On motherhood, the second time

It took a long, long time for us to decide to have a second kid. Our first one is a hellraiser. A piece of work. A demon. A monster. Bigger than life. Spirited and perceptive and tenacious and extroverted and energetic to the nth degree. She's kind, except not always to us. She saves that for others. Just the other day she made me lean down so that she could whisper in my ear, "Mommy, your tummy looks too big."

This kid...she is so much her father's daughter. Every once in a while a bit of me peeks out, but she is very much a daddy's girl. When I told her I wouldn't have to work anymore she just looked at me and said, "When does daddy not have to work anymore too?" She looks like him. She copies his mannerisms, his way of speaking. From one daddy's girl to another, I can appreciate this. I love that they share this bond, both of being the oldest child and of being so similar.

The Munchkin as a very tiny girl.

She is hard. Moody, so we never really know which kid she's going to be in any particular hour. And so, so extroverted, which is difficult for two introverted parents to handle sometimes. I wake up with her literally in my face, breathing on me, and I jerk back. When I tell her I need space she often clings harder, gets closer. I once had a really, really hard morning and told her that I needed to take a shower, all by myself, for just a few minutes. She declared that she was going in the shower with me. I said no, and a big fight ensued that ended with me shoving her out of the bathroom and locking the door. Well, not actually ending. She sat leaning against the door for my entire shower and sang only one line from "On Top of Spaghetti", very badly, for the duration of my shower. I wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry more so I ended up doing both at the same time. Refreshing, eh?

She climbs everything. At this point, unless it's actually dangerous (as in, broken glass or rusty nails along whatever she's climbing) or rude to others, I just let her do it. I got so sick of telling her to stop climbing things approximately every 2.4 minutes. During the epic snowstorm we had a few months ago she came into our room one morning to announce, "Look what I can do!" before climbing the doorjamb. She actually figured out how to climb the walls.

Climbing the walls.
In slippers.

My brother made the observation, not in a bad way (he made clear), that she's like a Border Collie. She's so smart that if we don't keep her entertained for absolutely every second of the approximately 842 hours she's awake every day (in normal people time) then she will find ways to entertain herself and we will not like them. I laughed and told my brother that I've had the same thought so many times. Keeping up with her while trying to do anything else--like eating and sleeping normally--is perhaps the hardest thing I will ever do. I always say, because it's always true, that my goal in parenting her is nothing major. She's going to rule the world one day and there's nothing anyone can do to stop her. I merely want to ensure she's a benevolent dictator and not a supervillain.

I love her to pieces. All of her worst qualities are also her best. She's strong from all the climbing, and does things no five-year-old should be able to. She's so sociable and kind because she's so extroverted, the kid that all her classmates turn to when they need a friend. She's smart and perceptive, and I'm constantly amazed by the things she says and notices. Last week she told me that lunch was "delightful! Thank you, Mommy!" I will never stop loving her, or being proud of her. But I am also not going to say that she's not a lot of work.

So I was nervous to have our second. In what ways would she be similar, and what ways would she be different? Would we basically have a second kid just like our first? I reasoned that that wouldn't be so bad because at least they'd keep each other entertained--but would we have a house left or just a mound of smoking rubble at some point? The possibilities were endless and endlessly terrifying. We had many sleepless nights each imagining never getting a good night's sleep again because of what we'd spawned. How will we ever survive this? ran through my head in endless loops.

The second birth was not quite as dramatic as the first, but still hard. After 14 hours of labor and 1 epidural, the sheets were pulled back to reveal that I was bleeding, not leaking more amniotic fluid as I'd thought. (I could feel it.) I ended up being wheeled in for my second c-section at a fast clip rather than a run. At least I was awake this time, but so loopy from the drugs and throwing up all the water they'd let me have over the previous night that I couldn't appreciate any of it. My spouse actually asked why I wasn't really looking at her and I couldn't even answer. My eyes weren't focusing on anything. It was not the fun sort of loopy.

This picture makes me so sad and so happy
all at once.

With my older daughter I had that instant bond that we hear so much about. Maybe it was just because we'd both come so close to death, but as soon as I woke up and saw her I would have done anything for her. With my second, it took a few days to really feel like she was mine. I was wary. Who are you? What will you be like? Will you demand as much of me as your sister does? The dog bonded with her faster than I did. It's taken me a while to realize that this is okay. It has not, at all, affected our relationship. She's such a breath of fresh air, so similar and yet so different from her sister. She's easier in many ways while also being super demanding and challenging.

She is very much my girl. I did not expect such a clear delineation in personality, but it's there. In looks, too! Sometimes I've teared up at how much she looks like my dad. He would have loved her sunny, happy disposition--so much like his. She already has so many words for her age and among them is "tickle". She tickles herself and other people (not that it actually tickles) all the time. "Tickle tickle tickle!" she says, giggling.

