As promised, a post about our first week with our two boys. It has been a pleasant yet hectic week!
Brazilian hospitals make all mothers stay for two nights so our first days were all in a strange environment. My husband went home after the birth so he was there when our boy woke up to give him his breakfast and keep his routine as normal as possible. Then they came to the hospital. When they arrived I was holding the baby and our big boy came to sit with us. He pushed his hand against the baby so i put the baby in the crib so I could give my boy some big squeezes. Very soon after, the baby cried so I told my boy I must pick him up. He watched silently as I quietened the baby and asked if he would like to see. He gently stroked his brother saying ´baby´. I think he was trying to get his head round the fact that the baby was now right in front of him and not in mummy´s tummy anymore. The first few days he looked for my tummy asking ´baby´ and each time we explained that the baby came out of my tummy and showed him his brother. Each time he seemed a little more accepting and intrigued by his baby brother.
One big reaction we noticed from him was that he woke much more frequently during the night for the first three nights. We aimed to keep his routine as close as possible to the pre-baby routine but as we were both quite exhausted from running around after him/recovering from birth and waking with a newborn several times we did have to adapt the way we were dealing with night wakings for a few days, meaning my husband would lay down close to him if he woke up and often did nod off himself!! However just one week in, he is sleeping better and we have returned to our normal ways of dealing with night wakings.
He hasn´t seemed to digress too much with the potty training and continues to ask when he needs to use the bathroom. We have kept everything the same in this department and are not really giving him a reaction should he have the odd accident which, hopefully, will avoid any purposeful accidents!
One of the most important things we have managed to do is to include our big boy in the day to day care of his brother. He has been a super little fetcher and carrier! He sometimes asks for one of us in particular to pick up his brother when he is crying and where possible we have done as he wishes (for now). He has accepted the breastfeeding really well without any obvious jealousy or fear. He does find it hard when his brother cries but this seems more out of fear that he is hurt rather than jealousy or anger and often tries to comfort him with us by stroking him or calling for us to pick him up. We have had a couple of walks now where our big boy is able to help push the pram or have a ride on his buggy board which is novel and fun - at least for now.
We are really pleased with how smoothly things are going and hope it continues like this. Preparation has been the key for us (view our pre-baby preparation here) and being prepared for any minor issues has kept us all calm and relaxed. I´m sure there will be a few bumps in the road but overall we are all managing to enjoy our new arrival together.
