My Little Girl Going to Be a Big Sister

Mira's drawing of my body. Baby brother top right.

 I love my daughter to pieces. I would hope that most parents would say that about their child(ren). I love my daughter more than I had ever imagined that I could love someone.

The one difficult thing for me to grasp during this pregnancy has been the concept of loving another baby as much as I love Mira. I have known my little Mira for over 5 years and I love every little thing about her.

I love that she's considerate and expresses how she is feeling without hesitation. It's the beauty of kids. Raw. Honest. Transparent.

Mira is loving. She wants to marry me. She wants to marry Geoff. She wants to marry her little unborn brother. I have explained that family members can't marry one another time and time again and although that concept has been lost to my 5 year old lovebug, she does understand the concept of loving someone so much that you choose to marry them. Devote your life to them. Pretty strong stuff.

I have been worried about my darling Mira and how she will adapt to being a big sister. Finding out we were having a little boy was a bit of a shock to her as it appears she had visions of sharing her childhood with another little girl. The first couple of days after finding out we were going to have a son, we were comforting a Mira who was suddenly uncertain about this whole big sister gig. She was suddenly very clingy and needy. My independent child was suddenly dependent. She wanted to sleep with us at night (for the first time in years) and even cried about it.

As much as I wanted to panic and protect her, I chose to involve her and give her some space from baby. Now, talking about the baby will only happen on her terms. And funny enough, it worked. I'm not sure if it was her feeling her little brother kick for the first time that did it, but she decided that being a big sister was very cool. She donated almost 1/4 of her books to her brother.

She drew a picture of me while at school (pictured above). In it is my body. Inside my body, there is the food I ate (circles), the water I drank (squiggly line), my heart (the red heart) and her baby brother. All the way up there in the top right with spikey hair and he appears to have one giant eye or is wearing a pair of fetal sunglasses. I love my daughter. I love her for embracing this new role instead of shying away from it. I love my daughter for the massive size of her heart and her capacity to adapt and love everyone in her family unconditionally.