When I was pregnant with my second child, I spent a lot of time wondering how the arrival of a new baby would affect my 2-year-old son. Would he feel abandoned? Resentful? Would he feel left behind when he stayed with my parents while we were in the hospital with his little sister?
I worried, too, about my relationship with my son. How would I maintain the tight bond we'd established? Would I love our new daughter, then unknown to us, as much as I loved the little boy I already knew so well? How would I manage to make space for one-on-one time with my son?
But when our daughter arrived, all sleepy and snuggly, I was surprised by the emotion I often felt around my son.
Annoyance.
Every time I sat down to nurse my daughter, he acted out
My son was my first baby — he'd made me into a mother
How could I feel like he was an intruder?
Fortunately, this painful stage was short-lived. One of the best and most painful parts of parenting (and life) is that everything changes. The sweet parts melt away, as do the difficult times. We slowly acclimated to being a family of four. My daughter's infancy flowed into toddlerhood, while my son morphed from a preschooler into a boy.
The mysteries I pondered during my pregnancy with my daughter have been solved. If my son ever felt abandoned or resentful by his sister's arrival, those feelings have long been absorbed (perhaps to come up in future therapy). They are, like many siblings, each other's best friends and fiercest tormentors. Almost four years later, we have to squint to remember what life was like before our daughter's birth.
