Second Baby

Our second child, Andrew, was born two weeks ago yesterday. I can’t believe how different in every way the experience of having him has been from the experience of having my first child.

During my first pregnancy I spent days in a mental haze where every thought and action revolved around carrying or planning for my baby. My conversations all dealt with maternity symptoms, anticipations, dreads, or needs. Bryan and I spent hours speculating about the baby’s gender and had both a boy’s and a girl’s name at the ready basically from conception. The baby’s car seat was installed a full month before her due date, as per the instructions in What To Expect When You’re Expecting.

Conversely, my second pregnancy seemed to speed by too quickly. By the week before my scheduled induction, I still hadn’t catalogued what supplies we still needed. We hadn’t chosen a name. I packed my hospital bag at 11:30 p.m. the night before his birth. It seemed almost to me as if there could be no room in our fully occupied lives for this new person. I couldn’t conceive of how he might fit in, since I hadn’t spent nine months pondering who he might be, as I had with my first. In the moments I did think of him prior to his birth, I felt guilt: that I wasn’t as excited about his arrival as I should be; that I might not be able to love him as I loved Nora; that I might resent the loss of sleep and free time he would entail; that he would be the forgotten child.

But now I find myself unable to tear myself away from him. His sweet milky smell, his soft skin, his fuzzy hair enchant me. My initial fears and guilts have been replaced by this overpowering, melting, fiercely protective infatuation. And I can’t stop marveling over how this second venture into motherhood is so much better than the first. Labor was simpler, nursing is simpler, bonding is simpler. While my inclination is to declare him simply an easier baby, I don’t think that fully explains it. It’s more the fact that he’s the second. Talk to almost any mother you’d like, and you’ll hear the same thing: “My second baby was so much easier.” Certainly it can’t be the case that everyone has a difficult baby first. It’s more likely that the same newness of a first baby that’s so exciting and all-encompassing has a darker side, too. With my first I was anxious, obsessed, and overwhelmed by the searing waves of pain, first of labor, then of recovery, then of nursing. It seemed that each new development threw what I thought I had learned into doubt. I felt confused, depressed, and exhausted, barely treading water in a black sea of chaos.

While the pains haven’t been so different this time (although nursing has been much better), somehow knowing them, knowing what was and is bound to come, has made them easier to bear—in fact, scarcely noticeable. I have been able to enjoy our little boy’s infanthood in a way I could not enjoy my daughter’s because of my myriad anxieties. The very obsessiveness that I thought was key to good motherhood stood in the way of my enjoying her.

I am pleased to see now, more than anything, that I have learned something. Something concrete, something demonstrable, something worthwhile. Something I didn’t know I’d learned until I experienced it a second time. I have learned how to have a baby. How to carry him, bear him, feed him, bathe him, dress him, change him, enjoy him. I learned how to take deep breaths, relax, and love the baby I thought I’d forget.

Ellie