Why Having a Second Child Permanently Disables the First Born Part II: The Pregnancy/Birth

My mother made the mistake of telling me she was pregnant when she was only 6 weeks along. At age four, I believed this news to be the most exciting thing since body painting was invented.

And I enjoyed body painting quite at lot.

I promptly decided that I wanted a little sister to play barbies with. I refused to believe there would be any possibility of a boy. This would not have been all that problematic, had I kept this to myself, or at the very least a few close family friends. Silence, however, has never been my strong point.

I told EVERYONE that my mother was pregnant with my new baby sister. Being that my mother was only 6 weeks along and not even showing, this news surprised nearly everyone. The grocery store clerk gave me a free lollypop when I told him. My pre-school teacher congratulated me and sent a card home to my parents. Family friends wanted to know when the baby shower would be. My mother was sent an enormous amount of pink themed gifts before she was 12 weeks pregnant.

Before you are 12 weeks pregnant it is nearly impossible to know the sex of the baby. Yet, I already told the entire world my happy news.

Therefore, when my mother went in for her 12 week ultrasound, she was relieved to discover that she idea carried a girl.

This only furthered stoked the flame of my fantasy of being omnipotent. I pointed out my ability to read the future to anyone who would listen.

As the big day approached, I began to see negative effects of my mother's pregnancy. Most importantly, I could no longer sit properly on her lap during every meal, as I had previously done. (Don't let anyone tell you having a child is not a full time commitment; I refused to eat anywhere but on my mother's lap for four fucking years.)

However, as my mother's pregnancy continued and the due date of my sister approached, my mother's lap became infinitely smaller until it disappeared entirely. From that day on, I was forced to eat independently of my mother, something I neither did silently, well mannered, nor happily.

In fact, much of the damage on our nice, Amish-made dining table can be traced to me pounding silverware on it during this transitionary period.

Once my mother finally made it into her 9th month, things did not settle down. I continued to harass her during meals and questioned everything she asked.

The day her water broke, should have been an exciting and relieving moment. Unfortunately for her, I made sure the moment was entirely unpleasant.

My mother's water broke while she was asleep. I snuck into bed with my parents that night and found this event hysterical. For the next few years, I would gleefully tell anyone who would listen about the time my mother wet the bed one night.

This would come back to bite me.

My sister was eventually born and my father took me to the hospital the following day. I remember this day to be almost as exciting as when I got a dollhouse for my 4th birthday, but not quite. Regardless, my emotions were running wild and I was pleased with myself for accurately predicting the birth of this baby girl.

At the hospital, my mother placed my new baby sister, Bronwyn, in my arms. I was excited beyond belief.

I could not contain my excitement. It bounced around my body, searching desperately for an escape.

Gleeful screams of joy and all around self congratulation could not contain the excitement of the situation.

This was my own fucking little sister after all. My new favorite doll, my new best friend, my new source of entertainment. The excitement of this situation could not be contained...

...and it eventually found it's escape.





Have a great day! Do you remember the birth of your sibling? Tell me! And follow my blog!!

Why Having a Second Child Permanently Disables the 1st Born PART 1: Bed Time

I was an only child for three year and ten months. My parents happily spoiled me rotten and I got away with everything.

THEN, my mother accidentally got pregnant. Well, ish.

 Let me explain. My mother has three sisters. Total that is four sisters if you include her. They are all within a year from one another except for the youngest who my Oma told me "Was an accident when Opa and I were watching Alfie." Aside from this being way too much information, it explains why they're all so close. They all talk on the phone at least once a day and moved out to California together and got married around the same time and started having babies at around the same time. Today there are 8 of us spawned from these four mothers, two kids per mom. It wasn't always this way however. Originally, two of my aunts had two kids and my mother and another aunt each had one daughter. It was perfect, blissful, amazing.

Then my Aunt Karolyn got pregnant again. My mom, being super jealous and not wanting to be left out when all of her sisters had two children, stopped using birth control. She forgot to tell my father of this grand plan to continue propagating the earth.

