It’s a Girl

We are expecting the arrival of a second daughter any day now. (The due date is January 17, for what that’s worth.) Delphine likes to talk about babies, and pretend to listen to the baby’s heartbeat with her toy stethoscope. (She thinks, in fact, that everybody in our house is currently pregnant, including the cat, and stalks the cat with her stethoscope, calling, “Kitty baby! Kitty baby!”) But the actual materialization of a real baby sibling, of course, is going to upend her world. Nothing will ever be the same again — for any of us.

My sister was born when I was two. I don’t remember it, of course, but I’m sure I was less than thrilled. My parents still have a flashed-out snapshot of me holding my newborn sister in a contorted pose for the camera; on the back of the print, my mother’s brother scribbled, “One snap of the wrist and I’ll be queen again!” Which pretty much sums up the devastating devolution from Pampered Only Child to Mere Oldest Sibling.

I do remember being four or five years old and still resentful of my younger sister for, well, being the baby — for whining for what she wanted and actually getting it, for insisting on riding in the stroller instead of walking, for still being small enough to ride on our dad’s shoulders and watch what was happening in parades while I was stuck on the ground, too short to see.

I also remember my parents gently pushing me — the relatively easygoing, well-behaved kid — into the role of Responsible Older Child, encouraging me to give in to my sister. “She’s younger, she doesn’t understand” was code for “You’re supposed to be mature, but your sister isn’t.”

At some point, of course, the younger siblings do become mature enough to understand and to be responsible — and the older siblings aren’t always wise and patient simply by dint of being slightly older. So as parents, we hope to treat our children as the individuals they are, instead of lumping them into age-based categories. I’m sure we’ll fail at this, as most parents fail sometimes at nearly everything they attempt. But kids aren’t just who their birth order says they might be.

Even less are siblings destined to be best friends or buddies or even close. Most of the new-sibling advice books we’ve come across at the library include a reassuring conclusion along the lines of, “Despite all the times your kids try to claw each other’s eyes out, they do truly love each other and will end up good friends.” Sorry, but that simply ain’t true — and I suspect that the parents nervously reading these books about sibling relations already know it. Yes, it would be great if our children grew up liking each other and remained friends as adults. But we decided to have two children because we liked the idea of two children, not because we idealized siblinghood.

In the remaining few weeks before our second child — whom Caleb refers to as Baby XX — is born, I’ve tried to focus less on the next child and more on the last days of Just Delphine. We have a nice rhythm, she and I; quiet days of meals and naps and errands and trips to the park. I know I won’t be able to give her this level of attention again for a long time; especially at first, I’ll be too tired and too distracted and too dang busy spending eight hours a day breastfeeding. But I hope I’ll be able to find some time every day to be with Delphine alone.

It took me a long, long time to get used to being a parent, to having to take care of a baby all day. Presumably it won’t take me quite so long to get over the shock with baby number two — but then, the shocks will be all new, because now it’s all about how to care for two individuals instead of just one.