The Parent's Nook » Relationships

The Second Pregnancy

mwilson — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 19:32:39 +0000

The second pregnancy is a big step in your life as a parent as well as in the life of your first born. On one hand you are embarking on a familiar journey and have a sense of what you can expect, while on the other hand you have a new set of responsibilities to juggle as you make the transition and become a larger family.

Am I Missing Out on the Pregnancy?

It takes a lot of resources – both financial and time – to raise a child. With all those demands constantly pressing on your time you may feel like you’re “missing out” on the new pregnancy. Many second-time parents fear that they will not bond as strongly with the new baby because so much of their time is taken up.

Will I Love One Child More Than The Other?

Many parents fear they will not love the new baby as much as their older child, or that the older child will feel replaced or unwanted. The older child is starting to become more independent and needs less hands-on time, but will they feel completely shut out when there is a new infant taking all of tired mom’s energies?

Safe Transitions

The best way to proceed will of course depend on the temperament and age of your oldest child. You can explain to a five year old what is going on and involve them in planning and decorating for the new baby, but a two-year-old won’t have the same level of comprehension – they can tell “something” is changing, but need to be carefully handled so they don’t wake up one morning and lose their room, lose horseback-mommy, and have to learn all new routines.

Much like the first pregnancy, they key to a comfortable transition is beginning early. No one gets a right to complain – mother nature gives us nine months to get our things in order and prepare for the change in our lives. Second-time (and third-time and fourth-time) parents have an ace up their sleeve in that they already know what to expect when bringing home an infant.

Stop. Breathe in. Breathe out. Now go and enjoy this amazing time!

Online Walk of Shame

mwilson — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 02:20:45 +0000

While writing The Parent’s Nook, I struggle to find balance between my desire to share the exciting things going on with my own child’s development, and the desire to keep the tone of the site somewhat neutral.

Certainly the main goal for this blog is to share with other parents some of the tricks I learn and discover as I go through this journey, but it’s sometimes difficult to know when I’ve focused the discussion too much on myself and my own thoughts (except, of course, for this particular entry).

This web site is certainly not a journal by any definition, but in some ways it is journal-like because the topics I write about tend to be the ones I’m dealing with at the moment. My intent is to make you better, dear reader. So if I go on too much about myself please tell me in the kindest way possible.

This is where I should promise to write more often and get back to my regular daily posting schedule. The problem is many bloggers will do that and then not post. So here’s to the spirit of posting regularly, and let’s see that it happens!

Worth Every Minute

mwilson — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 13:35:19 +0000

What makes everything worthwhile to me: When I come home from work at the end of the day and my son gets his first glimpse of me. For a minute, that big old smile melts away all of the world’s problems for both of us. Related posts:Working Late Means Less Time With Family Related posts:

Working Late Means Less Time With Family

Working Late Means Less Time With Family

mwilson — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 00:30:42 +0000

Does this sound familiar? When my son wakes up in the morning and has his first bottle, I am busy getting myself out the door for another day at work. By the time I get home in the evening he has already finished his last bottle and my role is putting him to bed for the night. In between, the only time I see him during the day is when I look up at the picture of him I have on my desk at the office.

Prepare Early
If you take the time to prepare any necessary items and place them by the door in the evening, you will have more time in the morning to spend with your child. Make your lunch in the evening, bag it and put it in the fridge so you don’t have to wake up and prepare food. Even breakfast cereal can be pre-measured so all you need to do is add milk to eat.

Do What You Enjoy
More than ever, now is the perfect time in your life to find out what you enjoy doing and get out there to do it. It’s discouraging enough to spend nine hours a day away from your family; if you’re stuck doing something you don’t enjoy, you are forever losing a big part of your life that you will never get back. Take care of yourself and your needs, and you will be better focused to take care of your family’s needs.

Leave Work at Work
If you are the type of person who is used to bringing home work, now might be a good time to take a step back and leave unfinished projects at the office. Since family time is reduced by work during the week, your “homework” is to squeeze every last moment of togetherness out of the evening.

Avoiding Parental Tunnel Vision

mwilson — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 17:33:56 +0000

Remember that kid back in grade school whose parents made them bring their little sister every time they came out to play? The big kids would have to accommodate the sister who wasn’t able to ride her bike as quickly or play the same sports. What happened to that kid? Eventually we stopped playing with them. Yes, looking back we can see how cruel it was, but when you are in the thick of it you don’t want to carry around someone else’s baggage.

The so call “parental tunnel vision” is the grown up equivalent of the tag-along sibling. As parents there is a tendency to focus our entire world onto our children, so when we talk to other people all we can think to discuss is our child’s recent dinner table disaster, their successes and failures in the walking arena, and their babbling sounds. For our grown-up friends, especially those without children, child’s developmental milestones are not as much of a paradigm shift as they are for us. If we dominate most of the conversation talking about baby stuff, our friends will end up bored, guaranteed. If they start to see us as nothing more but an extension of our children (which we are, in a lot of ways) we will start to find ourselves excluded from “grown-up” activities – whether our kids come along or not!

So how do you function as a social adult when your world has been taken over by your children? First, put yourself in your friends’ shoes. If you were in their position would you want to be hearing about children all the time? I don’t mean status updates and major milestones – would you want to spent hours talking about teething developments? Or would you be thinking “Ok, your kid is normal. Why are we talking about this?”

Naturally all bets are off when you’re talking to other parents, especially ones whose children are roughly the same age as yours. Be careful! All those stories and comparisons can turn into a competition, so always be supportive and keep the conversation affirming and friendly.

No related posts.

A Beginning

mwilson — Fri, 02 May 2008 02:44:50 +0000

A new month, a new blog.

Welcome to the Parent’s Nook, a blog about the trials and tribulations of parenthood. I hope to fill this site with a wealth of information over the coming months that other parents and parents-to-be will find useful. For the time being, I offer this “first-post” cliché article.

By way of introductions, I’d like to take this opportunity to talk a little bit about myself (I promise to keep that to a minimum!) and where I come from when approaching content for this site.

As of writing, I am a father-to-be. The little one is due to arrive at any moment now, and both I and my wife are simultaneously elated, terrified, prepared, and totally clueless when faced with what the coming years has in store for us. My wife is from a large family with a lot of children, I am not.

I noticed that almost as soon as my wife announced she was pregnant, all kind of lost relatives and otherwise strangers began to crawl out of the woodwork and offer ‘advice’ on how to conduct our new selves – the least polite among them simply point out all the ways in which we are wrong about absolutely everything. When you throw in the conflicting media messages about child safety, nutrition, BPA problems in the bottles, and industry-wide recalls on every kind of equipment, it becomes difficult to filter out what is really good advice and what is fluff.

This blog is my escape from all of that bustle. I will disseminate what I have learned and the conclusions I have come to at the end of the day. I am not a doctor, a professional childcare giver, nor anyone else with authority in these matters. I’m just a new parent figuring out the job like anyone else.

Thanks for reading through with me. I hope you will choose to come back and find some value in my writing here. I welcome comments, criticisms, complaints – please do leave your mark anywhere in the site.

Happy Parenting!