A friend asked me to write about how Levi is adjusting to life with a new baby. Really, it's an adjustment for all of us.
I will say this though, it has been an easier, smoother adjustment from one to two kids than it was going from no kids to being parents for the first time. I remember crying while nursing Levi as a new baby and thinking, "My marriage will never be the same!" We couldn't go and do all the things that we did before babies, it was just a huge adjustment. New moms, just expect your marriage to change in some ways because of your new baby, but don't freak out, just adjust. Remember to put your husband first. It's really difficult at first because your baby needs you every two hours+ and you feel like you will never have time for your husband. Those first six weeks are difficult too... pray a lot, do what you can to draw as close to the Lord as you can. Pray with your husband, and pray for him and his protection from the Enemy. Ben and I are trying to memorize scripture right now, it has been so edifying for our marriage and our walk with the Lord.
I'm also going to say this for new moms. Sometimes (or a lot of times, especially as your baby gets bigger) it's okay to let your baby cry. When they are fed, changed, burped and you know they are okay, sometimes it's okay to just let them cry themselves to sleep on their own. We did that a lot with Levi and he is fine. Maybe the longest he cried for was 45 minutes, maybe an hour and he is totally fine. Babies are made to cry, God made it so that they cry perfectly from their diaphram and they don't wear out or hurt themselves when they cry. It's good exercise for them too, they are working out their lungs and when you think about it, they don't get much exercise on their own since they just lay around all the time. I say that because sometimes you can rock a baby ALL DAY LONG and you will be so exhausted by the end of the day and have gotten nothing done and you won't have any energy for your husband. I'm not a total subscriber to Baby Wise or Attachment Parenting, I feel like there is some kind of middle ground there. I definitely always want to put my husband first and here's why: marriage is the foundation of a family. It is the soil for which your kids grow out of and so if it is broken up your child's identity is broken with it. The way you can truly love your child the best is to love your husband and make sure that relationship is firmly in place. If you start to put your child above your husband in a way you are putting cracks in the foundation for your child. Does that make sense?
Okay, I really was going to talk about Levi and that adjustment, but I just had to put that in there.
Levi has been doing well with Aria. He seems to be very interested in her and what she is doing. He is still working on his pronouns so sometimes he calls her a "he" or an "it" ... we just laugh and tell him she's a "her" :). He asks "I wanna hold it!" I think he just wants to hold her so that I will get out my camera and take a picture of him holding her because the first thing he asks for when he holds her is "picture" and then he wants to see what he looked like on the camera and Aria is dropped to the side so he can see himself in the picture.
I will say that for the first week after Aria got home Levi had a short fuse. Nothing seemed quite right for him. It was like he knew his world was changing. I couldn't move very well, couldn't really hold him or do much with him, there was this new baby and Ben was having to deal with him and growing more and more impatient. Thankfully mom and dad were able to take him every once in a while so we could have a breather. Before Aria came he was perfectly fine with going to bed but all of the sudden he would scream and cry at going to bed, each nap and bedtime was a battle to get him down. We didn't know what was wrong. But after about a week something clicked and he was finally okay with life. That seems to be our only trouble with him so far.
My next post I will tell you a story about what I learned on my first trip to the grocery store about being flexible. :)
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