- When you have a second baby, things are a bit different than the first time around.
- You will less concerned about being the perfect parent.
- Time alone with your partner and friends is even more important.
Everything changes once you become a parent. Your sleep is cut in half, you eat standing up, and you may be unsure which day of the week it is — and that's just after you have your first child.
Just when you think you have this whole parenting gig figured out, the second baby comes along and life gets a lot more interesting.
If you're getting ready to have your second child, you might be wondering how your life is going to change, or if it's going to change at all. When I was pregnant with number two, friends and family members gave me tons of tips on what to expect when a second child joined the family.
While some of the advice was helpful, most of it made no difference at all — especially when I was knee-deep in parenting a toddler and breastfeeding a new baby.
Here are the 13 things I wish someone had told me before I had a second baby.
1. It's actually easier than you think
To be honest, I was scared to death about how hard it was going to be with a second baby. My first was barely two years old, and I was still trying to figure her out.
During the first few months after I had my second child, I often felt like I was walking in a fog. But after I found a routine that worked for me, I started feeling less like a hot mess. In fact, it wasn't until I started getting out of the house and becoming more comfortable with being a mom to two kids that things got easier.
2. You will 'wing' it a lot more than you did with your first child
During your first pregnancy, you probably had every baby book under the sun lined up nice and neat on your bookshelf. You may have even read all of them cover to cover — I know I did.
Just when you think you've got everything figured out from your first baby, number two comes along and "mom intuition" — aka "winging it" — takes over.
Who has time to Google anything when you're feeding a baby and changing diapers on a toddler — both at the same time (probably something NOT recommended in the baby books).
3. Your firstborn might revert to baby behavior to get attention
I made the mistake of trying to cram potty-training my toddler into the last few weeks of my second pregnancy. While it worked initially, she quickly went back to using diapers after my son was born. I chalked it up as a parenting failure, when in fact, it's quite common for children to revert to baby-like behavior when a sibling joins the family.
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