My blue eyes baby is no longer such a baby.
I am trying to come to grips with the fact that she is growing up.
Did I blink?
How has all this time past?
To think 13 years ago I stood rocking her in the NICU filled with so many emotions.
She was a standard hospital birth, you know the kind when you go in with normal labor, walk the halls, beg for pain medication and they give you pills and then a shot and you cry for what you wanted in the first place, the thing your mother and everyone else said would make it all better THE EPI!
Finally I got it and of course they pushed pitocin to “get labor going”! I wish I hadn’t.
For some unknown reason my perfect little 8.5lb girl was breathing a bit oddly. She didn’t swallow meconium. She spent a week in the hospital and no one knew why. She got better though and we got to take her home. 5 babies since I have had her, and not one of them with those issues. Though not one of them did I take the pills or shot when in labor, and 3 of them where all natural.
I was so scared that first week. I just wanted to make her better and bring her home. I refused to leave her and for some reason this made the nurses think I was not ok. Who would be ok with their baby in the hospital with mystery issues?
She was so independent right from the start. She likes to sleep alone. She slept longer. I didn’t though, I was always checking on her. She liked her swing, she liked to watch Toy Story and would cry every time it ended. She was not my best “attachment parenting work” unless you consider that Daddy and I really tried to listen to her wants and needs as best we could.
She loves us though, not too found of strangers. Our safety kid from the get go.
It was her and I against the world when Daddy so often was away or deployed.
For 6 years, half of that Daddy was gone more often than not, it was just us.
Then came her little brother. Thats another story!
She was a great big sister from the get go. She wanted to help and after having surrogate sisters she was just so happy to have a sibling that was all hers. Oh how she loved on him and picked out cloths for him and made sure I was nursing him ever time he made the smallest little sound.
2 more siblings later and she loves them too and is helpful and independent and my safety child. She always looks both ways when crossing the street, is quick to tell everyone if they are doing something not safe, and checks in with her parents to make sure her own actions are safe too.
We went from teaching her to look both ways before crossing the street to teaching her how to post online and about internet safety. I know, I know, I posted a photo with her name on it. Honestly though if you follow this blog or my social networks chances are you know it. We can’t live in a cave and hide from the world. Or can we? I wish we could sometimes.
I feel so lucky to be her mother. She has never told me she hates me, never tried to hit me or run away, or stolen, or cussed at me, or done all those other things some children do while trying to find themselves at such a hard age. I am lucky, so far anyway. I was a hard teenager, goodness I hope she does a better job than I did of figuring it all out and not making her parents crazy!
My Dad said I was a good teenager…. I think he has selective memory as I really really wasn’t.
I think he forgets just how I ended up living with my Mom at 16!
Oh the stories I could tell….
Do better baby!
Great Story!! They do grow fast! My baby of 5 will be 17 next month, I know how you feel.
However, my soon-to-be 18 yr old is about to make us 1st time grandparents in November.
Just one of God’s beautiful accidents I guess.
Time flies by so quickly!