Скачать или смотреть How did your first child behave after you’d had your second child?

I never expected my daughter, Olivia, to react the way she did when we brought home baby Sophie instead of the brother we'd been expecting.
The ultrasound had shown a boy. We'd painted the nursery blue. Named him Samuel—Sammy for short. The doctors had no explanation for how they got it wrong.

Olivia refused to acknowledge the mistake.

"Good morning, Sammy," she'd coo into the crib each day, ignoring our corrections.

"Her name is Sophie," I'd remind her gently.

Olivia would just smile that new smile of hers—the one that never reached her eyes—and say, "No, Mommy. This is Sammy."

We thought it was normal adjustment, until the day I found all of Sophie's pink clothes cut to shreds. In their place were the boy clothes we'd packed away.

Her preschool teacher requested an urgent meeting.

"Olivia drew this during free time," she said, sliding a paper across her desk. It showed a baby with X's over its eyes and another baby floating above it. "When I asked about it, she said, 'That's Sophie going to heaven so Sammy could come home.'"

That night, I found Olivia standing over Sophie's crib, scissors in hand, snipping at my baby's hair.

"What are you doing?" I screamed.

"Fixing him," she said calmly. "Boys don't have long hair."

We installed a lock on the nursery door. Started taking Olivia to a child psychologist.

One night, I woke to Olivia's voice on the baby monitor. She'd somehow gotten into the nursery despite the lock.

"I know you're in there, Sammy," she whispered. "You can come out now."

The next day, Sophie developed a high fever. The pediatrician found nothing wrong, but her temperature kept climbing. 103. 104.

In the hospital, the doctors were baffled. Tests showed nothing. Yet Sophie was wasting away before our eyes.

Olivia was eerily calm during visits. "It's starting," she told me. "Sophie's going away so Sammy can come."

That night, Sophie stopped breathing for thirty-seven seconds. When she started breathing again, her cries sounded different—deeper, more forceful.

When I returned from getting coffee the next morning, I found Sophie's hospital crib empty. My heart stopped.

Then I heard giggling from the bathroom. I pushed open the door to find a nurse helping Olivia hold Sophie under the faucet.

"Look, Mommy," Olivia said brightly. "I'm helping Sammy get clean."

"How did you get here?" I asked, stunned.

"Daddy brought me," she said, though my husband was at work.

Sophie's fever vanished that afternoon. When we brought her home, she was different—calmer, with an intense gaze that seemed to understand everything.

As months passed, Sophie showed strange preferences. She screamed when dressed in pink. Reached for toy cars instead of dolls. Responded more to "Sammy" than her own name.

One night, I heard Olivia in Sophie's room.

"You did it, Sammy," she whispered. "You found your way back."

I stood frozen in the doorway as Sophie made a sound—not a baby's gurgle, but a distinct laugh. She made her freaking gay.