Dear Finneas (On my due date)

Dear Finneas,

Today is our baby’s due date. So, it could be hours, days, or, I suppose, up to two more weeks before you take on a special new role at the wee age of 2. You will be a big brother! A wonderful big brother! You will be a big brother and I will be a mother of two. I’m soaking up these last days with you being an only child, soaking you up and taking it all in with a heart that is mourning, just a little, the only child in you.  Or, maybe not the only child in you, but the mother of one in me. It’s so easy to love you. It’s just so easy to fill our days with dancing, laughing, singing, kisses, hugs, hand holding – some of basic things we find necessary to souls kept young and contented. Perhaps these little moments might be harder to come by at first, but we will have them, all of us together.

I’m aware that I’ve been nudging you towards independence as this belly grows and grows, sometimes gently and sometimes like a mother cat whose grown tired of carrying her young by the scruff of the neck. Sometimes it feels like we’ve timed these new expectations perfectly, and other times it’s all a bit premature, like I might be asking too much from you – my toddler with needs that could be listed neatly at the center space of a Venn diagram between baby and child. But you’ve navigated our gentle pushes gracefully as Daddy and Mommy ask for more. We know that we ask you to walk when you’d rather be held, to be patient when you want our attention NOW. We asked you to give up nursing several months ago, which was hard for both of us. But you are my effervescent, the cup is always full kid, and you have kept adapting and loving rather than acting out in frustration. I can’t even ask you to imagine what life will be like with a new baby in the house, despite the library on welcoming a new baby we’ve acquired. I can’t really explain how important it is that we hold our new baby often and show our love like we’ve shown it to you. Your compassion, and my is it budding faster than I ever thought it could, affirms some of our decisions to be those extra cuddly, baby wearing, koala like parents with our second child just as we were with you. If you were older you could take pride in that, you could feel accomplished at how absolutely inspiring you are to our hearts and mind so much that we want something similar with our new little baby. In reality, seeing mom and dad holding your little brother or sister will be the first of a few things natural to find irritating by older siblings upon the arrival of a new baby: there will be crying and lots of holding and rocking, and no, the baby won’t play right away, and yes, the baby will want your coveted nummies. But you’ve been walking, and trying to get yourself dressed, playing more independently and even showing aptitudes for things that we now have to delay because the baby is coming soon. You’re ready for the potty! You keep telling me you are, yet I haven’t been able to fully encourage this new interest of yours because there’s no way I will have what it takes to see it through in the first weeks of our baby’s life outside my body. But we will get there and OHMYGOSH you will explode with pride when you get to sport the Thomas the Train underpants you’ve been asking for! In fact I hope that I can help you feel pride and happiness with all your achievements as this baby changes our lives and forces all of us to grow, mature and make changes. It will be an adjustment, and how I know that we will make it fun despite the challenges coming.

Sometimes I revel in the opportunity to give you the best gift one can have – a sibling. I desperately wanted to grow up with a brother or a sister as a child and I am so happy you won’t grow up as the single child of a family – there’s nothing wrong with growing up this way, I’m just certain, after listening to all the stories your dad has about his big family of four that having siblings is more fun than not!  I daydream about this baby, and you, my sweet boy, growing into a big older brother and how you will  share your life with this wonderful person who will be at your side long after your father and I leave this world. This little person growing inside me, just as you did, will look up to you and cherish you in ways that will make up for the attention that Mom and Dad will have to split between the two of you. Someday you will share secrets and stories with this little person that I will never be allowed to hear. You guys are bound for adventures that will be just yours and no one else’s. You will have a bond that is uniquely yours. There are moments where I get that guilt, of knowing you will never get the kind of non-stop attention you get now from me when I’m home. That things are going to change forever, and that change will be hard on you, testing your patience and heart – which is so loving already. But I am so happy to have had these two years with you and just you – to savor you in every way, catching all of your leaps and milestones, collecting them in my memory and with my camera in a way that only the first child can experience, just as I will savor our new baby in a way that only our second, and most likely last baby, can be savored.

I’m fairly certain that on this baby’s birthday I will see my family complete. I doubt we’ll have the resources for a third and even if we did, we’d rather give two a premium experience and education than be poppers with three or more. So how special that day will be, when I will see the last of my children come into this world. I will have the three most precious faces (You, your dad and your little ? ) before me etching those smiles upon my mind’s eye.  Someday, so very far from now, when I am wrinkled and white-haired, when I leave this world, your faces will be the ones that linger in my mind bringing me such joy from knowing what fun life has been while surrounded by love. As this is truly how my family makes me feel, even your little sidekick  yet to be born – surrounded, if not saturated with love. And with that I promise that while I might have to split my attention, I will never split my love, but double it with the birth of this baby, so that there is always enough for everyone. Just as this belly expands so does the metaphysical heart which hasn’t walls our boundaries. It’s a beautiful thing.

I wish I could give you advice about being a sibling, but since I grew up solo, I can’t feign a speck wisdom on the subject. Your dad says there will exorbitant fighting, pranks and jokes played. But borrowing from your father’s childhood I have this one sweet anecdote. He and his older brother shared a room. Something I find kids usually hate in years that they’re sharing, but look back on fondly as adults. Your dad got so used to sharing a room with his brother Danny it was hard to fall asleep without him there. Often Danny would pretend to go to bed early and lie on the top bunk while your father fell asleep beneath. Sometimes,  your dad would catch Danny sneaking out and would have a moment of panic, and ask him to stay and he would. He didn’t want to and certainly had cooler older kid things he could have been doing but he would stay until your dad was sleeping, until he felt safe. These are the moments that stick, that help define us when we are older. I know you’ll be the kind of brother who stays too.

And yes, you’ll have to share a room at some point. Sorry kid.

Love,

Mom