Anya is 3 months old today. She is very happy. She smiles and coos, and has long entertaining conversations with anyone who looks her way. If you happen to catch her by surprise (like if the day care lady gives her to you, but she's too busy looking at the spot on the wall to notice when you start talking to her and hug her and then give up and put her in her carseat where she finally notices you exist, for example) she yells in delight. She's a squinty smiler, so when I try to take her pictures she sometimes looks like someone just punched her in the right (edited to add: Oops. That's her left. my right. Did I ever tell you guys that I don't know my right from my left?) eye. She sleeps relatively well, and nurses just fine. She loves her bath and would sit in it for hours if I had the patience to continually squeeze warm water over her body and feet. She loves to see Ally blow raspberries at her. She drools all over everything. I love her so much. She's my little munchkin and Ally's little pumpkin.
But, I have a confession to make. I didn't like her too much when to start with.
I wanted to have a second child. We talked and planned about when would be a good time. We both thought 2 and a half to three years spacing would be ideal. I was overjoyed when I got pregnant. But the pregnancy was so hard. I constantly felt tired and wasn't able to do anything about it. I felt too guilty about Ally. I felt like I was short-changing her by having another kid. I wanted to do everything - be everything for her for the little time we had left. And then I'd get worn down. Those days, I'd sit Ally down in front of a Dora tape and just doze on the couch. I felt bad for not being there for her, and I took it out on Rob. Because if I couldn't be there for her, I expected him to be. But he still worked 24 hour shifts and went to school full time and wasn't really a part of our daily routine anyway. I (and circumstances) made it impossible for him to take over, but resented him for not doing it anyway.
When I finally got to feeling like I couldn't take it anymore, I started seeing a counselor for the stress. It helped being able to talk about it. But, it didn't really change anything. It was everything going on around me that stressed me out. Those things couldn't really be changed. I just needed to be able to deal with it better, and the hormones were making it hard to do. I quit going and just decided to hold on as long as I could. Rob finished school in May, and Anya came in April.
But, when Anya came it was so different than I had imagined. Rob and I got along much better, but our lives changed in so many different ways than I had planned on.
First of all, I was worried about Ally's feelings. I had to have a c-section, and any of you who read back then already know what a hard decision that was for me. I was so worried about how it would affect Ally. How she would feel about not being able to climb on me and me not being able to pick her up. Whether she would feel abandoned when I had to stay at the hospital. Whether she would act out in frustration and what I could do about it if I coudn't pick her up or really do anything except talk to her. What if she just ran away from me? I couldn't run after her. Would she mind if we set up her crib for Anya?
It turns out that none of those things were really a problem. We explained that mommy's belly hurt, and Ally couldn't hurt me. We had to do it often, but she accepted it without much question. She sat on my lap instead of me holding her. She loved coming to visit at the hospital because she got to ride the elevators. (I actually felt more abandoned than she did, I think. Everyone was trying to help with Ally, and I got to feeling a little left out.) Ally wasn't really interested in me or the baby a whole lot at the time. She did have a few "trying" moments. She was testing if her boundries had changed, and most of the time I was able to show her they hadn't. There were rough times when she knew I couldn't do anything because I was feeding Anya, but once we explained to Darra how we wanted it handled, she and Rob handled it. She hasn't even noticed that her crib is set back up. She just doesn't care that much.
(I just re-read the above paragraph and it doesn't exactly give the right impression. She does care. Anya has seriously disrupted her life. We had many screaming fits and tantrums thrown. But she has also adapted a little. She still has days that she is pressing my buttons for the sole reason that she wants to be the center of attention instead of the baby, but they aren't as often. Kids are adaptable.)
I thought about day care and bottles and carseats and clothes for Anya, and all the other parts of running around with a baby again. I figured I'd be tired, and I figured that it would be okay anyway. After all, I've done this before, right? It can't be so different.
The real problem was that I had forgotten how hard it is. Having a newborn sucks ass most of the time. The only redeeming quality is that the few redeeming moments are SO good that they overshadow the far more prevalent crappy ones. But, with Ally, I could nap when she did. I could lay down on the floor and talk to her. I could sit her on the couch and watch tv over her head - I could get a little break occasionally. I didn't have to be constantly explaining things or disciplining or planning meals or doing as much laundry or any one of the other 500 things that I am already doing with Ally. It takes a lot of time and energy away from me and away from my interactions with Anya. I feel so guilty sometimes that Anya doesn't get the attention that Ally did. Guilty that Anya gets attention intstead of Ally. Guilty that Ally gets attention instead of Anya. Even guilty when I interact with both of them at the same time. It's imposible.
Plus, Anya started out as a monster. She screamed all the time. From about 5 in the evening to about 9 at night, someone had to be constantly attending to her. She wouldn't lay down. She ate every 2-3 hours, and would wake up in between feedings screaming when she had to poop. When she woke up, we'd look at the clock to figure out whether she woke because she was hungry or pooping (Rob would ask me "Is she hungry, or is this the 90 minute poop?"). Plus, she'd scream for an hour if she had 5 drops of pee in her diaper. I can't even count the number of diapers we'd use per day. She was very high maintenance. Since I sent Ally to day care in the daytime to give Anya and I some guilt-free time (and to keep Ally's schedule un-interupted and keep me sane) it seemed like I never got to spend any time with her. Anya interupted everything we did - even our bedtime stories sometimes. It made Ally very cranky, and me very cranky. Rob couldn't take it. He has a central-auditory-processing-something that makes it hard for him to distinguish sounds and has a constant ear infection on top of that. Ally and I were grumpy and Anya screamed all the time. He tried to help, but he got very cranky too.
If she ever did stop crying, I'd usually set her down. I'm sure that didn't help. But, holding her and trying to get her to stop for hours at a time was just too much. Ally was suffering, my head was suffering, my back was suffering, and also, my personal hygeniene was suffering occasionally. So every chance she gave me, I walked away. I rationalize all this by saying that Anya won't remember it later anyway (of course by writing about it, she won't have to remember - she can just read it) I didn't like her. I loved her so much it occasionally left me speechless, but most of the time, that love was hidden behind the angry lady in my head yelling "Why won't she just shut up for a little while?".
Rob and I think she was a little too early. They did the c-section a week ahead of my due date, but I just think it was too soon. Her digestive system needed some more time. She didn't smile as soon as Ally. She was late looking around and focusing on things. (Although her size has always been at tthe top of the charts. Just look at those cheeks!)
About 6 or 8 weeks old, Anya finally started to settle down a bit. She turned from a monster into a baby. She started smiling, she started sleeping (a little better than Ally did I think), she started paying attention to things. She started to pay attention to people. Ally and I play games making faces at Anya to see who can make her laugh so hard she gets hiccups. Ally sits on my lap and holds her. She gets very posessive at day care when any of her friends want to touch Anya. Anya stares over my sholder at anyone walks by. I love tickling her multiple chins. I am so glad that she's 3 months old.