People always seem to be shocked to hear that parenting seems to get easier as you have more kids. This isn’t to say that it doesn’t have it’s own challenges or that parenting is ever easy, but there are some definite things that change as your family grows which help to make parenting seem easier than it does when you only have your first or even your first two children.
Your first child
There is nothing that quite compares to the expectation of your first child. You and your wife have relatively few responsibilities and a relatively large amount of free time to prepare for the new member of your family. If you’re anything like me you spend that time reading, researching, child-proofing, and doing everything you can to set yourself up to be the perfect parent. Taking all the best things your parents did and adding in all the latest and greatest information on raising happy, healthy children.
Then the day finally comes, you introduce your little one to the world and you immediately begin to stress about everything. “Gotta make sure they are on the right sleep schedule”, “Gotta make sure they’re on the right eating schedule”, “Why are they crying so much”, “Are we holding them too much”, “Are we holding them too little”, “They don’t like sleeping where the expert says they’re supposed to sleep”, “I don’t like them sleeping where the expert says they’re supposed to sleep”, and on, and on, and on. Every noise they make gets your pulse racing, their crying seems to cause you physical pain. Fortunately, you have all of your spare time, energy, and attention to spend worrying about those things until eventually you fall into a rhythm, you start to get the hang of “this whole parenting thing” and you decide on baby #2.
Your second child
Preparing for your second child is completely different from your first. You’ve gotten into a parenting rhythm, things are going well with your first child, so all of the hard work and preparation from preparing for your first seems to be paying off. Things aren’t perfect and don’t exactly line up with what you expected, but you’ve found your own way and a way that works for your happy little family. You’ve done your preparation, you’ve done your research, and your child-proofing and on top of that, you are still primarily focused on your first born.
Before you know it, the big day arrives (Wait, we only took how many baby bump pictures?) and you very quickly realize NOTHING WE’VE BEEN DOING IS WORKING. That feeding schedule we finally got worked out, NOPE. The device we got that finally got the other to sleep, HA! All of that baby-proofing, pointless. Not only that, but now feel guilty because you have less time for your first born who some how is picking up bad habits from their younger sibling. Your sanity starts slipping and you suddenly can’t figure out why you ever thought you could handle this whole parenting thing.
This is where many people stop. They’ve met their quota, realized parenting is REALLY hard, and it “feels like their family is complete.”
Some of us though are just crazy enough to forget all of that and have another.
Your third child
If the second child’s pregnancy is quick, the third child’s pregnancy is non existent. You have two kids to care for and no longer have time for all of that other stuff. Surprise, surprise, nothing that is working for your first two works for your third, but you’ve been through this before and you’ve started to realize that everyone really is different, even siblings. Each person has their own unique needs and responds differently to their environment. You’ve also started to realize that the expert advice doesn’t apply to your kids more often than it does. Your third child is also when you start to realize that all of the stressing and protecting with your first child may not have been so great for them or for you. You start to relax a bit in your parenting strategy, not in a neglectful way but in a “whatever is going to happen is going to happen” way. Your oldest is starting to get old enough to start to be more independent and your second was born independent.
This continues through with your fourth child with your older children becoming older and more helpful/independent, you and your wife realizing that maybe you can do this whole parenting thing after all. While I don’t know if it ever gets “easy” you realize that you can just embrace the beautiful madness that is parenting.