Birth of a Baby

The birth of a sibling can be a difficult time for a child. Especially if, until the arrival of the latest offspring, that child has been baby of the family. Suddenly they have to get used to sharing the attention, sharing their space, sharing their toys and, well, sharing their life.

As an Early Years Teacher I always aim to be aware of children who are going through this transition and help them adjust to their change of circumstances. (Maybe my commitment to this aspect of my job has something to do with being relegated from ‘baby of the family’ to ‘neglected middle child’ at the age of four and never quite getting over my change of status… (that’s a joke mum!) :-s ). So when I heard that Tommy’s mother was expecting I made sure to go out of my way to help him understand and accept what was happening, and gave him a little extra attention here and there to make it all a bit easier for him.

I wanted to encourage Tommy to talk about his new sibling so in the run up to the birth I asked him about the baby in mummy’s tummy and if he knew when the baby would be born (I wasn’t really expecting a three year old to give me an accurate due date, but I thought (naively?) that he may have some idea of whether it was a matter of days or months…) and I was rather surprised when he sighed in a manner that suggested he was shouldering the woes of the world (a rather usual temperament for Tommy) and uttered rather resignedly ‘twenty years’. Wow. The things I am yet to learn about pregnancy (I did later tell my sister-in-law to think herself lucky that she was only a week overdue rather than nineteen years, but I’m not sure my pearls of wisdom did anything to ease her impatience).

When the baby finally did come along, not quite twenty years later but only a couple of weeks, I took Tommy to one side to ask him about his new sister, and his disappointed was evident when he said ‘but I didn’t want a girl baby, I wanted a boy baby.’ His mournful brown eyes gazed into mine and I’m sure I detected an inkling of hope, as if he thought it was in my power to rectify the situation as he desired. We had a little chat about things and I covered all the standard topics until he was ready to run off and find the Spiderman suit, and I pondered on how the whole experience may affect him. I wasn’t too sure how he was really feeling about the recent arrival so I decided to keep an open mind, play it by ear and just be aware; I felt pretty prepared to support him as he became ‘big brother’ rather than ‘little baby’. But there was one thing I hadn’t considered. That was disappointment.

I don’t mean disappointment at having a baby in the family, but disappointment about how little a new born can actually do. We’ve all seen it on tv; think of ‘Friends’ when baby Ben is born - the crew cooed over him for a full five minutes before deciding that he didn’t really do much and opting for coffee in Central Perk over oohing and aahing for the next few hours. But I’ve never before accounted for that disappointment for a child - in the comedies it typically belongs to the blokes, or the single friends, who forget to account for the few stages of development an infant must go through before he can actually play football or Superheroes with an overexcited Uncle.

But in Tommy’s case this disappointment definitely belongs to him. When asked about his new baby sister he tells me he loves her and likes having a baby, but my heart reaches out to him when he sighs theatrically, looks me deep in the eye and says ‘But it wees and it poos and it wees and it poos and it wees and it poos and it wees and it poos. And it burps and it cries and it burps and it cries and it burps and it cries and it burps and it cries. And that’s all it does!’

Well at least he’s accepted the new arrival and is pleased to have a baby in the family. That’s my main objective achieved. And if we’re going to be totally honest, at the end of the day, little Tommy does have a bit of a point…!