When it was just the three of us, Elliott, Steve and I, I didn’t think things could get better than what we had. We didn’t have loads of money, we lived in a small house and we car shared, no designer labels on our clothes, but we were so happy. We idolised him, and he did us. He was the centre of our earth and we gravitated around him. 
When Steve and I decided to try for another baby (for the purposes of my dad, held hands), I knew it was the right thing to do and I so desperately wanted to be pregnant again. We were incredibly fortunate to fall easily and very quickly the rug was pulled from under me – but it won’t just me us anymore! All of a sudden I was mourning something that would die the moment the new baby came along. There would no longer be the three amigos, we were going to need to make room for one more person. I actually found this really hard to come to terms with. I felt like this baby was about to ruin all the goodness, all the fun. In hindsight it was the beginnings of prenatal depression, I just didn’t see it.
I tried to suck in all the tiny moments alone with Elliott because I knew they’d be ending soon. I felt like it was a long and slow goodbye to a friend that wouldn’t leave but I couldn’t see anymore. 
Elliott was desperate for a sibling, he couldn’t wait to have someone to share bunk beds with (quite frankly I do not have the strength to cope with the little bastards jumping off the top bunk onto each other just yet), he was so excited about sharing Christmas morning with a brother. He just wanted another kid to do kid stuff with, although he regularly tells me now he wishes I could just put Toby back to which I explain how that could never happen. 
Truth is I did love my time with Elliott. I loved how much we all slotted in. For a good while I felt Toby was an unwanted intruder to the family who totally upset the apple cart. It was a tough transition for us all. I fast forward to me now, sitting here, with tears dripping from my chin onto my chest as I look through the photos of them, playing, laughing, hugging, dancing. Somehow in amongst the chaos of our lives all of a sudden that earth we gravitated around grew and that mourning feeling disappeared and turned into contentment and adoration.
You fall in love with your first child and find the idea of ever loving anything that much again absolutely impossible, and yet it happens. They capture your heart, no matter how much you might resist or feel you don’t have it in you, it catches you. That overwhelming love for each one of your children happens. You don’t understand how it’s possible to stretch to those dizzy heights and yet you reach it and beyond.
Even now, after all this time of juggling the two of them, sometimes I’ll take his little hand in mine and I’ll just gravitate around his little life, all on our own, giving him my undivided attention, just like old times. The moments he no doubt misses with his Mummy. He calls me the best and I tell him how much I love him.
Crazy little thing called love.