On Having Two Kids (or "Don't Shoot the Baby with the Cannon")

This post is for Kelly, because I am writing it with my new ipad keyboard, hence it no longer looks like I'm typing with my elbows. Also because Kelly is about to have two kids.

A long long time ago, what feels like forever ago, I thought I would never love another kid. I was wholly dedicated to one tiny, perfect individual and could not imagine having someone else in my family, couldn't imagine giving the same amount of love and attention to a second person. I actually felt like loving the second one would take away from loving the first, which was crazy and wrongheaded. I felt sorry for both of them; to the first I felt like she would have to share me, and might feel resentful and short-changed. To the second I felt like he would get half a mother or be an afterthought, a tag-along in the Nora caravan.

I am happy to report now, six months later, that I was wrong on all counts.

It's a funny thing, falling in love with your child. There are about seven or a million different ways to fall in love, and you cycle through them with the passage of time. It's like the levels of hell only in reverse. I look at my baby, Theo, and I think "I am not even up to capacity on you yet and I already am over the moon. Holy." I went through all of the doubt and regret and fear when I was pregnant, so by the time he arrived I was like "OK let's do this; let's see what happens."

The first stage is meeting your new baby. When Theo arrived, the first thing he did that I love him for was being born fairly smoothly and relatively quickly. I didn't pass out this time, and I felt every damn thing - as flaky as it sounds, I finally had the 'birth experience' I'd always wanted. When I first saw him, all I could do was go "ooo oooo ooo oooo" like a demented ape, while  looking at my husband like ARE YOU SEEING THIS? Theo made his presence known by immediately pooping and peeing all over me, thus setting the tone for his first several months of life. The second thing that made me love him was that he breastfed effectively right off the bat, therefore making me feel right away like I could do this; I had it in hand. I could manage this baby.

The first weeks and months of a baby's life are normally, and in my previous experience, harried and chaotic and full of worry. Not so with Theo, really. Four days after he was born we spent the day at the beach. Nine days after we brought him to the Canada Day celebrations, including baby's first fireworks. He was a relaxed and chill little guy who drank well, pooped like nobody's business and gained weight like a champ. We towed him along with us to the cottage, to the beach, to here and to there. The thing with a second child is that you already have a first child, whose needs still have to be met and who has to be occupied during the days, so number two gets to have a richly varied set of life experiences very early on.

I am looking back at this period through rose-coloured glasses, I realize. There were problems with Nora, for sure, as she dealt with sharing her mama with a new arrival. We had prepared her pretty well for the baby and she was instantly in love with him - a real wonderful big sister. She couldn't get enough. But we hadn't prepared her very well for just how time-consuming breastfeeding would be. She was at the tail end of potty training, at the stage where I was still wiping her, and inevitably she would have to go just when I'd settled him onto the boob. I learned to do a lot of things one-handed while breastfeeding: wiping bums, making macaroni and cheese, making dinner. Now that Theo is almost 16 lbs I can't really do it any more. He dangles too much but Nora quickly learned how to wipe her own bum and help herself to the fridge. Anyway, Nora got resentful of all the breastfeeding and all the naps and quiet time and how much he had to go into the ergo carrier. There were some awful moments. But it petered out at about 6 weeks, and now at 6 months there's nothing of that left. They are a twosome, in love with one another.

Two areas that I have learned are super tricky with two kids: sleep, and illness. When I am alone with both kids, I find it difficult to steal away for 15-20 minutes to get the baby to sleep and leave Nora alone to her own devices. So he sleeps in a baby carrier for naptimes and is used to a bit of chaos and noise. And my sleep is totally busted now that I play bedroom pingpong most nights, back and forth, back and forth. And illness - well, Nora started school in late September, and now the plague hits my house monthly. Theo has had two colds - one rather serious - and having two kids night-coughing at once is hell. I never sleep. I have a giant mystery dent in my back bumper and I nearly ran over my neighbor a little while ago. I am permanently impaired.

As for the title of this post, well, Nora has already started to involve Theo into her imaginary play. He is the ice monster in her imaginary "Frozen." He lays there on the floor gurgling while she plays with the toy pirate ship, firing cannonballs at him (a light plastic ball with zero velocity), and he has more than once been 'random bad guy.' He doesn't mind. He is delighted just to be invited. He grabs at her barbies' hair and irritates her and I can see already how it will be for the next 5-10 years.

But at the very bottom of it, I can say that it isn't a cliche when a mom tells you 'Oh your heart grows to fit the second one in'. I didn't believe it at the time. I do now. I have two different individuals but they fit together like little puzzle pieces, and both of them are my favourite people in the world. Seeing Nora as a big sister just gives me a whole new way to love her. And I look forward to falling even more deeply for Theo as time rolls on, because I know that's how it goes.

Also, now that Nora has a little brother, she has learned a bit more about anatomy. The other day she drew a four-eyed alien with a 'peanut.' Oh did I laugh.