3 Babies in 3 Years: Lessons From My Rocky Start To Parenthood

In a few weeks, my oldest child will turn three. My husband asked me recently if I think the last three years have gone quickly and, without hesitating, I answered that it feels like about a thousand years have passed since she was born.

In the last three years, I have gone through two more pregnancies. Our second child was stillborn at 37 weeks last September. Our third child was born in August this year (coincidentally, on international rainbow baby day — a day that celebrates babies who are born after a loss). In the last three years, I have become a parent for the first time, I have suffered the heartbreak of a stillbirth, I have endured the almost unbearable anxiety of pregnancy after loss, and I have welcomed my darling rainbow boy. No wonder three years feels like a long time.

Although I am still relatively new to this parenting business, I feel like I have gone through a lot already and I wanted to share some of the things I have learned so far.

You do lose your (old) life

My husband often teases me about the first few weeks after our oldest daughter was born, when I lamented to him, in floods of tears, that I felt like I had lost my life. I felt like I couldn’t do any of the things I used to do, and I couldn’t see how I would ever be able to do them again. Everyone expected me to be thrilled with my new baby, but actually I felt quite trapped and miserable.

Of course, over time, the newborn haze cleared and things became easier, but life has never returned to how it was before we had her. Having a baby means that you do lose your life — that is, the life you had before your child was born — and I think many of us grieve the loss of that old life.

In fact, I don’t think it is only your old life that you lose, but your old self. Becoming a parent means that someone else’s needs matter to you more than your own. It means, for the first time in your life, loving someone else more than you love yourself. Such a monumental shift in focus from “me” to “baby” means that your priorities, worries and purpose all change, so you are no longer quite the same person. This can be quite hard to accept. There are times when I long for the “old” me — that calmer, freer version of myself — and I wonder if she’ll ever come back.

Children bring out the best and worst in you

I think that one of the ways that having children changes you is that it brings to the surface personality traits that might otherwise remain dormant.

Some of my worst characteristics are that I’m impatient, irritable and easily stressed. Having children certainly does nothing to help this! This year, my daughter has been going through the “terrible twos” and I have regularly lost my temper with her, in a way that I rarely do with anyone else. Of course, I know rationally that it’s not the end of the world if she refuses to brush her teeth/ have a bath/ get in her car seat, but in the moment, when it is the twentieth battle of the day and my patience is exhausted, I struggle to keep my cool. Somehow children push our buttons in a way that nobody else does.

Conversely, having children brings out a softness in many of us that perhaps wasn’t apparent before. Having children means that you go from selfish to selfless, it means that you experience a huge outpouring of love. These kinds of emotional changes can make you kinder and more sensitive. My husband has often spoken of a “kinship” he feels with all other parents — a kind of awareness that they share the deep feelings of love that he has. That, however hard someone might seem on the surface, there is most likely a softness in them somewhere.

It gets easier… and harder

It seems that, from my own (limited) experience and from talking to people with older kids, parenting gets both easier and harder.

As my daughter approaches three, I’m relieved that the baby stage and the toddler stage are behind us. We’re done with nappies, and bottles, and following her around everywhere in case she falls over. She’s becoming more independent and infinitely more fun. However, there are now different challenges to face. When she was a baby, it was just about caring for her physical needs. Now I need to consider the much more complex task of actually raising her.

I sometimes envy people with older children because their lives seem to be a lot easier. Their children don’t require constant supervision, they can leave the house without bags packed full of nappies and milk and changes of clothes. However, they are dealing with things I haven’t even thought of yet — like puberty, bad school reports, and teenage drinking. The world is such a complicated place these days. How do we teach our children about big issues like climate change and cyberbullying? Suddenly I feel quite glad to be waking up in the night to feed a young baby, or arguing with a three-year-old about how much Peppa Pig she’s allowed to watch!

The biggest test of a relationship is having a child…..

Anyone who has a child to try and save a relationship is mad. Having a child is most likely the biggest test that your relationship will undergo and any cracks will only become deeper.

