My Baby is a Little Girl Now
Something happened this year…and I missed it. Somehow my baby girl grew up. When I became pregnant in October of 2011, she was 2. She was still a baby in so many ways, tangible and intangible. She was still nursing and wearing cloth diapers and taking naps. She was my baby girl.
Unfortunately for me pregnancy is not a happy time. I get sick and by November of 2011, I was quite sick. Stay-on-the-couch all day sick. Throwing up and feeling nauseous 24 hours a day sick. Averse to almost every food there is sick. Suffice it to say, my ability to mother my precious baby girl was at an all-time low. I was beyond miserable with no end in sight. Survival mode was where I lived.
Finally late March 2012 that awful pregnancy sickness started to abate. Marcella turned 3. She was growing up. She no longer was nursing as I decided to wean her. I was so sick and it had gotten so painful that I made the decision to limit the amount of nursing to once during the day (which was pretty much what she was doing anyway) and eliminate nursing to sleep. It was rough. There were tears. It wasn’t an overnight process but slowly, gradually we were suddenly there. No more nursing. I don’t even know or remember the last time. And it makes me sad. I’m sad to know the last time I nursed her I was most likely grimacing through it.
I was thankful to be slowly returning to some kind of normalcy. I was slowly gaining energy (very slowly) and was able to add more and more foods back into my diet as less things repulsed me. I could even start to walk into the kitchen or open the pantry or fridge without gagging and running to the toilet. But, still, a lot of days I spent horizontal. When I eventually got some of my energy back, I was to that point of starting to need to rest because my belly was getting big. But we still managed to enjoy our time together. I was finally able to get out and take Marcella to the park and on play dates again. She started using the toilet independently. No more cloth diapers for us. Still, somehow I didn’t notice it. It was subtle. But she was really outgrowing being a baby. She was really growing right into a little girl.
Then Jude came. Cue the all-consuming life of the mama of a newborn. Marcella was taken care of but not by me most of the time in those beginning weeks. My husband, my mom, my in-laws all were instrumental in taking care of everything else so I could take care of my little Jude.
Somehow I just looked at her – just looked at her – and that baby girl I had? She’s gone. No trace. I missed it. She grew up when I wasn’t looking.
Today she is 4. Happy Birthday Marcella! Mommy loves you so much!