New Baby Flashbacks

Just caught a glimpse of new baby fast asleep in his bouncer chair, and the likeness to our eldest J took my breath away.  For the first time I have had the 'falling in love with new baby' experience.  With J it lasted for four days before it was taken away, and even then it was tainted because he wouldn't feed and we knew that there was something wrong.  Having a new baby in hospital, especially your first, can be a really overwhelming experience.  As a parent you have to hand much of your control over to the medical staff caring for your baby.  Having to ask to hold your baby, and needing to have help to get them out of the incubator, to manage the tubes and monitors the baby may be attached to, for me took away any feeling that he was our child.  Despite this, Rob and I tried really hard to build a special relationship with him, and I think that has lasted.  With F, we were still so raw from months in hospital with J that it took a long time to relax into being a new mum, but with new baby we have made up for all those experiences we felt we had missed.  Poor J had another blood test this morning, and was very brave.  We have been practising slow breathing to help him relax while he is having it done, which he is very good at, a future yoga master maybe, but when it came to having the blood test he was so scared he forgot all about it, and had to rely on a play specialist blowing bubbles at a cuddly toy for distraction.  It didn't work.  With things like that it brings back all the feelings we had when he was a baby, desperately wanting to protect him, but having to give in to the medical way of doing things.