Making room for (another) Baby…
“How can I possibly love another child as much as my first?”
“Won’t by oldest child feel jealous when my second (third, fourth…) is born?”
“Why does having another child feel like a loss of something with my first?”
I hear these questions and concerns often in my work. As the mother of two children, I remember having the same worries when I was pregnant with my second. It’s so understandable to look at your first child and wonder if you’ll ever be able to love another child as much, or to question how to uphold the bond you’ve built with your first.
Paradoxically, adding to the family does require the loss of something, just as having a first child also required the loss of your relationship with your partner as it once was. Your first child will never be your sole parental focus again, for example. You’ll probably have to negotiate your time boundaries differently, which might implicate your partner in a new way. Daily rhythms will have to include the needs of one more person, which affects all the persons in the family system.
But here’s the thing: like pregnancy, adding to your family is an expansive experience, not just for you as a parent, but for your child as well. They are losing an old parent-child dynamic to gain a new one, and a new sibling. Expansion isn’t necessarily fun or easy. Yes, there’s more love, but there are also growing pains.
We adjust again and again and again in this life. As hard as that can be, adjustments are happening all around us in big and small ways, moments of expansion and constriction, life’s inhales and exhales. It’s a biological imperative, and without our adjustment capacity, we wouldn’t survive.
I read recently that the corpus callosum in females was relatively larger (overall brain size accounted and adjusted for). This is the part of the brain that connects the two hemispheres and creates cohesion between their functions. You can read more about the corpus callosum here:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/neuroscience/corpus-callosum
I suspect that this size difference in females may help us multitask and attune to our multitude of environmental factors when caring for children. I’d love to ask a neuroscientist if they agree, so if that’s you out there, let me know. Of course, every brain is different, and males can be incredibly attuned caregivers, but the point is, you were made for this.
Your womb will expand to 500x it’s original size by the time a pregnancy is full term. Blood volume increases by approximately 50%. Heck, you grow an entirely new organ (placenta).
So, to the mother who is concerned about her capacity to expand her love in equal measure to another child, I would say this:
Trust what’s already true. Your body is doing this work. Proof that you can love more than one child is in every heartbeat and hug given, every kick felt and kiss on the cheek. It’s in your bones, your viscera, your ancestral lineage, to be a mother to this new child AND your first. Sometimes, we just have to remember what our bodies have already known.
As always, wishing you wellness and warmth on your journey,
-Kristin
