Our youngest son is now 20 months old. Young enough to still be aged in months, yet on the cusp of being a two-year old. He’s a toddler. I can’t call him a baby any more.
He hasn’t seemed like a baby for a long while now. He is independent with a fiery personality. He runs ahead to try out a climbing frame or ascend the stairs of a slide at a new park long before my eldest will. He is no longer breastfed, and sleeps well at night*. Most recently he has started brief conversations, which are endlessly entertaining with his limited vocabulary, and often involve pointing at things and naming them, along with a “yes” or more often a “no”. He is a little person and much less dependent on me. It is at this point with our first son that we considered another baby.
It was a simple decision then, we were naïve and looking back, we had it easy. We had already talked about having a second and when it felt like things calmed down a bit, we went for it. But if you have been following Distracted for a while you may know that it has been a tough couple of years and the question of another baby this time doesn’t feel any where near as simple.
When we started trying for our first child, my body yearned to have children. I don’t know if it was my age, I had just turned 30, but ovulation would come round and I was obsessed by thoughts of having my own baby. My body ached with the absence of it. I didn’t feel like our relationship, which was still fairly new, was progressing without it. I didn’t feel complete. My stomach flipped at pregnancy announcements of friends online, my body was telling me what it wanted. We had no idea what to expect really, having only seen the peripheral of other peoples’ experiences of parenthood, but we went for it anyway.
We were naïve going in to it. Isn’t everyone? We could be forgiven with our first child to have had such naïvety, but our second? We knew it was going to be hard, we had spoken about the fact that I would likely have to leave my job as childcare costs would jump and I would likely be looking after the two of them at home full-time, but how much harder could it be? I thought I was ready for another, but I really wasn’t.
Perhaps you can’t ever prepare for parenthood, or the arrival of a second child. Even when you feel you have a good balance and things are going well, firstly you don’t know what kind of second child you’ll get and we know some are easier than others, and things change when a child gets older, things are always changing - and obviously change means harder. Things will always get harder.
Writer Lucy Huber put it best in her tweet recently.
“Honestly, my hottest parenting take right now is nobody should have a baby and a 3yo at the same time. Try to avoid if at all possible. Maybe it will pan out well in the future but introducing a new, helpless person who needs a lot of attention, when your other kid goes into their most self-absorbed, screamy stage and ALSO needs attention is just… a lot.”
Lucy Huber, Twitter, 25/09/2023
The endless neediness of both children when they are both young, is beyond any mother’s physical capability. In that first year with a baby and a 2.5 year old, every day I was leaving someone to cry, I was letting someone down. There were times when it wasn’t physically possible to do everything that was needed. I had to prioritise, and someone’s needs went unmet. Now usually it was the baby who took priority, then the toddler, although it would depend sometimes on what was happening, and the third and last priority was me, and that’s not even considering my partner in all of this. It was hard, it was really hard.
Then there is the pregnancy to consider. Being pregnant with a toddler in tow is no small feat. Toddlers don’t care if you can’t carry them up the stairs anymore, they don’t understand that each day into the pregnancy there are physical limitations as to what you can do - in fact as your bump grows they will need you more as they become clingy aware that the bump is literally pushing them slowly out of your lap. The effects of pregnancy insomnia hit harder with no chance to rest and having a toddler attending a germ fest everyday while your immune system is down is also no joke.
Do I really want to go through all that again?
The trouble with pregnancy and the first year of having a baby is that it all goes by in such a blur it is hard to remember it, or at least, remember it accurately. When we look at photos of our first son, I have never captured the crying or the tough days. There is one picture of the two of us holding him when my partner’s parents came to visit at perhaps 3 weeks in, the exhaustion evident in our eyes, but otherwise we seem calm and collected. We are happy.
It is easy to forget the tough nights and the sleeplessness, although we are often reminded of those by other people. It is the smaller things that get forgotten. The endless clinging, and touching from someone, the overriding want to just be alone, not being able to even go to the toilet on your own. The constant exhaustion, with no time to recover, having to be on and ready to play when you have been up all night with a newborn and playing games with the toddler with your breasts out, feeding the baby - the breasts always out - your body no longer your own.
