Recently, my four-year-old daughter Sia asked when her dead brother who lives in the stars will become her real brother. My heart stopped. Kids say the most peculiar things, but this cut me in half.
After my wife placated her with some talk about her brother always being in her heart, Sia took up her wish to have a baby brother to the next level when she ‘gave birth’ to a beautiful baby with long rabbit ears and grey fur. It was an easy pregnancy, with no physical discomfort, no stretch marks or back pain and was over within minutes. Considering she gave birth to a healthy toy bunny named Floppy, it was quite a smooth delivery.
While kids love to play make-believe, this fake pregnancy was especially welcomed by my wife and I, since our daughter has been pressuring us so hard to have another baby. We couldn’t have guessed that it would be our daughter – and not our family, friends or even society – that would be urging us to add another child to our ‘triangle family’.
Sia’s brother was born six years ago but he never got to live on this planet. He had a rare chromosomal disorder and was born still at 33 weeks. It may sound grim to tell a toddler that they have a dead brother, but my wife and I felt it was important to honour our son. Before he passed away in utero he seemed like a happy healthy baby. I’ll never forget the day I saw him during a 3D scan playfully eating his own foot while he was in my wife’s womb.
Sia’s brother was born six years ago but he never got to live on this planet. Going through our son’s loss, followed by two failed IVF attempts and having Sia was an emotional roller coaster
The pain of going through that loss, and the subsequent fear of losing another baby that my wife and I felt when she was pregnant with Sia is the reason she will never have an earth sibling. Going through our son’s loss, followed by two failed IVF attempts and having a miracle baby in Sia on our third try was too much of an emotional roller-coaster.
Sia has asked many times about how babies are born. Recently, it has led to questions about when another baby in our house is going to be born. “Sorry, Sia, but Mummy is too old to have another baby,” my wife answers honestly.
“Why?” Sia would reply. “Why are you too old?”
“Because my eggs are too old, Sia,” my wife explains.
“Why are your eggs too old?” Sia asks, not knowing what eggs she is talking about. “Are my eggs too old? Can I have a baby? Can I make a brother? When will my dead brother leave the stars and become my real brother?”
While most of the questions are cute, this one really cuts my wife and I both.
After the grief stopped spinning my head around, the reality that I had to look after this live girl took hold. I started to have worries and concerns about raising a single child
For the first few years of Sia’s life, I couldn’t separate that Sia was here because her brother died. If he had lived, there is no way we would have been back on the baby-making carousel so quickly. I couldn’t separate the grief for her brother and the joy that she had been born, and that I had a beautiful happy girl that was living and breathing and thriving. Maybe it’s that Greek male patriarchy bullshit and pride I felt that as the firstborn son, I too was going to have a firstborn son. But fate had other ideas. Eventually, in my son’s place was a girl I would get to take care of and not mourn.
After the grief stopped spinning my head around, the reality that I had to look after this live girl took hold. I started to have worries and concerns about raising a single child. Would she grow up spoilt and entitled? Would I overprotect her because I only have one kid and the one I had before her had died? Would she struggle to make friends and be lonely, and would that leave us feeling guilty?
Would she grow up spoilt and entitled? Would I overprotect her?
My biggest fear regarding how I raise my one and only living child is that I might end up becoming her best friend, because I’m too worried to just let her be. How, instead of parenting my daughter, I would befriend her and become such a good friend that she doesn’t learn how to socialise with anyone else.
A lot of Sia’s friends were initially in the single-kid club, but that’s starting to change. These younger upstart parents are now beginning to have two kids, and this is damaging the fragile ecosystem my daughter lives in. Sia is starting to work out that adults can have more than one baby, and while Daddy has grey hair and looks old, Mummy is not that old.
I knew the day would come when Sia would start asking questions about having another sibling. When she is at the playground, I can see that she is eager to make friends. Sometimes she’s so keen that she announces her arrival. “Here I am!” she yells when she visits a new spot. Most kids ignore her, but now and again she makes buddies.
When she’s at the playground, she is eager to make friends. “Here I am!” she yells when she visits a new spot
It’s hard out there for the single kids on the playground. There are lots of cliques that you have to break into to make friends. There are sibling cliques: Sia usually targets the older one first but after a while, they turn back to their younger sibling. The friend cliques are even harder to break through. Here, Sia uses the “let’s play the chasing game” technique but sometimes she spends too long being the chaser and not the chasee, and the kids resort to their original friendship circle and Sia is left out again.
At day care, Sia has friends who are single kids like herself, but one wrong move – such as colouring outside the lines – can mean she loses BFF status as quickly as she received it.
While there is some respite now with Baby Floppy, I fear that as she gets older and Mummy’s eggs disappear completely, for Sia, kittens, puppies and ponies may not be enough.
“My family is just my mummy, daddy and me.” As she got on her bike and sped off, I had never felt prouder of my daughter
I am looking at this situation through a selfish lens. With no siblings to play with, the onus falls on tired mid-40s Daddy to take up the gold standard of fun parenting. Thanks to shows like Peppa Pig and Bluey, it’s hard to maintain that level.
The other weekend, I thought things might be looking up when Sia made friends with a young girl and her little brother. The girl was so enamoured with Sia that she gave her some Frozen stickers. Sia beamed as they played on the see-saw. But her new friend later got bored and started to give out Frozen stickers to other girls in the playground. The mother of the girl then asked Sia if she had a brother or sister at home. “No,” she replied confidently, “my family is just my mummy, daddy and me.” As she got on her bike and sped off, I had never felt prouder of my daughter – the most important point of our triangle family.
