Big Sister
By: Michael Rudeen
My daughter was four when we brought our sons home from the hospital. She had stayed with my mother-in-law during my wife’s labor and delivery, and they had come to the hospital to visit the newly expanded us while we were still in the maternity recovery room.
She had reacted beautifully to them in the hospital, doing everything a big sister should do. She proudly wore her “I’m a big sister” T-shirt, she knew how to hold them — in the middle of the bed, of course — and she didn’t seem the slightest bit jealous. She was too excited and happy to be jealous.
But they had yet to invade her home.
Until we learned we were having twins, we had planned on putting the new arrival in with our daughter, but now that would have turned her bedroom into a dormitory. So the boys started life at home sharing a crib in our bedroom.
They slept most of that first day, but, according to the newborn contract, were raring to go when it got dark. We don’t seem to conceive quiet children. There were times in those first few months when their shrieks would hit some kind of hellish harmony that would shake the paint off the walls.
So, about 3 a.m. that first night home, when they were hitting their stride and my wife and I were trying to remember why we had done this again, they woke up big sister. As she walked, bleary-eyed, into the room, our hearts sank. Three a.m. with three kids under the age of kindergarten.
We braced ourselves.
But instead of whining, she asked what she could do to help. For the next three hours, our daughter fetched diapers, soothed fiery little brows and fielded pacifiers as we changed them, paced with them, and tried to settle them down.
By six a.m., my wife and one guy had fallen asleep in the recliner in the living room; the big sister, the other guy, and the daddy were out cold on our bed. When my wife and I awoke two hours later, we knew we had a champ living in the bedroom down the hall.
When somebody asks why we decided to have another child, I invariably tell that story. Even my daughter has gotten tired of it, and she usually loves to hear of her heroics. “We wanted to build a family” had been a theoretical response; now we knew we had done just that.
We knew the boys would never be just nuisances for her. Although they fight and she has been known to trigger a riot in our Tudor-style cellblock, there is affection, consideration, and love we could have only prayed for.
At 18 months, we began to see how the boys would respond. My wife left them in the nursery at church one Sunday, and we learned later that during the service, one of them had dissolved into desperate sobs over some slight or injury.
As he sat on a tiny bench, crying his little heart out, his brother toddled over, sat down beside him, and patted him on the shoulder with his chubby little hand.
Since we weren’t there, he was.
So that’s why we put up with the brain damage and had more children. We now know none of our kids will ever be alone.