Forecast: Showers Unlikely

A Household Word Column By Carol Band

Yesterday my son needed a baby picture of himself to bring to school. He’s a third child, so we don’t have any. Instead, I dug out one of the millions of baby photos of his older brother. (Hey, they look enough alike!) But lately I’ve been worried that the money I saved on film processing may have to be used for therapy. I worry that being a third kid might be psychologically scarring.

When I was pregnant with my first child, I expected the world to sit up and take notice. And it did. My pregnancy was a novelty. Strangers in the supermarket had no qualms about asking me if I planned to breastfeed, co-workers waged bets on my due date and my mother-in-law hosted a baby shower that netted an umbrella stroller and enough booties to outfit a team of sled dogs.

But, when I was pregnant with my third kid, nobody really noticed. I was just pregnant ... again. Everyone assumed that it was a mistake. Strangers in the supermarket felt free to lecture me on the evils of overpopulation. When I was pregnant with my third kid, nobody threw me a baby shower. Everybody thought that since all the furniture in my living room was made by Fisher-Price that I must not need any more baby stuff. But they were wrong.

By the time my third kid came along, all the bibs were stained, all the picture books were ripped and the stroller had been converted into a go-cart. The childhood of my third-born has been a vastly different experience than that of my first two kids. Let’s take a look:

The first child: Had a bureau bulging with stacks of tiny sailor suits and dry-clean-only sweaters that were worn just for photos.

The second child: Wore only pink. (After two years of primary colors and T-shirts with trucks on them, Grandma was itching to buy pink.)

The first child: Was shielded from sugar and white flour until kindergarten. Other kids taunted him when he insisted that the rice cakes in his lunch box were cookies.

The second child: Ingested no sweets until her brother went to kindergarten.

The first child: Played with new Lego™ sets. When he was obsessed with pirates, we bought pirates.

The second child: Pretended little Lego™ pirates were Barbie’s™ babies.

The first child: Goes to piano lessons, soccer practice, French class and tai kwan do.

The second child: Takes ballet.