From One Child to Two
So I have discovered item number 3,257,002 that people don't talk about with regard to motherhood. This, my friends, in an article on having a second child, and the trials this second birth brings that no one talks about.
I just checked on my almost three-year-old son after tucking him in to bed about an hour and a half ago. I came downstairs to send out the invitations to his birthday party (Diego themed, of course) and I realized I had tears streaming down my face (again). I'm assuming that most of these tears can be blamed on hormones and the fact that I had our second baby a whopping twelve days ago. But in this moment, right now, I'm really sad.
My husband and I wanted to add on to our family mostly because we wanted our first-born to have siblings and know sibling love, and well, learn how to share attention and love.
But we have both found that since the time she was born, we are having a really hard time adjusting. We both love our second child, there is no question about that, but we miss our first-born! We both have the feeling that we haven’t seen him in a while, and as we were so busy focusing on him and making sure he was OK with the transition, we didn’t stop to think about how the transition might affect us. On top of that, we feel like we aren't as attentive to our second child as we were to our first. Oh the guilt that brings on!
Again, I'm aware that as I write this, I'm under the influence of hormones — nothing to shake a stick at. And perhaps the feelings of sadness will go away. But as I've expressed this feeling of confusion and surprise to my friends who have more than one child, they have all nodded sagely as I’ve expressed my concerns. So this tells me that I'm not alone in this experience.
I have likened this adjustment to the one that a romantic relationship goes through when a child enters the picture. Suddenly, sexual organs aren't so sexy any more, and they're being used for something other than pleasure. Date nights have to be scheduled, not spontaneously indulged in and flirtation or jumping in the car for a long weekend — all of these things either disappear completely or become very rare. Life just changes. The romantic relationship that existed one second before the child was born, is completely altered. It's still there, but it’s not the same relationship.
And, while the addition is wonderful and exciting, there is something that is mourned at the same time. The door on the "old way" is closed, and we are left to find our way, quite blindly, through the "new way" door.
I have found myself going through this experience again — only the "old way" I am missing is the relationship with my son. I'm not sure how to just be with him any more. When I play cars with him on the floor, I always have one ear cocked for the baby. When I am nursing the baby, I find myself over-reacting, in a positive way, to everything my son does so he doesn't feel left out.
Then there is the guilt about not feeling as “bonded” with the second child as we did the first. Everything feels much more mechanical this time around. Like, we know what to expect and when to expect it, so the "magic" of the baby isn't here this time.
I think that's having both a positive and negative affect on this experience. Positive in that I'm not nearly as stressed out as I was with our first. My milk is flowing much better, I'm sleeping better, the new baby seems really happy and I’m not worried about every sound I hear from her or every face she makes. She's beautiful, we love her, she eats, she poops, she sleeps, the end.
The negative side is that because I'm not going through the same experience, I feel like there is something missing in me, the mom. How can I not fret about every noise and face? What’s wrong with me? Am I turning into a bad mom? Am I playing favorites already? Is it just hormones? Will this go away?
I was prepared for her personality to be different, or for her to be a difficult baby as he was so easy. I was prepared for the idea that she may be different from her brother. But what I was not prepared for was a difference in the way I felt about being her mother. This part has really thrown me for a loop. I'm sure it will pass, and all of you incredibly patient mothers who have three or four children would pat me on the shoulder and tell me it gets better.
I share all of this because as I've been talking to other moms, I've found that this is in fact another "dark side of the moon" secret about motherhood that people don’t talk about. I think we should be talking about it. I'm not the only new mom to go through this, and I certainly won't be the last. And I think it’s important that we know we're "normal" (well, as normal as any of us really are…ha ha), and that it's OK.
I've been promised by the moms that have gone through this that it does get better, and that the family dynamic, while altered forever, will settle down and we will all find our places. Even I will forgive myself for not fretting over this one like I did the last, and I will learn to rely on everything I've learned as a mother and trust that my new little one knows I love her and she will grow and flourish — and might even become a little bit more self-reliant than the first born.
You know, because I won't be in her face fretting about every move she makes.
Author: Sarah
