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Thinking of having a second child? Forget everything you think you know

It’s not just multiplying by two

Sarah FitzGerald
6 min readOct 11, 2024
Black and white photo of a toddler with a baby. Both with their backs to the camera. The toddler has her arm around the baby
Photo by Joshua Clay on Unsplash

It’s March 2023, I’m in the kitchen chucking together food for the kids. I’ve been in there for less than 60 seconds when I hear a blood curdling scream followed by hysterical crying coming from the living room where my children were happily playing just a minute ago.

I drop everything and race to the living room where I find my four-year-old eldest child in floods of tears, and my sweet, angelic little one year old poised to sink her teeth into her sister’s back — again.

I grab the eldest, who has frozen, and move her onto the sofa to inspect her. I find a large red ring on her back, where my darling baby has tried to bite a chunk out of her.

My youngest meanwhile is making her way over to the sofa, a demonic glint in her eye and proceeds to try and get to her sibling to bite her again, she is so determined that I find it difficult to fend her off.

What happened? Where did my sweet baby go? Who possessed her? Why has she turned rabid?

As I separate them, trying to calm them both down enough to keep everyone safe, I contemplate the fears I had when I was pregnant with baby number two: Would her big sister pick on her? Be mean to her? Or worse…

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Sarah FitzGerald
Sarah FitzGerald

Written by Sarah FitzGerald

I write funny things about parenting and well researched things about linguistics

Responses (2)

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But here we are, and kid number two is most definitely the dangerous one.

My sweet little baby sister got her first taste of control at the age of three and never looked back. She quickly learned that, at her whimsy, if I ever deigned to get so much as three feet from her and mom was within earshot… she would utter the…

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Children are the flowers of the earth! These moments will pass very quickly! In time you will be proud of them

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