Ask Moxie

Q&A: Imagine no possessions...

Continuing with the sibling theme, Jen writes:

"Our daughter Natalie will be almost 2 1/2 when our second child is born this fall, and I'm getting pretty worried about dealing with jealousy.  I'm specifically concerned about possessiveness related to THINGS - mostly baby gear, maybe clothes & diapers - because we plan to hand down everything we can, given our limited budget.  In the past few months, when friends have come to visit and their children have used some of her outgrown gear (booster seat, Moses basket, blankets) she's been INSANELY possessive.  She is in a big disequilibrium phase right now, and has been for about 4 months, so she should be better when the baby is born... but heading downhill again when the baby is about 3 months - prime time to be starting to play with toys, and moving into "her" stroller, Ergo, etc., etc.

Natalie is very sweet with the children, bringing them small toys and playing with them, but she goes ballistic when they use her stuff.  We had dinner with friends last weekend, and she would not calm down about the baby using her booster high chair - demanding it was her turn, that we take the baby out, warning the baby she had "one minute" left, etc.  We told her she could sit in it when the baby was done, but she kept talking and talking about it the whole time.  It did not make for an enjoyable dinner.  She doesn't show her frustration physically, at least with small babies, but did bite her babysitting buddy (spends at least 2 days a week with him; he's 4 months younger) once when he crawled into the Moses basket that she was playing with (which had been left out from a baby visiting the night before).  I think in a weird way the digital age is compounding the issue - she has seen many pictures of herself as an infant using all of these things and so still feels a strong connection to them even though she's long since outgrown them.

We're not having her give up her crib - the baby will sleep in our room for the foreseeable future - and there are a few other things she won't have to share, but most baby things will naturally be reused.  I do also hope to/plan to tandem nurse, so she won't have to yield the boobs entirely to her sibling.

We're reading a lot to Natalie about babies, and she is very excited about the baby.  She tries to share some things with the baby even now - she will wear a sticker for a few minutes and then put it on my stomach "for the baby".  She likes to sing and talk to the baby.  I think she will be fine overall in the end.  My partner has read Siblings without Rivalry, and it's in my (gargantuan) stack of things to read.  My partner says it's mostly focused on older kids, anyway.  But I envision the scenes when the baby is really here, and taking up some of our time as well as HER things... and I get pretty worried.

Is this one of those grit our teeth and get through it things, or is there something we can do about it?"

Is there any way you can do a hard sell to convince her she's a Big Girl who does Big Girl Things and has Big Girl Toys and Possessions and get her to buy it so thoroughly that she doesn't even care about that Baby Stuff anymore? That's pretty much all I've got. I have no idea how to mediate between a toddler and a baby (and seem to be failing Mediation for Mothers 202: Preschooler to Elementary Schooler for the last week or two, too).

Somebody help, because all I've got in my bag of tricks is manipulation marketing.

For those of you who have or are having or considering second children

So a few more questions came in over the last week or so about second children. A couple of them from people who were either newly pregnant with the second or about to give birth, and were wondering if they were setting themselves up for disaster. The real concern for both those writers seemed to be the overwhelming sense of guilt at breaking up the little party the first child had, combined with the worry that they'd never be able to love the second child the way they loved the first.

I don't know that I have so much to offer here. I definitely felt both those feelings when I was having my second son. And I think it's a mistake to resort to the old "a sibling is the best gift you can give" line to comfort yourself, even if you do believe it. (I do for myself, because my relationship with my brother is the most important relationship I've had, aside from the one with my children.) Because even as wonderful as it is to have a sibling, there is loss for the older child. If nothing else, there's loss of having all the focus (which, again, could also be a good thing), but there's loss of the immediacy and the cocoon.

Does the good outweigh the bad? For my kids, yes. But it's important to acknowledge for yourself that it's not all happiness all the time. Allow yourself to feel a little sad about it, even as you look forward to the baby.

