A Mother’s Joyful Lament
Can you love your second child as much as your first?
Our daughter Danielle Gruley wrote this heartfelt essay.
Our second son, Asger, turns one today. A year ago, I didn’t know if I could love him as much as he deserved to be loved.
For the first six weeks of Asger’s life, I mourned the loss of our family of three. My iPhone cruelly sent me photo reminders of our time together as a trio — my husband, Billy, three-year-old Six, and me — and with them, reminders of what we would never be again. I’d always imagined the most challenging part of introducing a second child would be the sleepless nights or the logistics of adding another human into our routine. I couldn’t fathom the thought that I might feel a pang of nostalgia — followed by immediate guilt — for my family of three any time I looked at my new beautiful baby boy.
Six was elated to meet his new baby brother. He wanted to kiss him, touch him and bring Asger his pacifier when he cried. It was unbelievably sweet and my heart swelled with pride. But at the same time, I could feel Six slowly slipping away from me. He sat in the corner wide-eyed as I struggled to breastfeed Asger, and got angry when I picked the baby up in the middle of our playtime. Most painful of all, he began to consistently choose Papa over Mama. Before Asger was born, I had worried that a jealous Six might lash out at the defenseless baby. I never thought his anger would be aimed at me.
The first time Six declared, “I don’t like Mama,” about a week after Asger’s birth, I sat with my new baby on my lap in my dark bedroom and sobbed. Fundamentally, I loved this tiny human in front of me with all of my heart. But I also questioned whether we had made a mistake. The questioning alone sank me deeper into the depths of my sadness. What kind of mother would feel like this? I felt helpless, hormones coursing through my body, and out of control as a parent. In desperation, I started allowing Six to eat the extra cookie or I wouldn’t insist he clean up his messes in hope that he might love me like I believed he used to. I felt jealous and resentful of Billy for the ease of his relationship with Six post-Asger. It didn’t feel dissimilar to that feeling when you know your partner is about to break up with you: the overcompensation, the power struggle, the wheels spinning out of control, the realization it isn’t working.
Before you have your second child, I think it’s pretty common to struggle with comprehending how you could love your second as much as your first. The anticipation of Asger was emotionally taxing. The trauma of pregnancy and birth and those first sleepless nights with Six all came back to haunt me at different times throughout the process. Not to mention, navigating pregnancy in Denmark, a foreign country, made it feel like I was experiencing pregnancy for the first time all over again. I tried to prepare the best way I knew–soliciting advice from my circle of mom friends. I inquired, “How can I ever possibly love this baby as much as Six?” The little boy I have spent three-and-a-half years getting to know. My friends were unanimous: “Just wait,” they said, “it just happens.” Or, “Your heart just miraculously grows.”
Well, here I was at the exact moment I was wondering about and I couldn’t compare the two loves. My love for Asger was primal and instinctual. He was, in a way, a stranger. But I had what felt like a lifetime of experience with Six. We had our language, our memories, our familiarity, our bike rides to the Plads to get a bolle. When Six was born I had no point of reference, no voice in the back of my head nagging me, do you love him enough? But now I did have a point of comparison, nearly four years in the making, and I worried.
If there was a single breakthrough, it had less to do with me than with Six. He began sitting with me in the early mornings while I pumped on the couch, asking questions and confidently transporting the milk to the kitchen. Asger laughed for the first time and I felt something shift. Six, in his small way, was growing up, and I had to grow up a little too.
At twelve weeks postpartum, Billy suggested we try to put Asger up in his own room to sleep instead of the bassinet next to our bed. I cried thinking of not hearing his comforting little snore next to me all night. Six lovingly started calling Asger, Dada. It stuck. The newborn fog was dissipating, leaving our freshly minted family of four in its wake.
Asger grew and with it, his extremely sweet personality. I found myself excited to see who he would become, thinking about the future with happy anticipation. My love for him expanded outside the primal and with each passing day I started to understand this profound duality of love my friends were describing. My heart, indeed, began to grow.
Six is back to his fickle ways of choosing Mama some days and Papa the others. I don’t feel the wind being knocked out of me when he chooses Papa anymore but instead relief at the break. Of course I didn’t “lose” Six. He and I just had to get through it together.
I started writing this piece about 10 weeks after Asger was born, when I felt the weight of those early emotions lifting. I knew I wanted to capture the clarity of this challenging period as honestly as I could. The thing with postpartum is you quickly forget those intense feelings. To be honest, it’s hard for me to read the first parts because my love for Asger is so clear, so poignant and so uncomplicated today.
A good friend who’s pregnant with her second child recently asked, “How is it possible to love my second as much as my first?”
“Just wait,” I told her. “Just wait.”
