As it’s 1.08 am, we’re actually on Wednesday I can now say my baby is due tomorrow.
We’ve just had a small wee related incident. All in bed, lights off. Hubs is sort of asleep. I hear the boy’s door open. Decide to head him off before he renders hubs definitely awake. Get to him at our bedroom door, he’s clutching Miaow Miaow we cuddle and I tell him gently he needs to go back to bed. We pad along the landing to his room, as he climbs into bed he’s mutters ‘Sorry Mummy’
(I get a flashback of Vinegar gate, but since that we have no vinegar left after that incident and I can’t smell it, is he sorry he got up?)
‘You have nothing to be sorry for darling, into bed’
‘All wet mummy’
And then I notice. Great big wet patch on the bed. And his pyjamas are soaked, top and bottoms, so is his vest and socks. We’ve had a leaky nappy. I strip him down, put new nappy and clothes on, hubs is now definitely awake and comes to change the bed and in around five minutes the Bald Kitten is tucked up in a clean, dry bed with his teddies.
But what I can’t get out of my head is just how tiny he seemed. Tired, disoriented and tiny. Our baby.
He seemed tiny to me on Monday too. Although perfectly capable of drinking from a cup, every time he’s given one now he just throws the contents about with gay abandon. I had to change him as he was covered head to toe in squash. And I was really bloody cross. And I told him. ‘You’ve made mummy really cross that was a very silly thing to do.’ (I get that you’re behaviour made Mummy cross is what I should have said, but hopefully this one incident of not making that clear hasn’t scarred him for life…)
He didn’t say much, but he did pick up his felt shopping basket and start squeezing the felt pepper that was inside. And in an instant I felt awful. Watching his little hand and chubby wrist as he explored the toys almost absentmindedly. Was I too hard? Am I expecting too much? Does he know how much I love him? Was I in the wrong for getting so annoyed about it?
The Bald Kitten is tall for his age. According to the Health Visitor, and various other people not using a graph to come to that conclusion. Some assume he’s older than his two and a half years. Am I a little guilty of the same?
Very soon (Well hopefully very bloody soon, I’ve been pregnant for like EVAH!) he’ll have a little brother or sister and they will seem bloody tiny compared to him, overnight he’ll seem so much bigger and more advanced. I’m so frightened that I will expect more from him than is fair. I’ll expect him to be more than two and a half.
How much is he going to understand? I don’t want him to feel pushed out, I get that it will be hard for him, he’ll have to share us. He’ll have to share everyone he knows and loves. Can he handle that? How do I make sure that he knows he is loved as much as he ever was, that he’s still our little prince that every day we marvel at him, that we made something so perfect and beautiful and funny, that we are so bloody proud of him we could burst?
So to you, darling boy, there’s going to be some changes around here. And we hope we’ve prepared you for them. We promise to remind ourselves that you are little and still have a lot to learn about the world and your place in it. We promise to be calm when you get cross with the baby. We promise we’ll understand when you inevitably tell us you’d like the baby to go back. We promise that you will still have the same room in our hearts that you’ve always had.
And son, your sibling is so lucky to have you as a big brother.
xXx