Mind the gap

Claire Quansah - 16 May 16

From the day my first son was born, we were constantly bombarded with the inevitable question of “when are you having another?” Believe me it gets tired after about 6 months, so 7 years of it drove me mad.

Now that the second is here, the popular question ‘how do you handle the age gap?’. One year in, here’s my take…

Big gap ‘cons’

• Sleep, or lack of! I’d been used to getting a good night’s sleep for a few years, so the arrival of a newborn really was hard
• Entertaining them together can be tough and will probably get tougher. It’s already quite difficult to find something they both enjoy so when I have a 4 year old and 11 year old to deal with, who knows what I’ll do?!
• No joint school photos. Ok this seems quite minor, but as a lover of nostalgia, I’ll never be able to pull out a photo of both my boys sitting awkwardly close to each other, gap toothed in perfectly ironed uniforms.
• Childcare – By the time my youngest is 11, we would have been paying for childcare for 17 years. Yes 17 years!!
• Different childhood experiences – 7 years is a long time in the world of children. So much can change from TV programmes, popular music and even technology, I wonder if my boys will ever be able to reminisce about ‘old school’ stuff together or will they just be generations apart
• What saddens me the most is that there will probably come a point when Boy1 is “too cool” to talk to his baby brother. Right now he adores him and the feeling is mutual, but once he becomes a teenager, just as his little brother is in school, he probably won’t want to listen to Biff, Chip and Kipper stories

Big gap pros:

• I only have one set of nappies to deal with. Nappies are expensive and dirty. Thankfully I’m only having to clean one bottom each day
• Continuing the nappy theme, our luggage for days out is much lighter. When I see parents with change bags, back packs, buggy boards and the like just to visit the corner shop, I shudder
• My oldest is pretty independent. He gets himself washed and dressed in the morning. Plus he can make his own breakfast! Result
• Help on hand. With an older child that likes to feel like a big boy, it’s easy to give him tasks to do to make him feel responsible, which lightens the load on me. I can leave him to entertain baby whilst I do other jobs safe in the knowledge the only thing he’ll smoother his brother with is kisses and not a pillow
• No jealousy! Toddlers don’t ‘get’ babies. They struggle to understand why a little screaming blob suddenly commands attention from all the big people. Not a problem with a 7 year old
• Protection – Even with a bout of teen angst in a few years, I know Boy1 will always be his brother’s security guard
• They both get to grow into their own person. Of course all siblings become individuals, but my eldest spent the first 7 years of his life becoming ‘him’, not being compared to anyone else, getting our full attention. And with such a big gap Boy2 won’t have to live under the shadow of his older brother because we can’t compare two people who will always be at different life stages

For us, this gap works perfectly. I’m not sure I would have ever been able to handle having a toddler and baby at the same time! My boys love each other and we wouldn’t change them, or the gap for the world. But what works for us, wouldn’t work for others. I just don’t think there’s any such thing as a perfect gap. If and when the time is right, it will work out.

xx

Claire Quansah

30 something Mancunian mother, wife and dancing queen. When I'm not juggling 2 boys, I'm either doing PR, drinking wine, eating cake or trying to shift the cake weight. Sometimes I share my musings at www.mumsomnia.wordpress.com

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