A Fine Balance
One family prepares their daughter to be a big sister
BY DANIEL LEADERMAN
My wife and I are mostly thrilled;
she’s healthy and feeling pretty good,
the doctor is pleased, and the anatomy
scan indicates the appropriate number
of fingers and toes are present and
accounted for. There’s the usual work
to be done preparing the nursery and
lining up day care, but we’re making
good progress and there’s plenty of
time yet.

Mostly absent this time is the
background anxiety that leads first-
time parents to obsessively (but not
irrationally) consult the pregnancy
guidebooks to find out which bit of
produce most closely approximates the
size of the fetus (It’s an artichoke! It’s a
rutabaga! It’s a taro root!) and how this
week’s side effects may differ from last
week’s. Whatever, we say. We’re pros,
we say.

But the old worries have been
supplanted by a new anxiety: preparing
our nearly 3-year-old daughter for life
with her new sibling, rival and potential
usurper. The party line we’ve been
pushing has been, of course, that the
new baby will bring joy and excitement
to the family and that life as a big sister
will be great.

But will it? Once the initial novelty
and curiosity wears off, I’m really just
hoping the joy and excitement will
follow for her. But I don’t know. I’ve
made my peace with the small fictions
we tell our children (“Try it! You’ll like
it!”) and a few of the larger ones (see
“Claus, Santa”), but I feel like we’re
walking a tightrope here and that our
credibility is at stake. If first child
decides new child is a dud, we’re
screwed and I’ll be a liar.

The good news is that the
early returns on siblinghood
look promising. Our daughter
understands that there’s a baby
growing in Mommy’s tummy —
although it seemed to take her a little
while to understand there wasn’t also
one in mine — and that it will be her
baby, too. She will sometimes declare
herself to be “Mommy” and designate
my wife or a day-care playmate to be
her “baby” or “sweetie,” diligently
making sure her charges are fed, well
rested and wearing clean diapers (the
last one can get a bit awkward, not
gonna lie). A few weeks ago, she even
said, of her own volition, that the baby
could share her stuffed animals.

We know it will take diligence on
our part to make sure she still gets
the attention and appreciation she
needs once little sister arrives, and
we’re trying to smooth the way by
talking to her about what the baby will
need from us and from her and reading
stories about children whose families
get new babies.

A special shout-out is due to Daniel
Tiger, our daughter’s latest crush,
whose eponymous “Neighborhood”
includes numerous episodes dedicated
to the difficulties of having a new baby
sibling, from no longer being the center
of attention to not wanting to share
your toys and stickers. It’s all she wants
to watch these days.

We’re really proud of her. We are.

But as encouraging as all of this is,
some problems are too great even for
a cloying cartoon tiger to solve. And,
in a way, I feel like the deck is stacked
against our firstborn. She’s been the
center of our universe for as long as she
can remember, and that’s about to come
to a screeching halt. She’ll also likely be
dealing with her parents — her father in
particular — as they reach new heights
of exhaustion and frayed nerves (and
I can be a bit too uptight under the best
of circumstances).

Even if she’s prepared to share her toys,
sharing the limelight is another story
altogether. For better or for worse, the
new kid is going to rock her world in
ways she surely can’t imagine yet.

“But it’ll be great!” we tell her. “You’re
going to be such a good big sister!”
we say. “The baby is going to love
you so much!” we say. But every time
we do, this little pang of guilt I’ve
been nurturing in my gut gets bigger.

Because what I really want to do is ask
the child to tell me that I’ll be OK and
to assure me that being a big sister is
going to be great and she’ll be happy.

But that’s not how it works, of course.

So we sit, and I read to her about bears
who welcome new babies into their
families. And we watch “Daniel Tiger’s
Neighborhood.” And I cross my fingers,
hoping I’ve been telling her the truth.

washingtonFAMILY.com June 2018 43
FamVeld/iStock /Getty Images Plus
F or my family, this will be the
summer of The Second Coming,
by which I mean the birth of our
second daughter in August.