Sibling rivalry: The love-hate relationship we know too well

My other half and I weren't entirely sure that we were going to go for a second child. We had struggled a lot with managing our first - we were ill-prepared, emotionally overwhelmed, sleep deprived, frustrated and overworked. Oh, and we were also completely besotted, head-over-heels in love with our gorgeous little man. When he had just turned two, we had a breakthrough conversation where we finally aired all of the things we were struggling with - we shouted at each other, I cried my eyes out, we made up and we put it behind us. Four weeks later, I found out I was pregnant again.

"This is the best gift you will ever give your son!" my friend announced when I told her the news. "He will never love anything else in the world so much as he loves his little brother or sister!"

When our daughter was born, Jacob wasn't at ALL impressed that she wasn't a little brother, and kept asking when HE was making an appearance. He got his head around that, finally, and now our almost 5-year-old son has a very wilful, playful and SO bossy 2-year-old sister to deal with. "I just don't LIKE her", he wailed at me on Monday, as I took him for a walk to have a chat about why he was screaming in her face in the back of the car. When I enquired as to what was bothering him about her, he shrugged his shoulders and replied;

"I didn't want to be a brother, I just wanted to be a HUMAN".

The drama. Last night, I brought him to his room and showed him the new bed that we had bought for him as a surprise from IKEA and we thought that he would love it. "Where's Eva?" he asked and upon telling him that Eva was currently asleep in a bed in her own room, he went into complete meltdown.

"I want her to sleep in my bed with me forever! I can't sleep on my own! I just love Eva!!"

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