Kids & Company Blog

The Arrival of Child #2 – How Not To Do It

As this month we are discussing all things “siblings”, I just thought I would share the crazy story of how our son (Joshua) arrived into this world (and how I got to share the news to my then 2 year old daughter Jainie).

So, I will preface this story by saying my wife and I are not from Calgary and have no family here at all.  In addition, our son was due in the new year/over Christmas holidays and most of our friends and neighbours were either on vacation or with families, etc.  And as this was our 2^nd child, we may have been a little (lot) more relaxed in our (lack of) preparation – i.e. hospital bag wasn’t even out much less packed weeks in advance like when Jainie was born.  I mean we’d done it before, we would just wing it this time, right?

Anyway, our Joshie was due Jan 4 so as we knew we needed to have someone here to take care of Jainie when the big event occurred, and so my mother-in-law had booked a flight to arrive the eve of Dec 28^th – in our minds, giving us a good buffer of time until the due date.  We had NO backup plan.  None.  Everybody we could rely on in a pinch were away for holidays, etc.  But no worries, we said, having mom-in-law arriving several days before the due date seemed like a solid plan.

So luckily the 28^th finally comes, my wife is still very pregnant and my mother in law arrives that night and all is good –whew, we can exhale!  Jainie goes to sleep, my mother-in-law goes to sleep and my wife and I discuss how we will spend the next several days and….her water breaks.  Literally 2 hours after her mother’s plane landed in Calgary and ta-da –it was go time!  So we head to the hospital and several hours later Joshua is born in a whirlwind of a night.

It’s bright and early the next am and I have already been sent home to get some rest.  Now when I get home, I realize that Jainie is still sound asleep - she has absolutely NO idea that we have even left and been gone all night and that she now has a little brother.  So as she woke up, I had the privilege of giving her the big news that she had literally woken up as a big sister.

For me, the whole night was a very surreal blurry experience to say the least. But you can imagine how surreal it was for Jainie - she went to sleep one night and when she woke up the next morning Daddy was here, Mommy wasn’t, and she now had a little brother - wha?  Must have been quite confusing at first but then she got to meet him for the first time that very night and I swear she has been in love with him ever since!

To this day we still don’t know what we would have done if this all happened before my mother-in-law arrived.  And there is no real moral to this story other than my strong recommendation to be a little better prepared than we were (as you just never know!) when new baby sibling is on the way and that apparently my mother-in-law’s superpower is the ability to send women into labor by her mere presence ;-).

 

Scott Taylor, our Director of Marketing & Operations for Alberta, is a busy Calgary father of two (to Jainie & Joshua, 4 & 2) and these days can name more My Little Pony & Thomas the Tank Engine characters than any one grown man should be able to ;-) Scott can be reached at staylor@kidsandcompany.com

Posted on: Friday March 14th, 2014

Posted by: Kids & Company