October, 2001: Baby #3?

My 3-year-old is napping and my 6-year-old is in school and I’m thinking of another baby again. These “third baby” thoughts rarely come when the boys are fighting or I’m woken up in the middle of the night by someone who needs a drink or fell out of bed. The thoughts of baby number three come when the house is quiet; when Jacob puts his arm around his little brother and kisses him; when Liam tells me he loves me “this much” and holds out his chubby little arms just as far as he can. My third baby thoughts come during those times that it seems that my boys are growing so fast I can almost see their pants getting shorter as they stand in front of me. They come when I pick up Jacob from school and I look at an 8^th grader towering over his mother and realize that, God-willing, my son will stand taller than me in fewer years than I would have believed possible when I held him as a tiny newborn.

            When my husband Bill and I got married, we had not talked about what size our family would be. My surprise pregnancy with Jacob happened before we could get to the family-size discussion, and once we had Jacob, it never occurred to me that we would have any fewer or more than two babies. Bill and I each have one sister and having two children seemed natural—a given almost. When Liam was a baby, I would look at other moms I knew with three or four, and in one case, five children, and not understand what drove people to have more than two children. To me, two children were children enough.

One child seemed like a lonely idea, but three or more meant that parents played zone defense rather than man-to-man. With baby Liam and preschooler Jacob, I saw no need to make more work for ourselves.

            Something changed within me as Liam approached his third birthday and I’m still not sure what it is. We went to the beach with some friends, and I had so much fun with my wet, slippery boys, that I began to think that I didn’t want this pudgy, innocent stage to end so soon. I splashed Liam in the water and watched Jacob practicing his very shaky front crawl and wanted the day to last forever. The boys were just independent enough to walk and play in the water without a constant hand from me, yet they delighted in my “motorboat” rides and grabbed my hand as they jumped off the pier. Suddenly, it seemed that in just a whisper of time passing, they would be floating away into the deeper water. And while I didn’t want to prevent them from growing up, it occurred to me that I could have another one. That I was allowed to have another one. That just because I never wanted a third before didn’t mean I couldn’t change my mind. I had never before stretched my mind around the idea of a third bed, a third car seat—or most exciting, a first pink dress-- and letting my imagination go to a future I had never before considered was exhilarating.

            My husband Bill understands these baby-longings of mine, and is especially attuned to the fact that a part of the baby longing, might be, more specifically, baby girl-longings. But when Bill looks at the possibility of another child for us, he sees the thousands of U.S. children languishing in foster care, waiting for a mom or a dad to call their own. He believes one of these children may be our first responsibility as a family. Why make our own when there are others that need our care?

            And I have no argument. Our family is healthy and happy and whole. Bill is a teacher; I have a background in education as well, and am home with our children almost full-time. As far as I can tell, our marriage is more stable than most. Our children are well-behaved; they seem well-adjusted and secure. We have enough money and enough room. If there is any home that a foster child would feel welcome, ours would be one. Part of our wedding vows included a promise to always reach out to others, and we both recognize there would be no greater way to reach out than to welcome an abandoned or abused child into our family.

            And yet.

            That’s all I can say. The yets add up in my mind. And yet I’d love to see a daughter who has my hair or my laugh. And I’m not sure I want to complicate our lives with the problems that foster care could bring. And I feel like we have one life to live and it’s seeming shorter by the day, and if I even think for a second I want to have a third child, we should. And I just think it would be exciting to see what one more combination of Bill and Annemarie would be, so happy we are with the first two.

            But if I really felt that strongly to have another one, I could pull Bill to my side quickly and easily. If I felt a “YES I DO,” instead of a “I think I might,” he would jump in with few questions. But I don’t have that certainty. Each time I see a foster care case in the headlines, I can’t help but think, “We could do that,” and know there would be less chance we would if we have another of our own. And sometimes I’m just not sure I want one more little person around the house—biological child or not. When the boys argue; when the laundry piles up; when I think that another baby would put my career on hold even longer, I have little desire for one more. I don’t look longingly at pregnant women--  while I appreciated the miracle of childbirth, I didn’t particularly enjoy being pregnant. Neither do I envy my friend down the street who has a newborn. With 2:00 a.m. feedings several years in the past, and diapers safely packed away, sometimes I have little desire to go back to square one. I had both children before I was 30, ahead of many of my friends. In doing so I exchanged the freedom of my twenties for the responsibilities of parenthood. I don’t have any regrets, but now, with freedom coming back in small tastes—a night out here, a weekend away there, do I want to give up my mid-thirties as well?

