Expecting a new baby makes me wonder how much time, attention and resources shall he be able to get? In fact part of the answer became visible already during the pregnancy.

With Ivan growing up fast over the past two and half years we have often compared the attention he gets to the one obtained by his elder sister Maia. And we always concluded that it is disproportionately lower. In spite of our repeated commitment and willingness to offer Ivan the same as what we had offered to Maia. We both agree that Ivan gets equal amount of love, affection and cuddling from us. But he certainly does not get as much of our time - for the natural reason that Maia is already here to occupy a significant portion of it. Or he also seems to get less in terms of net financial investment - e.g. by staying home with an au-pair rather than attending nursery which would have allowed him to learn English better, just as Maia did. There are various reasons for this, e.g. our income at the moment is lower with me relying on a PhD studentship, while our expenses are higher because we have two children and live in one of Europe's most expensive countries in terms of child-care. And it is not necessarily a bad thing, as Ivan's advance with Hungarian and Bulgarian was slower anyway, so we did not feel pushing a third language upon him would have been timely.

The experience with the new baby has repeated the same trend already during his mother's pregnancy. No more purchasing of parenting books, naturally, as they have been purchased long ago, and have been read at least twice. Since the being of the pregnancy we have visited a scan together twice - first in Oxford, to see the baby's heart in the first trimester; and second - for a mid-pregnancy scan in Budapest. No other visits to the doctor together, keen to hear what he's going to say after checking Emese. No more excitement over English-speaking doctors telling me a few words about the baby - indeed, here in Egland they all speak the language, but ironically, I do not go with Emese to hear what they say.

For the sake of fair reporting it needs to be pointed that Emese does not see doctors nearly as often as during her previous pregnancies either. The UK pre-natal care is very different - shockingly different, I would say - from what we have seen in Hungary. Countrary to most people's expectation, actually here in one of Europe's richest countries, pregnant women get incomparably less attention by the health care system. In fact the entire pre-natal screening and consultation is left to midwives, who Emese goes to visit about once a month. Of course the assumption is that if anything would have gone wrong she would immediately be transferred to a doctor. But deep inside the treacherous suspicion lurks that a midwife may not be able to see or notice the problem soon enough.

Yet, all in all the latest pregnancy seems to be least commented or noticed. A clear proof for this the 'baby folder'. It is a big folder where I have been archiving materials and information relate to each of our children since the time they have been conceived. These are things like name list printouts, media articles about major events during the pregnancies, tickets from concerts we attended with the baby in Emese's womb etc. The fact is that new coming baby's folder was empty until about two weeks ago. I have activated myself since then and added things, but the timing of this speaks for itself. All this sends us a signal of what to expect with the third baby after he is born.