4 Weeks On: Noah

4 weeks on, how are we doing?

Noah

Of our 2 children, Noey has, by far, been the trickier one to deal with. For this matter, I am grateful that Naomi hasn’t been too difficult thus far as it has given us the much needed time and energy to manage our little son.

Despite all our fears otherwise, Noey has shown himself to be a rather loving brother. He takes a keen interest in his Mei-Mei and is always trying to kiss her or grab her somehow. He has been endlessly fascinated with Naomi’s wee baby proportions, and loves to whip off her mittens to look at her little hands and flip open her blanket to expose her small feet. “She’s so tiny!” he loves to say, complete with the index finger to thumb gesture.

“What’s Mei-Mei doing??”, he asks about 100 times a day. Even though the answer is almost always “she’s sleeping” or “she’s trying to sleep”. Admittedly, having to answer this same question the whole day everyday is driving me a bit nuts.

Noey has, however, always been sticky to me and this has been the most challenging part about managing 2 kids.

I think the 2 nights when I was in the hospital were the hardest for him as those were the first nights ever that we’d ever had apart. (Ok, it was hard for me too, though I must admit I enjoyed having a bed all to myself!) When DD tried to put him to sleep on the first night, he kept saying “Shall we wait for Mummy to come home?”. And when it finally sank in that I wasn’t going to be back, DD said that he went to hide behind my bedside table and when asked what he was doing, said, very morosely, “Mummy’s gone.” DD hastened to explain that I was in the hospital as I needed to be looked after by the doctors, and eventually, he very sadly went to sleep. He was very excited to see me in the hospital the following day, but when it came time to go home, he quickly curled up by my side and asked to sleep on my bed. All reasoning with him was fruitless, and by the time they carried him out crying, I was in tears myself.

Things got better once we got home and I was around to try to calm Noey’s insecurities. Over the past few weeks, my modus operandi has generally been to try to settle Noey where necessary and leave Naomi to the extra pair of hands — DD, my parents, my mother-in-law, my helper. Whereas Noey was previously happy to have others play or do things with him, for the past few weeks, only Mummy was to bathe him, put him to sleep, play with him, feed him dinner. Thankfully little Mei-Mei is too young to be upset about being outsourced!

There have been hiccups of course, like when I have to get up to feed Naomi early in the morning when Noey wants to lie in bed with me. “No feeding Mei-Mei!” he would cry. Later he even caught on to the fact that we sometimes bottle-feed Naomi, so when I said I needed to go feed Mei-Mei, he countered, saying “Aunty Marilou can feed her with a bottle.”

It doesn’t help that he’s going through a difficult Terrible Twos phase at the moment. There are days where he is rude to his grandparents and our helper, is rebellious and point-blank refuses to comply with my instructions, choosing to throw screaming fits instead. It’s been something that has been building up over the past couple of months so I don’t attribute it to Mei-Mei’s entry into his life. It is him, asserting himself as a person as part of the process of growing up. I just wish he didn’t choose this time to do this!

So things, well, could be better on the home front, but I expect it to get better as we establish more of a rhythm to our days. This morning for example, instead of crying in panic when he woke up and found that I was no longer in bed, Noey trotted over to Mei-Mei’s room where he knew he would find me, in my nursing chair, and plonked himself beside me. And I scooped him up for a hug.

I do wish there was two of me, yes, but I’m glad I’ve got two of them.