In the past few weeks she's gone full toddler on us. She throws face down on the floor tantrums, but not for long, and knocks things over like the Grinch in a snit. Her first real tantrum was on my birthday and culminated in her lunging across the table to try to knock the cake over. She shakes her head 'no' at pretty much everything. She's given up her second nap, but still could use one. And my personal favorite, she squirms to have me put her down and then cries because I'm not holding her anymore. I mean, how hard is it for me to get it right?! She wants to simultaneously be over there doing things independently and also be held by me! Sob!

In the car together.

She really is a tiny little girl, with Very Firm Opinions. You're going to carry me there. You're going to read me this book. You're going to put me down. No, pick me up! Now read this book to me. I'm going to eat that, and you should read this book to me. Read it! She is just as strong willed as her sister, in a very different way. She's learning both spoken language and basic signs at an almost alarming rate. She's said a dozen words and counting, and has three four signs she regularly uses in addition to pointing. She's said several two-word sentences, mostly along the lines of, "Hi, kitty!" Since her sister seemed to hardly speak until she was three this abundance of language at an early age is startling. I suspect it's because she's trying to keep up with her sister, who may not have talked early but now won't stop talking.

She loves music, both appreciating it and to dance to. If either of my kids ends up musical, she will be the one. Not that I think it's missed her sister at all, but I can already see the dedication in Little Miss's eyes, the will. Her flighty older sister loves to sing but I'm not certain she'll ever have the dedication for an instrument. Littles, however, already seems to be trying to pick it all apart. She recognizes songs. She has favorites among the ones her musical toys play and pushes buttons until the favorite one comes on, then stops to dance. When certain songs come on our music app, I can tell that she recognizes them. Especially if it's one I've danced with her to. She'll sit on my lap to watch music being played online (symphonies, bands) and takes it all in. As I said, she's my girl.

And she's exactly who we needed as a family. I won't say that life is necessarily easier with two kids, but I think that we are having much more fun as a family. It would be hard not to have more fun with this sunny, remarkable little girl. She smiled and giggled early, and has used both of those things prodigiously since. She's quieter, but in a stealthy way. My spouse has said that while our oldest will light a match and look us in the eyes while she throws it, we'll just never know with our younger one when something has burned down until it's too late. While our older daughter cries and screams and throws a fit when she doesn't get her way, then makes a point of then doing it again, the younger just quietly ignores us and goes back to whatever she wasn't supposed to be doing. I can't hear you telling me not to play in the dog's water, la la la.

I'm thankful to say that all the ways I dreaded having a second child did not come true. This one actually lets us sleep! Without her! In fact, she doesn't want to be held while sleeping any more than I want to hold her while sleeping. She asks to be put in her crib. My jaw dropped the first time she did that. Our older daughter still wouldn't sleep alone if she had the option. (As it is, she crawls into bed with us pretty often.)

Reading to her baby sister.

It helps our family situation that our older daughter not only really, really, really wanted a sister, she also excels at the job of big sister. As we knew she would. She's been so kind and loving, right from the start. Even when her sister was a protohuman, a boring lump of screaming and pooping that took Mom and Dad's attention away, the Munchkin was still kind and loving toward her sister. She threw a four-month tantrum at us, but she came around in the end. It helped that, around that time, younger sister became more engaging and interactive. The Munchkin learned to show off for her interested sister, who loved to watch her as much as she loved being watched. Over the months since then I've seen them blossom into a true sibling relationship--both the fascination with each other and the frustration. The two of them play together so much. There are mornings when the Munchkin gets her baby sister out of bed all by herself. I've heard the two of them laughing together as my wake up call, and "Come on, let's go play in the living room!" They'll play together until one of them decides that it's time to wake me up for breakfast. Sometimes on weekends we have easy things for the Munchkin to get for them, and I can doze while listening to them play for an extra half hour. Bliss!

With both of my kids, I had a touch of postpartum anxiety. This is very different from postpartum depression. I was not sad, I was anxious about everything. Am I doing it right? Am I hurting my baby? I would have visions of doing something, like dropping the baby on her head, and it would be so real that I'd have to put her down for a few minutes until I could calm down. It's not something I really talked about with anyone other than my spouse in part because once I recognized it I knew it was on its way out. It was tough to deal with until that point, however. It never seemed like a legit clinical issue, I just wasn't able to cope as well. There's nothing wrong, it's just motherhood. Right? I thought and hoped that with my first child it had merely been the rather extreme circumstances of her birth and then the ridiculous amount of sleep deprivation she put us through. But even with my Little, who started sleeping through the night regularly at about 8 weeks, I was getting anxious almost to the point of panic attacks. The state of the world is awful, what have I brought my kids into? I had nightmares about active shooter situations (thanks, America) and about hiding the kids from actual monsters. I'd agonize over every negative piece of news, obsess over it all, and was convinced that everything I couldn't control was going to make life miserable, hellish. But I couldn't control any of it! I'd hyper-control what I could, and get frustrated when I inevitably couldn't control everything. Then one day I'd realize that my thought patterns were Not Normal and I could begin to get better. I recognize in myself that, some days, my need to try to control things around me is because I'm so anxious that it's the only thing helping me cope. But I am getting better, and those days are very few and far between now. I've learned to recognize what's going on do what I need to do to feel better.

