Every time I look at Neil I am overcome with love and joy and pride. He's such a terrific kid and I'm so proud to be his momma. But I live in constant fear that something is going to happen to him. I'm sure every parent feels that way, but for me I feel like it's different. It's like I'm waiting for the other ball to drop; that it can't actually be right - us being happy? I'm terrified it will all come crashing down and we'll be left with nothing. That every child we every tried to have died. It's so morbid, I know, but it's such a strong fear.
Yesterday D. and I were talking about how lucky we are with Neil - that he's such an amazing kid. And I'm not just saying that. I mean seriously - he goes to bed at 6.30pm every night and sleeps until 7am the next morning! Oh, and when he's ready for bed he literally gets up, walks to his bedroom, puts his thumb in his mouth, picks up his lamb, and waits for one of us to put him in his crib. Then he smiles at you and goes to sleep. Without a peep. Yeah, I know!
So we were talking about how lucky we are with Neil; that he's a "perfect" kid; that why would we want to press our luck with another one. That the next one might be the "nightmare" child everyone dreads. We laughed about it. He was serious. I wasn't, really.
I know it's horrible to admit, but I often think: what if we don't have another child and something happens to Neil? Then we'd have nothing. And of course you can't replace one child with another, but when Riley died I got so much strength from Neil, just having him in our lives, it made such a difference. If we had another child, would this immense fear go away? Would it minimize into just regular fear? Or, regardless of how many children we have will I always have the same fear? I don't know.
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