One of the fears that parents feel when the second pregnancy comes is that of not knowing if they will be able to love the second as much as the first. They feel that there is a lot of love they feel for the first and they fear that when the new baby arrives, they will be at a disadvantage because they do not receive the same affection that the older one does. It is a normal feeling that soon disappears, when the baby is born, when they realize that love multiplies instead of dividing.
But it is not the only feeling that appears with the second pregnancy, because there is a similar one, very associated, which is the feeling of guilt. Blame it because you know that from the moment the second baby is born, you will stop being exclusively for your first child.
Blame, until you get to crying
I don't know how the rest of the men will live it, but when I have met my wife the most, it was during the times when I was pregnant and nursing. In those moments I talked a lot about what I felt, and I always looked at her with a mixture of surprise and disbelief. Something like "I didn't imagine you could feel that way, but I love to discover it."
Of course, I also knew that Jon wouldn't have us the same way when Aran was born. Of course he knew that we would have less time for him and that that would pose some difficulties, and that for him it would also be a great change. But nevertheless, I didn't feel guilty about it. The decision to have another baby was his and mine, both of us, and we saw him as positive for us as, at least in the long term, for him: we were going to give him a brother, and we saw him as a good thing. But we didn't do it just for him, or not just for him: we wanted to have another child.
In Babies and more The feeling of guilt at the arrival of the second child: how to deal with itHowever, she felt guilt. She felt selfish because she hears, there are children who have no brothers and are the sea of happy. Who ensures that a child needs a brother to be happy? Moreover, what if having a brother does not make him happier, but quite the opposite? Everyone knows sibling couples who don't get along, and if you think about it, "giving him a little brother" could be questioned.
But I never saw it that way. Of course it could happen that they didn't get along. But I have never seen it as an impediment, but perhaps as an unlikely problem. I was not going to stop having a child, if I wanted to have him and she too, for fear that they would get along badly: we would do what was possible and impossible to avoid it. We would already do the possible and the impossible to promote a healthy and complicit relationship.
And he came to cry. One day, with his belly of a few weeks, he began to cry (I guess the hormones make you reach those limits) because she told herself that she was selfish, that perhaps it was a mistake, that his relationship with his son was great and that in a way he was going to spoil it.
When mom and son get along so well that they don't admit threats
The story of Miriam Y Jon, mother and son, is that of a mother who was very lonely at first, because I changed jobs and started doing many hours. A motherhood between tears and cracks, a breastfeeding for which he had to fight a lot, to take care of a baby that was always very demanding. But much.
It was the baby with whom he decided that I wasn't going to work anymore, when days before returning to work he said he could not do that, that his baby needed her and that he was unable to leave him with anyone. And from that moment they became, even more, nail and meat. Every day they went shopping together, strolled through the park, made food, played, picked up the house, took pictures, and lived enjoying together, she taking care of him and he being taken care of. Very hard for her because she was totally exhausted at the end of the day, but rewarding after all.
In Babies and more The emotional picture of a mother hugging her daughter before welcoming a new babyTogether (I was also around, but they were both "the pack") they went over the criticism for carrying him a lot in his arms, for giving him a lot of time, for feeding him like this or that way, for not taking him to the nursery, for ... and they got to know each other so well, that she knew right away what he needed, and he knew right away what mom meant by her gestures.
When the months passed, especially the summer when Jon was two years old, while she was already pregnant, my relationship with him began to intensify. I never forced anything, but he gradually separated from her to learn more about my way of doing, of playing, of "paternalizing." I thought this would be great, because that way when the baby arrived it would not be so dependent on her (and so it was: at birth Aran, he and I had a great relationship), but her love for him, of course, remained the same.
So when he started imagining his still unknown baby in the family, felt that he betrayed Jon. He felt that he was putting another baby in the middle, as if he were a rival, as if he were the baby that was going to receive all the love he could not continue giving to the elder. And he was afraid that Jon would somehow reproach him.
It's normal, but love multiplies, and they learn to love the brother
So if you have doubts about having another child because you feel something similar, or if pregnant you feel something similar, I can only tell you that it's normal to feel that way. It is normal, but you can be calm because on the part of the parents, love multiplies. I had those doubts myself ... if I could love two children at the same time. And immediately you realize that it is possible (and also logical).
And not only that. They also learn to love their brother, just as they take care of mom and dad since they are born, despite not knowing them at all (at least not dad). Don't they say that rubbing makes love? For the time with the brother, the feeling that he is one more, seeing him as a partner and not as a rival helps them get along and soon, when the little one grows a little, they begin to realize the things they have in common. And they start to play, to explain things, to take care of each other, to fight, to argue, to reconcile, to laugh together ... and ultimately all the things that two young children do when they are together, even if they are of different ages.
