On Saturday, the baby (Blake) was 9 months old. He was crawling and standing and playing with toys. Annabella could have been nicer to him and showed some signs of jealousy, but it wasn't really too bad. She would take her toys and walk away with them whenever Blake showed a little interest (even if she hadn't cared about that toy in a really long time), but when coaxed, she even handed him a ball to play with. So really, Saturday went pretty well.
On Sunday, the baby (Lydia) was 4 months old. And Annabella was NOT happy, not happy at all. She started out pretty uncertain, and showed a lot of signs of just not knowing what to do. At one point Jason was holding Lydia, and Annabella was running at him full force and sort of hit Lydia in the process. Annabella didn't hit her hard, and I don't think she meant to hit her, but Annabella fell apart when Lydia started crying and she saw the look Jason gave her. After that, Annabella needed a lot of comfort and was almost afraid of the baby. She wouldn't even come up and sit next to me while I was holding Lydia. And then when I handed Lydia off, Annabella was firmly planted in my lap needing lots of snuggles.
Lessons learned: Annabella freaks out over other babies crying. Annabella is really not okay with Mommy or Daddy holding other babies. Annabella needed more attention than normal after the babies went away.
And the big takeaway lesson is: We're in for a heap of trouble.
I'm really really worried for Annabella now. Before this weekend, I was convinced that she'd have a hard time losing out on attention and go through some jealousy issues, but I didn't imagine she'd have negative feelings for the baby outside of those. Seeing her so insecure was really tough, and I'm not sure how we'll combat that.
Annabella is the most important person in the world to me, and I'm feeling really pretty darn guilty for putting her through this right now. I hope it doesn't turn out to be a bad decision for her.
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