Lisa with her husband Youssef and her first two sons, Rocco and baby Zach
Oh, Lily Allen, what have you done:
eight months pregnant barely a year after the birth of your first child?
You are going to have two babies — a newborn and one just over a year —
on your hands.
You have no idea what you have let yourself in for. Your marriage, health and sanity will be pushed to the brink. You will suffer exhaustion that in military conditions would be classed as torture. Take it from a mother who knows.
For like Lily and Peaches Geldof, who has discovered she is expecting her second son six months after she gave birth to her first, I had tandem babies.
I remember all too clearly my GP
telling me my second child was on the way, in April 2006. His
congratulations were half-drowned out by my colicky five-month-old
screaming blue murder in his pram.
I was on my knees after weeks of sleepless nights that had impeded my recovery from a life-threatening, post-natal infection. My reaction was not elation, but an overwhelming combination of helplessness and terror.
I had dismissed the abdominal pains and morning sickness as the after-effects of a difficult birth. But then came those all too familiar signs: the aversion to cooking smells and a craving for bananas — for Peaches, it was sour sweets.
I went to the doctor’s surgery for reassurance that I couldn’t be pregnant again. Naively, I thought that because I was breast-feeding, conception was impossible. How wrong I was. As Lily and Peaches have also discovered, some women are at their most fertile in the months following birth.
Though I applaud Peaches’ decision to do without a nanny, I wonder if she will feel differently in six months when she’s ready to sell her soul for an uninterrupted shower or a meal eaten sitting down.
Then, of course, there’s sleep — she and Lily can wave goodbye to that for a couple of years at least.
But before that, there are the practicalities of the pregnancy. The baby books recommend you take it easy, especially in the later stages, and avoid heavy lifting.
But when I was heavily pregnant for
the second time, I had to lug my ten-month-old son Rocco, a pram,
shopping and nappy bag up and down the steep steps to my London flat.
While the first-time mothers in my NCT class were obsessively firming up their pelvic floor muscles in readiness for the birth, I hadn’t even finished my post- natal exercises. I was told to abandon them because of the danger of harming my second baby.
Later, I was banned from ante-natal classes because Rocco, who had started crawling, was a disruption to the other expectant mothers.
I attempted to wean Rocco when a midwife told me I should stop breast-feeding because of the small risk of miscarriage. But he refused to drink formula, leaving me no choice but to carry on.
The combination of pregnancy and
breast-feeding took its toll. I was anaemic and felt guilty that Rocco
was taking essential nutrients intended for my second baby, who was
growing at a slower rate than he should have been.
In the end, Zach arrived weighing a healthy 7lb on Boxing Day. The contractions had started on Christmas Eve, so Christmas Day was occupied with my breathing and calls to the hospital.
Nothing could have prepared me for the shock of caring for a newborn when my time and energy were consumed with my demanding one-year-old, who had just started walking.
In the early days, I would have to stop nursing Zach to race after Rocco, who would be attempting to climb the stairs.
Rocco had just begun to sleep through the night, but Zach was wide awake from the time his brother went to bed until light flooded through the windows.
Exhausted after a sleepless night trying to settle my baby, I would turn my attention to my challenging one-year-old and the daily round of changing, feeding and washing.
It was a major effort to get the boys
into the double pram to go to the park, where I would chase after Rocco
with Zach bouncing on my chest in the Baby Bjorn sling. Being
sleep-deprived was the worst experience of my life. During my lowest ebb
in the early hours, I would burst into floods of tears. Once I even
started hallucinating.
We’d agreed that my husband, the sole breadwinner, would be exempt from night duty, but in retrospect I shouldn’t have let him off so lightly.
I would urge Lily Allen to have a written undertaking from her husband, Sam Cooper, to share the night feeds. Fortunately, he seems a hands-on kind of man.
She should not underestimate the impact a new sibling will have on her first-born. With hindsight, introducing Rocco to his little brother the morning after he was born was a mistake.
I will never forget the bewildered look on his face as he saw me nursing an imposter in the hospital bed.
The betrayal must have felt all the worse because I’d forced him to stop breast-feeding in time for the birth.
Devastatingly, Rocco rejected me for weeks after Zach was born. He refused to speak to me and would only let his father feed and change him.
This was all the harder because from the moment he was born, Rocco and I had shared every waking moment. I thought we had an unbreakable bond. To this day, he favours his father’s company over mine.
