emmeline making sense of birth

Emmeline is trying to understand a lot of things lately.  And doing a pretty funny job at it. 

A month ago when I was explaining to Emmeline that she needed to see the Dr (for her yearly check up)  she insisted that “I scared of the Dr.”  I spent some time trying to prep her and tell her that the Dr. was just going to check out her body and make sure everything was ok.  Later when we were actually on our way, out of no where she said to me, very matter of factly, “Mom, my body is AWESOME!”    She was right, the Dr. even confirmed that her body is awesome (and off the charts on all counts, including cheeks).

Ever since then she tells one of us every few days in a voice full of enthusiasm, “My bum is AWESOME!”  She’s kind of obsessed with bums right now.  Maybe it’s potty training.

Emmeline is trying her darndest to understand what’s going to happen around here any minute with this impending birth.  It’s hard to know what she really gets and what she just likes to repeat back to us. She talks a lot about the baby brother inside my belly.  She’s stopped wondering if there is a baby in her belly (I think my belly just surpassed the size of hers a few weeks ago……so now she’s getting that there’s only one baby and it’s inside of me).   She has come with me to my midwife appointments and pushed buttons on the doppler to hear her baby brother’s heart beat.    Last week when all four of us went to the birth center we took a little tour of where everyone was born.  We saw the tub where Charlie was born, the bed where Hazel was almost born etc.   Emmeline saw the bed where she was born and has been obsessed with it ever since.  Telling most people she sees about how she was born on a bed.  And sometimes, if she’s feeling inferior to Charlie she steals his story and insists that she was born in the tub.

My dear doula, Lorenza came for lunch the other day and in preparation I told Emmeline about how Lorenza was there when she was born and how Lorenza was the first person to hold her little hand and how it was only then that Emmeline took her first breath and made her first cry.  All morning while waiting for Lorenza to come Emmeline repeated that story to me over and over:

Emmeline: “Enza hold my little hand?”  “I said Wa, Wa?” “I had my first cry?”

Basically, Emmeline has  asked lots of questions about birth and gotten a lot of answers. 

We were at BJ’s Wholesale the other day and a nice older lady was making friends with Emmeline while we waited in line.  Emmeline started spouting out her newfound information about birth.  Here’s how the conversation went:

Emmeline: “I got born.  I got born on a bed.” 

Nice Old Lady: “that’s nice.”

Emmeline: “My mom got born too.” 

Emmeline: “You got born?  You popped out your mama’s bum?”

Nice Old Lady:  looked embarrassed.  changed the subject.

I can’t wait to see how this all comes together for her in the next few days!