Baby books

Today I found these baby books I was given when I was expecting. I started flipping through them to see what I had written and I saw that they are practically empty. And I was heartbroken. Now I know you could easily forget to fill them out or get fed up after the baby is a few weeks old and just stop doing it. ( I mean who has the time to document every step of their baby's journey when they are dealing with a newborn !! And don't even get me started on the 2nd baby... sure you barely have time to take their photo at the start 🙈. )
But that's not what got me so upset. I realised that I had stopped because the kids just weren't hitting the milestones so I couldn't fill it up. I couldn't write Kirsty's first time waving goodbye or singing along to her favourite song because those things actually haven't happened yet. It must be 3 years since I stopped filling them out and still today I can't write those dates down. I can't fill in the chapter on Logan's first time saying Mama or Dadda because he hasn't said them. Those 2 iconic words that you dream about all through your pregnancy and after. When I got those baby books I so desperately wanted to be of those mothers tutting and saying " after all my hard work he says Daddy first. "
Now nothing would give me more pleasure than to hear my little boy call his daddy.

It's amazing how you can plod along in life and then something so unexpected can just floor you.
Reading those books, rifling through empty page after empty page I just felt truly gutted. I was consumed with a feeling of grief for what we have lost out on. I try to be positive and think of what is hopefully to come but what if it doesn't? Hope can be amazing but it also scares me. If our hopes and dreams for our kids don't come true, how do we live with that? Sure, we can only ask that they will always be safe and happy but I'd be lying if I said we didn't want more for them. Every parent does.

Flipping through that book brought me back to the days when we first heard autism and how absolutely devastated we felt. How everything was so unsure and unclear. I look at how far they have come and us, and I know we are doing everything we can do. But those empty pages tore through me. They were blank but somehow there was so much on them.

I almost felt angry at them. Like they were taunting me with their expectations of what a child should be doing at a certain age and time. Is everything that is acceptable in life on a schedule ? What about those that don't follow it? Where do they fit in ? Where is their baby book ? Maybe I should make one and call it " Their Steps ".
Their own little milestones at their own little pace and no guilt or hurt for the parents involved. Fill it out when and if you can, and if not write something else. Maybe my child didn't use a fork by 3 but they lined up every spoon in my drawer with perfect precision!!
It's an idea. I know a book like that wouldn't have resulted with me in tears tonight. I didn't have the heart to throw them away so for now they are hidden in a cupboard. Maybe some day I'll go back to them and complete those entries.
Some day...

💜💙💚💛❤️