From One Child to Another

I’ve heard my friends talk a lot about how different it is to go from having only one child to having two or more.  While that’s very true, it’s even more true when your first child has special needs.  To add another child into the mix can be terrifying, exhilarating, and overwhelming.  It also adds more love, laughter, and tears.  You’ve probably heard me say that it took a lot of soul searching, prayers, and conversations to decide to have our daughter.  Our son was born with cerebral palsy, and while he is able to sit on his own, crawl, and now walk, he was not able to for a long time.  He was not walking at 5 years old when we had our daughter.  That’s right; I had a five-year-old son who weighed 45 pounds and I was pregnant and then had a baby in a carrier for a year.  It was hard work to help him so much, when my own body was changing so drastically, and then to have a baby in a carrier on one arm and my big boy on the other should’ve helped Mama to lose the pregnancy weight–but it didn’t.  I digress.

My point here is that there were so many changes that happened when we went from one child with special needs to having another child who didn’t have special needs.  Our whole family dynamic changed.  Our house went from being quiet and no baby chatter, to squeals of delight and loud shrieks of joy from her when she saw her brother.  Now we have one child who is so talkative and loves to sing, and one who loves to listen to his sister talk and sing to him.  She enjoys doing those things for her brother, knowing how much he loves it.  Ri likes to try to get a smile or a giggle out of Jamie, and she’s really good at it.  Usually it’s the other way around, the older sibling doing for the younger.

We had therapists, teachers, and home respiratory therapists coming in and out of our house on a daily basis.  We still have them, but not as often.  Our daughter has had to deal with not being the center of attention at home…a lot.  Usually, it’s the baby of the family that gets the lion’s share of attention.  Maybe that’s why she loves performing so much.  Maybe that’s why she blooms when she’s on stage.  She loves it.  She can’t get enough of it.  Jamie loves to watch his sister up there.  I think he thinks she’s doing it all for him.  I think maybe, she’s doing it because she needs to.  She’s had to be independent from an early age.  If Jamie was sick, or needing our help doing something, Ri had to wait her turn.  She was never able to get all of us for long periods of time.  She got attention, don’t get me wrong.  Ri is, and always will be, our favorite girl.  She’s the best thing since sliced bread, I tell ya.  But, she’s always had to let us take care of her brother first.  On days when I’m able, I like to do things with just her.  I’ll sit down and read to her, while her brother is getting therapy.  I’ll let her tell me all about her day, and what she and her friends did at school.  We snuggle up on the couch on days that Jamie is at therapy with his nanny now.  During nap time, her dad will take her to fly a kite, or roll down the snowy hill.  She loves to go with him when he washes his car, or to his office on the weekends to work, or to the golf course to hit a bucket of balls.  She gets a lot of time now but when she was smaller, and we didn’t have help, she had to wait her turn.

At dinner time, we all sit down to eat at the same table and talk about our days.  Jamie doesn’t really talk so I get to tell everyone what he did.  It’s a lot of fun and not something Joel or I ever did before we had kids.  We talked at dinner, but never sat at the table, and we hardly ever ate a real meal.  It was usually Taco Bell at the coffee table in front of the television.  Ok, it wasn’t always Taco Bell, but we did run for the border quite a few times since one of our first houses was directly across the street from one.  Yes, it was gross, but it was sort of food and we were poor, hungry, and too lazy to cook.  Now, Mama cooks almost every night.

These days, we don’t have to do much suctioning on our son, like if at all.  Lucky us!  We spent the first five years of the kid’s life sticking a tube down his throat to suck mucous out of his airway.  That shit was not fun, at all.  He fought us; we cried.  We won, and our medal was a big ole loogie.  Sometimes, even a little puke from the gag reflex.  Oy, those days are not ones I like to remember because it reminds me just how sick he was, and just how close we came to losing him a few times.  Ri got to where she would crawl away and find something else to do when it was suction time.  Both kids would hear that machine click on and Ri would take off, while Jamie would lie there helplessly awaiting his fate.  Poor kids probably still dream about that damn machine.  We moved to Kentucky and a better climate change helped, but also the fact that Jamie was now learning to walk.  Being upright more hours of the day, and building that muscle strength helped him learn to cough out all of that nasty mucous that was blocking his airway.  Score one for us for being able to put that PITA in the closet for good!

When we travel, we have a lot more luggage but less medical equipment due to Jamie getting older.  We take up about as much space in the van as before, but now it’s a lot more fun.  Ri sings and talks all the way to my in-laws’ homes.  It used to be really quiet in the back seat, but not anymore.  Having two kids (one who actually talks) means no more listening to our music or God forbid, NPR.  Now we have to listen to Laurie Berkner songs all the way to Minnesota.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m a huge LB fan, but there’s only so many times one can hear Doodlebugs before one wants to pull Laurie’s curly hair and break her guitar over her head.  Love you, Laurie!

