On your back with your racks as the stacks are your load

So, it’s hard now, but not in the way I ever expected. Sparrow is not only good, she is luscious.  She has a "witching hour" like Chai did in the early evening when she screams plaintively for about an hour or so, but other than that she is dreamy and smooth and peaceful, especially if someone is holding her. She has started smiling these wonderful, shy smiles and I can hear my own voice melting when I talk to her and we’re making eye contact. I love her sweet greasy hair, I love her clever little fists, her startle reflex, I love her calm eyes, I love how much she loves to be held and how safely she sleeps in her father’s arms. I’m so glad I have her, she is my precious girl

The hard things are the jolts of missing newborn baby Chai who is no more, and the times when he is calling my name and crying out for me and I can’t hold him because my arms are full of the little bird. The mornings he wakes up so early that the day hurts him and he reaches out for me, so I reach back, but when I move from being curled up around the little girl, she cries her braying sniffly cry in protest and if I try to draw her in and nurse her, Chai screams in anguish. I can see the frustration in his eyes. I've tried to double them up and sometimes it works and it's so sweet, Chai will put one hand in Sparrow's and pat my face with the other The days he wakes up too early from a nap, screaming “Money…Money!” and wants me to cuddle him and then Sparrow starts squalling the moment I have snuggled in with him. Oh, my boy, my beautiful sweet boy. I have these lovely pictures of Chai meeting Sparrow and rubbing her feet, kissing her face, that seem so idyllic, but all I can think of when I see them is that he came home that day to a completely different life, and in a very real way, to him, he lost his mother. Yes it will teach him independence resilience the world does not revolve around him, etcetera, but he would have learned those things eventually anyway, and I am mourning our easy skinny, uncomplicated love. Laura said you can only have a romantic, "in love" relationship with one baby, and no matter how much you fight it, your relationship with your older baby changes into something else, and even though you have the occasional “in love” interaction, which I am so desperately trying to cling to, those moments get fewer and fewer and fewer and of course when the new baby is older, there’s no trace of baby left in the first one, like they quietly packed that part of their life up by themselves and turned out the lights while you were busy. It’s unbearable sometimes to thing how it could have been different. I've been trying to connect with him by building forts, making messes with him, making myself get on the floor with him and play even when I'm feeling lazy, reading stories, turning on music and dancing with him in my arms whenever the baby is sleeping, but those moments when they are both needing simultaneously just kill me. I feel like I’m falling in love with Sparrow almost surreptitiously, but there are times when I’m cooing and smiling in her face and she is doing her shy smile up at me, wiggling slightly, and I’m saying My love girl, my love girl, my belly girl, you’re a lit-tle girrrl! that I see Chai look at me with such abject betrayal. There are times he openly sobs and points at the baby and screams, Baby! Baby! No! and other times he drops kisses on her head and begs to hold her and nuzzles her face and I’ve even heard him say “Luh yoo” to her, but those sour betrayal moments are like electric shocks to my soul and I just ache for him. I’m so sorry, I don’t know how to do any better than I’m doing, scrambling to hold out warm arms for both of you, but they’ll both take everything because that’s how children are, and they don’t want to divide it. That’s how I am too to be honest, I’d rather Jonathan never go to work or school and just cuddle with me on the couch all day long forever, and I think I deserve that just as much as both my babies deserve an undivided me, but none of us will get it, and it’s not fair that it’s not fair. I can also acknowledge that we’re lucky to have as much as we do, even if it feels like it’s spread too thin. I hope my Chai can forgive me. I hope my Sparrow can forgive me.