Having a child is a shared project that you and your co-parent will undertake for the rest of your lives. I never particularly liked group work at school, but now I am committed to working with my husband on a shared project every single day — a project that is constantly changing, that we are often ill-equipped to deal with, and is never finished!

Sharing a child with someone makes you dependent on them in a way that you weren’t before. You need to work as a team to deal with the daily drudgery (splitting child care and household chores), but also to agree on how to manage difficult situations, from toddler tantrums to teenage rebellion. Your co-parent is the only other person who is really in this with you, and therefore you need them much more than you did before. You need to work out a way to support each other, or resentment will set in pretty quickly.

Even if you do work well as a team, you can end up so focused on your shared project (aka your kids!) that you have no time or energy for each other. You are so busy looking outwards at the children that you forget to look across at each other. It is easy to end up seeing your partner as simply your teammate in parenting, rather than the wonderful person who you liked enough to have a child with in the first place.

…. and losing one

A bigger test than co-parenting a child is how to survive as a couple if you face the unthinkable heartbreak of losing one. The overwhelming grief following the loss of a child can shatter even the very best of relationships. I can only speak from my own experience of stillbirth (I can’t be sure how I, or my relationship, would survive the loss of my other children), but it seems to me that there are a few things that make it particularly difficult to navigate this type of loss as a couple.

Firstly, grief is unique and therefore terribly lonely. Even the person who is supposedly “sharing” the experience with you isn’t really sharing it, because they are most likely feeling quite differently to you at any given time. One of you might be feeling angry, while the other feels guilty. One of you might be feeling unbearable sadness, while the other is feeling a sliver of hope for the future. Dealing with emotions which are so strong, and yet often so different to your partner, can be very divisive.

Secondly, it can be very difficult to support another person when you are struggling so deeply yourself. The loss of a child means that both partners are suffering the worst kind of pain at exactly the same time. Each person is likely using all their resources to keep themselves going, and so has nothing left for the other person.

I think my husband and I have managed to navigate our loss together because we felt the same way about how we wanted to move forward. I think it would have been very difficult if we hadn’t been in harmony about that. It also has to be said that my husband is the most optimistic and resilient person I know, and has been able to support me even when I couldn’t support him.

Children make you happy… but there’s a price to pay

In one way, I feel that having children has made me happier than I have ever been. In another way, I fear that having children means I can never be truly happy again.

Before I had children I thought a lot about the purpose of my life. What was I doing that had any meaning, what would my legacy be? Now that I have children, I don’t think about that at all because (at least for now) they are my purpose. My existential angst has vanished because I have such a clear reason to exist — to care for them and guide them as best I can. Having this clear purpose, perhaps for the first time in my life, gives me a certain kind of peace and happiness.

Besides the meaning that they have given me, my children also make me joyful in a way that nothing else does. It brings such incomparable happiness to see my daughter wave ecstatically from a fairground ride, or my baby boy smile at me for the first time.

However, the flip side to the meaning and joy that my children bring is the anxiety and worry. Once you become a parent, you can never again be carefree. You must always bear the burden of worry. Small worries, like whether they are eating properly or making friends at school. And big, dark worries about something terrible happening to them.

The experience of losing my baby has made these anxieties more real. I know that the worst things can happen and that they can happen to me. Other people seem so confident in their assumptions that a pregnancy will lead to a baby, and that the baby will grow up and grow old. Of course, this is the most likely scenario, but a 99% chance is no longer good enough for me. Sometimes this feels like an unbearable weight — how can I possibly be happy, knowing that nobody on earth can promise me that my children will outlive me?

In his persistent optimism, my husband has tried to switch these thoughts around for me — if I know how precious my children are, and how nothing in life is guaranteed, shouldn’t I treasure them even more? Shouldn’t I try to enjoy every moment and be grateful for it? Of course he’s right, although these things are often easier said than done.

The way I see it is that my worry is my payment. I have been blessed with the most extraordinary luck to have these two wonderful little people in my life (and one sweet soul out there somewhere, hopefully checking in on me). The price I have to pay for this luck, this happiness, is the fear that I will lose it.

And, all things considered, it’s a price I’m willing to pay.