Two of a Kind
I’ve thought a little about what the newborn stage might have in store for us this time (will No. 2 not sleep/eat/be cute?), but I haven’t thought much at all about labor and delivery. We had SUCH a great experience last time (epidural! awesome hospital staff! speedy recovery!) that I’ve probably been all too content to let those memories overshadow paranoid thoughts about the vast range of complications that can rain down on a family during something as delicate as bringing a new person into the world.
At my OB appointment last week, my doc was reviewing notes about my last delivery and brought up that whole “oh, remember how you could have bled to death?” thing (which remains the engine that pulls my long anti-homebirth train; chugga chugga, chugga chugga, HELL NO). All we knew at the time was that I had some sort of major hemorrhage, which the team of experts took care of lickety-split, and only just this week, three-plus years later, did I find out the source was a high vaginal laceration, which I gather is kind of a big deal.
“What that means for this time is that…” my doc began–and before she could finish I sensed my body tensing to resist what I felt certain was coming: “…you need to have a C-section.” That’s NOT what she said at all (I just need to use some cream to make the area more supple and flexible), but even at the mere (imagined) idea of a C-section, it hit me like a sledgehammer how attached I am not to having a vaginal birth over surgery (“whatever it takes to get a healthy baby and mother” is my philosophy) but rather how attached I am to the idea that This Time be as similar as possible to Last Time. Because Last Time was awesome. I want to do Last Time again.
The more I thought about my reaction to this reminder of the obvious–that things might go differently this time–the more obviously obvious it became to me that this hangup is practically the same hangup that inspired so much trepidation about the idea of having another boy. You may not have picked up on this before, but I think Wombat is pretty much the best little boy on the planet. No, not “pretty much”…he’s THE best. Faults and all, he is my perfect little manchild, and although I know intentions are all good when other mothers assure me that having two children of the same gender isn’t like having two versions of the same child–”They’re SO different! You’ll see!”–I haven’t actually been able to find much comfort in that idea because, at this point, I’m still unable to imagine that anything different from Wombat won’t necessarily be less than. Does that make sense. At the risk of being dismissed as a hyperbolic jackass, I guess the conundrum is how do you improve on perfection?
Perhaps I have an unrealistic appreciation of the sheer awesomeness of my firstborn. PERHAPS. But regardless, most likely this is just one of those things I can’t reconcile ahead of time, and the only thing to do now is busy my hands and brain so I don’t spend the next five months wringing and wracking, trying to figure out how I’m going to raise sons that I won’t always describe in terms of which one is ______er than the other.
Waaaaay back when I was still coming to terms with never parenting a daughter (what? two weeks is a long time!), I realized that one of my issues is that I don’t trust my own ability to NOT compare sons. I thought maybe having a girl would make the sibling thing a more apples/oranges situation, letting me off the hook a little, allowing me to be a little bit lazy. But no, I see now that I’m either going to have to (a) work really hard at acknowledging these boys as individuals or (b) be completely surprised at how easy and natural it is to see them as separate, independent, individual people once they’re both here.
Likewise, I need to believe that there can be two incredible childbearing experiences that bear very little resemblance to each other. And that there can be two sons in one family that, even though they may look exactly the same (or not), can each be incredible in his own incredible way.
Wombat is awesome, but I have to believe now that he’s not actually The Awesomest. Awesome is not a superlative in and of itself. There are variations on awesome. There have to be, for everyone’s sake.
There must be. There will be. There already are, I just haven’t seen it with my own eyes yet.
[I think comments are still broken (grrrr), but I'd love to hear what you think. Email me at leah (at) agirlandaboy (dot) com and I'll get your thoughts up through some sort of technological magic I have yet to learn.]
[Okay, I was being cheeky re: "technological magic," but it turns out I actually can't figure it out, so here are your comments so far:]
From Beck, my brain-twin:
“At the risk of being dismissed as a hyperbolic jackass, I guess the conundrum is how do you improve on perfection?”
