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Having two kids is brilliant!

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Having two kids is brilliant! 

When I found out I was pregnant again, it took about 4 minutes before I was googling all about having a second kid; what bunk beds I should get, would I need a double buggy, would I need a bigger car, how my son’s behaviour/sleep/potty training was going to regress and how that was totally normal. There are articles about choosing names that go together but aren’t too matchy, there are articles about jealousy, there are articles about the perfect age gaps (oh my god I’ve left it too long, 2.5 years is far too big). Mostly, there are articles about how bloody hard it all is.

After I’d closed google, settled into my pregnancy and got all the practical stuff sorted, I started to get really sad. For 8 years, my husband and I had been a couple, we were jubilant when our son came along and for the last two and and half years we had been a little family, just the three of us. I loved our family and I couldn’t bear the idea that it was going to be disrupted. I honestly felt like I was mourning a bit for the family that we were no longer going to be. My husband, naturally, thought I was insane. The night before my c-section I carried my baby boy home from nursery on my shoulders, read him 5 bedtime stories and cuddled him until he fell asleep. I was so sad that this was coming to an end.

When we brought his sister home from the hospital, it was a blur. Thankfully, my husband filmed the blur. I have a video of my boy seeing “his baby” for the very first time and I watch it any time I need to fall in love with my kids again (I fall out of love with them sometimes... apparently that is totally normal too). What I wasn’t prepared for is that my baby boy was suddenly a giant. He must’ve grown a foot in the 36 hours I was away from home. Next to this tiny, squeaking, helpless baby- he was my big man.

Well, 8 months later I can declare with certainty that having two is bloody brilliant. BRILLIANT! Let me tell you why: at 2 years old (it’s true, 2 is terrible) my son has had a whole new side of his personality opened up by his baby sister. He is a doting big brother who is capable of being completely unselfish when his sister needs me, of being gentle and sweet with her (okay, sometimes he whacks her on the head with his plastic t-rex) and of being endlessly loving.

Everything has suddenly become double the cute, double the fun and yes, double the mess. My daughter’s first food was a strawberry that my son had to share “she really really wants it Mummy, I promise promise she wants it”. The first time we went on holiday and they shared a room, I listened through the monitor as my son brought all of his stuffed toys and put them one by one into my daughters travel cot, jumped in with her and sang twinkle twinkle little star to her. He gave her her first nickname (“girl beep”), it has stuck; her second nickname (“pee-pat-poop”) hasn’t. As she has grown older and become able to sit up and crawl- she loves nothing more than to watch him running around like the Tasmanian devil, an excuse which has been his get out of time-out card more often than I care to admit. The other day I left the room for a moment and came back to find them facing each other doing “row row row your boat”. See? I told you. BLOODY BRILLIANT!

And sure, it’s hard, they can be shitty sometimes, it’s not all rosy. Having two is full on- with one you can tag-team with your co-parent, with two, it’s a man-on-man game, and no one gets a break, ever. But honestly- when you see your toddler holding your baby’s hand so that she doesn’t get a fright when Te-Ka emerges in Moana- who cares about hard?

Some of my mum friends with two talk about feeling guilty that they have to give the baby more attention, or that they can’t give the baby enough attention. I say no to mum guilt! Are you kidding? My uterus has provided them each with the best plaything they’ll ever need- each other! No guilt here!

 

By CJ Graham.

 

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