My First Born

I was 21 when I gave birth to my first child. I was totally clueless and completely in love.

Now as we are preparing for the birth of our third baby I wonder how it will be different.

It's a well known fact that parents are always hardest on their first born. My dad says that you always push your first born the hardest and expect the most out of them. He also says that with the baby of the family you will put bricks on their head to keep them from growing up too fast. Although we only have our two children right now, I can already attest to this. We are constantly pushing Jayden and expecting the world of him. The problem with this system is that it never stops. Your first born is the child that taught you what it means to be a parent in the first place and you NEVER stop learning from them (not even when they're 60 years old!).

I wondered how being a big brother at 13 months would effect Jayden and how it would change his life. I worried that I wouldn't be able to share the same love with Gabriella that I felt for Jayden. It's so cliche but it's true. Now I wonder how both of my children will effected by the birth of their new sibling and how it will change their already established relationship.

Being that I'm a middle child and Jordan is the baby, we don't always see the mistakes we are making raising a first born. Will Jayden grow up to be a perfectionist? Will he be a strong leader? Will he have a dominate personality? Who knows!

I do think it's funny how much we can change in our ideas of what it looks like to be a parent. Both my children are so different and we have to parent them differently because of that. Jayden is much more strong willed than Gabri and when we discipline him it looks different than when we discipline miss sensitive. I also wonder if he is strong willed because he's a first born and if she's sensitive because she's a middle child, or if it's because he's a boy and she's a girl...

I hope that the older I get the more understanding and wisdom I will gain of being a mother.