Mama Josie

Jaden has gotten mobile lately. He's not full-out crawling, but he is getting around.

Yesterday, as he succeeded at getting ahold of Josie, our golden retriever, I remembered when they first met and it brought tears to my eyes.

Josie is a very needy dog. When I was pregnant, she followed me around very closely and was so attached to me. She is Justin's dog and I'm not a huge fan of indoor dogs, so it was especially strange that she was so attached to me.

We brought Jaden home at 9pm the night after he was born. He was crying when we walked through the door. The cat freaked and Josie got really excited about the cat and confused about the crying. I was instantly terrified of the cat being anywhere near the baby, but somehow, I knew that Josie was going to be ok.

When we settled in to bed that night, Jaden cried for 6 hours straight. I couldn't do anything all night long to console him. Our bedroom was in the basement then and we had our door closed so that we wouldn't keep the whole house up. We had to let Josie in with us because she was going crazy outside the door. That dog paced the floor all night. She barked a couple of times, but all I had to do was assure her that it was ok and she would stop barking, but she continued to whine and pace all night. She never tried to hurt him. She was just very concerned. Back and forth around the bed, whining and pacing. She was so worried about him.

During those early weeks of colic, she would often go to him when he was crying. She was so attentive. Even though I was concerned that she would be jealous, she never was. She always kept her distance, but was close enough by to make sure everything was ok.

I'm still not a huge fan of indoor dogs, but she'll always have a special place in my heart just because of that first night home and how concerned she was for the new baby.