embracing interdependence

and other reflections on becoming a mum of two

Mother and Two Children by Mary Cassatt, 1906

My second baby turned six months old recently. It feels like only yesterday that I was in labour with her, like mere days have passed since she was born calmly and serenely in our front room on a wild and stormy December night whilst our older daughter slept peacefully upstairs. It also already feels impossible to imagine life without her, and like she has somehow been a part of our family forever.

I found my first postpartum experience difficult, and struggled to adjust to early motherhood. I’ve written about that previously:

Today, I want to share some thoughts on my second postpartum experience, mostly because it has been very different from my first. These words are for myself as much as anyone, and many of the lessons are ones I am very much still learning.

So, in no particular order, here are some reflections from the first six months as a mother of two:

Pregnancy and postpartum are a vulnerable time, and acknowledging that you need support to navigate it is not weakness, it is wisdom. As

Amelia Buzzard

wrote in her latest post:

When I was pregnant, I came to terms with the vulnerability of my sex in ways I hadn’t before reckoned with. I bore a life within my own, a fragile life that could be snuffed out if I didn’t carefully tend and sustain my own. For me to care for the baby, I needed my husband to care for me.

When I had my first daughter, I was forced to reckon with this vulnerability, and with the interdependence between a mother and her newborn baby. The total dependence of my baby on me came as a shock, as did the amount to which I in turn had to depend on others, primarily my husband. I didn’t even realise how much I had unwittingly absorbed the idea that dependence was weakness until I found myself struggling to ask for or accept help as a new mum. Half of me knew I needed someone to “mother the mother”, but the other half couldn’t bear the idea that I needed help, because asking for help felt like failure. I never really got into girlboss “I don’t need a man” feminism, I was rubbish at corporate girlboss life, and spent my twenties drifting around the world working various hospitality jobs rather than knuckling down to a career and smashing the glass ceiling. But I still believed in the myth of my own independence, not from men particularly, but in general. So when I had a baby I felt that I should somehow be able to do motherhood without compromising my own independence. Well, I know better now. I’m beginning to wonder if the idea that individuals are really autonomous and independent is the real myth, and whether interdependence is in fact the norm for humanity.

“More and more, it has seemed to me that the idea of an individual, the idea that there is someone to be known, separate from the relationships, is simply an error”

Mary Catharine Bateson

So during my second postpartum I asked for help more readily, and accepted it more gratefully. I chose to let go of the pervasive and corrosive idea that I needed to prove my independence whilst doing arguably the most interdependent thing any woman does - birthing and caring for a newborn baby. I no longer aspire to be independent, and embracing interdependence has in an odd way felt liberating.

Motherhood is easier when you stop fighting its demands. Sometimes you just have to ride the wave instead of fighting it. I found this to be true even during labour - when I softened and breathed through the contractions instead of tensing up and resisting them, they were easier. Not easy, but easier. This is an active not a passive surrender. When I say I stopped fighting the demands of motherhood, I don’t mean I started allowing life to “just happen” - far from it! Accepting the demands of motherhood and orienting my life to fulfilling those demands to the best of my ability has required me to exercise a great deal of effort and self discipline, arguably requiring more of me than my life pre-kids.¹ It’s just that now the goals I am pursuing are familial not purely individual. I’m trying to embrace a mindset that accepts the built-in limitations of motherhood rather than constantly resenting them.

You are capable of more than you realise. When my first daughter was about six months old, I used to question how I would ever cope with having more children. I felt like I was already at my max, like there was no way I could add another child into the mix. Even when I was pregnant with my second, I frequently wondered how on earth I was going to manage a baby and a toddler. Now that I have two, all I can say is…you find a way. Like in the children’s story We’re Going On A Bear Hunt, sometimes the only way out is through. Unbelievably, I have found the first six months with two kids to be easier than the first six months with one. This is possibly partially due to the very different birth experiences I had, so I entered my second postpartum in a better place mentally, but I think it’s also because I just had to get on with it. It was sink or swim. Being forced out of my comfort zone meant I was forced to grow. Dealing even somewhat successfully with situations I had previously thought were beyond me built confidence in my own capabilities, and I realised I can do this. I can do hard things. Motherhood didn’t get easier, but I got stronger.

