One Boy or Two?

Elsie Button put up a hilarious post recently touching on, amongst other things, how a friend of hers is coping with going from one child to two. She also wrote very amusingly on the extremely common-place phenomena of 'Husband Down-Time', which is when men go missing in some Bermuda Triangle-type hole in the space-time continuum following their exhausting travails on the labour ward. Which is something I have experienced too. And I shall say no more about it.

Other than, you try sitting in a post-natal ward, padded up to the max, only just regaining the sense of feeling in your legs, with your baby wrapped in what appear to be old tea-towels, and see if you are able to keep your sense of humour when your husband reappears after a 6 hour absence (during which he was completely uncontactable due to a conveniently dodgy battery in his mobile phone), and he has forgotten to bring the baby-gros...

But I digress.

My initial aim was in fact to tell those of you who are currently considering making that jump from one to two children that this a decision not to be taken lightly. Think you're tired after your first baby? Forget it, amateur. Whilst there are of course wonderful moments with your newborn and your older child, I'm afraid that my overwhelming memory of that time is of exhaustion. Breastfeeding a 2 month old whilst the 2 1/2 year old is demanding a story / the potty / a sandwich / a bath / for you to fix the wheel back on his Thomas Tank Engine / your attention in any shape or form, is a far cry from the halcyon days of having only one baby to feed on the sofa whilst watching Big Brother, I'm a Celebrity, and 24 to your hearts content during maternity leave.

And I could definitely have done without the 6 months of changing 2 sets of nappies before Boy #1 was potty trained at nearly 3 years old. But I think I covered all that off in my first couple of months of blogging, so I won't bore you with it now.

In brief, going from one to two children is hard work. I won't lie; Husband and I found it tripled the work-load, not doubled it. It was a shock to the system, that's for sure.

But, but, but.

Over the last few weeks on our Australia trip, something wonderful has happened. The masterplan that we had at the back of our minds when we decided to make that leap from one to two children seems finally to be coming good. The Boys have become a unit. It may be because Boy #2 is now the right age, it may be the 5 weeks when the only play-mates they had were each other, but for whatever reason, they are now as thick as thieves.

Boy #1 and his sometimes Mini-Me are now a team, whispering under the table together, plotting mischief under the bed-clothes together (usually under my bedclothes, usually with their shoes still on), and standing hands on hips in the garden, looking quizzically in my direction as they wait for me to transform into whatever 'chase monster' they have ordered today.

Yes, I know there will be times when I will have to throw a bucket of water over them to break up their fights, when they won't speak to each other for days, and when one finds the other so frustrating that they are ready to explode. They're siblings, it wouldn't be normal if they didn't do these things (or was that just me and mine?). But for now, it's working. And it's great to see.

So, ignore my earlier rant. Have that second child. But maybe pick up a gel-filled eye-mask and some ear-plugs when you go to the chemist to buy your pregnancy test.