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He'll have to fit in, but Number Three will be "baby" forever
The Mirror’s Alison Phillips, herself a mum-of-three, has some advice for the Royal parents...
(Image: DAN KENNEDY)
Oh the joy of three.
The three musketeers, The holy trinity, The Three degrees, Neapolitan ice cream.. the best things always come in threes. As Kate and William are now to discover.
And congratulations to them and little George and Charlotte as they welcome home their baby brother this week.
I too have got three children in the same boy/girl/boy sequence so I may have some insight into the pleasure (and pain) which lies ahead for the royal couple.
A friend of mine once said she thought anyone willing to have more children than hands was deeply suspect. She’s probably right.
‘And if you’ve got a blue one and a pink one, why have more?’ she questioned. (Clearly, the gender neutral narrative hadn’t quite reached her.)
But if you love the noise and chaos of babies and toddlers it is very tempting after two kids to go for ‘just one more’.
It’s like having ‘one for the road’. Rarely a good idea. Always hard to resist.
And actually, as parenting goes, the leap from two to three, is possibly the easiest of them all.
(Image: AFP)
You’re way past the exhausting neuroticism of first time parenthood and have come to realise that so long as the baby is loved, fed and has their nappy changed (occasionally) they’ll be fine. The jolt to the family dynamic is far less severe than the earthquake of first arrival or the seismic second child.
Or, as my husband puts it, ‘if life as you once knew it is already wrecked, how much worse can it get?’
The thing third children realise before the umbilical chord is cut, is their role in life is to fit in.
A first child’s start in life is filled with attention 24 gruelling hours a day, mind enhancing and stimulating baby activities and all items within 100 yards fully sterilised. By Number 3 the most stimulation is watching the buggy straps being fastened as they get belted up to follow the other two around. A quick lick of the dummy does the job of sterilisation and crying has become ambient sound to shattered Mum. Those baby monitor contraptions have been disconnected long ago.
And yet for all that the fascinating thing is how well balanced Number Threes turn out. (Prince Andrew is of course an exception to most rules).
They develop those brilliant life skills of ‘fitting in’ and ‘not making a fuss’ in their earliest years.
And they tend to be emotionally and physically mature from keeping up with older kids’ rough and tumble.
Although most Number Threes do a great job of hiding that maturity to play their everlasting role of ‘the baby’.
As older siblings grow and become more independent, Number 3 finally gets their moment in the parental sunshine as ‘baby’. Most never give it up.
It drives my older two children wild.
‘Don’t pick on your brother... he’s only little.’
‘Mum – he is eight and a half years old and you are still tying his shoelaces.’
‘I know, but he’s only a baby, look at his chubby little cheeks.’
‘His cheeks are chubby because he’s just rammed an entire Mars bars in his mouth.’
‘Oh I know, but he didn’t mean to.’
(Image: REUTERS)
Because, it’s important to mention..... Number Threes are naughty. (Back to Prince Andrew). They’re not ‘nasty naughty’, just ‘cheeky naughty’. The kind of naughty that you can raise an eyebrow to, although if it had been Number One, you’d have been raising the roof.
Esther Rantzen once wrote that a parent is only ever as happy as their least happy child. And so with three children come three sets of worries and anxieties. But I’ve adopted the Meatloaf approach to parenting when it comes to such concerns as school reports, mood swings and childhood illnesses. For, as he so wisely observed, ‘Two out of three ain’t bad.’
A great thing for the children about being one of three is that there’s always someone to play with. Even better, there’s always someone to wind up and fight with.
To check my observations about being a Number Three, I asked my own youngest what he thought life would be like for the new royal arrival.
‘It’ll be good,’ he said, looking discreetly over his shoulder to check his sister was out of ear shot.
‘He’ll get away with LOADS’. And he flashed me that grin which ensures he gets away with loads.
So yes, I imagine little will dent the charmed existence of Kate & William’s Number Three.
Unless, of course, they decide to go for Number Four...