The Second Baby Is Coming…and I’m Terrified

Author: Chapin Young / Category: Tips / Published: June-24-2019

Imogen’s birth hadn’t been easy, so we needed some support the second time around. Carmen came to us at the eleventh hour and kind of miraculously. After meeting several doulas, but not feeling like anyone was the exact right fit, we were feeling increasingly afraid about the birth and the transition to having two babes. But then on the very same day, just two weeks before my due date, my OB and a mom at Imogen’s school both recommended Carmen to us. Carmen is a lioness, with a huge personality, a deep knowledge of childbirth and everything that surrounds it, and was completely perfect for us.

We were expecting Carmen to help us navigate Asher’s birth, making sure my voice was heard, and so that we could heal from my first birth experience. But we had no idea she would give us some of the most powerful tools to help make sure Asher’s arrival and integration into our lives was a happy, joyous one for everyone, especially Imogen, and to empower me to stop being afraid of what was to come. During our first meeting with her she got right down to what she considered the most important business and spent almost the whole time focused on how to help us ensure the dynamic between Imogen and Asher got off on the right foot, so that it was a healthy, positive experience for our girl. She told us something really vital - that long after we were gone they would still have each other … and that that’s precisely what we wanted, for them to have each other. To be sister and brother, but to be best friends who trusted, loved, and could lean on one another for the whole of their lives. She told us exactly and specifically what to do to set up the house, the car, their first meeting. Who should be there, who shouldn’t. What we should say, what we shouldn’t. What we should have at the hospital to make their first meeting a celebration for Imogen. She even drew us a diagram for how to set up the hospital room to ensure Imogen would feel comfortable and safe, have immediate access to me, and be able to approach her new brother in her own time and own way. She told us how to bring him home. How to refer to them as equals, not that she was the “big” and he was the “little,” so nothing was taken from her or put on her shoulders. We listened and absorbed everything, knowing this was right; this was the answer to this big fear we didn’t know how to manage on our own.