Micah on the Baby

'Mommy am I going to have two babies like Ellie Bellie' (a family from our church just had twins.)

'No, Micah the doctor said that there is just one baby.'

'Why?'

'Well because God only put one baby in mommy.'

'That mommy and daddy took my baby brother and now you only have one baby sister in your tummy.'

Micah starts to cry.


So, I am sure you are wondering what she is talking about when she says that the mommy and daddy took her baby brother. Let me explain. About three months ago my dad broke his ankle and had to have surgery on his leg. When we walked up to the hospital to see him in the ER, Micah said 'Yeah lets go get a baby.' We explained to her that it was not time to go get a baby and that it was inside mommy growing. We told her that it would be a long time until the baby was ready to come out. We thought she understood. After we visited with my dad, she asked to go see the babies. We told her we could just go look and see if there were any new babies. When we got to the nursery window, there was a new little baby boy that was a Mexican, with a head full of black hair, being bathed by his father. He looked very sweet, so we stood there for awhile and talked to the girls about how the baby's daddy was giving it a bath. Then they put the baby down in a bed right in front of the window. Micah's first response, 'oh no - his bottom is hurt.' We then tried to explain to her that he was okay, that he was just a boy, and little boys have different parts. After a few more minutes, the baby's father comes around to the viewing side to take pictures of his son through the window. We tell him congratulations and have Micah tell him congratulations too. Then we leave. A few days after that Micah started talking about how she was going to have a little brother. We never thought much of it - until a couple weeks later she tells Clay and I that we need to go get her baby brother from the doctor's. We told her that the baby was still in my tummy. She kept persisting that we needed to go get her baby brother from the doctor, her baby that had black hair. Then we understood that she somehow thought we were picking out our new baby when we looked through the window. So we tried to explain to her that that was not her brother, that mommy still had her baby, and it would be awhile until we had it. We also told her that the little boy that we saw at the hospital had a mommy and daddy who loved it and he went home with them. Then she started crying, 'THEY TOOK MY BABY BROTHER.' So Clay and I hope that she will not always be traumatized by the idea that we gave away her brother.