Will I ever be close to my eldest again

[Intotheebyss]

This year we had our second child who is now 9 months old. He’s a very smiley & happy baby and has brought so much joy. But I miss my eldest so much. We used to share a bed every night, and had such a close connection. Her brother arriving was a huge blow and there was a lot of upset for months. Especially at night when she was getting used to my husband settling her rather than me. She is still very jealous of her baby brother and often just lashes out at him when he’s around, so we’re currently trying to do things separately & take one child each to keep the peace over the Christmas break. Our eldest is 3.5.

I just keep wondering whether I’ll ever get time back with my daughter again. Obviously lots of the baby responsibilities still lie with me as I’m breastfeeding and he mostly wants to be with me. But my husband takes him as much as possible to give me & DD time together. But it just never feels like enough. And I still feel like I’m grieving my closeness with her and the relationship we used to have. Will I ever get it back?

Thanks for reading….

I have exactly the same age gap, my youngest just turned 10 months. I really feel this too.

I try to spend as much of baby’s nap time as possible playing with my eldest, I also include eldest in dinner prep or baking while baby is crawling around and entertained by some toys.

I also try to do bedtime for eldest every other night. I breastfeed baby in lounge and then DH rocks him to sleep on my days to do bedtime with eldest. I feed to sleep when it’s my turn to do baby’s bedtime.

These things help me feel a bit closer to my eldest but I do still feel a bit disconnected sometimes. My 3.5 year old still wakes in the night so most nights we do end up sharing a bed which I think does help, I just have baby one side of me, eldest in between me and DH.

I think it will get easier when they youngest doesn’t need so much attention with bf, nappies, entertaining etc.

Thank you so much for replying. I think having her in bed with me would help the situation too, but at the beginning I couldn’t cope as the baby was waking so much so I just needed space to work it out, so hubbie went into our daughters bed with her as she’s got a double in her room. I don’t do bedtime very much due to feeding to sleep but maybe I could try what you do @Chocolaterocketcake as I’m sure that would help us to connect more. But when I’ve done it she says ‘why do you put me to sleep & then go away’ I.e. why aren’t you staying with me in my bed. I just feel so torn and guilty.

sorry you’re going through it too x

Hi OP. So sorry that you’re struggling with this. I definitely empathise, and I’m sure lots of parents with more than one child feel/have felt similarly! It’s totally impossible to give two the same undivided attention as one.

Mine have a smaller age gap than yours (24m) but we also co-sleep frequently and I found it really hard that my husband seemed to become much closer to the eldest when I was breastfeeding the little one, as he became the default parent whilst I was glued to the baby.

I have to say that things became a bit easier after the baby turned one. I stopped feeding a couple of months earlier than I had with my eldest, mainly because I wanted TTC, but also to try and start sharing the nights with my husband. We generally now take it in turns to go to each child, which means I get to sleep with my eldest when he needs that! Also, now that I’m back at work and baby is at nursery, I have found it easier to schedule 1:1 time with the eldest. On days where I have both of them on my own, I try and do a fun “older” activity with the 3yo during nap time. When we are all together as a family, we are really conscious to mix it up and not default to dad+eldest and mum+baby.

I still feel guilty a lot, and daydream of quitting my job to spend more time with them. BUT I think things are better. Also, as the little one grows, they play together so much more and they really dote on one another, so that helps too!

@Enigmasig thank you. It does seem to be getting a bit easier now that baby is moving around and doesn’t need to be held all of the time. That would be ideal if me &hubbie could at some point take it in turns to support each of them at night. Baby just still seems so little. They will both be in nursery full time when I go back to work but I might keep each off separately at different points so I’ve got a day just with one or the other. But then I'm sure it will never feel like enough…

It does get easier as the baby gets older. I use to make feed time a family affair!. I would get my son a drink and possibly a snack along with mine, then we would settle on the sofa and I would feed baby and read to my son or we would watch tv or just chat. You do need to be an octopus to cuddle a child feed a baby and hold a book. But with a few cushions it’s doable. At night we would snuggle in bed, me holding baby and feeding if needed and my son would fall asleep, hubby would then help me by taking the baby it’s quite nice that both children learn to sleep together. When my youngest was old enough to just go to bed not nursed I found that they both went happily together (they shared a room).

I found that by including son with the feeding made such a strong bond with the siblings and I did the same when I had my daughter. They are adults now, and people will comment on how close they are.

My DC are much older. My short answer is that it will very soon get easier as your baby gets more independent. At 9 months it should be perfectly possible to leave him with your DH all day and have a day out lovebombing your DD to help reestablish your bond (and I say that as someone with years of BFing experience, express some milk, and get your DH to give it using a cup along with eating some solids and he'll be fine). The long answer is below.

I have an 18 month gap then a 3 year gap (so also have a 4.5 year gap). I would say a ~3 year gap is the trickiest when they are young and this seems true across my wider family as well. Small gaps the older child forgets they didn't have a younger sibling very quickly, by the time my middle child was 9 months my eldest and her were already best pals and at 15&17 are still very close. The 4.5y gap between my eldest and youngest was big enough that my eldest was very much in 'big sister mode' and loved showing off her baby brother at school. The 3 year gap was trickier but not as bad as your sounds, my middle child is very easy going though. It still took a long time for them to still be friends and there are ages when 3 years feel very big and times when it gets much closer, usually when the older child moves onto the next step and the younger one is at the stage behind (e.g. starting school). But now it's 12 & 15 it's got closer again.

Agree with this too! My little one was always fed to sleep but I’d still do book and bed with the eldest whilst the baby fed then slept, and put them down when toddler was asleep. Might be worth a try if it could work, so you’re not always missing bedtime?

I have the same age gap of nearly four years. You do have to do a lot of tag teaming with your DH, and that will continue for a long time. Even now mine are 7 and 11 and we do most things together as a family, there will be things where that doesn't work, eg DS1 is old enough to see a particular movie that is too scary for DS2, or DS1 is keen to try more interesting food than DC2.

Like PP, we strictly rotate bedtime stories, so I do DC1 one night while DH does DC2, then the next night we swap.

We also went really big on the "your little brother" and trying to involve DC1 and talked a lot about what a great big brother he was, so that DC1 felt part of the team "grown up" with me and DH rather than being like the baby but bigger and pushed aside. (We possibly overdid this as for at least the first year DC2 could talk he called DC1 "brudder" rather than by his name!)

But to answer your main question, yes, you always have that bond with DC1 and that won't change unless you let it change by somehow getting set in your mind that there is a problem which will itself harden and create that problem. Remember that at 3 1/2 your DD would be becoming more independent from you even if there was no younger sibling.

Thank You for all all of these comments, they have been so helpful x