FAMILY LIFE
When
three
becomes
four n a glorious March morning last year, I took my three-year-old daughter to preschool as usual. The only difference was that I was 41 weeks pregnant and, on that day, Ottilie and I both sensed that everything was going to change. When I said goodbye, she clung to me and cried deep, angry sobs. I cried, too, and her teacher had to physically pull her from me, something she had never had to do before. Shaken by seeing my daughter so upset, I went for a walk. My labour began an hour later and my son, Zac, was born that night. We had always wanted a second child and a sibling for our daughter. We had hoped to have another by the time Ottilie was two and a half, but new jobs for my husband and I and a miscarriage meant that wasn’t to be. We veered from worrying a three-and-a-half-year gap would mean our daughter would find it difficult to adapt, to thinking that a slightly larger gap would mean she could help and
O
GROWING YOU R FAMILY MAY TAKE AN EMOTIONAL TOLL ON YOU AN D YOU R FIR ST BOR N , BUT YOU ’LL N EVER LOOK BACK , WRITE S Jessica Jonzen
would have a little more understanding. We talked to her regularly about the new baby, read her books and took her to a scan. When I noticed her admiring a toy seal in a shop, I surreptitiously bought it as a present from the baby. Rather than rest up with a
experience. Scooping my son out of the water, I fell immediately, intensely in love. I had worried, as so many parents do, that I wouldn’t be able to love another child as passionately as my first. I laugh to think of that now. The heart’s capacity for maternal love
THE TRUTH WAS I FELT A GREAT SADNESS THAT OUR TIME AS A FAMILY OF THREE WAS ENDING box set when I went on maternity leave, I exhausted myself with daily trips to museums, parks and soft play centres. The truth was that, as thrilled as I was to be having another baby, I felt a great sadness that our time as a family of three was coming to an end. Despite the emotional precursor to Zac’s arrival, his birth was a truly euphoric
is extraordinary. When Ottilie met her new brother the next morning, pink-cheeked and unsure of herself in the strange surroundings of the hospital, it felt like the beginning of a wonderful new adventure. But if nothing can prepare you for the birth of your first child then, sure enough, little can prepare you for the maelstrom
babylondon.co.uk | NOV/DEC 2015 | 101