Reply to If you had an extremely, extremely difficult first baby

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[quote=Anonymous]Our first was so hard it took us 4 years to have a second. I wanted one badly and I love our second child, but he has many of the same challenges our first daughter did. We thought he would be our easy baby, but it turns out that both my kids are neurodivergent and both have a lot of challenges around eating, attention, sleeping, and behavior starting from birth. There were no easy temperaments, good eaters, easy to settle/sleep, etc. or any sort of break for us as parents. They both hated childcare, hated being away from us, both frequently got sick, had different health issues, had an hard time nursing and eating, and were just hard babies.

Of course, we did not quite know that our first was hard as first time parents. It just felt like parenting was a horrible and soul sucking exercise and everyone else who had babies could still go away for the weekend, have sitters, get back to sleeping ok, eat a family meal peacefully, etc. while we just could not get back to anything resembling our old life or the life I envisioned we would have as parents. But now I have been around so many babies I know how hard mine are. I can hold a friend’s baby and see they won’t scream bloody murder if someone else holds them, and they can let mom shower without a tantrum, and can wean easily at 12 months, and eat a meal and self-feed until they are full, and be easily sleep trained, and put themselves to sleep, and calm themselves down after being upset, and see how easy some children are and how mine are not - in any way.

Now that both my kids are older we are getting them formally diagnosed with their conditions (we have more than one) but they were both hard, hard babies, infants, and toddlers. They are also smart, funny, bright, and loving and damn, I do love them. But I still feel that my parenting experience is like trying to paddle a sinking canoe while other parents are in motorboats or yachts and looking at our family like, “why is this hard for you? It’s not that hard for us.”

My only advice would be to expect it might be just as hard, and then you may be surprised if your next child is easier. But I would not count on that - I feel foolish having thought the second time would be easier for us. [/quote]

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