We look at the newborn world that surrounds us now and it’s fun for us to play ‘spot the first time parents’ because they are so scared and bewildered. Much like we were then. She doesn’t get picked up until she makes urgent cries, she is coddled much less, and only changed if she doesn’t pass the smell test. Yet she is content. Mummy doesn’t even keep track of her feeding and sleeping patterns like she did rigidly with S. I had to ask my mother when was the last time I bathed/ top and tailed L. Newborns just seem so much cleaner than toddlers who need to be washed so many times a day and bathed daily because they are just big germ bags.
Yes compared to her sister she is the sweet one now because there is no sass, only coos. She doesn’t try to manipulate us for treats or to delay bed time. We don’t have to treat her like a ticking tantrum mine field and she certainly seems assertive enough when poked at or roughly manhandled by her older sibling. With our firstborn we worried that we would kill her. With the second, we worry the toddler will.
What an incredible journey! Tiring and painful at the time but so hazy now as comfortably we slip into being a family of four.
From the three hours of active labour where I had to mentally psych myself into pushing her out on no pain relief all the while praying for the strength to see it all through, to the late night uterine cramps where I swore I was better off being in labour, through to the night I cried big tears because my milk came in and I was going beserk with the hormones. I thought of throwing in the towel. The magnitude of the toil ahead of us seemed all too much to bear. As I cuddle my slowly unfurling bundle of joy today those events fade away into distant memory.
Slight confession: the first two weeks, I missed my big girl. I had to watch her struggle to be independent of me. It hurt when she got used to having Daddy do things for her that used to be my domain. I missed being her ‘best friend’ as she called us. I can see that she missed me too as she asked me daily worriedly if I was feeling better. I missed my firstborn so much I didn’t really bond with my second. My toddler had a personality and I could communicate with her but the baby was just a non-verbal blob. I sat in silence with her in the still of the night although naggingly my memory tells me I used to sing lullabys and tell S my hopes and dreams for her during the newborn nights.
The maternal instinct towards L came very very late and I wondered about that adage that supposes your heart grows to accommodate the love you have for both. I watched like an outsider as my husband eagerly lavished affection on the baby and noted without passion how lovingly he sang and played with her during her brief waking moments in the day. I recoiled every time he would say ‘I think she needs a feed’. Perhaps it was the uterine cramps or the fact that I was tired and so immobilised by becoming a newborn’s mother again. I was sure relieved to find my own interest in my second child develop in the third week. Perhaps it made me feel more human.
We plod on. Soon my mother will excuse herself from our lives as she returns to her own. I have enjoyed the extra hands she's lent us the past so many weeks. I remember the helplessness I felt when she left the last time she was here to help with my firstborn. I am sure to feel it again especially when witching hour descends upon us and my toddler dissolves into a hot boiling mess at the same time. Still other people manage and the long evenings get drowned somehow in pools of hazy memories. Those are the ones who go back to wishing for another newborn to cuddle and to keep by their side little for just that while longer. I hope not for me. I must settle into nuzzling L more each long night and enjoying the tears that they will let me soothe and wipe away now, before they grow up and tell me in their big girl bravery," I want to do this myself."
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