The Unmumsy Mum by The Unmumsy Mum

Author:The Unmumsy Mum
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781473527126
Publisher: Transworld

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‘When I was pregnant with my second child and I asked my daughter whether she would be having a brother or a sister, her reply was, always, “a bugger”. Quite an accurate description of her brother, as it turned out.’

Emma, Taunton

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Second-child Shortcuts

‘We’ll treat them both the same,’ we said, with the sincerest of intentions. We were painting our (then unnamed) second bump’s nursery and mulling over the unfortunate tendency we’d witnessed in other families to fuss massively over their firstborn and leave the second child to be, well, just a bit unfussed.

Not us. We would treat our second baby-boy bundle exactly the same as we had our first. Deep down, I think we knew this was a lie even then.

Not a sneaky malicious lie, but a lie rooted in the most genuine of intentions. The truth was, as James and I merrily glossed the skirting boards and chatted about Bump Number Two, we discovered we both felt a kind of protective appreciation for his second-child status. We had a connection. As second children ourselves, each with an older sibling of the same sex, we had been brought up knowing the second-child drill.

Not that being the second child has been a bad thing – we haven’t suffered in any way because of it. It’s definitely not as if I still hold a grudge that my parents took my sister to Brownies and dance lessons but didn’t bother taking me to either; or that my dad could never remember my date of birth so used to offer my sister’s as the default. Scarred for life. (Just kidding, Dad, I know I’m your favourite. Bet you can’t remember the year, though.)

All right, so we’ve fared just fine as second children, but we also appreciate the inescapable reality of life with an older sibling.

Who always does everything first.

Whose hand-me-downs we were forced to wear years later.

Who always has the bigger bloody room.

The writing (or, in this case, painting) was very much on the wall of Jude’s (50 per cent smaller than Henry’s) nursery as we decorated it that day.

Our little foetus had already been allocated the box room.

It had begun.

I’m glad we voiced our determination to treat our babies the same (the will was there, Jude), but we were stupid to state this intention before we had experienced the reality of a toddler-and-baby combo. It was wrong (and naive) of me to scorn other parents from afar for the lack of fuss they gave their second child compared with their first. I just didn’t get it.

Now I’m living with the at-times-impossible task of juggling all that nice baby fuss and attention with answering to my other child’s commands as he launches himself off the sofa, shouting, ‘You be Chewie, Mummy. Do the voice!’ (I do a pretty top-notch Chewbacca impression, it has to be said.) So I really wish I could say I had iMessaged James with the moment Jude clapped for the first time (as I’m confident I did for Henry), but the truth is I don’t know when that happened.

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