            I don’t think I do. But I’m not completely sure. And that’s the problem, because each month that slips away is one month more in age-difference between our boys and the new baby. I can’t help but wondering if there’s a little girl in our future. I can’t help but wonder what the 40-year-old me would say to the 33-year-old me that writes right now. Would she say go for it because she loves having a six-year-old along with her preteen and teenager, or would she say that the two boys are enough and she has embraced this new stage of ‘big kid’ parenting? And maybe more importantly than what I would say 7 years down the road is what I would say in 15 years, when both boys are in college and the “baby” would just be starting high school, or in 25 years, when this yet unborn child and I might pick out her wedding dress together.

            In spite of many happy visions of what this baby might mean to me later, though, the idea of becoming pregnant today fills me with equal parts of trepidation and joy. I am so happy with our family as it stands. I have this feeling that we may be complete. And as I ponder this question yet one more time, I feel that I have almost answered it. While I’m not sure if I’m called to a third baby, I feel like I need to examine the idea carefully. I need to cradle the idea of a baby. Hold the idea. Nurture the idea. And maybe allow that idea to become a reality. Or possibly let that idea go, knowing that I took a good, long look at it. I believe God speaks through  the desires of our hearts. I need to stop long enough to listen to what my desires are. My prayer is that I might listen closely enough.

March, 2001: Alleluia

I have always marveled at how the Alleluias simply go away during Lent. On Ash Wednesday, they vanish quietly from their usual place before the Gospel and don’t emerge again until Easter. Going to Mass the first Sunday of Lent, I can’t help but scan the order of worship in hopes that one snuck by unnoticed by the music minister. A renegade Alleluia tucked into an otherwise appropriately drab and dreary Lenten song. It’s never happened. Where do they go? I imagine them crouched in a dark confessional for the 40 days, stifling their excitement and enthusiasm in deference to the solemnity of the season. They are probably wrapped in dark gray wool blankets so their natural light doesn’t shine through and accidentally flood the church with bright yellow and pink (the true color of all Alleluias, in case you hadn’t known.) More than giving up meat on Friday—not so difficult for this vegetarian—I have always had a difficult time giving up Alleluias for Lent. In fact, I don’t know that I have ever made it through the entire song of “Jesus Christ has Risen Today” on Easter morning without getting choked up on the Alleluias that follows each line, so happy am I to get them back.

            This year is going to be different, though. This year, you see, I have an Alleluia-ing two-year-old little boy at home who is no more likely to give up the word for Lent than he is to start saying, ‘Yes Mama,’ when I ask him to clean up his blocks.

I’m not sure exactly when Liam decided to make Alleluia a part of his vocabulary. Overall, he’s not a toddler quick to pick up new words. Generally, his motto for talking has been: “Why talk when you can run around and jump off the couch?”  Neither my husband nor I use Alleluia around the house-- despite my attachment to the word, I have rarely said it or sung it outside of church.

            Liam is another story. He sprinkles Alleluias like sugar over the events in his day. He uses the word correctly, and in context. True to church tradition, Liam avoids simply saying the word in a normal voice, but rather yells it, sings it or chants it. He can’t say the ‘L’ sound, so his version is actually ‘A-yay-yoo-ya.” Vatican II, after all, proclaimed the vernacular, or native tongue, holds precedence. Liam always speaks in his native tongue.

My guess as to how he picked up the word has to do with the many Sundays he has spent sitting on my lap in church. From little on, Liam has always been a baby on the move, and keeping him contained and still through the first reading, Psalm response and second reading has been an exercise in upper arm strength and a testament to the staying power of Cheerios. By the time the congregation stands for the Gospel Acclamation, Liam is ready to dance. Or run away. The upbeat Alleluias favored by our church have always been a perfect compromise. Since Liam was about 5 months old, I’ve held him facing the altar, swaying to the music. I’ve pumped his chubby legs in rhythm to the beat, and have blessed his head, mouth and heart with the three crosses when we’re finished with the Acclamation. I think he learned that Alleluia must be one exciting word if it can bring so much action to a morning of sitting around.

Liam’s Alleluias outside of church spout out spontaneously. Going to Grandma and Grandpa’s often warrants Alleluia-singing for several blocks beforehand. Once, after a particularly difficult evening, Liam’s restlessness was finally assuaged by the consumption of a large piece of bundt cake. This brought on an Alleluia that had some similarity to a wolf howl. His first poop on the potty was followed by a chorus of Alleluias emitted during a celebratory slide down the stairs.