On the whole, his resentment was directed at me, but there were times when he would hurt his little brother.
I would place Zach in his cot and surround Rocco with toys if I had to dash to the loo (showering had to be done when my husband came home and I don’t remember ever having the time to wash my hair).
On one occasion when I was in the bathroom, I heard the most piercing scream imaginable. Rocco had stuck his finger through the bars of the cot and poked Zach in the eye, making it bleed.
I had to scoop up the boys and flag down a taxi to take us to hospital, where I was quizzed about where I’d been at the time because the injury was so serious.
Rocco might have been put out by his brother’s arrival — he often asked when we’d be taking him back — but in some ways it was Zach who’d drawn the short straw.
He missed out on crucial one-to-one time with me, which Rocco had for the first 14 months of his life.
Neither did he get to enjoy the mother and baby yoga and music classes I’d religiously attended with Rocco. I was organising play-dates for his big brother, so Zach had to tag along.
A constant thumb-sucker, Zach compensated for his disadvantages by refusing his cot at night. He slept in the marital bed until he was four, which put an end to any hope of a night’s sleep and delayed the arrival of baby number three.
Unlike Rocco, who hit all his milestones early, Zach’s speech and motor skills were delayed because he relied on Rocco to tell us what he needed.
The first two years were shattering, emotionally and physically. I weighed a stone-and-a-half less than before pregnancy because I had no time to eat. Meals out and even a coffee with friends were a distant memory.
One thing that Peaches is right about is that her sons will be the closest of friends, once they’ve worked out there is room for both of them in her affections
But one thing that Peaches is right
about is that her sons will be the closest of friends, once they’ve
worked out there is room for both of them in her affections.
They will fight, viciously at times, but they’ll be thick as thieves, fiercely protecting each other, and sharing friends. By Zach’s first birthday, my boys shared a secret language.
She’ll be able to enrol them in the same schools, sport and music clubs, making her life much easier than mothers with children separated by a wider age gap.
Rocco and Zach share a room, not because they have to, but because they want to. When Rocco had his first sleepover at a friend’s house, Zach missed him so much that he couldn’t sleep, eat or talk until his beloved brother returned.
Rocco didn’t stop crying the next day because he’d hated every minute of being away from Zach.
The arrival of our third son, Mallik, three years after Zach was born, was not nearly as traumatic for the boys because they had each other.
They are a school year apart, so they seek out each other in the playground, rushing to each other’s aid if one of them is hurt.
With time has come a deep brotherly love and understanding that, as Lily and Peaches will discover, makes up for the devastation of those early years.
You have no idea what you have let yourself in for. Your marriage, health and sanity will be pushed to the brink. You will suffer exhaustion that in military conditions would be classed as torture. Take it from a mother who knows.
For like Lily and Peaches Geldof, who has discovered she is expecting her second son six months after she gave birth to her first, I had tandem babies.
Hands full: Lisa with her husband Youssef and her first two sons, Rocco and baby Zach
I was on my knees after weeks of sleepless nights that had impeded my recovery from a life-threatening, post-natal infection. My reaction was not elation, but an overwhelming combination of helplessness and terror.
I had dismissed the abdominal pains and morning sickness as the after-effects of a difficult birth. But then came those all too familiar signs: the aversion to cooking smells and a craving for bananas — for Peaches, it was sour sweets.
I went to the doctor’s surgery for reassurance that I couldn’t be pregnant again. Naively, I thought that because I was breast-feeding, conception was impossible. How wrong I was. As Lily and Peaches have also discovered, some women are at their most fertile in the months following birth.
Though I applaud Peaches’ decision to do without a nanny, I wonder if she will feel differently in six months when she’s ready to sell her soul for an uninterrupted shower or a meal eaten sitting down.
Then, of course, there’s sleep — she and Lily can wave goodbye to that for a couple of years at least.
But before that, there are the practicalities of the pregnancy. The baby books recommend you take it easy, especially in the later stages, and avoid heavy lifting.
Lilly Allen and Peaches Geldof have got a stressful few years ahead of them says Lisa
While the first-time mothers in my NCT class were obsessively firming up their pelvic floor muscles in readiness for the birth, I hadn’t even finished my post- natal exercises. I was told to abandon them because of the danger of harming my second baby.