Can I ask a favor? If there's anyone who truly doesn't love their second (or later) child as much as the first, could you comment on it anonymously? I've never heard of it happening, but of course it's something you could never say in public. So if there is someone, please put it here anonymously, and we'll see if it's a realistic fear, or if loving the second one as much as the first is just something you can't imagine until you're there.

The other questions I got were from a very new mom-of-two and one about to pop any second now, who were really terrified of what was going to happen when their help (spouses and family) were gone and they had to be alone with the two kids. The spacing was right around 2 years for both of these moms, and the primary concern was how to keep the older one calm and happy while they got the baby to sleep. And yeah, that's a concern, because a 2-year-old's needs are very immediate, as are an infant's, so it could turn into a donnybrook easily.

Mine were 3 years apart, so my older one watched a lot of Bob the Builder DVDs while I was getting the little one down to sleep in those early days. For those of you with kids spaced closer than 2 1/2 years apart, how did you keep the older one chill while you were getting the little one to sleep? Any and all suggestions welcome.

Q&A: Grieving and loss with a second child

Marina writes:

"Last week there was a post on second child Shangri-la which I read in earnest, hoping to find some help with my own issues around having a second child. I am having much, much sadness over a loss that I could not anticipate with a second child. With my first child, I was "ready" for losing a bit of my identity and having to give up certain things, which I embraced, and I actually enjoyed that transition and moving into a new role for myself. I found such enormous satisfaction in giving 100% to another person and I was able to manage that intense love for a child with a wonderful relationship with my husband, a terrific job, etc.

Now, with the second baby, I'm having another identity shift that is hitting me harder than I expected: the loss of intimacy with my first child. I miss him, our little family of three, our quiet (and loud!) times together, the attention I was able to lavish on him, and so on. He seems unphased by the change, so I think it is just me and my own feelings of loss. I cannot believe how much I am grieving over the closeness that I shared with my first child, a closeness that we barely are able to glimpse these days with a new baby in the house.

I need help processing and coping with this -- all my friends tell me that it was so much easier for them to move from the one child to two children than it was from no children to one child in terms of identity, transition, life, etc. I thought I was a "pro" at being a mom and now this has just knocked the wind right out of my sails.

If you have any advice regarding this, I need it. My family is across the country, I live in a rural area, and I don't have many mom friends. The Moxie community could really help me process this; perhaps many parents out there have experienced this to varying degrees and have some data points about "letting go" or "renegotiating" the relationship with the first child .....It's causing more "blues" than I really need right now."

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

Having my first was tough and really broke me down, but at the same time it taught me how to love another human being. It taught me that I actually could love another human being. And my son and I clicked so well that it just felt natural to be his mother.

And then the second one came, and I loved him instantly (probably sooner than I loved my first one), but our personalities just didn't click as perfectly, and I missed my older one. Those first months were difficult, with a baby I didn't feel I was doing a stellar job with (because there had just been this magical thing with my older son, so comparatively speaking I wasn't as good a mom to the second, I felt) and wanting to be closer to my older son, but not having the ability to with the second one.

It was a rough time, and I also felt like there was something wrong with me because other moms said going to two was so much easier, and I didn't feel like it was easy.

What helped things for me was:

1) The passage of time. As the baby got older I got things together more, got my routines down, and felt like I could have a better balance of time between the two kids.

2) Realizing that my older one needed me less anyway. He was a big boy, and wasn't so dependent on mama. It wasn't bothering him not to be spending as much one-on-one time with me, and maybe that was OK.

3) Working things out with the baby so I could feel that closeness with him, too. I felt like there was a disconnect between us, something that just made us miss each other. What fixed it for us was an offhand remark I made to my therapist (isn't that always the way?) that let him see that what my son was missing from me was something I'd never gotten as a baby (and, guess what--my mother had never gotten as a baby, either!). As soon as I started giving it to him we started to click. And some stuff shook loose in my relationship with my mom at the same time. It was a win-win-win.