If the standing Alleluia of the Gospel Acclamation calls us to pay special attention to the words of Jesus, Liam’s Alleluias during the day make me focus on God’s presence in day-to-day life. Liam’s Alleluias remind me that snow is a miracle. That eating noodles should be a joyful occasion. That there’s something strange and beautiful about squirrels and bath bubbles and drinking from a straw.

And as Lent begins and the Alleluias in church fade away, my Alleluia-ing boy will still be going strong. Reminding me that while a 40-day desert stay is one way of finding God, another way is to look deeper into the ordinary and pull out joy. Alleluia.

            

February, 1999: Big babies

Sometimes I want a little baby. A tiny little baby to cradle in one arm and dress in newborn outfits. I want to marvel at itsy-bitsy fingers and teensy toes. I want strangers to come up to me and ooooh and ahhhh because it is not every day that you see someone so small. It’s not that I’m still waiting for my first baby. I have two young boys. The thing is, though, they were only tiny for a week. Jacob was 8 pounds when he was born and Liam was 9 pounds. With each of them, I reveled in their sheer smallness at the time of their births. I remember holding Jacob’s newborn foot up to my husband’s size-13 shoe and feeling like it was almost impossible that a person could be so small and still have all the necessary parts for life. When Liam was born, I cupped his head in my hand.

Neither boy was content to stay in the single digits of weight for long, though, and by their first pediatric visits, only a week or so after birth, both were a solid ten pounds. By the time they were two weeks old, newborn-size clothes fit like sausage casings. Some babies have trouble learning to nurse. Not my boys. Both latched on efficiently in the hospital and sucked their way to the top of the size range for babies their age. When I took Jacob in for his six-week check up, I undressed him and put him on the scale. His chubby arms and legs kicked furiously and his belly quivered.

“What a giant baby,” the nurse said as she tapped the scale to fourteen pounds. “What kind of formula is he on?”

“No formula. Just breast milk,” I said.

“This is all breast milk?” She sat Jacob up and rolls of baby fat settled above his diaper as she fastened it. “Usually breast fed babies are a little smaller than average. He’s in the 99^th percentile for both length and weight.”

Jacob kept growing at this clip and was toddler-sized long before he could toddle. Since he didn’t take his first steps until he was almost 15 months old, and didn’t grow a full head of hair until even later, he had an unusual look.

“It looks like he’s pretending to be a baby,” a friend said to me as we sipped coffee at a mothers’ group one day. The other just-turned-one-year-olds, all smaller than Jacob, were cruising around the room, holding on to furniture or taking a few running steps and falling. Jacob was crawling after them in delight.

“He is a baby,” I said.

It was conversations like this which have made me want to slow down the growth of my husky boys. Inside those big bodies are two little kids, and I don’t want anyone to forget that. I am afraid that because Jacob, now 4, is taller than other kids his age, he will be expected to act older, too. Sheila, a friend of mine with a 5-year-old who’s a little shorter than Jacob confessed that she was surprised to see Jacob crying when his block tower fell down. It took her a moment to remember that Jacob was a year younger than her child, and that tears of frustration aren’t too unusual for the pre-kindergarten set.

It’s not just the expectations that others might place on my boys which causes me to be wistful, though. Some of it is simply about size. A couple down the street have a 17-month-old girl, Tyra, who is smaller than our 7-month-old Liam. Little Tyra stretched out her time as an infant; it seemed to me that her parents had a newborn for five or six months, rather than a week or two like we did. Even now, she seems more like a baby than a little girl. A couple times a week, I see the family taking a walk together, Tyra snug in a pack on her father’s back. By the time Liam is Tyra’s age, the baby backpack will be a distant memory. He’s already almost too heavy for it now. And while I am, of course, thankful that Jacob and Liam are growing into robust, healthy boys, I cannot erase that tinge of sadness that my husband and I are only getting a glimpse of their tiny selves while Tyra’s parents receive a long gaze.

Despite the constant predictions from relatives and friends about pro-football in our family’s future, I am trying to remember that my boys, big as they are, are the smallest they will ever be. And knowing this, I am taking the smallness where I can find it. I kiss Liam’s chubby cheeks and marvel at his nose, still no bigger than my thumbnail. I lift Jacob up and hold him, just to prove I still can. I buy clothes in primary colors, trimmed with animals and ABC’s and anything else which says “I’m still little.”

The other night, after I finished nursing Liam, Jacob climbed on my lap, and for a few minutes, they were both quiet and relaxed against my body. As I closed my eyes and rocked them, Jacob whispered in my ear, “You’re not going to stop doing this are you?”