She got pregnant almost immediately. And that's where Bronwyn came from: jealousy. My life was ruined. Things would never be the same again. Everything changed.


For instance, I didn't have a bed time before Bronwyn was born. I just conked out when ever the fuck I felt like it. This led to my ability to sleep on anything when I get truly exhausted.

Here I am sleeping starting at the top left and going clockwise: On a chair during a party with my cousin's dog, at someone's house, on a bed in the middle of the afternoon as my father lays beside me talking to my mom and sister in our hotel room, on my aunt's couch, at the beach with my friend Claudia, at a tournament using my mask as a pillow.

The lack of a bed time was probably due to my parents being recovering hippies at this point in their lives. They were finishing up the "Drugs are fun!" part of their lives and trying to be mature adults with a toddler to practice on.

When there was for some reason, a need for my parents to put me down to sleep (like if they had friends over and wanted to get drunk, or if a babysitter was coming so they could go over to a friends house and get drunk)  it rarely went well. I would scream and cry and beg to be an adult with them.

Bronwyn and I shared a room after she was born. This means all my toys were tossed out to make room for the vast amount of baby stuff. Let me add new baby stuff. No Good Will crap for Bonny. We lived in Lafayette at this point, not Berkeley where I lived as a newborn. My parents hippie ways had been trimmed away. They were responsible suburban parents now. It also meant I had a bed time. I did not like this.

I forced my parents to lay next to me until I fell asleep. They were also required to sing my lullaby, and other lullabies until I slept. If they fell asleep in my bed with me (which I infinitely preferred to them leaving me), they were not allowed to snore (which meant they couldn't actually fall asleep).

Inevitably after an hour or two they gave up and told me to lie in the dark and count sheep. They ignored the fact that I was 4 and couldn't count over 10.

This backfired on them however. As once they left the room and I counted to ten, I would sit up and scream loudly, "Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaddyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy! I'm looooooooooooonelllllllllllllllly!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" If this didn't a) get them to return or b) wake up Bonny I resorted to plan B. This was more treacherous, however, because I had to get out of my bed.

Getting out of bed involved leaping from the edge of the bed at least four feet away. This distance was necessary because the witch that lived under my bed could only reach out 3.5 feet from the edge. This is because that's how long her arms were. (Yes I did have a very vivid imagination.)

If I did manage to will myself out of bed and land four feet away and not break my arm, I was good. Now I had two options. I could poke Bronwyn until she cried, bringing my parents into the room immediately, but this involved sharing Bonny with my  parents something I tried to avoid. The second choice was to sneak out of my room silently and crawl down the long dark and foreboding hallway to my parents room. I usually picked the latter choice unless Bronwyn was being particularly annoying that day and I was feeling especially malicious.

If I made it all the way down to my parents room without falling asleep during the sometimes half-hour long silent-sneaky-crawl-down-the-hall I had to wait until my parents turned off the lights and went to bed. Their room was still carpeted at this point in time so this was usually a fairly comfortable time for me. I would curl up where they couldn't see me in front of the blanket chest that sat at the base of their bed, and think happy four-year-old thoughts.

Several times I fell asleep here only to be found the next morning when my parents woke up. We lived in California so sleeping on the carpet, even in the dead of winter, wasn't a huge deal. Some times they found me before they turned off the lights and put me back into bed. This meant my plan had failed and I returned to screaming "DADDY!!!!! I'M LONELY!!!!!!!!!" only shriller and more annoyingly.

On the rare occasions  I stayed awake long enough for them to turn the lights off and did not get caught, I WON!! I got to crawl in between them and sleep there, with the adults, till morning. I felt accomplished. I ruined my parents sex life. What?

My Lullaby

Momma and Pappa and Laurel make three/
We're a happy family/
With a big red dog/
and two fat cats/
Living in the Albany flats.
Our house is gray/
the trim is blue/
we painted it/
before we had you!

There was more. I don't remember all of it. But, SEE?! I told you my parents were hippies! They can't carry a tune yet they wrote me a lullaby!