my poor girl

I feel so sad and bad for my daughter.

I know it's not easy having a sibling - that' s why I wanted to wait til she was four so at least she wouldn't be deposed from her throne of babydom by a newer, cuter baby.

But my pregnancy was so hard on us all - her mother exhausted and irritable, her father absent and depressed. She started having huge, screaming tantrums, being incredibly difficult and unpleasant and shouting 'I hate you' all the time and I rose to the occasion by smacking her quite often. She stopped wanting to go to Montessori and got more upset about it than she ever had in the first week. She had problems with her friends, although that could just have been the end of the honeymoon period.

And through all this, for some stupid reason, I kept promising things would be better when the baby was actually here. And they are, in a way, except he cries all the time because of the colic, and after his fiasco of a birth I'm quite often on the brink of tears and he likes to be held, more often than not. So she's being told to wait til the baby's finished, no I'm feeding the baby, later, later, no, be quiet the baby's asleep. But she was so sweet when he was born, when she came to see him for the first time and took her Dad's hand to come over, it just melted my heart. And in the hospital and home with her Dad and Granny, she was brilliant, and for the next few days. But I'm irritable for no good reason half the time. And sometimes I don't admit it's not her fault. And he cries all the time. And she fell back in to her awful behaviour and is so unhappy, messing up with her friends, rejecting them. She had her first tantrum in school last week, red faced screaming, fists clenched, screaming 'I hate you' at her teachers. Now it's happened once, the flood gates are probably open.

And her ASS of a father is behaving the way he rejected me for doing when I was pregnant - aggressive, dismissive and disgusted by her half the time. The other night when I told her she couldn't sleep with us (the baby's in the bed) as I was putting him down, she walked out of the room saying 'nobody likes me anymore' and the fucker gave out to her for behaving badly. Tonight she threw a tantrum because she hurt herself, and he said 'I don't want any more of this shit'. Then she screamed at me and I sent her out very calmly - went up to her a few minutes later and got an apology - amazingly she agreed to apologise to her father which she never does, but asked me if I'd come with her. I hate that she's scared to approach him - I wonder why she is - she hovered in the doorway of the room where he'd stomped off and closed the door, and said 'sorry' - and he glanced at her angrily and said 'Okay', brusquely, still sulking. He just blames it al lon her, and won't take responsibility for her behaviour. This is reacting behaviour, not personality. She's just mirroring the shit she's been thrown and he refuses to see that.

Earlier I was playing with her, and talking about the baby, and I asked her if she'd rather he weren't here - after a brief hesitation she said 'yes', in a small, serious little voice, as if she knew the enormity of what she was saying but had to say it anyway.

I know all children have to go through a transition stage, that it's not so much fun having a newborn and she'll enjoy it soon, and hopefully be back to herself. I just wish we were handling the whole thing, and her, better. I hate that she has to suffer because of our shitty parenting. I'm so sorry.