I shook my head no and hugged them tighter. Because on my lap, rocking in the darkness, smelling like talcum powder and baby shampoo, they didn’t seem so big at all. 

September, 1998-- Little Liam

            Baby number two. Second child. Having another one. These phrases, tossed around with great frequency just a few months ago, when I was pregnant with my second baby, scared me a little. They all seemed to imply that I was doing something again. Something I had done before. And in the midst of disappointingly familiar morning sickness and swollen ankles, I wondered if having a second baby would simply be a repeat of having the first, except without the overwhelming awe that accompanied each new milestone. Looking back on the babyhood of my first child, Jacob, it seemed to be a string of wonderful accomplishments. Though the childcare books had taught me that the average infant rolls over at four months and sits at five, there was nothing average about my feelings when my own son did these things. He was a genius for discovering he had fingers, an athlete for being able to stand. As he bridged the gap from babyhood to life as a toddler, his feats became more complex, and I marveled in his newfound language skills. Now, as I entered the final trimester of pregnancy, he was three and a half, and I was his biggest fan as he raced through little boyhood, learning to kick a soccer ball, jump off the porch, and spell his name. I watched him, though, with one hand on my ever-growing belly, wondering if I'd be able to tear my eyes from his race long enough to appreciate this new baby, who was still in the starting blocks. Though I didn't doubt that I'd love the baby, I wasn't sure if I could love him with the passion and the unbridled excitement with which I loved Jacob.

            I approached my due date warily, remembering all that a newborn demands. With Jacob, the late night feedings, the never-ending diaper changes, and the bouts of crying were buoyed by the thrill of every new accomplishment. I hoped I would rediscover the magic of those tiny milestones from so long ago, but feared that they might not hold the same excitement, the same suspense. I never watched reruns on t.v. because I didn't see the point of watching when you already knew the ending.  I feared baby two would be a rerun.

            Liam entered the world late one night, oblivious to all of my questions. Nursing on my breast minutes after being delivered, he assumed he would be loved and kept warm, and as I stroked his tiny cheek, some part of me emerged that had never before given birth, had never nursed, had never held a newborn. I was in awe.  Again.

            In the days and weeks which have followed Liam's birth, however, I am discovering that my awe is different the second time around. With Jacob, I had waited eagerly for each new developmental feat, each new sign of growth. I loved monthly doctor's appointments because I could see him getting longer and gaining weight. I grinned at him until my face hurt in an effort to coax out a first smile. With Liam, though, I know what is to come, and I don't feel the need to rush things. I love the smallness of him, the softness of his legs, the sheer newbornly feel of his head. When the doctor announced at his six-week check-up that his size was in the ninety-fifth percentile, just as Jacob's had been, I didn't feel victorious, I felt wistful. My little baby was slipping away already, turning into someone bigger.

            If Jacob's babyhood gave me an appreciation of the miracle of growing independence, Liam's is teaching me that dependence is equally miraculous. I nurse Liam without wondering when he'll be weaned, and rock him before bed without being concerned that he learn to fall asleep on his own. I look into his eyes, and think with amazement that he doesn't know how to talk, he can't even say one word, and that somehow, despite this glaring deficit, he can communicate all his needs. I put him on a blanket in the middle of our family room and he is happy to lie on his back, smiling at the ceiling fan. With Jacob, I might have whipped out a toy or a book so that he could learn something while he was lying there. With Liam, though, I find myself more apt to look up at the ceiling fan with him. And seeing the fan through the eyes of someone who has never seen one before, I recognize that it is mysterious and beautiful.             

            I find myself simply enjoying Liam for who he is; a two-month- old baby who smiles and flails his arms and looks around with limited neck control. In the next month, he will probably figure out that he can reach for the things he wants, but I'm in no hurry for that to happen, for there is a certain peace in holding a baby who is too young to do anything besides relax against my body. Liam is dependent on his father and me in a way he will never be again. And while I am happy when he lifts his head higher than he did the day before and makes eye-contact while cooing, I am just as happy when he sleeps in my arms like he did when he was only hours old.

            As I revel in the non-milestones of Liam's life, I am trying to teach myself to do the same for Jacob. I watch him ride his tricycle and strain not to think about the two-wheeler he might have next year. I pull my mind back from imagining his first day of kindergarten. I hold him as he cries, and swallow my words of "you're too big." And as I do these things, I give thanks for this second baby of mine, not a rerun at all, who is teaching me that childhood is not about milestones and accomplishments. It's about being a child.