One plus one doesn't equal two
When our second child was three months old, I flew from Sydney to London with him and our three-year-old firstborn. My husband stayed in Sydney to finish things off. Without going into the details, the experience of flying, alone, with a breastfeeding infant and a toddler, for twenty-four hours, was almost exactly the same as labour. I knew the pain would have to end at some point, and I also knew that I was completely on my own, while simultaneously surrounded by people looking at me, just as most women are during modern births. The main two differences were (a) the lack of epidural on the plane, and (b) the fact that the stewardesses actively ticked me off, rather than telling me when to push. Nothing could have drilled into my brain better the understanding that we had not added to the family in having a second child, but rather that we had gone forth and multiplied . No one talks about what it is like to move from one to two children. There is no What To Expect book...