A Baby Sister

We finally told Stian this morning that he is going to have a baby sister. I have been putting it off because I didn’t know how he would react to the news, and I was protecting him because I didn’t think he’d be overly happy about it. Also, a pregnancy lasts a long time and the idea that she’s coming in 7 months seemed a little difficult. But we decided we really needed to do it soon so he had some time to prepare before her arrival.

We were having a nice morning this morning, Stian was a in a good mood, and we were just sort of hanging out on my bed chatting and playing and I told Kris I thought it was time. So Kris went and got some pictures of me when I was pregnant with him and some pictures of him when he was first born. And we told him we were going to have a baby and there was a baby growing inside of me. He got very quiet. He looked at the pictures, but didn’t say much. Then after a little bit he got off the bed and walked away. He said he wanted to go play with play dough, so we went down stairs. When we got downstairs he said he wanted to play with Legos, then blocks. I could tell he was on the verge of tears. It broke my heart. I asked him if he wanted to go read books, that’s something he likes to do when he’s feeling unsure or sad. He said no, he didn’t want to do anything and got all sad looking like he was going to burst into tears. I almost started to cry too.

I’m not sure how exactly we got him out of the funk, but I knew he was hungry and showed him the new freeze dried strawberries we had just gotten in the mail, so we sat down at the table and started eating those together. Kris went outside to wash the cars. After awhile Stian started to ask questions. Some of them are ones you might expect, but I thought others were interesting:
- Will the baby cry?
- How will the baby come out?
- How does the baby eat?
- When you eat does the food go down your throat and into your uterus?
- Can the baby hear? What does it sound like?
- How big will the baby be?
- When will her birthday be?
- Where will the baby sleep?
- What will the baby sleep in?
- Is the baby lying down or sitting up?
- How does she balance? (to my repsonse that I thought she was probably upside down)

Later, when he was getting ready for naptime Stian said to me, all serious, “Mommy, you have to take care of my baby, I don’t want to.” (I thought it was interesting he referred to the baby as his) I assured him it was not his job to take care of the baby, he could help if he wanted to, but it was Daddy’s and my job to take care of the both of them. I think this was something he was pretty worried about. He has been asking me for awhile to get him a cat, and I keep telling him we’ll think about it when he is older and can help take care of it. So I think he thought he was going to have to take care of the baby.

He seemed okay after naptime. He had some more questions, but he didn’t seem worried anymore. And I had assured him before he went down for his nap that Mommy and Daddy love him so much and that will not change at all. I think that made him feel better. We went out to dinner tonight and there was a little baby at the table next to us, he was watching her pretty closely. She was 2 ½ months old (her Dad told us), so she was quite tiny. He was pretty interested in what she was up to.

Overall, I think it went okay. I know it’s going to be very hard for him when she does finally get here. But hopefully it will go better than I fear it will. And now he has some time to start getting used to the idea.