As a doula, I am always in awe of my clients the second time around, but don’t get it twisted. First time parents are awesome, but there are a few things about second time parents that make doula work exciting. Every time I meet with parents who are having their second baby, I always come away smiling and excited to follow-up with more information for them. But really, what’s so different about the second time around?
A Note About First Timers
First time parents are awesome. They are so very full of ideas about how they want things to go with their pregnancy, birth, and baby. They’re sometimes really excited about learning all the things and almost always soo optimistic about what is coming up soon in their lives. Everything is theoretical for them, so all the options are still open too. First time parents ask great questions and we LOVE doula-ing them. Don’t worry, we love you first timers too!
Understanding
Parents expecting their second baby come with a built in understanding of how things work in a way that I can’t always teach in a classroom. They have been through birth and postpartum before, and that experience informs how they approach it a second time. (It also informs IF they approach it a second time!) Experience is sometimes the best teacher, and no matter how many times we role the cascade of interventions in a classroom, sometimes you have to experience it for yourself to know how you want to navigate it.
Knowing Your Needs
Second time parents know their needs better, because they’ve been there. Maybe last time they thought feeding their baby would be easy peasy and then they ended up needing to go to ALL the appointments to get it on track. Maybe they thought they wanted a natural unmedicated birth, but they ended up having an unplanned cesarean, and they want to know how to make a planned one better. Second time parents not only know their needs better, but are less shy about asking for what they need. That’s a true blessing in my book! I talk to at least one family a week who did not enjoy their first time around, and are looking to make things better based on that experience. Those calls are some of my favorite.
Unmitigated Pragmatism
When you have been put through the ringer of parenthood already, you tend to become much more pragmatic about what you want. Maybe you thought your family was going to be more helpful than they ended up being after your baby was born. Did you provider turn out to be less than supportive of your wants for birth and you’re looking to make a change? It isn’t cynical to want something different and to go after what you need; it’s pragmatic! It is recognizing that your needs are also important, and maybe your pie in the sky ideas didn’t turn out the way you wanted. Moving past those ideals doesn’t mean that you are abandoning them, rather you are shaping what you want based on what you actually experienced the need for the first time.
Let me illustrate with a story:
During Sonya’s first pregnancy I had she and her husband in a childbirth education class. This couple was so very excited about having a natural unmedicated hospital birth & spent extra time to learn ALL the different coping techniques and tools available to them to try to achieve that. Their plans got derailed when their provider told them their baby was looking small, so they thought they should schedule an induction at 39 weeks. The induction turned into a 3 day labor in which Sonya had every intervention she had tried to avoid. It also resulted in a beautiful baby boy being born vaginally, and I never want to overshadow that. Here’s the thing, many people would be totally fine with everything that they experienced in the hospital, but they weren’t. They didn’t feel listened to at all by their provider or the staff at the hospital, and grew angrier every time anyone mentioned to them that “at least they have a healthy mom and healthy baby!”* When they got pregnant with their second baby, we were their first phone call. They wanted to know about providers who would be more supportive of their wishes, options for different locations to birth, and who of the doulas on our team might be available to help them this time.
Second time parents know more about what they want and need, because experience is sometimes the best teacher. There is no one right way to do any of this pregnancy, birth, and parenting stuff, but sometimes a negative experience teaches you what you don’t want in a way that you may not have been open to receiving before it happened to you. So here’s my shout out to all you parents expecting your second babies! You’ve been there, got the poop-stained onesies to prove it, and know better what you’ll need this time around because of it.
3 secrets my 2nd baby taught me:
- All pregnancies are different, no matter the sex of your babies.
- Don’t worry, you really will love this one just as much as the first one. Your heart is going to grow the moment you see that new face!
- You are an expert about your firstborn, but what worked for them might not work for this one.
*Do NOT say this phrase in front of me EVER again!