Later, I was banned from ante-natal classes because Rocco, who had started crawling, was a disruption to the other expectant mothers.
I attempted to wean Rocco when a midwife told me I should stop breast-feeding because of the small risk of miscarriage. But he refused to drink formula, leaving me no choice but to carry on.
DID YOU KNOW?
Siblings born within the same year are nicknamed Irish twins
In the end, Zach arrived weighing a healthy 7lb on Boxing Day. The contractions had started on Christmas Eve, so Christmas Day was occupied with my breathing and calls to the hospital.
Nothing could have prepared me for the shock of caring for a newborn when my time and energy were consumed with my demanding one-year-old, who had just started walking.
In the early days, I would have to stop nursing Zach to race after Rocco, who would be attempting to climb the stairs.
Rocco had just begun to sleep through the night, but Zach was wide awake from the time his brother went to bed until light flooded through the windows.
Exhausted after a sleepless night trying to settle my baby, I would turn my attention to my challenging one-year-old and the daily round of changing, feeding and washing.
Peaches is right when she says that her children will be the best of friends (picture posed by models)
We’d agreed that my husband, the sole breadwinner, would be exempt from night duty, but in retrospect I shouldn’t have let him off so lightly.
I would urge Lily Allen to have a written undertaking from her husband, Sam Cooper, to share the night feeds. Fortunately, he seems a hands-on kind of man.
She should not underestimate the impact a new sibling will have on her first-born. With hindsight, introducing Rocco to his little brother the morning after he was born was a mistake.
I will never forget the bewildered look on his face as he saw me nursing an imposter in the hospital bed.
The betrayal must have felt all the worse because I’d forced him to stop breast-feeding in time for the birth.
Devastatingly, Rocco rejected me for weeks after Zach was born. He refused to speak to me and would only let his father feed and change him.
This was all the harder because from the moment he was born, Rocco and I had shared every waking moment. I thought we had an unbreakable bond. To this day, he favours his father’s company over mine.
On the whole, his resentment was directed at me, but there were times when he would hurt his little brother.
I would place Zach in his cot and surround Rocco with toys if I had to dash to the loo (showering had to be done when my husband came home and I don’t remember ever having the time to wash my hair).
On one occasion when I was in the bathroom, I heard the most piercing scream imaginable. Rocco had stuck his finger through the bars of the cot and poked Zach in the eye, making it bleed.
I had to scoop up the boys and flag down a taxi to take us to hospital, where I was quizzed about where I’d been at the time because the injury was so serious.
Rocco might have been put out by his brother’s arrival — he often asked when we’d be taking him back — but in some ways it was Zach who’d drawn the short straw.
One-on-one time with your newborn is crucial (picture posed by models)
Neither did he get to enjoy the mother and baby yoga and music classes I’d religiously attended with Rocco. I was organising play-dates for his big brother, so Zach had to tag along.
A constant thumb-sucker, Zach compensated for his disadvantages by refusing his cot at night. He slept in the marital bed until he was four, which put an end to any hope of a night’s sleep and delayed the arrival of baby number three.
Unlike Rocco, who hit all his milestones early, Zach’s speech and motor skills were delayed because he relied on Rocco to tell us what he needed.
The first two years were shattering, emotionally and physically. I weighed a stone-and-a-half less than before pregnancy because I had no time to eat. Meals out and even a coffee with friends were a distant memory.
One thing that Peaches is right about is that her sons will be the closest of friends, once they’ve worked out there is room for both of them in her affections
They will fight, viciously at times, but they’ll be thick as thieves, fiercely protecting each other, and sharing friends. By Zach’s first birthday, my boys shared a secret language.
She’ll be able to enrol them in the same schools, sport and music clubs, making her life much easier than mothers with children separated by a wider age gap.
Rocco and Zach share a room, not because they have to, but because they want to. When Rocco had his first sleepover at a friend’s house, Zach missed him so much that he couldn’t sleep, eat or talk until his beloved brother returned.
Rocco didn’t stop crying the next day because he’d hated every minute of being away from Zach.
The arrival of our third son, Mallik, three years after Zach was born, was not nearly as traumatic for the boys because they had each other.
They are a school year apart, so they seek out each other in the playground, rushing to each other’s aid if one of them is hurt.
With time has come a deep brotherly love and understanding that, as Lily and Peaches will discover, makes up for the devastation of those early years.
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