that I want to remember ALL of it and I have realized that somehow mom's brains (mine at least) are wired to forget just how exhausted and frustrated they were with their precious bundles of joy.
This last week was really really tough, Annika refused to nap unless she was in the Baby Bjorn carrier, hated being set down for more than 5 minutes and wanted to nurse constantly. Its not that she wouldn't nap, she just woke up after 5-20 minutes every single time. After I'd spent 30 minutes bouncing/rocking/nursing her to sleep. She wouldn't go to bed till 9:30 pm or so, which meant I had 30 min - 1 hour to myself each day and last night I was really losing it.
Then out of the blue, she slept from 10:30 pm till 6:30 am last night, napped 2 hours this morning and then fell asleep in her swing for the first time ever this afternoon. Hmmm.... this isn't so bad. In fact I could totally see us having just one more.....
3 comments:
I think you should totally go for one more Kari! I'm a huge fan of 3..coming from a family of 2 kids- one boy and one girl..I always wished there was a 3rd so I really new what it was like to be a sister. My brother and I just felt like 2 individual kids and we were only 4 years apart.
I laughed when I read the "chucking this kid out the window" part. I even said out loud, "Kari understands just how I feel!"
Allie is teething, has a cold, still isn't used to our new place and neither of us have slept more then 2 hours straight in weeks (closer to 20 min.). I just keep thinking how much I want another one, but can I really go thru this all over again? I must be insane! Glad to know I'm not the only one feeling this way.
I don't think I have reached the point where I could go through this again yet! Just waiting for the time when she sleeps longer then 4 hours. Of course the past two nights she has slept from 10-3AM so thats a bonus hour in there for me.
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