A Baby in Your Tummy

One of the daycare teachers in Love Bug’s classroom is expecting. I’m sure it’s something that has been explained to the kids, in an age-appropriate way. Love Bug has never said anything about it but he has been doing this thing lately where he asks to “be a baby in your tummy” and then he crawls under my shirt and cuddles there for a little while before coming back out. He insists he was once a baby in my tummy, even when I explain to him that he wasn’t. Chica Marie has also made comments about being a baby in my tummy and I know she knows that it isn’t true. Love Bug seems to have baby fever at the moment. He loves looking at the pictures of himself when he was a baby but he also likes seeing Esperanza’s friends baby and the few pictures we have seen of his brand new nephew. He likes playing with baby dolls, calling them his babies. Sometimes, he shoves the baby doll under my shirt to be a baby in my tummy. Most of the time I look at it as just a stepping stone in childhood development, his understanding of familial roles and how families are formed. But, sometimes it’s a gut-punch because not only did Love Bug not grow in my tummy, no baby ever has and (most likely) no baby ever will. On a few occasions I’ve gotten tears in my eyes when Love Bug lifts my shirt to be my baby. It’s hard to imagine Love Bug not being my son, our bond is very strong and he’s such a momma’s boy, but the reality is that he was someone else’s baby before he was mine. Sometimes I try to envision what Love Bug might have been like, had he been my biological son and not had to deal with so many things at such a tender age, but then he wouldn’t be my Love Bug, he would be someone else. Even though I hated seeing him struggle, those obstacles made him stubbornly strong as well as loving and funny. And, at the end of the day, Love Bug is my baby - from my tummy or not.