When my wife was pregnant, we made a concerted effort to encourage our daughter’s belief that he was her baby, that somehow he was a communal baby, the family’s baby, if you will. When she talked about the upcoming event, it wasn’t “Mommy is going to have a baby!” It was “I’m going to be a big sister!”

Well, our son is a little over a month old now, and as far as my daughter is concerned, the bloom is definitely off the rose. She was excited to meet him and hold him and give him a bottle, but now that he’s been here a while, she has replaced her excitement with acting out and attention seeking behaviour.

If one of us is doing something with her (reading a book, watching some television, playing a game, whatever) and the other needs to pass off the baby, my daughter becomes irate and will sometimes completely lose it and throw a tantrum. She seems to have lost the ability to play by herself, perpetually whining that “nobody wants to play with me“, instead of occasionally playing by herself. (This can happen at any time, even if I have just finished [what feels like] a marathon session of Dora Candy Land.) Her appetite for attention has become insatiable.

I have tried to reinforce the fact that she is still my special girl, and my daughter, but that now we have two kids who need us. I have tried to encourage the idea that we’re a family, and that families do things together. But most days involve at least one or two incidents where it is clear that she feels her baby brother is trampling on her turf.

For those of you with more than one child, how did you handle this? Did you just ride it out until they outgrew it? Did you have any tactics or strategies that helped deal with the situation?

Every addition or subtraction in a family results in great stress. Every addition or subtraction results in changes, big and small, for everyone.

When your first baby was born, chances are, your world was turned upside down. Your priorities changed. Your plans were rearranged and always, the biggest consideration for every family decision was how it would affect the baby.

Contemplating on having another child is much the same, only you will have more kids to consider and balance against your plans for the family. If before you were able to get by with minimal outside help (day care), now you might end up being totally dependent on one to keep sane.

Expenses will also escalate, a little or a lot, depending on your lifestyle and whether the next child will be of the same sex, or if he has special needs. Most probably too, the last vestiges of your romantic illusions about having a baby will be eradicated as you deal with jealousy and discipline while also grabbing every opportunity to love and teach your child how to live.

You may also have to examine your motivations for having another one, and prepare yourselves for the possibility of having another child of the same sex, or the opposite sex, or a child with special needs, or multiples. All these possibilities have to be considered and talked about, but not dwelled upon, if only to prepare each other for each other’s reactions when the next one arrives. At least, ambivalence or sadness will not be a surprise.

And as with the first baby, you have to prepare for the new one. Read up and ask about jealousy and sibling rivalry, and take notes on ways to keep it to a bare minimum. After all, the challenges will be multiplied.

The good thing, however, is that you die again from the old ways of being and doing. You develop new skills, become better at time management and being focused on goals.

You become more efficient in multi-tasking and there will be an extra pair of arms to wrap around your neck to tell you that you’re doing a great job.

My son has recently started becoming jealous of his 7-month-old sister. My husband and I were prepared for this when our daughter was born, but are surprised to see this jealousy pop up now.

We have tried what seems like everything in the book. We’ve tried extra one-on-one time with him. And, since part of his jealousy involves poking and/or prodding his sister, we’ve done time-outs and we’ve reinforced good behavior so he doesn’t try to get attention with bad behavior. Now, at this point we’ve run out of ideas.

I’ve pretty much resigned myself to the fact that this is a stage and is one we’re just going to have to ride out. What I’ve been doing lately is distracting him whenever I catch him picking on his sister. This gets him to stop for the time being and he becomes involved in another activity.

Still, there are some days where I near the end of my patience with him grabbing and poking his sister. Maybe this is just a preview for future bickering between them and I’ll be at the end of my rope then too. Maybe I’m just being pushed to test my patience because I’m going to need plenty for this type of thing in the future!