Ben and I have been blessed with large families, many wonderful friends, and a loving and supportive church family. While we are so, incredibly, grateful for this fact, challenges tend to arise.
In all reality, if you do not share my address, I should not have to care how my decisions affect your life. Yes, this means that I have taken our dogs feelings into consideration over yours. It's the truth. Deal with it.
There comes a point in time when you realize just how technically challenging it will be to have your second child. Depending on your personal circumstances, simply becoming pregnant with your second may be included in that challenge. While my Ben and I had no issues this time around, and other mommies would probably want to shoot me if I told them how easy and beautiful of a pregnancy this has been, the most important, most difficult, part of this process is still on it's way - DELIVERY.
Looking back, the dynamics of having our son were easy. The only "person" we had to worry about was our sweet boxer girl (the cats don't really count in this situation). We could spend a day, a week, a month, in the hospital and as long as we had someone to take care of our girl, we would manage.
*For the record, we only spent three days in the hospital with our son.
Some things that would be helpful to know:
1. Our son was born via unplanned/non-emergency c-section at 10lbs 1oz and 22" - we do not know how he fit in my tummy
2. Our daughter has potential to be larger than our son
3. She is currently breech
Being able to plan our baby girls birth was not something we had wanted originally. My hospital will allow a v-bac (vaginal birth after c-section) as long as I go into labor on my own. Because birthing our children naturally has always been so important to me (we tried with our Bear) this was the planned route up until about two months ago.
Other helpful things to know:
1. Our son will only fall asleep in his bed or in the car seat, with the car moving. We are OK with this, as he has always been a fabulous sleeper and goes to bed, typically, drama free
2. Our son is very routine. Every morning he asks for a banana and sits either on the couch or at his little table in the kitchen to eat said banana while I make my morning coffee. After his banana he wants to snuggle on the couch and help you eat your: eggs/bagel/yogurt/muffin, etc. etc. and drink his milk sippy.
3. Our son naps from 12pm -2pm He might be ready at 11:30am if he was up early, but 99% of the time, this is a sure thing.
We are unwilling to mess this up. We have a smart, happy, loving, all good things, little boy. We love him more than anything.We love our daughter more than anything. Their meeting should be as stress and drama free as we can make it.
Once we started to think of how our suddenly and surely stressed leaving would affect our Bear, pushing for a natural delivery started to feel selfish (to us, you do what feels right for you and your family!). After spending many evenings discussing the process we decided that opting for a scheduled c-section was the healthiest choice. Of course, she could still decide to come at any time. Should I go into labor we will still do a c-section (potentially large, breech, baby - she is not to be messed with!) and just leave a little more hurriedly than we would have on her scheduled date.
We also started to think of the dynamic of how to introduce Bear to his sister for the first time, how we want visitors to greet him, when we want visitors, etc.
This is what we decided would be best for our family:
There will be a sign on the door asking that all visitors please greet Barrett first and hand him a toy from the bin that we will have by the door (it's currently full of little toy "cas" aka cars). This way he doesn't feel overshadowed or unloved and he knows everyone is there to love and support him just as much as Paxton (his sister). He will be very aware of who is coming in and out and how they acknowledge him. Paxton will not.
We do not want people to just come in and out at their leisure. We will be focusing on getting to know our daughter, learning how to function as a family of four, and recovering. Also, we do not know what size room we will be given and don't want too many people at one time (nobody really gets to visit in this case anyways). To avoid this, we ask that a text, phone call, Facebook message, etc. be sent asking when a good time to pop in would be. This is for our sake, as well as your own. And please, don't be offended if we tell you it's not a good time.
We only want visitors during certain hours. Ben will be staying at the house with Bear and coming to see Paxton and me once their morning banana and snuggle time has been complete. Once they arrive we want time for me to spend with Bear and Ben to take Paxton. Quite frankly, we want some alone time. Ben will take Bear home to nap then come back after he wakes, stay until close to bed time then go home again.
We are doing everything we can to focus on our little, growing, family during this time. We want this experience to be as stress free and positive as possible, especially as we are currently planning on this being our last pregnancy.
There seems to be confusion during the most important times of our lives, as to where priorities lie. I hope this has helped to shed light on why we've made the decisions we've made and that if you are currently/planning to be expecting that I have encouraged you to do what is best for your (share the same address) family.
We are so insanely excited for this next chapter in our lives and are blessed to have so many who want to share in all of our special moments. Just please remember, they are our special moments to share.
