Sunday, February 24, 2008

Life Ain't Fair

We have a set of friends who recently had a baby. I remember the day they shared the news they were pregnant. It was not long after Cora was born - maybe a month. We were well into our Colic crisis and so sleep deprived it wasn't even funny. I believe the last words I said to them before they cleared their throats and delicately changed the subject was "so make sure you value every bit of your freedom before deciding to lock down to parenthood". Nice.

When my husband called to congratulate them shortly after the big event they told us what a "good baby" they had. I told my husband - wait until he's two weeks old - that's when all hell breaks loose. Today we saw our friends at church with the little one. I believe he is now all of three weeks old. Let me just mention that we did not take Cora to church until she was about two months old because we knew screaming through the service would not be the best way to ingratiate ourselves into our new church family. Our friends' little one (Michael) however snuggled into his carseat and slept the service away. At one point he did open his eyes and try to wake up, only to determine it was too much effort and fall right back into dreamland.

Later this afternoon, we stopped over to our friends' house to finally get an indepth meet and greet with little Michael. He was sleeping when we arrived but woke soon after. Instead of immediately screaming his head off for the next hour which was what I was used to and expecting he looked around, made a few squeaks, was picked up by mom and settled back down to suck on his paci and chill. We were there about an hour through a diaper change and various people swapping... he barely made a peep. The closest he came to fussing was when his mom set him up in his Boppy to look around. Until he got comfortable he squawked a bit - all of about one minute.

After we left and got home, I was torn between feeling a tiny bit of hope that if we did decide to have a number two, that there was another outcome we could have but mostly feeling a little down. I realized that our friends probably now thought that we were either weak-willed or exaggerating about Cora's beginnings. On top of that there was a very small childish part of me that thought - "it's just not fair." We are not bad people, we did everything we were supposed to do during the pregnancy, why did we get such a trying time when so many others got off so 'easy'. It was then that my hubby spoke with the plain wisdom that I count on him for in these times. He told me "Honey - regardless of what anyone else thinks, we know what we went through and we're stronger people for it. Maybe we needed to go through this to learn something - to learn patience." And I know he's right. I know that there's a reason no matter whether we see it now, or whether we never know it. There was a reason. So at the end of the night I focus on being happy for our friends and the blessing that they have with little Michael, and being happy for Ryan and I in the blessing that we have in Cora. No matter what the initial "buy in" cost us the jackpot is worth it.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Every baby is different. There are no lost experiences with them - that only comes when they are teenagers ;-)

Ames