Baby Iain FAQ

Now that we have Iain, we are getting the same two questions from most everyone we see or meet.


After the pleasantries of, "Oh, he's so adorable!" and "Congratulations!" come two questions:


How does Ada like him?/What's Ada think of him?


and


Is he sleeping well?/Are you getting any sleep?


If the conversation continues much longer, the topic of "Is this it or are you planning to have more kids?" follows shortly thereafter.


Maybe we should challenge ourselves to try to come up with more exciting answers or a different way to answer each question just to see how creative we can be and what possible replies we can invent. Right now it goes something like...


"What's Ada think of him?"


And we say a variation of...


"She seems to like him. She just kisses him and goes on her way. She doesn't pay much attention to him and only gets mad if Rick is holding him and not paying attention to her. She did get mad and short out his bouncy seat by throwing water on it while Rick was holding Iain and we weren't watching, but that's about it."


Rick's thinking of replying with...

"She thinks he's the devil reincarnated because she put a crucifix up to his forehead yesterday and babbled something and we think it was 'demons out' but we're not sure."

"She gave him a black eye the other day, but it's okay because he peed on her blankie."


And I'm thinking of saying things involving less aggression...

"She thinks he sucks. He can't play, walk, talk, have tea parties or play with Barbies yet so she just ignores him."

"She thinks he's lame. All he does is eat, sleep, poop and cry. I think she'd rather have a puppy."


The truth of the matter is that she doesn't interact with him much. She's too busy having fun and he's too busy eating, sleeping, and growing. She'll occasionally come over and hold his hand while I change his diaper but that's about it. Life goes on for her. We'll see how that changes once he gets older.


And when someone asks "Are you getting any sleep?"


"Yeah. Why wouldn't we be?"

"Why? Do I look like hell?"

"Of course. It's not like he needs to wake up to eat or anything?"

or Rick's favorite...

"Actually, once you have a baby, there is this hormone in your body that makes it so you no longer need any sleep. All those other parents that complain of being sleep depraved are lying. It's really no big deal."

But really, we are getting a good deal of sleep. He wakes up every 3-6 hours at night for a quick bite to eat and then falls right back to sleep. I can't complain and am hopeful that he'll be able to sleep an 8 hour stint in the next two or three weeks when he is a bit bigger. We'll see how that goes.

In the meantime, we'll keep fielding the standard questions and trying to come up with more exciting answers.

Moral of the story: Sleep and sibling response to a second child are hot conversation topics. At least they are easy to talk about, unless you aren't getting any sleep and your older child is rejecting your new bundle of joy.