I think negotiating the divided mind and affections of having two kids is the biggest problem of having a second child, honestly. (Others might disagree, but I'm sure there are plenty of people who agree with me.) And it takes awhile to find your peace within it, with being a mother of two, with not being the end-all-be-all to your older child, and to having to let this new person into your psyche. Be kind to yourself while you're going through it.

Readers, help for Marina? How did you cope until it started to be OK to have two?

Q&A: Second child Shangrila?

Annette writes:

"Am I missing something? I had my second baby (a boy!) 6 weeks ago. My daughter is 3. So far the new baby stage has been tiring and intense, but nowhere near as horrible as it was with my daughter. Even the growth spurts and Gas Wars (DH's term) have been easier to deal with. My daughter is annoyed that I always have the baby attached to me, but she's been doing lots of playdates and seems basically fine with the situation.

I can't shake the feeling, though, that the poop is going to hit the fan one of these days. Don't people go nuts with two kids? Is it just because the baby is so young? I don't want to get cocky and then end up developing PPD later on because things got hard and I wasn't expecting it."

If there was ever a good question for a group to answer, this is it! We need data points.

For me (and my kids were the same age spread as Annette's) the first 2-3 weeks were a piece of cake, comparatively (but then I had a home birth the second time with no tears and a nice snarky midwife and my mom, and my milk came in like gangbusters and he nursed from the get-go, so it was the dream situation and I was grateful for it the entire time and still am). And he was an amazing sleeper from the get-go.

Then the new baby stuff started to kick in, and my little guy was teething in painful rashy earnest from 6 weeks until his first tooth came in at around 6 months. I'd say that the entire first year of my second son's life was really hard for me. Some of that was that my bond with my older one was so strong that it was hard for me to readjust the relationship between the three of us. Also, there was some pretty awful emotional stuff going on with me at the time that cast a pall over that entire time period. I felt truly isolated from my friends because of that emotional stuff, and also because it was just much harder to get out and to participate with the two kids.

It got easier for me, personally, when the kids started to really interact with each other, which was around 10-11 months or so. Strangely, that was the age at which they started to fight a little over toys. But I think that genuine interaction (instead of just the older brother cooing at the baby thing) was when the corner turned.

If you have two or more children, what was your experience of the first however many months with the second child? Mention the age spread of your kids, any circumstances of the birth that would affect the postpartum phase, and anything else you think is relevant.

Q&A: 20-month-old afraid of an 8-month-old?

Shelley writes:

"I have a 20 month old son and an 8 month old daughter. My son runs and hides behind me and screams frantically whenever my daughter crawls towards him.  What’s up with this?"

Heh. I'm imagining your daughter as a pint-sized Godzilla, storming through Tokyo as your son cowers behind Century Tower.

I think he's probably scared because she's crawling, and that just freaks him out. It's the same reason some adults freak out when we see a mouse running across the floor or a large spider crawling on the wall. Even though we're way bigger than the mouse or the spider, it's the crawling aspect and the "otherness" that scares us.

I have no idea what to do about it, really until she starts to walk, at which point I'm pretty sure he'll stop being afraid of her. Maybe some of the readers have a suggestion about what to do to stop the screaming and cowering? I'll just tell you to make sure you videotape his reaction at least once, because it'll be priceless when they're older.

Q&A: only children

Too many irons in the fire! Sorry about the skipped day.

To the Jill who had the friend who would talk to K, could you email me at AskMoxie@gmail.com with your contact info so I can put you in touch? Thanks.

I've discovered several things in the past few days:

1. In order to use the auto-post feature of Typepad effectively, you have to know what day it is.

2. Green smoothies are excellent, but raw arugula does not taste good in them. (Current green smoothie recipe: raw spinach, mung bean sprouts, greens powder, kefir, raw almonds, a packet of Emergen-C for the winter season, frozen mango, frozen acai or blueberries.)

3. What was I thinking with all the skirts for work? I'm a skirt-wearer by nature, but between dropping my older one at school, walking to the subway, and walking from the subway to my office I walk 1.2 miles every morning. In the freezing winds of NYC. And I work in an office with only men, and my only contact with clients is by phone, so who even cares what I wear? I need more pants.