I was delighted to discover there are SO many varieties of perfection! K is a PERFECT K. H is a PERFECT H. Wombat and Mompth will be perfectly themselves, too. The inner perfectionist/valedictorian in me (to refer to Heather Armstrong’s constant striving to be valedictorian) wants there to be a right way to DO or a right way to BE… and for that way to remain that way always and forever amen. But there really isn’t a single right way to do anything. Everybody’s different, and that’s perfect. =)
From Sarah:
I read your post and tried hard not to be jealous. And then I failed. You think and hope you’ll get a birth like last time. And it allows you to do
it again. I think I might get a birth like last time (3 years of infertility, a high risk pg, 8 wks bedrest, a 4 day induction, cesarean followed by weeks of bad recovery with jaundiced newborn) and it keeps me from doing it again.
I hope your next birth is as good as your first.
Sarah–I get where you’re coming from (and am so sorry you had such a rough go of it!). I know a lot of people who have a second (or third) kid in hopes that the experience will be better. I’m like you, though, and if the first had been bad, I don’t know what I’d have the will to risk it again. That said, I guess my best option is to plan for the worst but hope for the best? :/
From mamabub:
So, I couldn’t help but comment on this same/different situation. I have both a boy, and a girl, so perhaps my opinion isn’t valuable here, but this is my personal experience. 1. My labors were very similar in many regards: Same day of the week, in the same month, both induced, both beyond 40 weeks. However, my second labor was significantly easier than my first. My first was fine, but I had a nine pound baby and pushed for two hours. That’s not all that unusual, but it was unusual for ME, and it wasn’t particularly pleasant. Second baby? Twenty minutes of “push if you feel like it,” then five minutes after the doctor arrived she was born. Why is it that we like to talk about our birth experiences so much?
As for comparing your children, well I think this just happens. Again, I have a boy and a girl and I compare them all the livelong day. Fair or not, I can’t stop myself. They’re very different kids, but also very similar in that they’re related and have many of the same influences. So, I don’t know that I could have possibly compared my children any more than if they were the same gender. To be clear, I don’t compare them in the sense that I VALUE one over the other. I do notice that my son hit his milestones much sooner, but my daughter is more free with her smiles and laughs. Where my son said “wa-pop” for lollipop, and “schloop” for fruit, my daughter says “brabra” for grampa, and “muk” for milk and both have been recorded in their baby books because those kids are CUTE. Both of them.
Good point. Comparison is probably inevitable–I guess I just feel like there are so few things I’d have changed about Wombat that I worry he’s always going to seem like the “better” kid. Again, all this is speculation that might have nothing to do with reality, and I guess the important thing is that however much I compare the kids in my head, I should be careful not to do it out loud, or in a way that would make the boys start comparing themselves. Being a kid is hard enough!
From Christine:
I thought that about my son, too. Then I had my daughter. The end. I really think that the sex has nothing to do with it – they’d still be completely different kids if she was a boy.
When I was pregnant with my second my wise mother-of-three sister-in-law asked me if I could possibly imagine any child of mine and my husband’s being other than the child I already had. Of course, I couldn’t. But you’re not having a clone, so the
next one will be different, and he will be amazing in ways you can’t even think of yet.
Comparisons are not always odious – they’re unavoidable, but it all evens out. One reason I’d love to have another – but won’t – is that I’d love to roll those genetic
dice one more time and see what amazing result we’d get with number three.
From Bethany:
I had a fantastic L&D with my first child, even though it was unexpectedly four weeks ahead of schedule: I managed without an epidural, I labored
calmly for 10 hours, and then after 15 minutes of pushing Annalie was born with minimal damage to me. It was better than I ever could have hoped. In fact, it was so great that it caused me to hesitate to have a second child, because I was sure I could never have that great of an experience twice.
And my second L&D *was* completely different: my water broke before going to the hospital, I had an intense but manageable couple hours of labor, and
then a REALLY INTENSE WHOA half-hour which caused me to ask for an epidural, but then before the anesthesiologist could even get there, I was ready to push, and Elliora was born in about five minutes, before the doctor had the chance to do anything more than hurriedly wash his hands (it was after 11pm and he’d been called in).
Similarly, I have been surprised over and over and over again in the 16 months of Elliora’s life at the ways in which she is not like her older sister. I shouldn’t be so surprised, especially since I don’t think my brother and I could be more different from each other, but I am. I think mamabub is right, that no matter what genders you have, you will compare your children, because you’re comparing what you know with something that’s new.
