It's 11 a.m. and gymnastics class is just finishing up. A swarm of three- and four-year-olds, one of them mine, hover around an aging former gymnast with a stamp pad. As I stand there holding my 18-month-old, wondering why the heck they can't make those stamps easier to wash off, my eyes wander over to Marie.
She's wearing her two-week-old in a baby carrier and trying to discipline her three-year-old who, admittedly, acted up today. But can you blame him? Imagine having the most intense love affair of your life with a person who also happens to be your main provider of food, drink and comfort – and suddenly she's snuggling up to someone else. Wouldn't you feel like stomping on the parachute tent?
I think the logic behind Matthew's behaviour (however subconscious) shows he's pretty damn smart. The more he misbehaves, the more she interacts with him. Voilà , food and comfort source retained.
But the look on Marie's face makes me want to weep. It's a mixture of postnatal exhaustion and the despair of the mother who suddenly realizes she now has two little ones to worry about.
That look takes me back to the arrival of my own No. 2, Misha. I remember the feeling of terror as the delivery date approached. How was my almost-three-year-old going to deal with the new arrival? One of my medical school classmates told me she had bitten her newborn brother's arm on the day they brought him home from the hospital, just to be sent back for a tetanus shot. Welcome to the family, baby!
And what about me, I thought? Was I ever going to be able to love this new baby as much as I loved my older son, Kiran? I couldn't fathom it. I gathered advice from friends and medical professionals. We bought Kiran a toy digger “from the baby” that he would receive at the hospital on the day we came home. To this day, I wonder whether he thinks both the baby and the digger came out of me.
In the early days, when both kids simultaneously needed comforting, I handed off the newborn thinking that as long as he was being held by someone caring, he wouldn't mind.
Every minute that I wasn't feeding or holding the baby was spent cuddling and playing with Kiran. It was exhausting but it worked. Our older son didn't feel he'd lost me to this new baby, but of course there were consequences.
I had decided to buy a breast pump so the baby could be fed by someone else on occasion, allowing me some freedom from the rigorous breastfeeding schedule. The first time Kiran caught me standing in the bathroom, milking myself, he looked at me in horror.
I panicked. How could I make this less terrifying for a three-year-old? Without letting go of my suction cups, I started moving my hips to the beat of the pump. “Zugga chicka, zugga chicka, dance to the beat!” I cried. It worked, and for the next seven months he would sway his little body every time he heard the noise of that awful machine.
