My phone vibrated with texts and calls as I lay in the hospital bed, recovering from the birth of my first child.
After a precious few hours in the newborn bubble, my husband Dan had left the hospital (thanks Covid restrictions!), to return when visiting hours began again the following morning.
Meanwhile, I had started telling my friends about our new arrival.
‘Guess who’s here?!’ I typed, sending photos of a tiny, pink and scrunched-up newborn.
Our daughter Minna had arrived, after a gruelling labour, in March 2021, and I was besotted.
So, it seemed, was everyone else.
For days after we were discharged, flowers, doughnuts, even personalised clothing, flooded our home.
We were truly humbled as we read loving message after loving message from people excited to meet our new arrival.
In the depths of newborn craziness, I was so grateful for everybody’s excitement, it helped through the nights of no sleep and the tricky feeds.
And introducing Minna to our friends and family was incredible – seeing our closest friends dote on our daughter filled my heart with love. After all, the more people who love your child, the better!
Then, in June 2022, I found out I was pregnant with our much-wanted second child.
As my bump grew, we read books to Minna about becoming a big sister, anxious to help her bond with the baby so she wouldn’t feel replaced.
The evening before my c-section date came around, in February 2023, I hugged my 22-month-old daughter goodnight, knowing things would be different the next time I saw her.
She wouldn’t be an only child any longer, not our youngest baby and life wouldn’t simply be centred around her. I was unsure how this would make her, or the rest of us, feel.
After a dreamy birth, my son, Lando, and I were discharged the following day on February 3 and we came home to life as a family of four.
I soon realised things would be different the second time around, but in a way I wasn’t expecting.
As I was breastfeeding, Lando was attached to me a lot of the time, and I was the person closest to him for the first few weeks of his life.
This left Dan, along with the (less) steady stream of visitors, to care for Minna, who was, and still is, a very busy child.
Everyone was so anxious not to upset Minna, when friends and family did come to visit they’d often spend all their time playing with her.
It was great, and I loved seeing them dote on her – but this affection sometimes came at Lando’s expense.
People felt that to give the new baby attention, they would be cheating on Minna, their first love.
I seemed to spend my life saying, ‘Lando’s cute too!’, tagging him on to the end of sentences about Minna’s effervescent personality.
Maybe it was the fact that a newborn really doesn’t do anything except feed, cry and fill their nappy. As a result, they can’t help but look like a little potato next to a literally all-singing, all-dancing toddler.
At times, I felt it was me and Lando against the world, and I felt a sad sort of protectiveness on his behalf.
Even Dan, who is a fantastic father and who I knew loved Lando, undeniably took longer to bond with the new baby. Instead of slow hours in a newborn bubble, with two parents to one tiny baby, his time was spent trying to ensure our daughter was happy and adjusting well.
While Lando and I lay in bed on a Saturday morning during hours-long feeds, he was out in the cold taking Minna to toddler rugby lessons.
And even I, his overprotective parent, made mistakes – at Minna’s second birthday, when Lando was seven weeks, in the excitement of her blowing out her birthday candles I completely forgot I’d left Lando strapped into his baby chair, facing away from everyone else.
While we were singing Happy Birthday and making sure Minna didn’t set herself on fire, Lando was gurgling at a blank wall.
I felt terrible when I realised.
But despite my initial, knee jerk reaction of sadness that friends and family didn’t seem to love Lando as much as they loved Minna, I realised people had loved Minna effortlessly because they didn’t know anything else.
They’d fallen in love immediately, which is unlike any other relationship in life.
After nearly two years, their bond with Minna was so tight it was hard to make room for someone else.
While I’d fallen in love again straight away, this time other people didn’t.
Their lives had moved on. They had different priorities and they needed time to get to know Lando, and for him to develop a personality, which they could react to.
It took months (and I wish I’d known before how normal this was!), leaving me feeling defensive and protective of my chubby little dumpling.
But then, at around four or five months, the sun started to come out and people started seeing the adorable, serious, cheeky baby that I knew.
Flashes of personality shone through and as he started to interact, I could see the love for him grow in others.
I never doubted my heart had enough space for both my adored children, but seeing other people make space for Lando delighted me.
It wasn’t that I wanted them to love Minna less; I just wanted them to love Lando equally.
Now, Minna is three-and-a-half and Lando is 19 months old.
They play (and fight) together. Lando can give as good as he gets. And while he’s more reserved than Minna, who loves a cuddle, when he smiles, it’s like sunshine.
People can’t help falling in love with him now and, as I watch both my children clambering all over my husband or giving their grandparents or my friends a cuddle, I feel privileged that our loved ones love them both too.
But if you’re going to visit someone who has just had a second baby, please try and make a fuss of the newborn – it might be all that a tired mama needs to see!
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