4. Have you ever been post-shower naked brushing your teeth in the morning, when suddenly both kids and one of the cats bursts in because the older child has decided to be Batman, "but not the real Batman, Mom! I'm a guy with two bats who attacks his brother--Batman! But they're just pretend bats!" and the little one is squealing and laughing and trying to hide behind your legs, and the cat just wants to be part of the action? And then when everyone's finally stuffed into clothes and ready to go, the little one poops? And people wonder why I leave the house with my hair wet.

Now on to today's topic. After that post a few months ago on spacing kids, I got a couple of responses from people about only children.

Lysa writes:

"My husband and I are in our mid-thirties.  We have a 15-month-old son.  We are university professors so money will never be aplenty (but time, at times, will).  We're really on the fence about having another child, for several reasons: resources (we want to give our child/ren everything we can and with two, as crass as it sounds, there'd be less to "go around"); timing and age (again: we're in our mid-thirties and *very* tired); selfishness (as much as we adore and utterly cherish our son, we secretly can't wait to get even a remote semblance of our old life back -- i.e. Preschool era approaching).  And yet, we feel strongly that siblings are somehow essential to well-being and adjustment (I hate that word).  I'm very close with my brother.  An only child himself, my husband feels indifferent: having never had a sibling he doesn't really know what he's "missed," but he also recalls wanting a larger family growing up (never had a dad).

Question: are there significant (i.e. Scientifically proven or obvious) disadvantages to being an only child?  What do people with only children notice?  Any major observations/experiences worth taking into account as we struggle through this indecision?"

Then Lisa wrote:

"Here's my context.  I'm a young, spry 30 year old Canadian that had a very normal childhood.  I have one sibling, 3y9m younger than me.  We fought a lot when we were young and once I hit high school, had very little to do with each other (mainly because of the age difference, dating, etc).  We are much, much closer now and have been since I left home 8 years ago.

My daughter is 17 months old.  Gentle, loving, sweet, beautiful.  Pregnancy was fine, delivery longish, but fine.  Normal breastfeeding challenges in the beginning and we're still going strong.  Sleep is a huge challenge, but we're coping through co-sleeping.

The reason for this preamble: I can see no glaring reason for my unending feelings of NOT WANTING ANY MORE CHILDREN!!!  Not just that I'm not ready for another, but I really don't want to do it all again.

I feel like a freak because of it.  For now, I can just tell family/friends/strangers that I'm just not ready as N is only 17 months, but that will change.

Is being/having an only child really that bad?  Am I a bad parent for only having one?"

You know, I don't follow a lot of the research on the optimum number of siblings to have, or how far apart they should be spaced. But I'm suspicious of a lot of that research anyway, because I think so much of how you relate to any siblings or to being an only, and how you feel about it is a heady mix of 1) how your parents dealt with the situation, and b) luck. And how do you control for that in research studies?

You know, there are people who love being onlies, and are very motivated and feel like they're lucky not to have had siblings. And people who feel desperately lonely being an only. People with one sibling who wished there were more (like me), and people who think one was enough.

One thing I'm pretty sure of, though, is that if parents don't have the emotional resources to deal with more than one kid, they shouldn't set out to have more.

[Before I go on with that, let's point out that you can't always control it. Some people struggle for years to have one, and don't have the luxury of considering having more than one. Some people have one and then can't have another. Some people only want one and then have a surprise baby. So, to a certain degree, this is all hypothetical anyway.]

But back to resources. If you don't feel like you can handle another baby emotionally or in terms of energy or time, you're going to put yourself in a really bad situation by having another one. You'll be stretched too thin to parent as well as you'd like to, and you just won't feel good about your life or yourself. I don't think the same argument can be made as strongly about financial resources, since having two kids isn't two times as expensive as having one. And your financial situation will, presumably, improve over time. You do have to consider how having less money will affect your parenting, in the sense of childcare, working hours, choice about where to live. Giving your kids "the best of everything" doesn't resonate with me personally, because I'd trade anything, including my college education, to have my brother. But there's a big difference between not being able to afford the very best thing because you have to buy two, and being stretched too thin with daycare or having no options for schooling.

