At the birth of their second child, Peter Curran worried about convincing his 3-year-old son that he is still the apple of his doting parents' eye ...
In the weeks before the birth of our second child, I had a pitiless sense of foreboding. Fate was about to strike a cruel blow. I knew it. The scans had been fine. So where was this unshakeable dread coming from?
The last time I’d felt this terrible inevitability was while waiting for my father to die, so whatever was on the horizon this time must be truly horrific, if it’s riding in on the back of a new-born baby.
To protect myself from being crushed by the shock of whatever was coming, I arranged a stockade of worst possible scenarios in advance of anything bad really happening. Some were very extreme…..After a thirty- hour labour, which nearly destroys my wife, Natalie, the silent midwife places the child in our arms and turns away – our baby has been born with the grinning face of Lord Archer.
On the night, the baby entered the world with the standard blancmange countenance, and that shriek of joy when she finally arrived scared the pit-of-the stomach dread away.
It was only when I turned to go home, that it surged back again, and with it the realisation that it wasn’t me that was in for the nasty shock. My anxiety was on behalf of our three year old son, Milo. The new baby was like an asteroid hurtling towards his world, and now I had to collect him and show him the massive crater this 7lb 8oz object had left.
While Milo looked enviously at a child being wheeled past on a trolley, I checked that his mother at least looked as though he was still the only care in her world. With the baby placed as far away as possible on the bed, I brought him in.
He was ecstatic to see his mum again, then cautiously approached the bed to get a look at his new sister. His eyes were like dark saucers as he leaned over her, but the half-smile he managed took us aback. It was worryingly mature, like something Richard Burton would have sported as he surveyed the glamorous wreckage of his life. If he ever reads Yeats, I’m sure he’ll be able to offer an alternative interpretation of "all is changed, changed utterly- a terrible beauty is born."
I got the camera out to record the historic summit between them. A couple of days later, I sat in the car tutting at what a fatso I looked in the photos, when I stopped at the one of Milo staring down at the baby. I’d seen that expression before. On the weary faces of Barry McGuigan, Mohammed Ali, Alex Higgins, John Major and countless others filled with painful resignation. He knew it was all over. The exalted boy-king’s reign as the sole object of his parent’s affection had come to an end. Our too constant reassurances that we loved him, and that he would always be the main man, were accepted politely- but the noisy, sleepless, time-consuming evidence to the contrary was overwhelming.
He was willing to indulge us though, as child-manual in hand we set about involving him is all aspects of the baby’s care. When I asked him to rub his sister’s back to relieve wind, he began to apply the sort of pressure you’d use when removing a badly congealed bit of gravy from a roasting dish. His face , inches from hers, bore the expression of the axe-wielding Jack Nicolson when he makes kindling out of that bathroom door in ‘The Shining’. Instead of ‘Heeere’s Johnny!, he hissed ‘Will you stop having wind, please!’.
For the first month he appeared to be switching species in response to her arrival, and although he lacked the baboon’s multicoloured bottom as a means of expressing his displeasure – the grunting, baring of teeth, and ‘patting on the head with considerable force’ did his distant ancestors immense credit.
We’re making progress though. He will now preface requests to visit ‘Old Mac Donald’s with a grotesque panto of sibling love. He approaches the baby, drapes a limp arm around her shoulders and through his ricktus smile addresses the room, professing his love for the cuckoo, and a little too quickly, his similar fondness for burgers and chips.
What he lacks in sincerity, he makes up for in sly cunning. He’s a survivor.
