“¡Hola mundo! Soy Aniela” 😀 So if you haven’t heard the news, my little Bilingüita was born 🙂 If you’d been following along with my pregnancy via Instagram or the podcast, you’ll know that we had no idea who to imagine we were expecting, since we didn’t know if the baby was a boy or a girl. Well, Anielita surprised us all by being una niña! And she is one loved little girl at that!
I decided to do these monthly updates throughout Aniela’s first year (and then probably quarterly for her second year) as a way to track her development and language milestones for the both of us. I’m only going to share a little bit of general updates, and try to focus primarily on language for the purpose of this blog but I’ve figured out that by sharing it, it helps me to keep track of everything more diligently. And I’m able to write out a lot more about each month that probably won’t make it into the posts but at least I’ll have it for my own records to look back on one day 🙂 I hope these monthly updates help other new moms and other families who are interested in bilingual parenting to see what it looks like month to month with a new bilingüito.
December, 2019 – Aniela’s first days
Weight: 6 lbs 15 oz
Height: 20.5 in
Clothing size: Newborn (but could fit premie when born)
Diaper size: Newborn (but had to fold down to make it fit)
Nicknames: Anielita, Mami, (those two will stick forever) and then the nurses & hospital staff would always call her Big Girl and my favorite nurse would call her Kiddo <3
She’s starting to: Hold her head up on her own – yes as a complete newborn!!! Everyone was in disbelief
She no longer: Lives in my belly 😭
Favorite word/phrase: Obviously this one doesn’t quite apply yet, but we say “¡Hola mami!” a lot and seems to perk up when she hears us engaging her 🙂
One thing that’s saving our lives right now: Avent Soothie pacifier – they gave her one in the hospital when she was going through phototherapy treatment for her jaundice. She took to it right away. I swore up and down that I was not going to introduce a pacifier, at all. Before, I was like “My kid’ll be tough! They won’t need a pacifier.” LOL Yeah well, baby’s got a strong sucking reflex and mama needs a break 😛
First Days General Updates
So I haven’t written Aniela’s birth story out, or even fully told it to anyone yet, as I’m not there yet… I need time to process it all still. But one day I will do that! Soon – before I forget too much. For now, I’ll just share about those first few days that we spent at the hospital before jumping into the monthly posts.
The first few days in the hospital were really nice actually (all things considered). We had great nurses, the food was pretty good, and lots of friends and family came by to visit. We were just still in awe of the little human we had made. I never realized the extent of what people meant when they would talk about how in love they were with their new little baby. I get it now. It’s like a new kind of love that you’ve never known; one you could never imagine. I can just remember what it was like to see her for the first time, to now know who she was after nine months of such mystery. Her big dark eyes looking up at me, her little body clinging to my chest. This tiny little human. It was just unlike any other moment of my life.
The first couple days with her passed by like a dream. Everything felt surreal. Granted, those first few days were some of the hardest of my life as well. My body and mind were worn out. The adrenaline from labor eventually wore off and I crashed hard. But the bonding as a family of three was incredible (or family of six if you include my parents and my sister!). And I just kept looking at her and couldn’t believe that it was HER that I had been carrying for nine months. She looked nothing like me but I still had this feeling of “you’re my mini-me!” Alfredo and I were (and still are) over the moon, and we can’t wait to raise our little daughter, our bilingüita.
“¡Es una niña!”
Language Updates
The first words I uttered upon meeting here were “¡Es una niña!” We were holding our breath to see WHO and what 😛 are little baby was, since, as I mentioned, we didn’t know the gender in advance and certainly didn’t have a name picked out because of it. My husband and I looked at each other in awe and disbelief upon meeting our little daughter – “¡es una niña!” My first words about her were in Spanish, and it’s fitting because right away it just felt so natural to talk to her in Spanish as well. It came naturally to coo at her, to ask her questions, to talk to her – all in Spanish. I remember, moments after the “it’s a girl!” revelation, she was placed on me and she looked up with her big eyes, head resting on my chest, and I held her tight and just started talking to her. “¿Y esa lengüita?” (she kept moving her tongue in and out of her month, I don’t know why but it was so cute) “Mírate, que hermosa… y esos ojotes? ¡Hola, hola hermosa!”
Throughout the next few days (we stayed at the hospital five days in total, but that’s another story), Alfredo and I would marvel at her in Spanish. The nurses would come in and hear me talking to her in Spanish. Some didn’t say anything, but some were curious — “What language is that?” “You know Spanish?” “Are you guys going to speak to her in Spanish?” — and it was a fun conversation starter about bilingual parenting. 😉 Very occasionally though, I found myself talking to her in English when the nurses were there. It was almost as if to include the nurses in on our conversations (“conversations” with a two day old lol) OR as if to include Aniela in on the conversations I was having with the nurses. It was interesting to realize that something triggered a language switch while others were present. It’d be interesting to analyze just exactly what triggered it, because it wasn’t all the time. But besides that, I’m happy to report that our language between the two of us has been Spanish and very naturally so.
The story behind her name
Many people have asked about her name, so I figured I’d share a bit about it. I was in search of a unique name that wasn’t too hard to pronounce or spell, and also that would work well in both English and Spanish. We had a few boy names ready to go, but girl names that I loved were harder to come by. One of our Bilingüitos families has a baby named Aniela and, as her mom told me, the name is Polish and means ‘angel.’ I loved the name as it is so ‘único’ and sounds like it could be Spanish. And hey, I thought, I’m Polish (from my mom’s side) and I sound like I could be Spanish 😛 Hahaha, just kidding. But I loved the name and it reminded me of a name I’d heard frequently in Nicaragua, Anielka. I remember on one of my trips to Nicaragua before moving there, I was with a team from my church and there was a gentleman with us who was from Poland. When he met one of the girls at the school we were working at and heard that her name was Anielka, he couldn’t believe it! “That’s the name of the Polish princess from a well-known children’s story!” And so he had me translate the story to tell to the little girl, and she loved it.
Well, more recently in my search for a girl name, I came to find out that the ‘-ka’ ending on that name is something like the ‘ito/ita’ ending in Spanish. So actually, the name Anielka is just the diminutive form of Aniela, like another way to say Anielita, or ‘little angel’/’God’s little messenger.’ So that fact confirmed it for me – not only was the name a cool Polish/Spanish combination with a beautiful meaning; it was also a reminder of my time in Nicaragua (which, by the way, I still don’t know how a Polish name became so popular in Nicaragua, but it is – I know at least three girls with that name!). So that’s the story behind her name. 🙂
Our hope with these posts is that aspiring bilingual families, new parents, and expecting mamás-to-be alike will benefit from month-by-month updates of bilingual parenting in action.
We hope you’ve enjoyed this milestone post! Our hope with these posts is that aspiring bilingual families, new parents, and expecting mamás-to-be alike will benefit from month-by-month updates of bilingual parenting in action. Want to connect with us online? Follow along with my personal Instagram, and with our Bilingüitos Instagram or our Facebook. Also, join in on the bilingual parenting conversation in our Facebook Group, the Bilingual Parenting Network!
