Baby Nursery

Welcome back to Taylor Talks!

Being in college is very different than being in high school. I’m still realizing that, even in my senior year. One of the biggest differences is that you are no longer in classes only with people who are your age. Instead, you can be in classes with people ten or twenty years older than you. It’s a mix of people from all different lifestyles, and while there are many people who, like me, started college right after high school, there are also a lot of people that took time off before going to college.

In some of my classes, I have a peer whose age is unknown to me. Quite frankly, I never even noticed how old she may or may not be until recently. I knew that she had a young son, but now she is also pregnant with her second child. Since she is due next month, everyone speaks about her pregnancy on a daily basis, from asking about her due date, to how she is feeling, to how her son is reacting to the news. Last night, the talk revolved around what her son understood about her pregnancy.

While everyone discussed how great it will be when her son realizes that he’s a big brother, and sees his baby brother in the hospital for the first time, I started to think about my own experiences with becoming a big sister. I thought about the one big part of becoming a big sister that I have never gotten to experience. Not a single time in the nineteen experiences I’ve had with becoming a big sister, have I ever gotten to experience my mom being pregnant or getting to go to the hospital to see a sibling in the baby nursery.

Okay, now when I talk about going to the hospital, I’m picturing scenes from television and the movies, where the dad proudly takes his young daughter and holds her up to the window, points to a baby and says, “Look sweetie, that’s your new baby brother.” I don’t know if this is what actually happens. I have no idea what actually happens. But when I think about what I missed out on, this is the scene that I picture.

Now, I’m not saying that I truly missed out on some great life experience. I wouldn’t trade the way my life has unfolded for anything. How unique is it for someone to meet their nineteen siblings when they are brought into their home by a caseworker? I know that the way I have gotten siblings has been pretty cool, and I’m so happy with the way that each of my brothers and sisters have come into my life. But I do sometimes think about what it might have been like to boast to my little friends that there was a baby in my mommy’s belly, or to look into my newborn’s sibling’s eyes as my parents introduced me in the hospital. I wonder if I would have loved having a new baby in the house, or if I would have wanted to send them back to the stork. I never thought about ‘returning’ siblings in my life, because we chose to help these kids whose parents couldn’t take care of them. I just couldn’t imagine what life would have been like if my mom had given birth to my siblings instead of fostering and adopting them.

Sometimes, it’s just weird to think about how different my life has been from other people’s lives.

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Thanks!
Taylor

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