The Chair arrived before either of you did. I remember the day we picked it out: the day we went to do the baby shopping – the same day we had our 20 week scan with you, Rian, and found out to our immense relief that you were growing perfectly.
We left the hospital clutching the miraculous scan picture of you, something we never thought we’d ever be able to hold at one time, and arrived at the baby shop almost giddy with disbelief that the seemingly un-achievable, impossible dream of parenthood was actually happening for us. Little did we know it would actually happen twice for us. Our frozen twins.
I sat in The Chair.
At first just to get a bit of a rest while we waited for a shop assistant to become available. It’s tiring work growing a baby. Of course, the minute I sat in it, I was able to imagine hours of gently rocking you to sleep and feeding you in it when the rest of the world was fast asleep.
‘We’ll take it.’
As soon as it arrived it became a little spot of peace and calm in the corner of your room. I used to sit there, with you in bump form, and wonder what you might look like and who you might be.
Would you have hair and would you look like me? A boy or a girl? Tall like your daddy? Wondering of what adventures lay ahead.
I sat in The Chair as I watched your dad put together your cot. Laying out all the pieces on one side and the toolbox on the other. I read from the instructions about what bit goes where. I had one hand on my bump and felt you kick in agreement when we figured it out.
And one after the other, you both arrived.
From the start, The Chair was where we sat, you and I, you and your dad. Gently rocking away the sobs and cries from colic. Gently rocking, persuading sleepy little eyes to close and nod off.
And gently rocking while we stared at your miraculous, perfect little faces and wondered, what do babies dream about? Breathing in the beautiful soft, sleepy, milky baby smell and wondering, how did you get here? Just how on earth did we get so lucky twice?
How many nights have we sat in that chair together? Sometimes it felt like endless hours. Please go to sleep…please don’t cry…. please, please just sleep, even just for a little while!
Some nights felt never-ending, some weeks felt like decades. Sitting rocking in that chair, trying to figure you out. Wishing the teeth would hurry up and come, rocking, shushing, patting your back gently. Wondering would we ever see sleep again? Feeling like surely you were the only person awake in the whole world at that time, willing sleep to come.
Thinking about the early baby days and hours rocking in The Chair, and how they became less and less hours there, I imagine it like a video collage in timelapse mode.
In my mind we're all moving in super fast motion in and out of the room, up and down from The Chair, the time whizzing by yet slowly passing at the same time. The video in my mind shows each of you starting off tiny, slowly growing bigger.
Sitting in that chair at the start, you're resting on my shoulder with your head nestled into my neck and your tiny little legs only long enough to reach my chest. Whizz on a bit and your legs stretch all the way to my lap. Whizz on some more and your face still nuzzles into my neck, your little arms wrapped around me.
You’re almost sitting sideways now as there is nowhere else for your legs to go. You’ve grown so quickly.
I wonder now, the sleepless nights long enough ago now, exactly why did I wish away those endless nights? All those beautiful baby snuggles, rocking together in the chair as I stared at your eyelashes and wondered at how they were so long.
The two perfect little button noses, and those drooly little mouths twisting in various ways depending on what little dream you were having and what amount of wind you had in your pudgy little bellies after a feed.
I could close my eyes right now and draw each little face perfectly; I have memorised them so well, all those hours of sitting and rocking in The Chair.
And only in the last week, for the first time in almost 4 years, a change arrived. The Chair was made redundant, nobody needing to be rocked gently in order to fall asleep for the night. I sat on the other side of the room and looked at The Chair, and realised: "I’ll never need to sit there again".
I remember reading something a couple of years ago about not realising when the last time you do something, is the last time you’ll do it. I didn’t know that my last time rocking a baby to sleep in The Chair would be the last time I did it. What would I have done differently?
I probably would have stayed there all night.
I’m that mother who feels a bit emotional packing away the baby clothes that don’t fit anymore, holding them up and wondering how either of you ever fit into them in the first place. Were you really that small?
But there’s something different about saying goodbye to The Chair. It’s more of a permanent goodbye. It’s saying goodbye to an era, not just to a small section of time where you used to fit into a particular babygrow.
It’s saying goodbye to a section of my life, a section that was longed for so hard. A section of our lives that we wondered if we’d ever get to experience, and we did. And it just whizzed by so fast.
The Chair was there for it all, from before we even met you both. It rocked us through the rocky parts of becoming new parents, and rocked us calmly through the most peaceful parts too.
I know when it’s not sitting in the corner anymore, that space will remind me that I no longer have two little babies, but will remind me of you both, our two amazing little boys.
