'My second baby has exposed me as a fraudulent parenting expert...'

"My second baby has exposed me as a fraudulent parenting expert..."

My daughter was born into extremely unstable circumstances 7 years ago. It was basically her and I against the world from the time she could sit up. And honestly? I loved it. Didn’t want that dynamic to change.

Then a few years ago I went and met a man who flipped every belief I had about men, marriage, and general life structure upside down. The audacity. My 7-year-old was a textbook unicorn dream baby. Predictable. Happy. Slept like a paid actor in a mattress commercial.

Ate like she read the feeding guidelines herself. I never planned to have kids, but she showed was such a pleasant plot twist. I truly believed I had unlocked some sort of motherhood cheat code.

People used to tell me how lucky I was, and I’d get low-key offended. Lucky?? Excuse me, this is SKILL. This is METHOD. This is EXPERT-LEVEL PARENTING. Fast forward to today.

I’m married, stable, emotionally upgraded x10 and holding a 5-month-old. I’m thinking "Ah yes. I’ve done this before. I am seasoned. Time to raise another magical, well-regulated cherub."

ERROR ALERT. MAYDAY. SYSTEM FAILURE. Turns out: YOU HAVE VERY LITTLE - LIKE, ACTUALLY F-ALL - CONTROL OVER YOUR BABY’S SLEEPING AND EATING HABITS.

This may be obvious to some of you wise elders, but to anyone who had a unicorn first baby and walked around with that inflated “I’m just built different” ego… PLEASE. LEARN FROM ME.

Your second child may not even be remotely similar. In fact, they may arrive specifically to humble you and dismantle every parenting opinion you’ve ever confidently shared. Hope for the Unicorn. Prepare for the goblin. Trust.

Here's what people had to say to OP:

deird said:

Every single technique I used on my firstborn failed on my second-born. Every single one. These days, the main piece of advice I give to new parents is “Some of the good parenting advice you get won’t work, because your baby is just like that. Feel free to ignore advice that doesn’t fit your baby.”

BCDva said:

2nd children exist to humble us, repeatedly.

blizeH said:

I have friends who I wish would see this, regularly telling me my eldest didn’t sleep well because I didn’t perfectly follow tHe RouTinE every single day. Yet our youngest who every single night does the literal exact same thing at the exact same time slept so much worse.

Prairiepunk111 said:

The good thing about my goblin child is she is fiery, fierce and top grades in her ninth grade year. Absolute firecracker she IS and brilliant.

littlewing52 said:

I'm a Child Development Specialist in my State's Early Intervention Program. My second child had me going to one of my colleagues to figure out how to handle him. Everything I knew professionally went out the window. I still call him my little case study.

Wish_Away said:

Yep, nothing makes me snicker internally more than a mom of a 3 year old bragging about how her 3 year old is such a great and adventurous eater and it's alllllllll because of her parenting. Miss ma'am. I raised both my kids exactly the same and have one adventurous eater and one nevereater.