Second Thoughts

(or, rather Thoughts on a Second)

Well here we are, less than a week from my Official Due Date, and I've got an already-week-old newborn laying next to me on the bed.

(Turns out all that week 37 nesting wasn't jumping the gun, after all.)

I'll get around to Little Brother's Birth Story in the next month or so, but in the meantime I wanted to ruminate a bit on how The Second Time Is Different (At Least for Me).

First of all, let me assure you, Gentle Readers, that I absolutely do love Little Brother as much as I love TLG; I do not see him as a threat to TLG's resources; and basically everything everyone told me about how It Was All Going to Be Okay, was totally true.

So thank goodness for that!

Now that we have that out of the way, the main thing I've noticed is how much easier it is to enjoy the newborn stage.  I'll admit: I was kind of dreading having a newborn again.  I kept repeating the phrase, "Boring torture" to describe my recollection of the experience.  Fortunately for me that's not really the case this time around- due to a combination of factors, I think.  I'm just so much more chill, because I've been here, survived that- already learned all the diapering tricks, the nursing hacks, and how to recognize the all-importance Emergence of Patterns.  So I can spend less time freaking out about The Right Way To Do Things, and more time just appreciating his ultra-soft-skin and long, mobile toes.

The other thing is that, in retrospect, I'm pretty sure I was suffering from Postpartum Anxiety with TLG.  At the time Nathan and I were on High Alert for me to develop Postpartum Depression (given my history with depression in general it didn't seem like a stretch), but I didn't even know that PPA was a thing.  I just thought all parents felt like I felt- that literally any time I didn't have eyes on my child he was probably dead and it was all my fault.  I thought that all new parents would lay in bed, terrified to move because if they got up and checked then the baby would actually be dead, and not just... probably dead.

Yeah.  I thought that malarkey was normal.  That is not normal.  And the fact that I thought it was normal just goes to show how screwed up my brain had gotten.

I do not feel that way now, thank all the stars.  I think I now have actually normal levels of anxiety- I only check to see if he's breathing like once, maybe twice a day, instead of constantly.  I can sleep at night (in two hour increments, sure, but I will take it) rather than having a hideous "my child died in his sleep" movies playing on permanent repeat in my brain.

It makes for a much more relaxing experience all-around.