So, yeah. You're not horrible for only wanting one. Or for wanting two. Or three, or four, or however many. If you feel that having a sibling is important, then have one. If you don't, you will have to do extra work to set up playdates and activities for your child. But if you do, you'll have the extra work of two kids, so it probably comes out even in the wash.

One thing I would like to say is that when my older one was in that 15-20-month age range, I couldn't even imagine having another child. That period was so lousy for me with the emotional stage of early toddlerhood that the thought of having another child in the mix was enough to drive me over the edge. So my advice for people wondering about this when their child is 15 months or 17 months is that if you think intellectually that you want to have another child, but emotionally don't want to, just make the decision to table it and revisit it in 6 months to a year. Once you're in a new stage, and your child is more verbal, it will probably become more clear to you whether you really want only one, or would like (and could deal with) another one.

Thoughts from the readers? If you got to decide about siblings, how did you decide? Did your decision change at all over time? If you didn't get to decide, how did you reconcile yourself? Regrets? Things you're happy about? Post anonymously if what you say could hurt your child's feelings someday.

Reader call: Is there a best time to have a second child?

We've kind of talked about this previously, but not with as many commenters. I'm hoping everyone will just jump in with their own data points of experience.

Susan writes:

"Talking with my mama friends, one thinks that maybe she is pregnant again (accidentally) and she would feel badly for her 18 month old if she was pregnant because he is still so little and she'd planned to wait until he was school-aged so that both kids could have her focus when they were very young.

Personally, I think it would be better for myself, my husband and our 18 month old boy to wait until he is around 3 before adding another because of our quality of life and having the older child mature enough to understand his new sibling and be helpful etc, and away at at least half-days somewhere.

I'm just wondering if there have been any studies done on if there is a 'best time' for a child to gain a baby sibling and for a family's quality of life, and if the readers want to weigh in and we can do our own study.

Maybe there's no magic time to introduce Child #2, but if there is, it sure would be interesting to hear about!"

The premise is that you actually get to choose the spacing of your kids, which we all know isn't applicable to many of us. But, assuming that you could choose, what does your experience tell you are the pros and cons of different ages?

Personally, I think any age separation could be perfect or bad, depending on how many resources you have (of all types) when the kids are little, how you treat them, and what your priorities are. Everyone knows kids X years apart who are best friends, and kids X years apart who hate each other. Parents who loved the kids at a certain spacing and others who wish their kids weren't spaced at that distance.

So when we're offering our experience, let's talk about what our priorities were for the sibling relationship, whether we think the spacing achieved those goals, and what could have been different.

I'll start. My boys are 3 years and 2 months apart. For me it was important that my older one have his full "turn" to be The Baby, and he was definitely a big boy by the time the second one came. But I also wanted them to be close enough to play together, and to have some time home together before the older one had to be in school all day. Those things my priorities for the sibling relationship, and I think that spacing achieved those two goals.

My older one went to preschool a few days a week when the little one was 4 months old. It was good, in that he had that fun activity and it gave me alone time with the baby. But the logistical challenge of getting to and from school and trying to deal with the baby's nap at the same time made it kind of nasty some days.

My parenting goal continues to be encouraging them to be kind to each other and to work out problems between the two of them. I want them to be able to negotiate with each other and give each other the benefit of the doubt. I am not sure it that would have been as easy if they had been closer together. I suspect that if they'd been spaced more closely (under 2 years) I might not have had the emotional resources to be able to help them navigate their relationship. But who knows? It might have come together even faster than it did.

OK, everyone. Jump in. What were your priorities for the sibling relationship, and do you think your spacing achieved those? Let's pretend for a minute that the world is fair and everyone can space their kids and afford to have as many as they want.

