2 Weeks Into 2 Kids

When you add an extra ingredient

When Marisa’s water broke at 1:30am on a Sunday morning, my bag was not packed, I was very asleep, and I was slightly hungover from substantial meals at two different Italian restaurants the day prior. Our OB had us scheduled a week out, which, to me, meant that date was 100% locked.

Turns out biology didn’t get the zoom invite.

8 hours later we had Austin, the second addition to our growing collection of kids.

Doublin’ Up

What an entirely different experience it is having your second.

First off, you don’t get bullied by the nurses any more - no more power plays using your naivete against you.

With Miles they loved pulling the “oh you must be first-time parents…” card. That swaddle blanket they give you? They wrap it up beautifully. Snug as a bug. You try it? Baby busts out in seconds. It’s a carnival trick. It’s unwinnable.

The second time, the minute they saw me pick up Austin and sling him around like a pro, they looked at me and said “second kid?” Once I answered in the affirmative we got a lot less “advice”. I even beat the swaddle game.

But for all the experience we had, I was amazed at how little I remembered about the first birth. I must have asked four times “is this a new policy?” only to hear “no sir, we’ve been doing this for 20 years.” The uncertainty of a new child, what it needs, and if you’re inadvertently doing something that will impede its chances of getting into an ivy league school overwhelmed my brain’s attempts to store memories.

The second time around, however, all the uncertainty is gone. You know what you’re doing, which means you can just chill with your kid in a way that was never possible with the first. For the past two weeks I’ve appreciated my time with Austin so much more, almost intentionally trying to fill my memory bucket because I know this tiny human stage is fleeting.

Same Same But Different

The one wrinkle to all this parental self-assurance is size. Miles came out as a percentile cube: 96% in height, weight, and head circumference. 9 pounds 3 ounces isn’t a normal baby: it’s a big hoss with durability.

Austin? 6 pounds 10 ounces. WTF? What is that? What do I do with that? Do I use chopsticks to hold him?

Miles had legs out of a Fernando Botero painting.

Austin’s legs looked like a discarded pile of picked over chicken wings.

He was, and is, immensely cute and fun to hold onto, but my word, what a curveball.

After three days in the hospital changing this baby who had basically no butt and no body, we arrived home back to Miles, now 30 pounds. Boy were we in for a shock.

The first time I changed Miles again it was like changing a fully grown human male. I took off his diaper to find a grown man ass with a grown man poop staring up at me. Ever thought about changing your friend’s diaper? It was like that. Everything about him was enormous relative to Austin.

Brothers in Arms

Which brings us home to the biggest question mark surrounding any second birth - how will the first react? I’ve heard stories of kids covering their baby siblings in clothes to pretend like they don’t exist. I’ve heard kids say “ok, they can go now!” I’ve heard parents tell of mammoth meltdowns as the first can’t comprehend a contender for their throne.

Fortunately, Miles went all in as big brother (except one or two mild freakouts). What an absolute relief. He loves nothing more than going up to Austin and just touching his head for a solid 30 seconds. He says “Auw-ten” (but not “Mommy”, which I find hilarious). Any dad’s hope is that they have sons that can hang out, wrassle around, and generally expend energy together. 14 days in and it’s looking good.

Of course there will be moments where both need something at once and it will seem overwhelming. Of course Austin won’t be a carbon copy of Miles and there will be new problems to solve. But overall we are as excited about being parents of two kids as we were about one. It might even be more fun.