KerryAndGabe.com

Clearly, the first pregnancy was all about Miss Maddie. Looking back, I cannot believe the enormous amounts of free time that we had but did not realize that we had. What a shame. Life for siblings isn’t fair, and I feel somewhat guilty that this pregnancy has been all about Maddie as well. Things are already stacked in the older sibling’s favor from the start.

We have given some thought on how to prepare her for big sisterhood. She’s so little and doesn’t really understand that “there’s a baby in Mommy’s belly” or “btw, your life is about to change drastically as we’re bringing another human being into the household that will have needs greater than yours for a while and oh, you won’t always be the center of attention.”

She is able to identify babies, so I guess that’s a start. I have been telling her that there’s a baby in my belly, but she looks at me as if I were an alien…and I suppose it’s a very alien sort of concept. She does look around a bit confused, “Baby, what baby? Where’s the baby?” I’m sure we’ll be doing more prepping as we near the due date and her second birthday.

We haven’t given too much thought to names…by now in the first pregnancy, we had been calling the baby, “Maddie” for over two months (aside from a few boys’ names thrown in and then there was that month that we were sure we were having a boy named Carson since the doc identified “boy” in our sneak peek ultrasound). Honestly, we don’t have time to think about every part of this pregnancy like we did the first time.

Some of our bigger concerns, aside from preparing Maddie as best as we can for the new sibling, include things like: Who is going to take care of Maddie when we’re in the hospital? What’s going to happen if I go into labor spontaneously in the middle of the night and we have to wait for said childcare? How the heck am I going to spend 2-3 nights away from my baby girl? How in the world are we going to care for a newborn and a toddler at the same time? Where will Maddie sleep and how are we going to transition a child younger than 2 to a “big girl bed?” We are so not ready for that! Will she regress and go back to spending large amounts of time in our bed? How will that work with the new baby?

I know we still have plenty of time, but we really don’t have as much time as it may seem. Several months have passed since we found out that I’m pregnant, and we haven’t accomplished much on the to do list. During the first pregnancy, time seemed to stand still. It felt like decades between doctors appointments. This time, I barely have time to take a breath and another few weeks have passed. Details of the pregnancy are very similar. Our mindset is completely different.