Q&A: mediating between a 3-year-old and a 6-month-old

Kristen writes:

"I am having a sibling problem. I have read your posts on the topic, read Siblings Without Rivalry and Between Parent and Child and still can't seem to find a solutions.

I have 2 daughters, 3 yo and 6 months. The 3 year old has some jealously especially when I have to nurse the baby and lie down with her to get her to sleep. It is a tantrum every time the baby needs a nap no matter what measures I take to avoid it. It usually ends with her lying in the hall outside my room crying that she doesn't want to be left alone. Eventually she will go into her room to play. No go nursing the baby to sleep in a communal room, she's too distracted.

The other problem is that the 3 year old likes to wrestle with the baby. She thinks it is hugs and kisses but it's really pulling and grabbing. The 6 month old is really active, crawling and pulling to standing but not exactly steady on her feet, I don't feel that pulling and grabbing (sometimes picking her up) is a safe interaction. Right now I have to separate her from the baby and repeat that this is not a safe way to play, I usually get an "ok, ok, alright' and then she is back at it, until eventually she is in her room and we are all crying.

I am at my wits end trying to deal with these issues. (It would really help if I could get a good night's sleep, but that's a whole other battle) I do my best to give my oldest some special time when the baby is asleep. I am so mixed up and hugely afraid that I am causing problems instead of solving them."

This evening I'm going to put up a weekend review of the classic book Your Three-Year-Old: Friend or Enemy by Ames and Ilg. I think if Kristen gets a chance to read this book she'll see that this sounds like a 3-year-old problem, and not a sibling problem necessarily.

The dirty little secret that most parents of kids 3 years apart (like, oh, say, me) won't tell you is that 3-year-olds can be amazing little creatures, but at a certain point they become cranky little jerks. And it's kind of a crapshoot where in the cycle you'll end up when you have your baby. So you could have a newborn and a sweet loving 3-year-old angel, but then later a 6-month-old and a 3 1/2-year-old cranky jerk. Or you could have a newborn and a cranky jerk, and then 6 months later a 6-month-old and an angel.

In other words, this isn't your fault. And there's not really much you can do to make the older one suddenly become loving and not jealous. Because she is jealous, and that's appropriate, if not particularly adaptive. But she's also just at a tough age.

I can tell you what I did, with some success. No guarantees that my ideas will work, so I'm hoping we'll get great comments with other ideas.

For the nursing down for naps problem, use the TV. We had a Bob the Builder DVD that my older son was only allowed to watch while I was nursing the younger one down for naps. Because it was limited to that time, he'd get really excited to see it, so he actually started looking for ward to my leaving the room to get the other one to sleep so he could watch that DVD. Bonus: I never had to see the first part of the DVD because I was in the other room nursing. So if your child loves some video you can't stand, this could be the nursing-your-sister-to-sleep video (hello, Wiggles).

For the too-rough play, all I could do was just try to be on top of it as much as I could. It was excruciating to have to be there all the time (and I got nothing done), but there were a few months when that was all that worked. There were brief periods in which I could give the older one a job and he'd do it or help me do it, and that would distract him, but for the most part it was just constant vigilance.

From having read Siblings Without Rivalry I knew not to set up any situations in which I was getting angry or telling him he was bad for interacting with his brother (even when that interaction was covertly malicious). So I'd just praise him for the good interactions, and then kind of play dumb about the intent behind the bad ones and try to distract him the way you would a young toddler.

It sucked, but it got us through those evil months.

I'll have my review of the book up for this weekend, and it's a book I highly recommend. Three years is both the best of times and the worst of times, and the Ames and Ilg book really lays it all out and lets you know that you're not crazy for thinking your child is both Jekyll and Hyde, and it's also not anything you did to make them that way. So I think reading that book will help you get a little breathing room emotionally.

Can anyone else offer practical suggestions for dealing with the immediate problems?

