New Mummy Blog: One Plus One Is Not Two

Adam and I have been operating under a false sense of security that, as we’ve done it all before, it can't be that hard becoming parents for a second time.

With our lives running to a finely tuned schedule full of work, nursery drop offs, bedtime routines, we’d be in a blind panic if we allowed ourselves to think otherwise.

We’ve got experience this time, which must count for something surely?

Why then do all those naysayers, those smug parents of two-plus children who have gone through the baby and toddler years already, love to tell us that we “have no idea what it really is to be parents” until we have more than one”.

Or the other little chestnut: “One plus one does not equal two. It equals a lot more. A lot”. Okay, we got it at the first lot.

So, I decided it was time to stop burying my head in the sand and start doing some research about becoming a family of four.

A word of advice if you’re in a similar situation: do not search online for other people’s blogs about life with two children under two.

You won’t find heart-warming tales of how, despite each little one having his or her own individual character, it’s fundamentally the same and therefore a walk in the park compared to the steep learning curve of number one.

Instead, prepare to come away believing your life, for the next long months and years, will be nothing more than an endless cycle of poo and chaos and you’ll be lucky to see the light of day, never mind manage to get yourself and your offspring out of pyjamas and out of the house.

So instead, I tried the professional route, downloading as many books as I could find on the matter. Happily, these have proved to be much more reassuring and actually pretty practical in their advice. However, unfortunately, they’ve also succeeded in flagging up issues that hadn’t even occurred to me yet.

So I’ve decided to put them aside for now – much better, I’m hoping, to dip in and out as problems arise than to fuel my panic with hypothetical dramas around sibling rivalry, breastfeeding jealousy, and how to get out of the house on time.

I’ve also sought the advice of friends and family. But it’s quickly become apparent there that as every child is different and every parenting style is too, there’s not much advice that we can take on board at this point.

So there seems to be a bit of a pattern emerging. Funnily enough, just as we couldn’t prepare for number one with no prior knowledge or experience of parenthood, we can’t prepare in advance for number two any more effectively. I might be clinging to the last few months of a doomed to die domestic routine before anarchy ensues in the Sparks household.

But there’s nothing we can do about it now, except for enjoy the peace – what little of that we have with an 18-month-old daughter ruling the roost.

[New Mummy Blog: Preparing For Baby Number Two]

[New Mummy Blog: Two Very Different Pregnancies]

How did your firstborn react to a baby sibling? Let us know in the comments below.