Last week I posted Part 1 about becoming a mom of two. I just want to start by saying THANK YOU to everyone who took the time to read it and reach out to me. The outpouring of love and support is overwhelming, and I’m encouraged to see women come forward who have had similar experiences. I believe it helps to share our stories because it builds a sense of community and lets us know we’re not so alone.
Honestly, since posting Part 1, I have had to work really hard at not repressing my thoughts and feelings. I want to hold myself accountable though, and continue laying down the details of my struggles in the first few months after becoming a mom of two. Many times I told myself “I’m good” and talked myself out of posting this. Often, I’ve been afraid to go back and read what I’ve written in fear that I won’t be able to hold back the tears. I’m a big empath and cry very easily about a lot of things. While crying is cathartic and good for the soul, I try to avoid seeking it out!
As I think has been clear between the last post and my Instagram, Henri came into the world in highly dramatic fashion. Fast, furious and in defiance of all my well-laid plans. I’m still processing his birth and not yet ready to share the story. Without a doubt, the events of his birth directly contributed to the shock and inability to settle into new mom life in the aftermath. Our little family had a good thing going. Life was sympatico. And then everything was disrupted.
“Make sure dad takes the older kid so you can take care of the baby – divide and conquer”
Lots of folks gave us this advice, and it’s an obvious one of course. We had already decided the husband would be Lincoln’s primary caregiver once Henri arrived. I can’t even think of what other (good) options we might have had. I was adamant that my second child receive the same amount of care and attention from me as my first did.
Looking back, while this desire was admirable, it resulted in me feeling incredibly isolated. I imagine that lots of second time moms would struggle with this. When you have one child, both parents have the capacity to work together to comfort and care for the newborn. When you have two, obviously you must divide and conquer.
It didn’t even cross my mind at the time that I would miss my firstborn so much. That I would experience a mix of emotions and feels I didn’t know I needed to prepare for and therefore was ill-equipped to handle. Those feelings being both of incredible joy for our healthy growing family but also sadness that the intimate moments between myself and Lincoln were over. I mourned the end of it being just him and I – someone who I loved with my whole heart and being for over two years! All this grief taking space in my heart while at the same time it was filling up with joy and love for another baby. It really is a mind-f*** mix of feels that I can’t describe and am still processing.
We’re a bed-sharing family, so Lincoln was sound asleep between us that night. When labour got to its peak, poor little guy was awoken and was all alone because the husband was out of bed on the phone with emergency services, and I for obvious reasons. Instead of the planned vision of a peaceful and comfortable experience at home, Lincoln spent much of the night traumatized due to the sounds and sights that come with bringing in a new life.
That night, after 26 months of sleeping with us, he requested to sleep in his “small bed”. Oh man…that tore at my heart so much. Obviously, it was bound to happen that he would move into his own bed at some point. But I never wanted it to be under the circumstances that it was! I was SO not ready.
So instead of spending the time to enjoy my new little baby, I spent the night uncontrollably crying…like, full ugly cry with snot running down my face…and staring at the baby monitor at my little man curled up in his own bed and own room.
Just as my midwives had warned me, my milk came in on day 3 like clockwork and it was an even rougher day for me emotionally. It felt as if my child was ripped out of my arms and I had no choice or say about it. Overly dramatic? Perhaps. But all so real.
My midwives assured me that my emotional struggles postpartum this time around was very normal. But I didn’t struggle like this after the birth of Lincoln, so it made no sense to me that I was having a really hard time the second time around. It defied logic. Logical sense would be that I would breeze through being a second time mom because first time momming came so naturally and easy to me. What the hell was going on!?
“You will worry much less and be so casual with the second child”
It may have been a postpartum baby blues thing, but I was so neurotic with Henri and the above statement was (and still is) not entirely true for me. A big contrast to the laissez faire attitude I had with Lincoln.
Henri entered the world so quickly and didn’t get a chance to work out all the mucous from his airways. The paramedics tending to us voiced concern about his breathing and his colour. They gave him oxygen. When my midwife arrived she confirmed his colouring was due to bruising having been delivered so fast. It wasn’t from lack of oxygen. Nothing to be concerned about, everything is normal.
However, I was not assured that everything was normal with him. Most of my early days with Henri was me awake, checking to see how he was breathing. Every tiny little phlegmy cough was a concern and I jumped to prop him forward or gently tap his back.
I was also very concerned about how fragile he was. He wasn’t fragile at all actually. At 9 pounds 2 ounces, he was a big (huge) strong baby! But I was convinced that because he was so heavy, that is why he must be more fragile. His bones are not able to support his weight or he can’t move properly due to his weight. It sounds so crazy and backwards as I type this out…but that’s where I was at mentally.
“Have a care plan for your first child so you can focus all your time on the baby”
This sounds all good and it all makes sense. But it turned out that where I really needed help was with baby #2! I needed someone to change him for me so I could sneak away for a quick shower. Someone to take him from me when he was screaming so I could regain some of my sanity. I needed someone to rock him to sleep for me so I could re-bond with my eldest.
The type of help this time was more focused on how to keep Lincoln preoccupied and away from me and Henri. And that actually made it harder for me to become settled as a mom of two and really enjoy my new family right away.
The husband went back to work on day 2, which was not in the plans. We intended for him to stay home for at least one month after Henri was born. But being self-employed, he has to take the work as it comes. My mom, mom-in-law and sister came by when they could to watch Lincoln and do some cooking and tidying. That lasted about 2 weeks before everyone had to go back to their busy lives following the holiday season. So most days after this initial period, I was alone with a newborn as well as a very rambunctious toddler.
I guess this would have been a good moment to have considered sending Lincoln to daycare. But I was selfish and wanted him close to me! No doubt that if he was out of the house, I would be crying all day missing him. This tug-of-war of trying to figure out the needs of a newborn while managing a toddler, AND wanting both my children to never leave my side so I don’t miss any special moments was a lose-lose for me.
I know that Covid had a lot to do with my postpartum experience. For sure it impacted how people could approach me to offer help. Everyone was mindful and kept as much physical distance as possible from Henri and I, rightly so. And I didn’t know I would need the kind of help I actually needed until I was in the thick of it. By the time I figured it out, it felt too difficult to ask. I felt mentally stuck. For the first couple months, I could barely form the words to explain to anyone what I needed or how I felt. I was finally that zombie everyone kept talking about.
If I were to give a second time mom any advice, it would be:
Be gentle on yourself. Don’t compare your experience to others, including your own prior to this one.
I’m now starting to settle into this new-mom life dynamic. I feel good about it. We have lots of fun amidst the hard parts. I can now confidently say there’s more good times than tough times. I’m looking forward to the future and can’t wait to see how we grow as a family!
As always, thanks for reading! If you have other moms in your network who need to hear stories like mine, please share this post by clicking any of the social media buttons below.
