This is the last thing I’ll write about parenting before we become a Two-Kid-Household. It’s the sum of everything I’ve experienced during our second pregnancy…from when I’m still in it, no hindsight, nothing foggy in memory, total reality – this is everything…and we’re almost there…10 months in…
…Wow that’s a long time. So long.
If we were goats, we could have 2 kid-kids by now, rabbits like 10 whole new rabbits, actually, back when this started – if I’d decided to build a house with my bare hands instead of having another kid, our 3 piece family would currently be sitting at the kitchen table rethinking our choice of paint color.
It’s been awhile, so…maybe it’s time we slow down, take a break – you know – rethink our options.
Like – What were we thinking?
Clearly we were delusional, but could we really have been all the way to punch-drunk with kid-want? I wanna know so I can avoid repeating this situation in the future. I mean, looking at things from where we are now (which is way more realistic place) – it’s crazy to have said yes to a second kid.
So…Yeah, I’m fully doubting our decision…but this new kid isn’t/wasn’t an accident – I think that’s really important to lay out. We choose to do this.
Six years between kids doesn’t mean we’re about to raise a Love Child. Six years means it took us 6-years to really consider the situation. It took us six years to talk to other parents (all of which I consider to be liars now, but I’ll get to that in a minute). It took us this long to feel steady as parents. It took us this long to want another kid – or at least for the want-of-a-second-kid to outweigh the parts of us that believed one-and-done was perfect for us. It took 6-years for our hearts to overcome our minds.
Because we had fully decided that we wanted to get pregnant. We weren’t just passively ‘ok’ with getting pregnant. We actively tried to have a second kid.
Well, we had been actively trying.
This pregnancy came at the very last moment, the last week of our attempt. We’d really given up. If this was a production – our Untitled-new-baby-project – the PA’s would have been sweeping the floors and locking the doors for good when we found out that our show had been picked up to series.
So all of this was on purpose, but it was still a surprise.
As soon as having another kid became a reality instead of just a thought exercise, our view on the whole situation changed. Suddenly, having a second kid wasn’t the most flattering idea anymore. So, we debated it.
We debated until literally the last possible day. And, when that day passed, we’d made our decision.
Second Pregnancies Aren’t First Pregnancies Repeated
Pretty quickly we knew that this new pregnancy wasn’t going to be like our first pregnancy. I mean, we were heroes during the first pregnancy – photoshoots, Babymoons, so many parties, decorating, embroidered quilts. We did all that – just us.
But this time, we were already parents…we had stuff going on. We couldn’t spend two hours making taco blankets or measuring avocados to find the exact 4-month size for our announcement image…we couldn’t even do monthly announcements.
This made sense, but also felt wrong.
Not Doing this sort of extra, fun stuff that we’d done while pregnant with Augustine – it was a hiccup. It was the first time that we knew we wouldn’t be able to dote on Jade’s belly like we had 6-years prior, and it definately wasn’t the last. Pretty quickly we both started feeling like we were neglecting this new kid.
To me, this was really tough. To think I was doing my best while still feeling like I was coming up short…feeling like I was already somehow an absent father…it was emotionally exhausting; to want to do more but not know what or how to do anything else, and just not have the physical time even if I figured it out.
I mean, doing anything more for our fetus was actively taking time away from our actual living kid and giving it to, basically, a bump…and bumps didn’t care…or at least bumps can’t slam doors, mope around or cry.
Throughout the entire pregnancy, I was never able to strike a comfortable balance between all the things I wanted to do and all the things that needed to get done. Everything was taking from Peter and giving to Paul. (and most of the time Peter was me, so I gave up almost all ‘my’ time and still felt like I was shortchanging everyone else in the house – including the emotion-less bump)
I really could have used some good advice or news from other multi-kid-families, but instead…they decided to start letting us in on all the secret little parent truths that they’d been withholding. (I told you I’d get to why I think they’re all liars.)
All Multi-Parents Know More than they Share…Until they’ve got ya.
Turns out, all those super-excited multi-parents who’d hyped up having another kid were only telling us half the experience. They knew/know that having several kids is a mixed bag. They just don’t share that info until it’s too late…they don’t want to scare everyone away.
So, parents with multiple kids tell us happy-and-healthy single-kid families only part of the story at first and wait until 3-4 months in to finish their sentences.
- They say “2 Kids are Great because they can play together…” at 3-4 months in they add “but you really need to have a way to separate them when they start fighting”
- They say “Having 2 kids really makes you feel like a family…” at 3-4 months in they add “…a family that’s run by kids. Even if you’re evenly matched, you’re out numbered”
- They say“You already have one kid so you know what it’s like” at 3-4 months in they add “every child is different and you can’t raise them the same.”
