Loving Two

It's definitely starting to sink in that Kate won't be our only child soon, and while I'm very excited about Claire's arrival, of course, it's making me a little sad. I feel like I want to hug Kate and never let go. I love laying next to her as she's going to bed and looking at each other face to face. She'll talk to me about things we did "yesterday" or about how she and I both have brown hair and eyes but Daddy's eyes are blue, and I'll sing our special lullaby or run my finger in a circle around her face like my dad did to me when I was little, and I'll have this irrational feeling wondering if we'll get to have moments like that once we've got two children.

Of course we will, I know. We'll take time to focus on each child and nurture those relationships separately, but there's still some strange feeling of loss as we gain something new and different. I remember in the first few days after bringing Kate home when she wasn't eating well and I was crying a lot, laying in bed by myself and seeing Charlotte, our cat, on the floor next to the bed. I suddenly felt like I hadn't seen her in days and like she'd been forgotten. I picked her up and cried, saying, "I miss you!" Though hormonal postpartum despondency is no reliable baseline for understanding or predicting emotions, I wonder if I'll have moments like that with Kate when I'm in a similar frame of mind a few weeks from now.

Matt has long teased me about being an only child, saying I don't understand how parents can love more than one child. Of course, once he became a parent, he shared that feeling that it seems all parents do--regardless of how many siblings they themselves have--that feeling of "how on earth could I love anyone else as much as I love this child?" I guess parents whose first children are multiples get it right away, but for most of us, I think the feeling is very common. The love one feels for one's child so far surpasses anything one has felt before that it seems impossible for that feeling to be replicated.

But I know it will. I just pray that when that feeling of "missing" Kate (or missing the one-on-one time we had) washes over me, I can channel it into some positive mommy-daughter time rather than a hormonal crying jag that causes her to stare at me uneasily (as happened the other day). Just like all those crazy-in-love parents before me, I have confidence that the love will grow and expand to include this newest member of our family.