One of the biggest changes was that, ahem, intimate time.  When we only had one kid (who couldn’t walk, crawl, and barely knew where he was) we never closed the door because we were afraid we wouldn’t hear him if he needed us.  Plus, he wasn’t going anywhere to be able to bust us, right?  Now that we have two kids who ambulate like there’s no tomorrow, we close and lock that door, tight.  There is no way our children will walk in on us.  I’m not about to have an awkward convo with my kids at their ages.  Not gonna do it.  Now that our kids are a little older, we’re getting back into (almost) the routine we had before.  When they were babies, we were lucky to get one under the belt (pun intended) a couple of times a month.  Now, it’s at least four times that many.  Seriously, all joking aside, our frequency is way up (you’ll be happy to know).

When we only had one child, we never got a sitter.  You’ve heard me say that we didn’t really know anyone who could watch Jamie.  He had certain special medical needs and we weren’t comfortable leaving him with anyone.  Not even family.  So we never went anywhere.  Now that we have two kids, we are leaving them with sitters all of the time!  Well, not ALL of the time, but at least twice a month.  I’m all about getting out and having an adult conversation with my husband, and possibly an adult beverage.  My husband would like me to point out that usually, I’m so tired one daiquiri knocks me out.  And I hardly ever drink because of it.

Before Riley, we didn’t have near as much fun.  When we only had one child (who has special needs), our lives were so built around his needs that we didn’t do much of anything fun. We didn’t go to theme parks.  We didn’t go to movies.  We hardly ever went out to eat.  We pretty much stayed at home and we were rotting inside that home from what I like to call “nofunitis”.  When you’re suffering from “nofunitis”, your funny bone gets inflamed and quits working.  Everything is serious, there is no light-heartedness about you anymore.  People see you coming and walk the other direction.  We used to laugh and hang out with our friends, a lot.  We were social creatures by nature, Joel and I.  We had a lot of friends, and one group of friends that we could usually be found with almost every weekend.  Once we had Jamie, we quit doing so much fun stuff because we had so much damn equipment to cart around, and a sick baby.  And it was depressing, and we were depressing, and who wants to hang out with people who are depressing?  No one, that’s who.  Then we had Ri, and things changed.  She brought happiness back into our lives.  She brought laughter, and sunshine.  It really was like the dark faded into light.  The shades were removed from our eyes.  We could have fun again.  Not that Jamie wasn’t a reason worth living and getting up for every day, because he was and is.  I guess unless you have a child with special needs, you won’t understand how draining and all consuming it can be.  It takes over your whole life, this need to make your child be what YOU and SOCIETY thinks he should be.  Not what he was born to be.  Maybe this person who came into our lives who happens to have special needs is supposed to be that way.  Maybe he doesn’t need us to “normalize” him.  Not that we aren’t giving him every opportunity to do more than what he’s currently capable of doing.  He gets therapy and he gets one on one time with his teachers.  But if he never learns to multiply, I’m okay with that.  Ri helped us realize that it was okay if Jamie doesn’t do any of that.  He’s doing what he’s supposed to do, and that’s laugh and love.  And he does that in spades.  Ri has made it so that it’s okay for all of us to laugh.  Everything isn’t serious.  Sometimes, a booty tooty is funny.

And so, there are tons of reasons why and how our lives changed with the addition of our second child, but none more important than the fact that we were all able to LIVE AGAIN.  The meaning of our lives is laughter, songs, love, respect for one another, and praising our God.  The birth of our second child made all of that okay again.  She made us want to show her how happy life can be.  She made us want to be better parents, and to show her just how to live.  How to be happy, content, and to help her fellow man.  And she does all of that.  She does all of that for us, and for others.  While this is sort of an ode to Ri for being our second child, the one who brought light and laughter back into our home, it’s also a love letter to Jamie.  Without him, we wouldn’t have known the joy of being parents the first time.  We wouldn’t have known how easy and hard it is to love someone who was created by you.  We wouldn’t have known how hard life could be, and we wouldn’t have appreciated when we saw his first smile at almost 6 months old, or his first time sitting unassisted at 15 months old, or his first time crawling at almost 2 years old.  When he walked the first time at almost 6 years old.  All of that would have been amazing without the hard times, but those hard times made us appreciate every little thing both of our kids do that much more.  Those little buggers made us parents, and life will never be the same.  And for that, we are truly thankful.