I think every time you become a mom whether it's your first or your fifth it can be overwhelming. So, my first piece of advice is do not put expectations on yourself to feel a certain way (spoiler alert! There isn’t a right or wrong way to feel when you become a mama) I was still scared and nervous when I found out I was expecting my second child. Just because I had done it all before didn’t mean that I was an expert by any means or that I wasn’t allowed to feel worried about doing It all over again. I felt so many emotions that nobody who had more than one child had ever spoken to me about, but I also learnt quite a few things that have helped me adapt to life as a mama of two which hopefully sharing will make other second time mamas realise, they are not alone at all.
My biggest concern – mainly because my daughter was not planned at all - was how on earth am I going to find space in my life and heart for another little human? What if when she gets here, I can’t love her the same as I love my son? Or what if my son resents the fact that he will now have to share me? These thoughts took up so much space in my mind during my 2nd pregnancy and I thought it I was alone in feeling this, I thought why am I having these insane thoughts...do they make me a bad mother? But I have very recently found out that these thoughts and feelings are so common! We just don’t admit them! (like a lot of emotions we feel during motherhood). I was very fortunate that as soon as my little girl arrived, I just fell completely and utterly in love with her...just in a different way, I love that she smiles at absolutely everyone, I love the face she makes when she's concentrating, I love the way she plays with her hair when she is falling asleep. Yes, I conceived, grew and birthed her just like I did with my son but she isn’t him and as soon as I let go of this concept that I needed to love her the exact same or I was a bad mom the easier it became to just enjoy and embrace this new chapter of my motherhood journey.
It wasn’t long before that little baby bubble popped and I found myself right in the middle of full-blown single parent motherhood, which is bloody hard! And that guilt that you feel when you have your first child just seem to multiply by like a thousand! The harder you try to meet everyone's needs the more you feel like a failure. It wasn’t until I got to my absolute breaking point that I realised it’s impossible to be everything to everyone all of the time and so I started accepting help and cutting myself abit of slack. But if I’m being completely honest, this is still a daily challenge for me, but I definitely have more ‘I’ve got this’ days than ‘I just can’t’ days.
However, it’s not all doom and gloom! There are some pros to being a second time mom! For me I had a new found confidence. I wasn’t that worried, anxious and timid mama anymore, I felt much more confident in trusting my own instincts and found that feeding, bathing and bonding with my daughter felt so much more natural than it did with my son as I wasn’t stressing about if I was doing it right or not, I just enjoyed it. I also felt much more confident in asking for help, being able to say no to visitors and I no longer felt the need to justify my parenting techniques to anyone.
If I could go back and give myself just one piece of advice it would be, let go of all those expectations you have, motherhood is not always going to be magical and empowering, sometimes it’s going to be exhausting and challenging and that’s Ok.
For extra support, I have left some links below:
https://www.nspcc.org.uk/keeping-children-safe/support-for-parents/
https://www.familylives.org.uk/
https://www.family-action.org.uk/what-we-do/children-families/familyline/