AINE O’CONNOR

Nursing our sibling relationships

THIS time 18 years ago a nurse called to the house. It was at the beginning of the Get-Out-Of-Hospital-AsQuick-After-Your-Baby-Is-Born-As-You-Can days and my brand spanking new Girlchild and I were home before she was the requisite 48-hours-old for her heel prick test. So a nurse called to the house.

Knowing it could be upsetting, especially when I was at the just post-partum weepy nutter stage, she suggested that it would be best if she did the test out of my sight. The Boychild was four, he told me not to worry, he would accompany his new sister. This was the same four-year-old Boychild who, when I had broken a leg a few months earlier had made one of my sweetest memories when he put seawater on my brow and advised: “Just don’t drink it, it’s salty.”

The nurse admired his moxie and in he went. I sat in the kitchen and cried when I heard her cry but the Boychild emerged to tell me she was fine, and had been “very brave. For a baby”. It was the beginning of the most harmonious sibling relationship ever.

Oh no wait, sorry. That’s some other kids, not mine, for those always adored but occasional feckers were for a time the bickeriest sibs in the world. But even at their most bickery they always had each other’s backs. They could say and do what they liked to each other, woe betide anyone else who did. As predicted, that gulf has narrowed as they have gotten older although I still get a bit scared when I see them getting along. People say childhood flies, it absolutely did not. It feels like a lifetime since he was four and she was brand new. And since Thursday last they are both legally adults. Which is weird, because they’re both still my babies.