Steven John
The author and his daughter.
- Having a second child means parents are on duty at almost all times, no longer able to step in for one another when one parent needs a break.
- Assuming everything you learned about infant care will come right back to you when a second child is born means setting yourself up for a collision with reality; you need to prepare yourself before the baby arrives.
- Here are five mistakes I made before our second child was born and some insight to help you avoid doing the same.
No two human beings are exactly alike. As I learned, this fact makes itself evident almost immediately after a baby is born. While my wife and I had more than four years of parenting experience under our belts when our baby daughter arrived, we had absolutely no experience raising this specific young lady. As I would soon learn, not all of what worked for one child would work with another.
I'd also learn how dramatically different life is with two kids as opposed to one. I thought that the profundity of the shift from being childless to being parents would far surpass the change from being parents with one kid to two.
As it turned out, it only slightly surpassed it. Raising kids who are four years apart in age means dealing with two people who both need you for all sorts of reasons, but those reasons have little common ground, so our kids constantly pull us in different directions. And the laundry, cooking, grocery shopping, and that thing called work? That stuff still needs doing, too.
If I could go back a year from today, a couple months before our daughter was born, I'd do myself a favor and read on, because these are five mistakes I made before my second child was born.