Letter to Greta: 2 Months

Dear Littlest One,

You are two months old, and such a roly-poly sweetie that you’re already filling out three-month outfits and stretching to the end of your three-month sleepers. You are smiling now, small, pleased, toothless grins, and staring intently on whoever is holding you. You are sweet and adorable and my favorite part of my day is when I bring you into bed with me for a half hour or hour in the morning, where you sleep in the crook of my arm until your sister wakes up.

And yet you are a restless baby, often unable to settle yourself; you are still snorting and grunting and straining, though not as badly as before, and it often seems that you are just uncomfortable. This may be just a baby thing, but I’ll of course ask your doctor about it. Just like your diaper rash—that you had for days and days before your checkup, and which actually required a prescription—I sometimes feel like a first-time parent with you, fumbling and not doing everything I should.

For the most part, you are doing some good sleeping: 7 or 7:30 until 12 or 1am, then 4 or 5 and then up at 6:30 or 7. This is not a guarantee, of course; some nights you can’t settle yourself and we are up rocking you for hours. And sometimes you cry off and on all evening. But we are on a path to feeling rested, more or less, or at least as “rested” we can feel with two babies.

I wish sometimes that we could spend more time just the two of us so you could have my undivided attention. But as it is, you have to accept divided attention much of the time, nursing peacefully while I talk to Lucia (or, more often these days, warn her to stop throwing or screaming etc.—you’ve inspired some jealousy, finally). It will be nice when you are a bit older and you can join in while we play, or at least sit on a blanket near us so we can talk to you.

But even if you do sometimes feel overlooked, I hope you always know that you and I have a special bond of our own: it was just the two of us in that hospital for four weeks. We got through that together. We might not ever have so much alone time but for that month, littlest one, it was just you and me.