When the second child is expected almost inevitably, the pregnancy is compared with the first or the upbringing that took place in the first weeks of the first child with those that will be the second. The reality is that when a second child is expected, things will not be the same as with the first, because there is already a long way to go and previous experiences will help you learn to improve things.
Now if you are expecting your second child, you may not know that love is not divided, but multiplies and when you have your children in front of you, you will realize that. But the reality is that parenting will not be the same with your second child because there will be things that will change and that you will do differently. If you already have a second child, you will have already realized what I am going to explain to you next, and if you are waiting, do not miss what will happen.
You won't care so much about the clothes
With your first child, it's more than likely that you had a collection of outfits in your closet, of those gorgeous outfits, adorable little dresses, matching outfits, hand-knit blankets… and you used half of all of that. You learned that it is not necessary to have that much, because babies grow fast. Maybe before you washed your clothes by hand or with a special detergent for babies and then you sorted the clothes by season and size ... and you realized how much time you were wasting on this.
With your second child, you will also want him to dress well but at the same time you will not worry as much about ordering the clothes or if it will match. You will try to avoid buying so many clothes because you know that it is wasting time and money and you will try to recycle all the clothes possible for your first child. Also, you will realize that as long as you use a mild detergent, your baby's clothes can be washed with the whole family's laundry - as long as they don't have skin problems.
You are not so scared in health matters
Many women, especially new mothers, become total hypochondriacs. They suddenly realize that the world is full of germs, waiting to infect their precious, defenseless baby. Maybe with your first baby you boiled bottles and pacifiers daily, cleaned the toys with wipes every day, had all the plugs covered and everything was so clean it was scary. You also didn't allow anyone to touch your baby without washing their hands first ... If someone sneezed or coughed towards your baby, you kindly asked not to do it again because your baby could get sick because of them.
But with your second child things begin to be more flexible. While you do need to be careful around germs, you don't need to be obsessed with it either. Good hygiene is essential but without becoming obsessed.
Your cleaning standards are going to change
You will not realize it at first but it will happen. Your cleaning standards will change. Surely when you were a mom for the first time you managed to keep your house clean, to organize everything so that everything was impeccable ... even though you ended up exhausted. When a second baby enters the scene, it may take several days before you unload the dishwasher or fold the laundry. Vacuuming you will happen to do it once every week or two weeks… and you won't mind as much. It is more important that you sit down to rest and that your children spend quality time with you than that you spend too much time cleaning and exhausting yourself. Little by little you will have more organization but you will not put cleanliness before your sanity. That is over forever.
You will not listen to everything you read
With your first baby you probably read and read a lot of information to be able to be well documented of everything. But with your second child, you may have realized that experience is what will really help you - along with the information - to understand the upbringing of babies and children ... and that your instincts have a lot to say about it as well.
You will not take so many photos
With your first child it is possible that you have folders and folders on your computer with almost daily photographs of everything he did: eating cookies, sleeping, the first steps or his teeth. Instead, With your second child, you will know which photographs you really want to take and which ones are not necessary because they are simply lost. Maybe you don't have so many photos and don't worry about having him in thousands of images on your phone or laptop, because what really matters to you is spending quality time with your two little ones.
You stop being a helicopter mother
That ended. You know that it is not necessary and that deep down they will only bring problems to their development. The tendency to be a helicopter mother or overprotective begins to slow down. If with your first child you only worried about everything he did, whether he ate or not, whether he slept more or less or if the poop he did was normal and sufficient ... what good is being so worried for so long?
When your second baby is born the propeller of your helicopter will be broken. With your first baby you probably checked in the middle of the night that he was breathing ... with your second baby it is not necessary, you know that it is fine. With your second child, you may find that you have greater confidence in yourself and that you know how to do things so that they turn out well or quite well. Now, newborn things are not so scary for you. You won't feel as much stress and you won't have to check if your child was breathing every 20 minutes.
Here are some things that you will do differently with your second child than with the first. Perhaps, if you have already had your second child, you have noticed other things that you have also changed, will you tell us?