Throughout my pregnancy with child#2, people would ask me “How are you going to tell your daughter you’re pregnant?”. My response was “I don’t need to. She told me.” The sibling bond began when I conceived.
My 1 1/2 year old daughter pointed at my belly one snowy day in December and said “baby”. A week later I found out I was pregnant.
From that moment on, I assumed she knew more about this baby than I did. Sure, it was growing inside of me but she seemed to have insider information.
We asked her throughout the duration of the pregnancy whether we were having a boy or a girl. Girl was her response. Are we having a girl or a boy? Boy. For 8 months she would respond with whichever we said last. Then one day, completely unsolicited she told me we were having a boy. A month later we discovered she was right.
During the first few weeks of his life, our daughter became his translator. His cries, she told me, meant he wanted milk, or a diaper change, or just mommy. When he screamed blood murder during diaper changes she would take a hold of his hand and he would calm down. I moved his change mat to the floor during those first couple of weeks so she could assist.
Our little man is now 6 months old. He doesn’t require as much translating these days but every once in a while I’ll ask him a question. Is it time to change your bum or are you still pooping? A small voice responds from across the room. “He’s still pooping Mommy.” Two minutes later he poops again. Now is he done? “Yes Mommy”.
The connection is strong between the two of them.
They aren’t communicating with their words. They aren’t even looking at each other. It’s coming from a much deeper, energetic, spiritual level. It has to be. There’s no other explanation for it.
Witnessing this has made me wonder how I’m communicating with them. I know that when Hailey was a baby she would mimic my behaviour. If I was stressed and flustered then she would cry. She still mimics my emotional patterns but I don’t believe she’s intentionally copying. It’s so automatic.
It also makes me wonder when we lose this ability to tap into another person’s being, responding to their needs without dialogue. Maybe this ability is buried deep within us and we don’t remember how to access it. Maybe we still have a faint awareness of it. Why else can we immediately like or dislike someone after meeting them for a brief moment?
We must be connecting on a deeper level. Our children are proof of this.
My children are not unique. Several of my friends have noticed similar connections. A friend’s son came home from daycare and told her he had a baby sister. He had been an only child for many years. She had just found out earlier that day that she was pregnant. Nine months later a baby girl appeared.
Our children are awesome. They are intelligent in a very different way than us. They are intuitive and know a lot more than we think.
Even as I write that last sentence “they know more than we think” it occurs to me that it’s not their thinking that makes them different but their ability to feel their way to answers. They don’t need to think about it the way we think about a problem. They just know.
Somehow they just know.
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Lindsay is a mom of 2 and a Certified Positive Discipline Parent Educator. She writes about how to get children to listen and co-operate and how to keep your cool even when all your buttons are being pushed. With a belief that there’s no one-size-fits-all parenting, she has a deep appreciation for children’s innate intelligence and uniqueness. She loves learning from her children as illustrated in this post,originally published at LindsaysTwoCents.com
My kids don’t appear to have that connection, but maybe they’re just not vocal about it. It struck me though when you said your friend knew about his mother’s pregnancy and 9 months later a little girl appeared. She might have made her first appearance 9 months later, but she was definitely already here.