Should I Feel Guilty Over My Second Child?

Sometimes it’s hard to voice the feelings you have, especially when it comes to your children. 

In my case, I fear that voicing my feelings will be a bad thing because eventually my child will stumble upon my writings years down the road and instantly hate me. 

But I’m taking a big step here in letting it all hang out because I know I’m not alone. I know that I am not the only mother that felt this when she found herself with a surprise pregnancy.

It wasn’t shock that I felt most, because lord knows I was shocked… but it was guilt.

After I read the results of my at home pregnancy test, I turned to my two year old with tears in my eyes and said: I am sorry.

It was guilt that was eating me up; guilt that I somehow had stolen something from my daughter. Guilt gnawed away at me because I felt that I wasn’t going to be able to give her the same childhood I had envisioned for her seconds before I read the results.

The mental picture of our happy threesome that slept through the night, didn’t need constant supervision and didn’t need a diaper change every fifteen minutes evaporated. It was replaced by a family of four.

FOUR!

Sure, my husband and I had discussed children. When my daughter was younger than a year I would always add a #2 into our dreams of the future. It was always we could do this with #1 and #2. But as she got older, the talks of adding another child slipped away. We were truly enjoying the time we had with a toddler; a toddler that was growing by leaps and bounds and surprising us at every turn. We loved sleeping again and not being surrounded by mounds and mounds of dirty laundry covered in spit up. 

Now we were throwing a monkey wrench into it all and I didn’t feel as if my daughter would be ready.

Hell, would I?

Slowly, I adapted to the idea when I saw how my daughter acted around other children. Younger ones warranted her toys and older ones garnered her admiration. The guilt eased as I learned I wouldn’t be stealing anything from her, I would be giving her something better: a sibling.

I was giving my daughter someone to be a role model for; someone to teach all her tricks. She could have a shadow that mimicked all her movements, a sibling to share her secrets with, a comrade to complain about Mom and Dad to.

As days pass, the guilt is gone and is replaced by sheer joy that really soon we will be a family of four.

SuZ writes Not Your Typical Mommy.