Eva Bradley: Experience is the key to baby success

Eva Bradley

Babies are profound. They prompt all sorts of profound pronouncements from pretty much everyone who looks at them. And believe me, everyone looks at them.

But one comment made during the past four months since young Master James arrived in our lives stood out from the crowd.

After expressing to a casual acquaintance how much easier the second baby was, he said the truest thing I think I've ever heard: if only the second one came first.

Because whether its babies, jobs, maths equations or even husbands, nothing beats experience when it comes to knowing how to deal with them.

Now I'm not saying that having baby number two was a walk in the park. Labour is labour and there ain't a mother on God's good earth who would say anything about that is easy (though having said that, there were a few reasonably heroic hours when I managed to effectively execute a complex business handover to my 2IC in between contractions).

But the fact was, James had arrived and at 2.14pm on December 7th, I became the mother of a toddler and a newborn. Cue nervous breakdown, right?

Well of course there were a few mini-meltdowns.

Combine hormones, sleep deprivation and two kids in nappies and that's bound to happen. Remarkably, though, I'm alive to tell the tale. In fact I'm showered and alive to tell the tale.

It's quite extraordinary how low your expectations for a day can drop when you throw in eight hours sitting in a chair breastfeeding, another eight pretending to be a monster for your 2-year-old, a couple being an actual monster to your long-suffering husband who wonders where the hell his awesome wife went to and about seven hours washing, folding and sterilising.

No, my maths isn't wrong, I'm aware that's 25 hours in my day and none were designated for sleeping.

But although that might seem like a fairly grim picture to paint, it's actually a totally different experience having a new baby in the house when you've already had one.

For a start, there's several hours a day saved because you don't have to Google search various combinations of "HOW THE **** DO I LOOK AFTER A BABY?"

I've also noticed I'm not wearing down the carpet sneaking to the cot to check James is still alive.

In fact so busy am I with the demands (sorry, I meant to say DEMANDS) of a toddler that quite often James doesn't even get to the cot, he nods off in his rocking chair because otherwise he'll be celebrating his 21st and still waiting for mum to come back and put him to bed.

But the thing I've learned second time around is that it's totally cool if he does that.

In fact most things I used to think would be a disaster are totally cool now. And that's the secret to why number two is easier than number one; it's not that the baby is any different, it's that the mother is.

And that's where I wish Google and all the other "how to" guides would stop sending me on wild goose chases to find the perfect answer on how to get a baby to sleep through the night and instead just give the one answer that fixes almost all problems to do with kids, work, health, relationships and life: chill the hell out.

Because after an anxious pregnancy dominated by the fear of how I would manage, I've looked back and realised the only really difficult thing has been me.