When I gave birth to my second child, love didn't divide, it expanded

In our home, we have a son who will soon be four years old.

Ever since he was born, I have kept wanting another child if possible. This is because I believe that having siblings made my own life more enjoyable.

Then, I was lucky enough to conceive a second child. As I went through the pregnancy, watching my belly grow and looking at the black-and-white ultrasound photos, I would vaguely think about something.

“With two children, will I be able to skillfully and equally continue to pour out my love?”

My four-year-old son is just so cute. Although he is currently in a mini-rebellious phase, he has continued to update his level of cuteness from the day he was born until today. Below are some examples of his cuteness.

His cuteness knows no bounds. This lack of restraint is on par with the opening line of the song “Tomorrow never knows”.

With such an “absolute ace” already in the family, a baby was now going to be added. Would I be able to love them both without bias, just as I do now, and do it skillfully?

In my mental image, the total amount of love a human can pour out at once is fixed. I thought that since I would be splitting the love I currently pour into my first child to give to two, the children might start to feel a sense of lack. Everyone else in the world is skillful and manages to distribute that total amount well to raise their children, but since I am not the skillful type, I felt that my love would inevitably lean too much toward the baby, or conversely, too much toward the older child, and in the end, both would end up feeling neglected.

If that caused them to become unstable due to jealousy or left their need for approval unfulfilled, wouldn't that be a very pitiful thing?

Giving birth to a second child is undoubtedly something I wanted, but it was quite unknown, and I started to become afraid of whether I could really handle it.

With feelings of excitement and anxiety mixed together inside me, I reached 38 weeks of pregnancy in the blink of an eye.

1. Sudden water breaking

As a high-risk pregnant woman who gave birth to my first child via emergency cesarean section, I was scheduled for a cesarean section at a university hospital this time. According to the hospital's rules, children under elementary school age are forbidden from visiting, so once I was admitted, I wouldn't be able to see my four-year-old for a while.

With my admission approaching in two days, as I was putting my son to sleep and fell asleep myself, I noticed something like a massive amount of water coming out of my crotch with great force, and I woke up in a panic.

What is this?

Could this be...

My water broke!!!!?!?!?!

Ti-ri-ri-ri... Biri-biri-biri! Kyuiiiin (The intro to LOVE PHANTOM plays).

If this were a pachinko machine, it would be a guaranteed win—my water broke!!!

Since the water from my crotch wouldn't stop, I called my husband in the next room while holding a bath towel against it. After we both panicked for a while, we decided to call the hospital for now. They answered after about three rings.

The woman on the phone listened to my current situation very carefully. After a bit of hold music, she said, “Please prepare for admission and come immediately.”

I finished getting ready, and without even having time to prepare my heart, I hopped into a taxi one way or another. If things had gone as planned, I intended to properly tell my older child that I wouldn't be able to see him for a while due to hospitalization before leaving the house, but since it was past midnight, that wasn't possible.

I arrived at the hospital and entered through the dimly lit night entrance. After changing clothes and undergoing various tests, a doctor came to me as I was lying on the bed.

“We will start the surgery at 2:00.”

Current time, 1:30. In 30 minutes, they would administer anesthesia and cut my belly. And then, the child would be born. It was incredibly sudden. It felt like a distant memory that I had been watching my older child do his “butt-wiggling dance” just a few hours ago.

Changing clothes, getting an IV drip, and signing several types of consent forms because it was an emergency surgery—preparations for the surgery proceeded steadily on a minute-by-minute schedule. Being a university hospital, several doctors who would be in charge of the surgery today came by in turns to introduce themselves. I’m Dr. So-and-so, the anesthesiologist; I’m Midwife So-and-so.

I am the type of person who forgets the names of sashimi as soon as the waiter explains them when I order a platter at an izakaya, saying things like “Starting from the right, we have red sea bream, yellowtail, flounder fin, ark shell, and fatty tuna,” and by the time the explanation is over, I haven't remembered a single one. Unless someone draws a relationship chart and hands it to me, I seriously cannot grasp it. I apologize deeply in my heart to these people who are handling a surgery in the middle of the night like this.

