As my eldest danced in her own puddle of pee at the bottom of the stairs and my newborn鈥檚 diaper leaked streaks down both her legs and mine, I began to reconsider just how wise it might have been to have two children and to leave me in charge of both.
This same thought reoccurred once more as the eldest vomited down the stairs, covering every inch of floor space and wall between where she sat halfway up and where I stood at the bottom, while the every-hungry little one screamed for milk. The postman chose this unfortunate moment to ring the doorbell. He was greeted by a tearful (me) vomity mess (me, again) and cheerfully handed me two parcels before hastily retreating back to his car, likely with warnings for work colleagues about avoiding the crazy lady in Number 4.
Don鈥檛 get me wrong, I couldn鈥檛 love our littles ones more. Even at 2 a.m., I delight in their smiles and adorable ways, but caring now for two little ones significantly added to the load of pre-existing parenting challenges. In fact, I鈥檓 almost grateful that total sleep deprivation has become the new norm as I鈥檓 now able to move on from self-pity-like wallowing at my own tired state and focus on other things鈥� such as making sure we all survive until that golden moment of relief when Daddy walks through the door.
Now, though, with the passing of three months since the little one was born, I鈥檓 relieved to say that it feels like we鈥檙e gradually emerging from pure survival mode. We鈥檙e daring to go out in daylight and are revelling in laughably small achievements, like solo supermarket shopping with two kids, or playdates in the playground. There are still certain activities, like venturing on public transit with them both or eating anywhere other than at home, that paralyze me with fear, but I suspect we鈥檒l knock them off the list eventually before looking back and laughing at how funny it was to be worried by such things.
And worrying, in general, is thankfully something we do far less of with the second than the first, where we lost a silly number of hours obsessing over minutia that, at the time, we thought were make or break details crucial to her well-being, from poops to percentiles, cradle cap and naps. The littlest just goes with the flow, being dragged from pillar to post depending on what her older sister happens to be doing that day, snatching bonus naps where she can. This initially filled me with self-reproach, but I鈥檝e stopped worrying about that too and regularly shrug my shoulders and utter the phrase, 鈥淥h, she鈥檒l be fine.鈥�
While the second one misses out on her naps, the first misses out on the undivided attention once showered on her during the first two and a half years of her life. This took some adjustment on both her part and mine, and the littlest too had to adjust to nursing not in the serene silence that her sister enjoyed but among total chaos, often with her mother not-so-silently mouthing to her larger sister to stop putting Duplo in her little sister鈥檚 ear while she鈥檚 trying to feed. (I鈥檝e since been reassured by child psychologist friend that it鈥檚 healthy for a child鈥檚 development to realize they鈥檙e not the centre of your world. Perhaps she was saying this to make me feel better. Either way, it鈥檚 one less item on the increasingly long list of 鈥榯hings for mummy to feel guilty about.鈥�)
Where I feel no guilt at all, though, is soaking up the little moments with my smallest, because all too soon I know we鈥檒l be offering bribes for potty training and answering the endless question of 鈥淲hy?鈥� So for that very (very) short time when she thinks I truly am the greatest thing in her world, I鈥檓 going to run with it.
