When Does Life Get Better After Having A Baby

Contradiction, though, lies at the heart of parenthood. So does unpredictability. One day, and this could happen any time after Junior's first birthday, she will start smiling at you again. Weirder still, flirting with you again. She will say complimentary things to you when you are least expecting it (such as when you are awake). She will make faint suggestions during commercial breaks that she might respond favorably to your sexual advances. She will poke tiny holes in all your condoms. She will want your sperm again, and when you are drunk she will probably have it.
 

When Does Life Get Better After Having A Baby

For as Junior learns to crawl and begins literally to move beyond babyhood, your beloved will feel a yearning for another one. Her amnesia is complete, her glasses are tinted with rose. You can show her slides of the first birth, or selected video highlights; nothing will budge her. This time will be different, she will say. And besides, little Arbuthnot/Iolanthe needs a playmate. Much as you will need to find the money to buy somewhere bigger to live, a larger car and oodles more stuff to keep the family in the style to which it has become accustomed before you peg out with a coronary in 15 years' time.

Don't blame her. It is her body talking. Just as your male body tells you to impregnate as many women as you can, her female body tells her to make the most of your male body before you peg out with a coronary in 15 years' time.
 
And in the essentials she is right. The second birth usually is easier than the first. The female body is designed to give birth to lots of children. The first one is effectively a trial run. By the fourth or fifth they almost drop out of their own accord.

And while Arbuthnot or Iolanthe does not need a playmate as such, or even want one, they will certainly benefit from having one, and so will you. At first having two children is so much more exhausting that you will be astounded that you used to complain so much. All parents of two children say the same thing of all parents of one child:

'They don't know they're born.' (Incidentally, all parents of three children say the same thing of parents of two children.)

Once the youngest is about two, however, life starts to improve. Siblings will play together and with other children more willingly and happily than will only children. I know parents of only children who are still required to keep their charges 'entertained' for vast stretches of the day. Think about it: would you rather play football with your child for four hours, or would you rather watch your two children playing football with each other for four hours while you read a book and sip a mint julep?
 
And your relationship improves as well. As your children grow, so does your satisfaction in having done all this together and somehow survived it. Each of you realizes that this is the only other person in the world who loves your children as much as you do. It counts for a lot.
 
For second and subsequent births you and your partner will be much better prepared. If she wants to give birth at home in a pool surrounded by 40,000 candles while listening to Manuel And The Music Of The Mountains, then why shouldn't she? Meanwhile, you will know whether you want to be there or not. (If there are enough qualified and/or sympathetic womenfolk there, you might be able to wriggle out of it. As Kate Figes writes in Life After Birth: 'Throughout history all cultures that have excluded men from the scene of childbirth have done so because there is little for them actually to do.') I have left this revolutionary and possibly indictable suggestion in the reasonable hope that your partner won't have read this far. 

But this is for the future. Right now you have a party to host. To find out more, you can check out When Does Life Get Better After Having A Baby.