Today you are 5 months and 8 days old - and you are the love of our life
Of course I am not just talking about Mummy and Daddy, who have the privilege of growing four beautiful people, but our whole family, who just live and breathe the wonder of you, the girl you are becoming and the little miracle that you are in our house
I often hear mothers who say "oh I have thought about having another baby many times but I just never knew how the kids would go or if our family would cope" and I know that those things were always in the back of our minds when we decided to have a fourth baby.
After almost 10 years of no babies in our house, we had cemented our positions in the family. We had our industrious, outgoing, creative and responsible older child. We had our wonderfully soft, gentle, artistic and empathic 'middle child' (though we were very conscious of the middle child tag, and tried to give our second child as much attention as our youngest). And we had our baby (even though he wasn't a baby anymore), who was cheeky, irrepressibly energetic, also artistic, and very set in his position at the bub of our family.
And then there was Layla...and the world shifted a little
Our eldest became a little less teenager-ish (anybody with a teenager will know what I mean!). She learnt how to deal with a little baby spew on her clothes, and also learnt how to put somebody else's needs before her own. Our middle child now took on the position of big sister to two siblings, which meant that she has become even more nurturing, though has had to adjust to her little brother now taking on a more mature role of a 'big brother'. And our baby, who had always been treated as a baby, suddenly transformed into a little man. Somewhere between his statement of 'I don't want to hold it (Layla!)' at hospital, and changing his first wet nappy, our baby boy became a big brother...and so there was room for a new baby of the family.
It is hard to quantify just how much our world has changed since we became a family of 6, though for the 5 of us, who have been our own little family unit for so long, the world has definitely shifted, and for all of us, she has become another love of our life.
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