Your second baby will be a different baby, and you will be a different mother. Before my second daughter was born, I think part of me was still expecting that she would just be a kind of repeat of my first born. Of course I knew (in my head) that she was going to be different, but I didn’t really know it in my bones until she actually arrived. Because I found my first daughter’s birth and postpartum difficult, I think I had a certain level of anxiety leading up to the birth of my second, because I was subconsciously preparing for the same experience again. Which sounds totally nonsensical when you say it out loud, but I think is actually a fairly common experience, at least amongst the women I know, especially ones who found their first child’s birth and early months tough. Well, in news that will come as a surprise to absolutely no one, my second daughter is a totally different child. She is her own person, with her own little personality and quirks. But, as importantly, I am a different mother too. I’m a little bit older, a little bit wiser, a little bit more experienced. I know that everything is a season, and that all seasons will pass, however hard they feel. I know that the oh so demanding newborn days (and nights) are also oh so fleeting, and will pass in the blink of an eye.

It’s normal to feel some grief for the way your relationship with your firstborn will change. The birth of a baby causes untold changes in the lives of those around it. In the midst of the joy I felt welcoming our second, I experienced pangs of grief for the irreversible changes to the relationship I had with my firstborn. Suddenly, I wasn’t the one putting her to bed, or comforting her when she woke in the night. My first daughter made me a mother, her arrival forced me to develop and grow in ways I didn’t know I could. I don’t know if I clung to her or she clung to me, or maybe it was both, but for over two years she was my constant companion. I joked that she was my “limpet baby”, and much as I sometimes wished for her to be slightly more independent, part of me loved being so needed. Having a second baby meant I had to loosen my grip on my relationship with her, trusting that it would be ok. The flip side of this was the joy I felt at witnessing my husband’s relationship with our eldest flourish as he took on much of her caregiving whilst I tended to our newborn.

Watching your kids love each other is a special kind of joy. Prior to Bonnie’s birth, I had some anxiety about how our older daughter would react to having a new sibling. We had tried to prepare her and explain that I would be having a baby, but there’s only so much you can explain to a two year old. These fears turned out to be unfounded. Watching our eldest love her baby sister, and watching our baby respond to her big sister has been the sweetest experience. We have had times when our eldest has lashed out in frustration towards Bonnie, or us, but overall she has loved becoming a big sister. That said….

Don’t be surprised if your eldest child is still the “hard” one. I still find parenting my eldest harder than parenting my youngest. Not because she is necessarily a more difficult child, but because she’s always the one who is breaking new ground. She’s always going to be the first one to hit every milestone, from weaning to potty training to going to preschool. Which means that I’m always going to be going through new challenges with her in a way that I won’t with subsequent children. With my second I am able to draw on the experiences I gained with my first, so even things that are still hard feel comparatively familiar and less daunting. I’ve said to more than one friend that the new baby is the easy bit, it’s the toddler who pushes me to my limits. Which I think would still have been the case even if we hadn’t had another baby.

The best postpartum gift you can give yourself is a freezer full of delicious and nutritious meals. Let’s get practical. I spent a few weeks batch cooking and freezing down meals and it was the. best. thing. I could’ve done. I think I froze about 40 meals (around 80 adult servings), plus batches of pulled pork for lunches, lots of soup and a few cookies and muffins. Being able to just grab food out the freezer instead of having to think about cooking every day smoothed the transition to being a family of four for all of us. It meant my husband didn’t have to spend his limited paternity leave cooking, and also ensured that we were eating meals with plenty of nutrients, essential for any postpartum mama. We literally ate the last nut roast from the freezer last week. If you don’t have space for a large freezer (we didn’t when I had my first baby), then can you ask a friend to organise a meal train for at least the first couple of weeks? You will appreciate it more than any number of cute babygrows.

It’s already taken me two weeks to write this post, I need to crack on with making dinner, and my six month old is due to wake up from a nap, so I better wrap this up now.

As always, dear reader, I’d love to hear your perspectives and experiences. How did you find the transition from one child to two? Was it easier or harder than you expected? Were there any unexpected difficulties or joys? Let me know in the comments!

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1. If you haven’t read it already, I urge you to read

Lane Scott

’s piece The Mother’s Gauntlet, which is excellent on this topic.