I’ll never forget the day my mom told me she was pregnant. It was after school, and we were all in her minivan: me, her, and my stepfather. She wanted to tell me in the van because she thought I might be upset, and there was nowhere to storm off to in the car.
I was overjoyed.
As an only child, I had always wanted a friend to play with. Like many only children, I spent most of my time around adults. Even at my friends’ houses, I sometimes spent more time with their parents. I remember sleeping over at my friend Haley’s house and hanging out with her mom because I couldn’t sleep. Now, I would finally have someone with me.
I still felt like an only child because of our age difference
The thing was, I was already 16 years old. So when my new baby brother was coming into our home, I was on the way out, heading off to college before his second birthday. Except for a few months when I was 21, I never moved back home.
We have lived separate lives and have ostensibly different parents. Adults also go through developmental stages, and my mom was young when she had me. She split from my other mom when I was 8 and met my stepdad. When my brother was born, she was in her late 30s and brought a different lived experience to parenting.
Growing up, I went to private schools, and there wasn’t a centralized neighborhood playground that I could walk to. My play dates were always a neighborhood away, meaning that my mother would have to drive me to them. So, on weekdays, I was on my own except for the adults around me, which might explain why many of my mom’s friends became my friends.
I wanted my kids to have siblings
I liked the idea of my kids having siblings — and I really liked having one baby, so why not add more? I had three kids in under three years between 2016 and 2019. My daughters are 13 months apart to the day, and my son, who I had last, is just over 13 months younger than my second daughter.
Which all sounded great until I was living with two toddlers and a baby. To top it off, my son was born 12 weeks early and required a lot of close attention — he had oxygen, as well as monitors that checked his heart rate and oxygen levels. We also had to use a feeding tube, and I had to learn how to place it. Even after he came off his feeding tube and stopped needing oxygen, an infant with 1 and 2-year-old sisters is a lot of work.
Parenting multiple kids takes work but it’s worth it
But it’s worth it now. Eventually, parenting becomes less about preventing children from injuring themselves and more about communication and conversations. I have forgotten how to play, so having kids who can play with each other is a gift, but I very much enjoy reading to them (and now letting my second grader read to me) and spending time outside together.
It’s not easy. I spend a lot of time feeling overstimulated; there is always someone talking to me or many people talking at the same time. It’s basically impossible to work full-time and I am grateful that I can work flexibly as a writer and consultant. Someone always has a doctor’s appointment or is sick. And nothing could have prepared me for the sibling arguments.
But I wouldn’t change it. My kids have the childhood that I wanted: a childhood straight out of a middle-grade book with a park across the street, friends around the block, and siblings who are (usually) their best friends.
And me and my brother? I’ve been visiting home more often and I am getting to know the fascinating person that they have grown up to be, which is teaching me that sibling relationships can still be special even if you didn’t grow up together.