Imma gonna go ahead and take this grudge to my grave.
I’m like 60% sure (at least more than half positive) that we would have decided to have a second kid even if our friends shared the whole truth, but we definately would have had more conversations and looked at our lives/plans in a different light.
Instead, all of the advice we’d been offered had made me think that having another kid was going to be fun and feel normal. When the experience didn’t live up to this image – when I started to get worried or nervous about raising another kid and my head started doubting our decision – I thought I was wrong, I was doing something wrong. I felt really weird, like if everyone else says this is easy and great, then I’m not cut out for this.
You can probably tell that the excitement that carried us into our second pregnancy began to dissolve into something less than ideal…
This Middle to the Last Trimester Is When I really started wanting to back peddle
It was all of this – realizing how busy we really were, loosing the shine of the second-kid-joys, actually seeing babies again (a horrible wake-up call), and a bunch of the amorphous other stuff that is sorta always in the background (finances, future, etc.) – that all together really began weighing me down around this point.
The more I thought about all of this, the more amazed I was that we were even able to raise one kid…like, for real, how did we ever raise Augustine?
I mean, that’s easy. We were blind. We didn’t know what we were getting ourselves into with our first kid. With our second kid though, I had a brilliantly vivid and textured picture of what raising a kid actually takes, and the closer we got to the birth, the sharper the contrast and deeper and uglier the detailed image became.
I don’t know if I’ve ever actually said ‘I don’t want to do this anymore’ but I’ve definately been going through the 31 flavors of that emotion, seeing if any made me want to bite….which really feels horrible. I’ve felt and I still feel super bad for thinking this way.
I regretted the choices that got us here. I mourned for the life we were losing. I apologized for not being able to be the Dad this kid deserves. I did all that and I’m still doing it.
And, even though Jade and I talk about all this…
…I felt/feel lonely or at least alone-in-this.
But, I can’t be, right? I can’t be the only Dad that’s gone through this. I can feel lonely, but I’m not actually alone. I think maybe many, many Dads go through this, we all just keep it to ourselves.
I mean, it’s not like I’m some irrational, hate-filled person. I’m a man looking at a situation and doubting the probability of achieving the optimal outcome. Or to put it simpler, I’m just a guy who isn’t sure how this is going to work out…and, however this works out, it’s just not going to be the easiest thing…and let’s be honest – easy things are better than hard things.
Moms and Dads must all go through these thoughts and emotions. Having a second kid is so many things, but part of it is being uncertain about the future of you, your family & this unborn kid. Maybe we should have a service that calls all soon-to-be-parents and starts the conversation – normalizes expressing these feelings. Something like :
“Hey. I see you’re about to have a kid. Ok, you probably have a lot going on both in your life and in your head. Did you know that’s normal – just part of the experience. All your friends – and even your enemies went through this. Dude you need to know that you’re probably going to regret this at some point, not all the time, but sometimes – you’re gonna feel unfit for the position…that’s normal. Do you want to talk?”
Any Day Now
But in reality, it’s not the physical stuff that keeps me up at night…I’ve resolved myself into the belief that we’ll have what we have and it will be enough…or – you know – food stamps.
What’s worrying me the most right now is finding space in my life for this kid and time all the challenges it will bring.
Look, I don’t know how we’ll raise our kids.
I need to say that again – I really don’t know how we are going to raise these kids.
But I know it’s worse feeling this way and thinking that I’m wrong or that I’m bad for feeling something that I’m not choosing to experience and can’t actually be weird or even unusual.
It takes a lot to raise kids, and it’s not ever going to be perfect. It’s ok to acknowledge that & it’s ok to sometimes wish things were easier or things could be perfect for me.
With still a few days left before we have our second kid…this is it…no looking back with rose colored glasses…the lived experience. Look, this pregnancy has been hard & I wasn’t prepared for all of it.
With my head in the future, I know I will get through this, there will be better, worse, and just different times ahead. I know this because it worked out with Augustine and I know this because many other Dads have made it though.
But I don’t want to let the future erase the challenges or the bad feeling parts of now…this is all part of the experience of having kids.
There’s nothing anyone could have said or can say that would have made me 100% ready for the experience that’s lead me to this, but sharing this, knowing that it isn’t just happening to me or you or someone you know…maybe that will make us all feel less shocked when our own doubts pop up.