The Chair

Last week we sold the glider and ottoman that had been in the kids' nursery for years. I'm not sure why, but I was very sad to see it leave the house. Maybe I'm sad because it was the last piece of "baby" furniture we had.  The crib is long-gone, and while A still has the original bookcase and dresser in her room that the kids used as babies, those pieces of furniture are not "baby" furniture, and she'll use them for years to come. 

I remember picking out the glider, over 8 years ago, when I was pregnant with D. We chose a calming sage green color, which would match the Classic Pooh theme we had going on in the nursery.  The glider rocked, and had a matching ottoman.  The ottoman had a pull-down panel on which to rest my feet, which was perfect for nursing.  We put the glider in a cozy corner of D's bedroom, next to a Winnie the Pooh lamp that glowed warmly, close to his crib.

I spent many, many hours in that chair with D.  I nursed him for 14 months, and lots of the nursing took place in that chair.  That's also where we read to him nightly, rocking back and forth.  Books like "Good Night Moon" and "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?" and "Guess How Much I Love You?"  All books that will forever be in my memory, books that I can probably recite verbatim today. 

When A was born, and finally came home from the hospital (at 12 weeks old) we had to move the chair.  We had too much medical equipment in the room.  We had the IV pole on which a bag of (my pumped) milk would drop in to her feeding tube. We had a sat monitor, to measure her blood oxygen level. We had a suction pump to suction out the secretions in her tracheostomy.  We had a 3 tiered cart filled with her medical supplies.  There was no cozy corner anymore; instead, her room looked more like a hospital room. We moved the glider to the middle of a wall.  I never got to nurse her on it, as she never nursed, only had the feeding tube.  And while we did do her nightly booktime on the glider, it just didn't have the same feeling as it did with my son.

Eventually, we took the glider and ottoman out of her room, in order to make the space more roomy.  We put it in our room.  My intention was that I would use it to sit and read MY books...but of course I never did that. It sat in our room for a few years, with a pile of papers cluttering the chair and J's clean laundry pile sititing on the ottoman.  We knew we had to get rid of it, and finally, last week, a buyer from Craig's List came, paid for it, and hauled it away.

Before it left, I sat in the chair one last time. I took my son,  who is now 8, and held him like a baby, rocking to him and singing him the song I made up for him as an infant. I did the same for my daughter, cuddling her and singing to her.  The chair didn't hold the same good memories for me with her as it did for my son, and that makes me sad.  And now all the baby furniture is....gone.