I wrote this post a while back and i thought i would share it here..Not sure if it quite fits into motivational monday but i know quite a few ladies who are facing or have recently faced the big springboard jump into mummy to more than one. So i thought this might just be suited to a day devoted to keeping on…so here it is:
Going back for seconds . . .
So this is you proudly cutting your 1-year-old baby’s birthday cake, smiling with contentment and happiness. Look what you did; just check it out for a moment. You’ve navigated pregnancy, child birth, newborns, no sleep, baby sick, weaning, crawling,house proofing and many other milestone achievements and you may be starting to feel “ah yes…I can do this, it hasn’t killed me, I haven’t broken the baby they handed me at delivery and we all survived!”
Then what happens?
tick tick tick …… . . you start thinking about another. Was it that moment when you held your friend’s newborn baby and suddenly your womb ached for another tiny miracle or was it that evening when mummy and daddy had their first night out without little one, drank some vino and found themselves looking, misty eyed across the table at each other and suddenly think: “hey, I remember you”.
And…boom…or maybe bang is more appropriate! Two blue lines and you are suddenly a family of 4.
My daughter was born a month before my son’s second birthday and I have to admit as a first time mum I had felt fairly prepared. I was just into my thirties at the time and was and still am a Neonatal Nurse so I wasn’t scared of handling babies and in all honestly I guess it came to me fairly easily. So thinking and planning another baby wasn’t a difficult decision. We knew we didn’t want an only child and so it made sense to just get on with it so to speak.
I hadn’t anticipated finding another baby that much of a challenge. I mean, I knew that managing two was going to be a lot harder physically than one but I hadn’t given any thought to any other aspects of the adjustment we would have to make as a family.
because it is an adjustment, no matter how many times people say ‘oh another baby will just have to fit in.’ Ever heard those words? Lies.
My delivery with my daughter was very different to my son. It was FAST. She was born 40 minutes after I walked into the delivery room and with no time for any pain relief (which I had for my son). I remember afterwards thinking “wow don’t remember it hurting like that!” I was actually surprised to find myself worrying about my son all the way through my delivery and actually just wanting to get home and be with him.
I remember actually getting really upset about it even though my son was in no way upset by me leaving the house. We actually didnt leave until he was in bed and then my OH was back before he woke! Hey presto..here’s your sister! 🙂
It was just me, I missed him, I think I missed our connection and that was something, that at the time, I didn’t know I would ultimately have to let go of in some ways.
Initially we just got on with it and although there was the very scary first time out with just me and the two little kids. I managed okay I think. It wasn’t until my daughter was about 6 weeks old that it finally hit me.
I actually didn’t know what I was doing.
I was emotionally all at sea, floundering in a world I thought I had hold of. I was doing the mechanical job of being a mother but internally I was struggling with the reality that was slowly dawning on me. I could no longer be the mummy I had been to my toddler when it had just been him. No i couldn’t play trains or read a book whenever he felt like it. Oops just watch the baby when you climb onto mummy’s lap..you know the drill.
And of course on the other hand I most definitely couldn’t be the indulgent ‘sit and cuddle’ first time mum to my newborn.
Emotionally I was starting to fall too bits. It wasn’t that I didn’t have enough love for these two little people, I just had to re-define this most precious of relationship that I had and would have with my children.
It took me a while but what I discovered (and still continue to do so) is that it’s a bit like when you have your first baby, you become a mother and you have to leave behind the independent single that you were. It’s a bit of a shock at first and you might lament its passing now and again but now you wouldn’t have it any other way.
When you have your second baby you have to, in some ways,leave behind the ‘mum to a singleton’ that you were. Not completely of course but you have to let go of that exclusivity and accept a new status quo.
Your kids have to share you and that fact comes with its limitations on you as well as them.
Things, for me, anyway did actually have to change. I tried for a while to convince myself that I could do both. I set about being the ‘I must not let my toddler feel pushed out’ mother and ended up running myself into the floor, dragging my tiny daughter to all the tumble tots, sing-a-along sessions I could fit in. Then by night or whenever my son was not around I would hold my little girl and weep over how much of the time she was in her car seat and largely being ignored. I found myself “hmmm”ing at the health visitor’s “does she enjoy tummy time?”and “is she following with her eyes”when there were points when my honest answer would have “I have no idea.”
But it is what it is, being a mum to more than one means there will always be the eternal struggle to divide yourself up into equal chunks for everybody. It just isn’t always possible; to be honest it’s hardly ever completely possible. The trick is how to deal with it and not let the guilt swallow you whole. In all honesty the more kids there are the person that looses the most on chunks of time is mummy, so be kind to yourself. I always have said, and i realise that this might sound a bit dramatic but i believe you have to grieve the indulgent ‘just the two of us’ relationship you had and grief is a process so give yourself time.
Once I allowed myself to be a ‘mummy of two’ rather than a ‘mummy to one with a newborn in tow’ it got a lot easier.
We both knew that having another baby was a great thing for my son.He might not think that but..Really, I promise it is if you are in a place of wondering about it right now. Your child might not agree with you initially but you are giving your child an amazing gift of being and having a sibling. Your sweet second born will never know any different and yes they might exhibit some attention seeking behaviour when they get older because they have been born needing to compete for mummy time but then any of us who are the younger sibling would probably say with certainty that we got off a bit lighter than our eldest brother or sister because we weren’t the first to test those boundaries. I reckon it all balances out eventually.
As for your beloved first-born they will not only benefit from a sibling to learn important lessons like ‘how to share’ ‘how to work together’ but they WILL benefit from loosing a bit of that limelight because that glare can be a bit too much for anyone to cope with all the time. 🙂
Now I clearly overcame this fairly well as I now have 5 children and the insane idea that I could be an all attentive, no distraction mum is about as far fetched as a soap opera story line. But my kids carry each other and work together, fight, squabble, work it out and then squabble some more.Its teaching them about family, messy, chaotic but so very necessary.
Just yesterday i watched from afar as my youngest daughter went and sat in her elder brother’s lap. He popped his arm round her waist and she patted his knee. Thats a heart melting family moment when regardless of how annoying she is to him (which is quite a lot these days). They are still knit together by those bonds of sibling-hood.
That fact alone has got to make the journey from mum of one to mum of more was so very worth it.
just like to point out that these two lovely girls are not my own kids but an image from a shoot i did last year of two very cute siblings. 🙂
My little giveaway this week is a ingenious tool for photographers…and not just pro’s. Its called a white balance lens cap and you pop it on the front of your camera and your camera can set the correct white balance from it for whatever light situations you are in. Its a great little tool!! this is it below. So if you are interested just fill in the rafflecopter details below.
a Rafflecopter giveaway
