February 1986

February 1986

Jacob, there are times when I forget what happened to us. My glance will cross the picture of you and Jeremy that I have on my desk, and I will feel somewhat puzzled - I have TWO children?... And I will wonder for an instant about the mundane things - like how much extra time in the morning would I need to get 2 kids ready for daycare or how much would it cost to have TWO kids in the daycare. Then in the next instant, I remember that life would have been different with you, and I wouldn't have been working.

Taking care of you was hard, but it was rewarding. What I remember the most is never having enough sleep. A newborn who didn't wake up loud enough to be heard for feeding tended to keep me up all nite long. Plus the worrying. God, how I worried. I hated to leave the house. Inside the house, we were a family. The time we made cookies and we had you up on the kitchen table - you were wide awake, watching me and Jeremy. Jeremy thought you were trying to talk to us because you were just beginning to smile. We tried to feed you "real" baby food to see it that would stay down any better than formula, and you loved it. It was a fun nite - treating you like a normal baby, trying a new food on you.

It's not every mom who has to stop and think "now am I gonna be home in time to cath him, or do I need to take all the stuff with me", or "what 2 month old baby is gonna sleep for a 12 hour period so he can wear the therapy equipment they want him to wear for 12 hours" or wondering how much you vomited or how much your head grew overnight and did it mean you needed to go back to the hospital.

It all seems so unreal now, and yet I can still smell you.
.