1. Having your first child doesn’t teach you everything there is to know about parenting, it just teaches you about parenting THAT child… and even then, when you think you’ve got a handle on things and know what you’re doing, they go and have a developmental leap or change tactics and put you right back to square one.
2. The mythical self-settling baby DOES exist(!) but just because they do it once doesn’t mean they’ll want to do it again. And then when you lose hope of them doing it again, they’ll do it at a really inconvenient moment (e.g. when you put them down to change their poopy nappy).
3. Children like to drop naps when you’re doing really important stuff like, oh, I don’t know, branching out on your own or… releasing a mega important website.
4. Having 2 children is not twice as hard as having 1 child. Some days it’s only a little bit harder. Some days it’s mental torture. But mostly just a little bit harder. (I am waiting for the days they can entertain each other…)
5. As much as I like to think I’m shaping my babies with my every word/touch/action, personality is a bigger factor than I ever realised. Same parents, same boobs, same cuddles == still equals different babies.
13 Sep at 11:52 am
Having had one baby already being a Mum to another is less hassle when it comes to the “am I doing things the right way” questions that arise with each child you have. Each time it slots into place far easier than the previous does which helps too – less self doubt = more competent mum. As they grow older they become more independent and mostly more helpful too although there are exceptions to that, but you are indeed correct when you say parenting the one child in question but you do have the experience from dealing with the first so that does help a bit.
14 Sep at 9:38 pm
#4 is so true! But for some reason, once you have 3, it’s about 100 times as hard! We’re still having a difficult time adjusting to being outnumbered. But I’m sure a lot of that is due to the fact that mine are all so close in age.
15 Sep at 8:53 pm
I used to think that when they got older and could entertain each other, it would be so fab! Yanno what they did instead? Play off each other to escalate any tiny little thing into something WAY WAY huger than one child could do alone…
15 Sep at 8:58 pm
NOT reassuring!