The time came, and I was pushed into the operating room while still on the bed I was sleeping in. I was moved to the operating table by the hands of adults, and anesthesia was administered from my back. Then, my field of vision was covered with a bluish cloth.

“Alright, we’re going to start cutting now.”

Finally, the scalpel entered my belly. Since I had an epidural, I could feel the sensation of my belly being touched from a distance, but there was no pain.

About two hours passed as I endured the sleepiness.

“The baby is coming out soon.”

When they said that, the sensation of my belly being pulled became intense. The moment the voltage of my belly reached its peak, I heard a healthy cry that was so textbook-perfect I thought it was a sound effect source: “Ogyaa, ogyaa.”

2. Encounter with the baby ~The start of a New Game+~

The surgery ended just past 4:00 AM. It was already slightly bright outside the window, and due to extreme sleepiness, I fell asleep as if I had fainted.

The next time I opened my eyes was when the midwife came to the hospital room. She checked the IV drip and the wound on my belly.

“The baby is doing well. Would you like me to bring them over?”

When I asked her to, the baby was brought into the room.

SHIIIIIIINE!!!!!

WAAAAAAAH!!!!!!!!!

Too dazzling!!!!!!!!!! A lethal dose of radiance!!!!!!!!!!

Even though my belly still hurt from the surgery, I raised the backrest of the adjustable bed and had the baby placed in my arms.

The newborn I was holding for the first time in four years was so light, small, soft, and dazzling that tears came to my eyes just looking at them. Even though the second child was right in front of me, for some reason, I remembered the first. They were this small, weren't they? They worked so hard to grow up. This is not a metaphor; I truly cried about 12 times in total out of pure reverence.

After that, I practiced walking several times, and by the time I was able to go to the bathroom on my own after medication and rehabilitation, even while feeling like I might collapse from anemia, taking care of the baby in the room began.

The brand-new baby just closed their eyes and was breathing in and out with all their might in my arms. Too innocent. This child doesn't know anything yet. They don't know where they are or what has happened to them. They just cry because they are hungry and feel uncomfortable, and when they are fed something they don't know what it is, they calm down, then get sleepy, and then cry again because they are hungry—they just repeat that endlessly. They don't know that I, who am soothing them, am their mother, nor do they know that this place is a hospital. They don't know that night comes and morning comes, or that there is a wide world outside. They don't even know about the corporate efforts of Saizeriya.

I could watch them forever. They are a being that must be protected. And I realized something. Surprisingly, the “anxiety about suddenly being required to have the correct answers as a mother” or the “time when I wished they wouldn't cry because the next response would start as soon as they did” that I felt with my first child were completely absent this time.

There was nothing but the feeling of: Baby, so cute!!!! The best~~~!!! Wooooooo!!!!!! To me, the newborn was almost like fireworks, just as almost no one feels gloomy watching fireworks. Every second, a 10-shaku ball of firework named “cuteness” was being launched. Even their poop is cute. Is “just being cute” not enough? The answer to the most difficult question in the modern age becomes a single choice in this situation: “It’s fine!”

When the sleeping baby would cry “honya... honya...”, I even felt happy that it was a real newborn cry! I even had the leeway to listen intently, savoring it while thinking, “May I hear a little more?”, and even record the crying on video.

Before giving birth, I did have some feelings of annoyance, thinking, “Am I going to start over from 1 what I’ve built up over the past four years...”, but that was a huge misunderstanding. It doesn't start from 1. I can start raising a cute baby again with the experience of having already raised one to four years old. Things I couldn't do well last time, I am now doing quite efficiently and skillfully. It is truly a New Game+.

