Four Bonuses that Come With Your Second Birth

Giving birth is always an amazing, humbling, awe-inspiring experience – no matter how many times you’ve done it, but no two births are the same. Your second birth can be a completely different experience to the first, so we thought we’d let you know of some of the things that might be different.

An Early Arrival

If the truth be known, there is no real way of telling when a baby will arrive (unless you have a planned caesarian), so we can’t say for sure that number two will arrive earlier than your first baby. But, we can say that there’s been plenty of research on the topic. Thanks to that research we know that the average first time pregnancy lasts 41 weeks and three days, whereas the average second pregnancy is said to last for 40 weeks and three days. So if you happen to fall in to the ‘average’ pregnancy both times around, then your pregnancy should be a week shorter with number two. But as I said – no guarantees.

A Shorter Labour

This might be wishful thinking but, again, we’re looking at the laws of averages. An average first time labour lasts for around 18 hours. Second labours are said to be much shorter at around eight hours. It’s partly due to muscle memory; your body remembers what to do the second time round and things have already been stretched out once before, so it’s a path of less resistance.

Less Pushing Time

This is your past birthing experience working to help you out again. Pushing time in first time births is between 20 minutes and three hours, but second time around most Mums push for less than an hour. First time around you’re likely to spend a bit of time learning how to do it, but by the second time you’ve usually mastered it and can get straight down to business.

With Experience Comes Confidence

Almost certainly you’ll feel much more empowered because you’ve done this once already. You know your body can do it and you’ll feel more confident. That confidence will extend to after the birth and you’ll be able to really enjoy your baby knowing that you’ve got the skills and experience from the first time around.

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