Q&A: four-year-old twins waking in the middle of the night

Cathy writes:

"we have 4yr old twin girls (they sleep in the same room)
within the past couple months one of them wakes up between 1:30am - 4:30 am just to "play" with her toys
she throws a temper tantrum every time we tell her to go back to sleep because it's not time to wake up yet
we have even told her that it's time to wake up when the sun comes up but that doesn't work
we're all tired and frustrated...HELP!!!"

Just awful. I don't have twins, but I have two kids who share a bedroom, and it just makes you want to yank your brain out through your ear when one of them wakes the other one up, especially on purpose.

I don't know if there's any way to stop your daughter (I read the question as it being one of the girls waking up consistently, not the two of them taking turns waking) from waking up, and am guessing that it's a phase she's going through. My suspicion is that if you stopped caring about it she'd get bored and go back to sleep, and after a few nights of this would stop waking up.

So that means the question is how you can stop her from waking her sister. If you could stop her from waking her sister, then it really wouldn't matter if she woke up to play with her toys, because the other three of your could stay asleep. (And if the other three of you stayed asleep she might give up and go to sleep herself from boredom.)

I think there has to be another room involved in this somehow. Either you could separate them for sleep, or make the waking sister go into another room silently to play with the toys. I wouldn't want to have to deal with switching the beds and sleep, so I'd choose to make a rule about going into another room to play. But that's obviously me, and you might want to go the other way. I think if you did make her go into another room (assuming you feel it's safe to do this--my older son could have been trusted not to get into any trouble in the middle of the night, but not all kids could be, and I predict his brother won't be at that age) you'd find her asleep on the floor in the morning.

If this is making your stomach turn because you just can't see separating them or letting her be alone in a room awake in the middle of the night, we're going to have to go back to the drawing board. As you all have figured out, I tend to look for the thing that seems the most direct, but there are often tricks that I'm just not seeing. So does anyone have any suggestions for Cathy? And if you can come up with a way to get a four-year-old to obey we'll all send you chocolate and beer.

Q&A: preparing a young toddler for a new sibling and second deliveries

Ladre writes:

"My husband and I are expecting our second baby in November.  Our first child will be less than 20 months old at that time - is there anything we can do to prepare him for the change about the come?

Also, just a quick question about second deliveries: any truth that they are easier/faster than the first? My Ob/Gyn said yes, but of course, there are exceptions to that.  My first labor was wonderfully easy and fairly quick (11:30 am at the hospital, 6:30 pm delivery) so of course I'm keeping my fingers crossed for at least a repeat of that.  Hoping to get some stories from others so that I have some idea what to expect."

Hmmm. My kids are 3 years apart, so I don't have any personal experience with prepping a toddler that age for a new sibling. I'm going to need Menita and anyone else with kids very close together to jump in and talk about what you did that was good, what you did that maybe you wouldn't have done in hindsight, and what you wish you'd done that you didn't.

About the second labors: I've heard tons and tons of birth stories, and it seem to me that vaginal second births (after first vaginal births) seem to go one of two ways. Either they start suddenly and are really forceful and short (6-8 hours from start to finish doesn't seem uncommon) so it's like having your first labor condensed into half or less of the time, or else you have on-off labor for days that annoys you and makes you think the baby is never actually going to come out but then all of a sudden things turn around and the baby's out in 1-3 hours. (I had the second type, with contractions every 12-15 minutes from Sunday evening 'til Tuesday morning, then suddenly I went into hard labor and he was out in an hour.)

But either way it's easier, because you know what to expect, you know you can do it, and you know you've got bigger fish to fry than the labor.

I can't think of a second labor story I've heard that hasn't been better, in some way, than the first labor story. Either you have an easier vaginal delivery, you have a scheduled c-section, or you try a VBAC and are proud of yourself for trying whether you end up delivering vaginally or by c-section. I really think so much of it is being prepared mentally and knowing you can mother a child.

Anyone who wants to share a story of a second birth (especially compared to a first birth), please tell us!