Yet handling tiny baby clothes awakens something in me, it excites me - I get that warm fuzzy feeling, my heart aches - my body telling me again that I could have another. I was super keen to get rid of the old baby clothes months ago, certain that we wouldn’t have any more children, but as I find stray newborn bits around the house as we finalise the last few “baby” clothes, preparing to hand things over to friends, I am reluctant to let go of them, grieving a baby we have not lost, but who will not exist.
The reality is that it has been tough and whilst we may still be in the woods with the two of them, it feels like we are just breaking through into a clearing - things are getting easier*.
I don’t want to upset the balance. I don’t want to lose more of my identity - I am only just starting to feel more myself again. I don’t want more small people to be dependent on me, two is quite enough. To be honest, I feel most days I can barely control the two of them, so adding a third into the mix, after a year of nausea and extreme tiredness while looking after them seems silly. Why would I want to make life harder for myself?
Then there is my body. I am getting older now, I don’t have the stamina for it. I survived the second pregnancy with the toddler around, but pregnancy felt harder the second time. It took a toll on my body which I can only imagine will be worse for a third time. I told myself then that I couldn’t do it again.
Of course there are finances to consider too. Can we even afford another child? Things are hopefully going to get easier with more funded hours and our eldest starting school next September, but even without childcare expenses, the cost of a third child would be vast. With a third child we would need a new car, I don’t drive but my partner does and we have started to enjoy our long drives to Ireland. There is no way we can fit three kids on the back seat. They wouldn’t all fit in the same bedroom either, especially as they get older, so we would have to consider a new house and that’s not even considering the lack of outside space and the imminent need for an additional bathroom. We’d probably have to move out of the area, already clinging onto the outskirts of London we could end up outside the city all together - do I want to do that?
My body may be craving another baby but I am better at ignoring it now. I feel the pangs and twinges around ovulation and I let them pass by. My body may think it knows what it wants, but I know better this time. I can see the pregnancy announcements on social media now and know that whilst that may mean a cute baby and boundless love for that couple, for us it would be too much.
Having a second child has tested us. Our youngest son slept in our room for 16 months (7 months longer than our eldest). He has been a louder and more demanding baby. He was breastfed and that took a toll on both of us. We weren’t able to divide the labour as equally as we would have wanted. He continued to need feeding in the night for a long time and waking us both in the night for that long, sometimes every two hours, was something neither of us were expecting or prepared for. We had signed up for a second child willingly, but the child we got was harder than our first - everything was harder.
The thought of having another child may pass through my head but it isn’t long before my sense of reality pushes it away.
Now I am happy with the ratio we have. On days when there is the four of us, a 1:1 ratio is ideal. If nothing else, having a second child made us realise how easy we had it with just the one and I am sure the trend would continue if we had another. When we have the children alone, usually while the other is working, a 2:1 ratio, although not preferred, is perfectly doable, but a third? I think of it as with two, I can get in the middle of them like a referee at a boxing match. I have two knees for them to perch on one each. I have two hands to hold one of theirs in each, and two arms to hold them in.
Two is enough for me.
It is funny actually that most of this reasoning and justification has stayed in my head. The conversation we had about it was much more concise.
He turned to me in bed one night, on holiday I think it was, in our caravan on the Isle of Wight, and said, “I don’t want any more.”
I am sure I laughed. “Me neither,” I said.
*Disclaimer: Me writing this will likely tempt fate so I can only say it was accurate at time of writing.
great read! i’m so happy to find your writing and relate to so much of it (v similar birth experiences)- i’ve just had my second son and have a 5 year age gap mainly because i found my first so incredibly hard and wasn’t even sure we wanted another, i then had a miscarriage once he started school and now finally we have a second. he is a dream so relaxed and chill and it’s been a completely different experience so far (he’s only 3 months) which is opening up the third child question to me! but you are right the reality is different to what the body might think it wants. and i haven’t experienced this age gap so it’s good to read a realistic representation! you also never know with babies how they will be so much is their temperament i think and it sticks! it’s so much on the body too. thanks for sharing xx
Being right in the thick of it with two... I can honestly say I wouldn’t even consider a third. I knew when I was pregnant there was no way... even if it was possible... I would do it again. Pregnancy this second time was brutal on my body and this year has been the hardest of my life. BUT I still get that pang in my heart when I see someone with a tiny baby in a sling, or someone announces a pregnancy. Maybe even more so than before because I know it will never be me again. I think it’s ok to feel grief and heartache over this but also be 100000% sure there will be no more. Xxx