Second

I’m trying to find moments to think about this second baby. Usually it’s at night when he’s kicking so hard I can’t fall asleep. Ironically, I wanted this baby perhaps even more than the first, yet just over a month away from his arrival am not really feeling much. For one thing, it’s hard for him to compete with the immediacy and tangibility of a two-year old. Not that she’s always a peach—her latest irritating habit is treating my belly like a jungle gym—but she is so present in her affection, joy, and exuberance, it’s hard to imagine myself loving another child the same. The other day we hid under a sheet together and she kept laughing and laughing. She likes to lie swaddled up naked in her towel after a bath and lie like an egg roll next to me on the bed while I read to her, or lie with her head on my shoulder while I tell her the story of David and Goliath for the fiftieth time. She’ll look over at me out of the blue and say, “E happy.”

So I think I feel a little sad knowing that I won’t be the same towards her after the second one comes. I wish I could.

For another thing, I’m still trying to figure out how I feel about having a boy. Let’s face it; the thought of taking care of something with a penis weirds me out. I grew up around girls, and I’m not sure what to do with a boy. I’ve seen fewer healthy mom-son relationships modeled. I think overdone baby boy clothes are naturally tackier than girls’. I don’t really like trucks, dinosaurs, bugs, sports, or farts, which may be a problem. There don’t seem to be any boy names I really like, which is an even bigger problem. We are nowhere near coming up with one that sticks. I’m in the stage where everything turns into a name search. Hm, read a verse from Habbakuk—could that be a boy name? Oh, I just met you, but mind if I ask what your boys’ names are?

One thing I am getting sold on is that the world needs more solid Christian guys. I have to know ten amazing single Christian women for every one guy, which remains a mystery. I’m also starting to think that men can change the world in a way women can’t, just because women are more likely to have to make a larger sacrifice for the sake of having kids.

But all that is a long time away. Right now I feel like the idea of having a second baby is just that; an idea. The world isn’t turning rosy, the light isn’t coming on in my eyes. I’m starting to recall memories of labor pains and zombie days and engorged breasts. I’m waiting for that point where I’ll want him to come out, but really right now I’d rather he stay in there so we can settle into the house more, and I can do stuff like take showers and sleep. Plus it would be sort of nice if we had some name in mind first.

Journal Excerpt

The director of my surgical clerkship once told me, “repetition is the key to success.” For a living model, look no further than the two year-old in our house. There must be something about the way her brain wires itself to acquire information that stipulates that everything must be repeated at least twenty times in a straight row. Preferably thirty.

If she wants someone to hear what she’s saying, she keeps saying it. Over. And over. And over. Most of the time it’s not even a question, just a statement she wants me to verbally affirm. “We are eating grapes. We are eating grapes.” “Yes, we are eating grapes.” “Daddy’s eyes are moving! Daddy’s eyes are moving!” “Yes. Daddy’s eyes are indeed moving.” And so on. It’s worse with songs. There is this great Chinese song about fishes, and my poor mom sang it about thirty times in a row when she took her to the aquarium. I spend my entire day singing “The Wheels on the Bus” in all its glorious verses in endless repetition. My mom chimed in once with “the E on the bus says more! more! more!..”

It’s gotten so I just sing songs mindlessly, wherever we are. Today we were standing in line at Costco, waiting among the crowds out to stock up on hurricane supplies, and she was sitting in the cart which she thinks is a boat, which meant she wanted me to sing “Row, Row, Row Your Boat,” and I didn’t even realize I was singing it over and over until I noticed other people in line looking over.

I walked by her room after a nap yesterday and heard her singing to herself, rather loudly, in the crib. She could sing all these verses of all these songs, which was incredible since she rarely sings in front of me. So it all goes somewhere I guess.

Journal Excerpt

I am trying very hard not to feel like all I want to do is lie around and nurse my pregnant self. There was a point last week when I suddenly felt very third-trimester, like a switch had been turned on, though I’d been there for about a month. I don’t remember feeling this heavy last time, though I’m starting to wonder if my memory has gone totally haywire. I keep picturing that figure in Netter’s anatomy text of the pelvic floor muscles viewed from above, and imagine them getting looser and looser, like a hammock weighed down by too much. Lovely. I know I should have done those Kegels. I feel very much like a beached whale, dragging myself around the house while slightly out of breath.

It’s hard to describe how it feels when he moves. Once D saw a body part bumping up and said it looked like a hernia. That’s exactly what it feels like, or at least like what I imagine a hernia would feel like. Or a protruding ostomy. I remember the first time I saw an intestine protruding inside-out into an ostomy bag; it looked like an alien limb though of course I acted like it was completely normal.

I think D is getting tired of me asking him if he wants to feel the baby move. Last night he felt for the head, and in response got a series of punches followed by a major flip or roll that made me feel like someone was twisting my innards while occasionally stepping on my bladder.

Storms and Lullabyes

God hears the lullabye
In a mother’s tears in the dead of night
Better than a hallelujah sometime
-Amy Grant

She has developed a sudden fear of storms. This includes not only lightening and thunder, but rain against the window; she wakes up screaming and crying, wanting to be held until it’s over. Let’s just say the weather forecast has taken on a whole new significance.

I was holding her last night and thinking about how odd it was that she’ll never remember any of this. How much do you remember before grade school? I have a vague memory of my dad holding me at night and walking through the house. Of riding a motorcycle in Taiwan. Of taking my first step: really just a hazy picture of my parents next to me clapping while I walked to a plastic purple chair. That’s really about it. I don’t remember sleeping in a crib. Or wearing diapers. Or crying at night.

It’s strange, doing something for someone who will never even remember that you did it. I’ve rarely ever done that in my life. It brings out a sort of discipline in love. Hoisting my tired self out of bed when she cries, cleaning up after spills, nursing through mastitis (which ranks right up there with labor). This exists of course in marriage, but a husband gives you lots more breaks, and listens to you complain, more than a toddler does.

But I think this is why motherhood is, as a friend put it, such a sanctifying experience. It forces you to have to rely on God or lose it. It makes the attitude and spirit behind your actions very obvious. It’s hard to pretend for very long. But the more you do loving things, the more you love, and it carries a deeper, fuller meaning because of all the acts of thankless service or sacrifice behind it, which of course is the type of way that God loves us.

And it makes motherhood more of something in the moment as well. Because even if she doesn’t remember, I will. I’ll remember the heavy weight of her in my arms, her legs splayed to accommodate my belly, one arm tucked into her side and the other curled around my shoulder, while the rain patters outside. If I look hard enough, the entire day is a series of these moments, that no one else can know and no words or pictures can capture. She isn’t really mine, but these moments are, like little gifts wrapped in the tedium of the day.