Changing diapers, feeding milk—there is not a single bit of anxiety. It's because I know how to do everything. The anxiety and worry inside me have been sifted out, and all that remains is euphoria. What is this? It's closer to a grandchild than my own child. Thank you for letting me experience a simulation of having a grandchild so soon.

In that way, I finished my hospital stay feeling almost no hardship and finally reached the day of discharge.

3. The beginning of siblings and the expansion of love

My husband came to pick me up at the hospital, and the three of us headed home.

In the evening, my four-year-old son, who had been at daycare, came home with my husband who had gone to pick him up. The baby was breathing steadily on the futon. I was nervous about finally facing the moment of their meeting. I prayed in my heart that I would be able to distribute my love properly.

When my older child entered the room, I first hugged him with all my might. Since it was the first time we hadn't seen each other for a week, I thought he must have been very lonely.

What surprised me was that the child I thought was still so small looked incredibly huge when my eyes were accustomed to a newborn. Four years old, too big. As big as a baobab tree.

I thought it would be a more emotional reunion, but the four-year-old unexpectedly pulled away quite easily and asked me, “Where’s the baby?” When I told him the baby was in the bedroom, he headed to the room with a complex expression that was like a smile and like a cry.

When my son looked at the baby from a distance, he whispered in a small voice,
“It’s a baby...”
When my husband urged him, “Go wash your hands,” he usually would say “No, no” and roll around on the sofa or go toward the toy box, but on this day, he nodded without saying anything, obediently washed his hands in the washroom, and trotted back to the same spot.

“Here, try saying hello and telling them you’re the big brother.”

When I urged him like that, he whispered “Nice to meet you” in a small, gentle voice I had never heard before.

“Can I pet them gently?”

When he asked that in a whispering voice, I told him, “Of course you can,” and he touched the baby's head timidly. The hands that I thought were still small looked very strong when they were placed on the baby's head.

Gradually, he began to want to be actively involved, saying, “Can I hold them?” or “Can I feed them milk?” When the baby cried, he would rush over faster than anyone else and do his best to make them stop crying with his best funny face, saying, “I’ll make a funny face for you!” The baby would look blank, staring at the ceiling or the wall, and occasionally looking at their brother. I watched the two of them, thinking they were truly adorable, without even thinking about clever things like the total amount of love.

Since then, every day when the four-year-old comes home from daycare, he washes his hands and rushes to the baby first.

“So cute!”

“You stopped crying! Good job.”
“I love you.”
While stroking their head or kissing their head, he always speaks gently in an even higher voice than usual. Seeing him direct those words—the “so cute,” the “good job,” and the “I love you”—that I had always used on him toward the baby, I was struck by the thought that the love I had poured out until now was not interrupted, but was now flowing from the four-year-old to the baby. I never thought that love would circulate.

A newborn baby doesn't know anything yet. But I, who have lived for 35 years, still didn't know many things at all.

That when a second child is born, my feelings for the older child also become extra large. That the older child uses a gentle voice I’ve never heard before when being affectionate to the baby. That even though it’s only been a short time since they met, the baby has become a special existence for the four-year-old. And surely, the baby will also become a special existence for the older child more and more from now on.

I thought the total amount of love would be dispersed. But I was wrong. At the same time I gave birth to the second child, the capacity of the tank inside me that stores love increased, and the love I could take out from there automatically doubled. No, it might be more than double. Because when I look at the 0-year-old, I overlap their figure with the time the 4-year-old had such a period, and I end up loving both of them at once, and when I look at the 4-year-old, I want to straighten my posture and spend every day preciously because they grow up so fast. It’s not dispersed; it’s increased so much that my heart is busy. My love is exceeding my capacity and starting to glitch. The way I see the world is different. It’s like the love I had been watching in digital terrestrial broadcasting suddenly became an IMAX screening.

Even without thinking with my brain, when I look at the two of them, my heart is filled with an uncontrollable love that is useless to try to hold back. There is just happiness there that cannot be contained in both hands, and I can only bathe in it with my whole body.