Who needs a doctor, midwife or OBGYN when you have a two year old and a $12 plastic doctor’s bag full of all the essentials for monitoring a healthy pregnancy?
Corbin’s engagement with my pregnancy has been amazing – beyond anything I could have hoped for. He started interacting with the baby and asking questions shortly after I started reading My Mom’s Having a Baby sometime in April. His interest in my pregnancy is not always constant as I assume his interest in his new sibling will not be constant. But, there is no question. He is engaged and interested.
He talks about the baby to his friends at daycare, has told them that it is going to be a girl – though at home he is split over whether or not it is a brother or sister and, one day, during snack time he turned to our daycare provider Deb and reported to her, “I’m going to be a big brother.” As 2-year-old imaginations are want to do, he has, on more than one occasion, affirmatively stated that I am having baby turtles and/or kittens. He has used his doctor’s bag to carefully monitor my health and that of his sibling. When he first got the bag, I was enduring several check-ups a week that included blood pressure monitoring, listening to the baby’s heartbeat & administering medicine to the baby via my belly button. When he wants to communicate to the baby, he asks me to “put my shirt up.” Communication can include everything from making train noises, to drumming, to saying hello in a high-pitched voice to singing – sometimes gently and sometimes very loud.
Occasionally we still have baths together. He likes to give the baby something to drink – again via the belly button. Once he put the face cloth on my belly and told me he was “wrapping the baby up.” During another bathing session, he dropped clumps of bubbles on my belly and then spread the “peanut butter” around.
We are now in the ‘why’ stage of development. Loch and I are getting better at answering ‘why?’ only once and then stating, “Asked and Answered.” His most recent questions about Roome2 revolve around the birth. I’m amazed that the question has even arisen. It is true that he sees my belly getting bigger, but he seems in tune with the fact that we are getting closer to D-Day (8 weeks to go). He started asking me about a week or so ago,
“Mama, is the baby going to get out of your tummy?”
“Yes, Corbin.”
“When is the baby going to get our of your tummy?”
“We still have to wait a bit longer – just a few weeks?”
“Why?”
“Because the baby is bigger than Tidoo (Corbin’s beloved doll), but not as big as your bear.”
“Oh, why?”
“Because it still needs to eat more breakfasts, lunches and dinners.”
“Why?”
“Asked and Answered.”
What I love is the progress. Next day…
“Mama, is the baby finished growin’ yet?”
“Not quite.”
“When it’s finished growin’ it will come out of your tummy, ya?
“That’s right.”
“hmm.”
The only question he has not asked is how the baby got in my tummy to begin with and how it is going to get out.
Original cartoon appears on the Zoitz site.