My third child, Jaedin, was born this month. He is 14 months younger than his brother, Kainan. He was as much of a surprise as all of my kids, maybe even more, since Kainan was still nursing full time at 6 months old when I realized that something felt… off. Turns out that was because we were going to have another baby. I was a bit freaked out. Three kids ages 4 and under seemed really overwhelming!
When I was about 8 months pregnant, I made birth announcements. This was 22 years ago and I actually made my own little art graphic thing and created a handmade card to use. Jaedin was due I think September 3rd or 7th, I don’t actually remember, but my other two babies were early, so I assumed he would be as well. I left the information mostly blank on the inside of each card so that all I had to do after the birth was fill in the date, time of birth and weight. We had already chosen the name (or at least his first name, I believe) and I put “Born: August ___ 1996” on the inside.
My mother in law and I had a bit of a, how shall I say it? Tense relationship (I know, we still haven’t told the rest of the wedding story). Suffice it to say that she was a control freak and I was a control freak. She had been in control of her son’s choices for his entire life until I came along and upset the apple cart so to speak. There had been little power struggles ever since.
This was a minor one, much like the one with Kainan’s name choice. She laughed when she saw the announcements and said, “Well, you’re pretty bold, aren’t you? You’re that confident that he’ll be born before the end of the month?”
Now, in hindsight, I can see that she was maybe just making a comment, but at the time I was sensitive, pregnant and we were still in the throes of finding our places as Mother-in-Law and Daughter-in-Law and it just pissed me off. She had a very… superior air about her at times and it just set me on edge.
Needless to say, when Jaedin was so kind as to be born on August 30th, I was VERY relieved. I don’t remember if she brought it up, or if Patrick did, but I believe I said, “Tell your mother I was right and he even left a full day to spare!”
Lawd, what a weird thing to feel so tense about.
ANYWAY, Jaedin was born in the fastest birth yet. Almost exactly one hour of super intense fast contractions with barely a break in between. The labor had happened so fast that I didn’t have time to do anything. I had planned to get into the bathtub to ease things a bit and that would have actually been very helpful, but when we started the water, we discovered that our propane was out and we had no hot water. Things were progressing far too fast to make any other plans.
Patrick had went upstairs to prepare the bedding in our bedroom so that I could give birth up there, but by the time he was done, I was already sitting on our overstuffed (white!) chair in the living room and there was no way in HELL that I was going to make it up the stairs with full on contractions going and no break in between.
That’s also the birth where I slapped the midwife’s hand because she kept rubbing my thigh to calm me. I do NOT like to be touched at all when I am in pain. It takes me out of my ‘safe place’ in my head and makes everything so much worse.
Jaedin was born in the ‘caul’ (my water hadn’t broken) after one hour of labor, his hand was up against his face and the cord was wrapped around his neck, but also around his arm that was in the way. I barely pushed at all, my body pretty much did it without any thought or effort on my part. It was short, but actually may have been the most traumatic birth I had because it was just so damn fast with no break at all, I barely had time to realize that I was in labor before it was too intense to speak or move or do anything and then suddenly, “BABY’S HERE!”
It felt a little crazy.
I was so happy to have two little boys so close in age. I imagined them being so much alike, playing together and always being best friends. So, of course, they were polar opposites. Jaedin was into bugs, critters, dirt, science and asking a million questions about bugs, critters, science and pretty much everything. Kainan was into play ball, games of pretty much any kind and winning.
That kind of came in handy, because as I may have mentioned in the post about Kainan, he was the laziest child I had. By far. And that’s saying a lot, because we’re not the most motivated family in general.
ANYWAY, Kainan was very competitive, but Jaedin was the most motivated child I have. Still is to this day. This helped in ways I couldn’t have foreseen. Trying to get Kainan to potty train was impossible until the moment he saw Jaedin go in the potty. Suddenly it was a dire emergency that HE be the first one to be potty trained. This happened over and over again as they were growing up and it was almost silly how competitive Kainan was about things like that. It definitely worked in my favor, though.
Jaedin is one of the children of mine with the power to follow through (we're not all great at the follow through), with the intelligence to learn just about anything he wants to learn. He will put a plan into action and do the work to make it happen. He doesn’t have a problem doing the tedious shit that generally bores the rest of us to distraction, no, he’ll stick with it and do amazing things.
He was very A.D.D. I had to work with him a LOT on speech issues (got a book from the library on speech therapy because no internet + no money for ‘real’ therapy), on paying attention to things with a LOT of reminders for everyday tasks. Whenever we did school work, he had to sit and play with Legos or blocks or some sort of put-it-together type thing while I taught. He was still the one who had more answers than anyone else, even when he didn’t appear to pay attention at all. He learned how to work around any issues he had and went through a LOT of school on his own, very much self taught in all the sciences because he flew past the rest of us at a very young age. He ended up testing out of several high school classes years later because he had already learned everything inside and out.
He was the weird kids who checked out plant encyclopedias for the summer reading program and learned an astounding amount of information. He would pack up his backpack and his fishing poles and gear and ride his bike TWENTY MILES ONE WAY to go fishing for the day week after week when we lived out in rural-ville. Then he’d ride back home at the end of the day. That was nerve wracking for me, because we didn’t have the extra cell phones at the time to always keep in touch! I think that was the hardest part of parenting this kid, the fact that he was so independent and willing to just take off for the day with no need for communication.
He was never much of a people person growing up. He was kind of the nerdy kid who seemed more interested in catching bugs than playing games with the other kids, even at his own birthday party.
Now, though, he’s probably the most social of any of my kids. THAT is quite the unexpected change! At some point in his late teens, he suddenly morphed right out of the dorky guy phase into the ‘hot guy’ phase and no one was more surprised than us! :)
Seriously, though, he is an amazing guy. At this stage of life he is working, saving up money and planning for his own adventures. He wants to find a woman to travel with and have adventures with (including to buy a sailboat and travel the oceans like his dad and his grandpa before him) and just generally enjoy life.
He’s the one who is still interested in cooking (somewhat because cooking for yourself means cheaper eating) and also just because I think he enjoys creating things. He brings me cases of grapes when they’re on sale because he knows that I LOVE frozen grapes.
And he'e the child that built a forge int he back yard when he was 17. Now that he's older, he's made a much bigger one... in the driveway.
So there you have it. The life and times of Byn and her VERY varied children! I still have a hard time realizing that all of these VERY strong, independent and yet VASTLY different personalities all grew up in the same family!
I couldn't be more proud of the way they have all turned out... but since today is Jaedin's day, I'll just say:
Happy birthday to my favorite youngest son. I'm beyond proud of the man you are and the way you live your life, make choices and continue to learn. You are an incredible, amazing person.
Now... off to finish the lasagna for the family night/birthday dinner tonight!
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