Raising Children

I've been reflecting recently on how my experience of raising Harry to date differs from my memories of raising Tully in the first 6 months. Everyone always told me it would be easier with a second and whilst I'm not saying I didn't agree I hadn't realised how different the experience would be. There's clearly no one single reason for this, but is down to a combination of changes in my attitude, Harry himself and having learnt from some of the mistakes I made first time around.

One BIG difference this time is that Harry sleeps so well. He's been sleeping right through (mostly) from about 16 weeks, something that Tully didn't do until she was 1! He also sleeps well during the day - with Tully I often only got one 30 minute nap out of her all day, whereas Harry will have two good 90 minute sleeps. I also learnt from Tully that it really is best to just put them down and leave them alone when they are tired rather than holding them, and he puts himself to sleep really well whereas I always had to fight to get Tully to rest.

Another difference is that with Tully I was always eager to be on the next stage, under some misapprehension that things would get easier. This time I know it gets harder before it gets better and am holding Harry back as a result!

The most obvious example of this is weaning - the experts say that babies don't need food until they are 6 months old. With Tully, primarily as she slept so badly, I assumed she was hungry and started weaning her at 4 months and a week. It didn't work at all, but once you start giving food they want it, so from that point had to cater for her on excursions instead of just being able to take a bottle. With Harry I waited until he was 5 1/2 months, and would have waited longer if I hadn't wanted him to have been mostly weaned when he starts nursery next week.

So far I am enjoying Harry much more as a baby than I did Tully. Looking back I'm fairly sure I had some mild post-natal depression but in typical Katie style didn't want to admit to anyone, myself included, that I wasn't coping.

Having said all that, whilst I love him loads and do think it's fun to watch him develop and learn new things, I'm still not really a baby person and am looking forward to when he's 2ish and a useful communicative person rather than a useless lump.