I didn't really think that anything could top the bittersweet feeling of watching my firstborn grow into first a toddler, then a preschooler, and soon a kindergartener. But seeing my second, and last, baby make the transition to toddlerhood brings so many more of those feelings to the fore. I have to search for any lingering baby smell. I hold her tiny clothes up and know that those tiny clothes will no longer grace anyone in our household soon enough. I do not want a third child but sometimes.... It's agony to both want her to stay as she is, right at this moment, and to want the changes that will come as she matures. Could she maybe stay this tiny but also just potty train herself in the next twenty minutes so we can skip that step entirely?

I'm so thankful that, this time, I knew all the things I couldn't have known before I had my first. We knew what we needed to do to keep our household running even when everything was going to shit. We knew where and how we would divide and conquer. And, despite all my fears, I was so much more at ease. My expectations were lower for how much control I would have for any of it--from labor to my child's personality.

"I'm totally going to put some of
this in my mouth."

And we got lucky. I could not have asked for two better children. Even when two sets of tiny hands are reaching under the bathroom door, refusing to let me even pee by myself. Even when it takes over an hour to try to get to the playground, including two dirty diapers, four water spills, missing shoes, and a couple of tantrums. Even when it's midnight and I've already been woken up four times. Even when someone has wiped their snotty nose on my shoulder. Even when they're both screaming and crying my name at the end of a long, long day and I'm exhausted and would give almost anything for two minutes of silence. They're the best, and I wouldn't trade a second of it.

I have listed attributes of my children, so here is my list. I lose my temper too easily. I try to control things too much, and am too anxious. I'm not as carefree and fun-loving a mom as I always assumed I'd be, and I will never be the Cool Mom. I hate gardening with my kids and most of the time I can't stand baking with them either. Both of those activities end up too messy, so all I can think about is how much time I'm going to spend cleaning up. Guaranteed, at least twice as long as the actual activity, which will only be 1/8 done with actual "help" before they both get bored and I try to finish up the project on my own while also keeping them out of trouble. In other words, it takes approximately 12 times as long to do the actual thing as I could without them, and at least 24 times as long to clean up from it. Do you know what it looks like to have your floors covered in flaxseed meal because your toddler got ahold of it and chased her sister around, holding the bag upside down? I sure do! And I'm still cleaning it up, weeks later.

I'm too busy too much of the time, and feel like I don't focus enough on the kids. Then again, with my older one, how could I not focus on the kids? If I spend even a minute not focused on her, she finds a way to grab my attention. Infuriating, frustrating ways. Then, spending my attention on the older one, I will discover that the younger has quietly been creating her own disaster.

I don't know what I'm doing and, at this point, I assume I never will. I never have it together. If it ever seems like I do, it's a lie. 

I make them laugh as often as possible, because that is the best sound in the world. I might not be cool, but I do try to be fun.

And I do my best for them, always. I have found wells of patience I never knew existed within me. I've got reserves of strength, both physical and mental, solely because I have to be strong for them. They push me to be better. I end every day grateful for my kids, and still as in love with each of them as I have been and ever will be. I have loved them since they were just specks inside of me and that will never change. Having two has just made that love more abundant, for both of them.





One small note:

I am the luckiest woman in the world. I had two healthy babies from two healthy pregnancies at times when I wanted them. I know many women for whom things have not gone so easily or so well and my heart hurts for them. Having babies is never easy, and to have it go imperfectly (infertility, miscarriage and stillbirths, abortions, and the loss of a child) is the worst thing ever. Seriously. Nothing else gets to your emotions, your soul, the way problems surrounding pregnancy and parenthood does. Yet so much of it goes unnoticed because people don't talk about their worst moments. Because there is stigma attached. Because sometimes it's too painful. Because the process is filled with self-doubt and what-ifs and blame. You could have done better, should have known better, have you tried this? She got what she deserved!

This Mother's Day, please remember that almost every woman you meet will have had something in her past--even if she never had kids and never wanted to. Please remember that for most women the path to motherhood is fraught and dangerous and tricky to navigate. Appreciate the mothers in your life not just for who they are and what they've done for you, but also for all the personal tragedies that you may never know about. Appreciate the strength it takes to go on sometimes, and the dedication. The love. Take a moment to think about women who want to be mothers and can't, or won't ever be able to. The line between "mother" and "not-mother" is not as clear as we generally make it out to be.