Bogosity

Did I mention yet that we’re having another baby? Over the last few weeks or so we’ve been processing the reality of having our second baby now that the twelve week probation period has finished. On the topic of the twelve week thing, we actually don’t care about it but observed it this time around because last time when we told people before the twelve weeks, some of them got all weird about it.

Speaking of last time, that’s what we’ve been thinking about a lot: last time. The pregnancy has dredged up a few issues that we are a bit afraid of facing again the second time around. There were some things during the first year of Sol’s life that we never really solved but just endured our way through. This time around, it’s a bit worse looking forward to some of the hard times we went through. While we’re not worried about the technical stuff anymore: we’re confident we’ll know what we’re doing when it comes to eating, sleeping and changing nappies, we’re not so sure about how we (er I mean Steph) will cope with the isolation, lack of support and depression.

One of the worst things about the first year of Sol’s life was the feeling of being alone. The change of lifestyle was such a shock to us, we didn’t know what hit us: lack of sleep, wall to wall baby chores, not feeling like we could leave the house. Steph had depression though we didn’t recognise what it was. I didn’t feel like any of my friends could understand what we were going through. Steph’s family demonstrated very thoroughly that they couldn’t understand what we were going through and were one of the reasons that we felt ashamed that we were not having the most wonderful and glorious time of our lives.

Having said that, Sol brought us a lot of joy. I don’t want to confuse some of the things we were going through with all the good stuff that was happening at the same time. I remember how I could just sit and stare at him and marvel at what he was. I loved to listen to the sounds he made, especially when he would get a bit of a chatter going on about a topic that will always remain a mystery.

Some of the steps we took to come out of the bad space we were in as parents was for Steph to join a community group or two where she could meet some other mums. While she was afraid that the groups would be full of vacuous designer mums, she discovered at at least a few intelligent mums through one of the groups she was at. We also had to learn how to ask for help from our friends (though we are still not good at that). It helped along the way that we were able to reconnect with friends who had toddlers and babies so that towards the end of Sol’s first year, we had managed to reconfigure our lives and gather the support we needed.

It was also a help for Steph to go back to work part time so that she could get some time to think about something other than being a mum.

What will it look like when number two baby comes along now that Sol is a toddler who likes to push the boundaries of bad behaviour and now that we have moved to the suburbs, once again in a place where we aren’t close to our support networks? From my point of view, I just want to be happy about our new baby and forget about all this stuff. On the other hand, I don’t want to dismiss these fears. It’s much better to tackle these things and find some faith that it will all work out than to hide it all behind white picket fences and manicured lawns like so many of us do.