For my wife and I, 2019 has been one of the most frustratingly difficult years of our lives.

We've been exhausted all the time. We've been stretched thin with stress and worry. Things that should have been easy have consistently been a goddamn ordeal.

And it manifested in creatively insidious ways, too.

For my part, despite having been a published author and professional writer for 20-plus years, I suddenly couldn't understand how words worked or how to put them in order.

This was a particularly urgent issue because my writing has been the main source of income for our family since my wife was largely occupied in gestating, giving birth to and mothering our second son.

We wondered why it was all so challenging. After all, when our first was born it was a huge adjustment — but we'd known that was coming, and even had training in how to deal with it.

You think you know what you're in for

Everyone knows having the first kid is a big deal. You can't move for advice and articles and books and podcasts about how the transition into parenthood affects couples, to the point where some state governments even make you attend classes just in case you're not across what's about to occur.

After having a baby, however, it's generally assumed that you know what you're doing for the subsequent ones.

And thus it's easy to go into it expecting your second child to be less new movie franchise and more of a blockbuster sequel — you know it'll be bigger, louder and more expensive, but for the most part, things will be familiar.

We looked for explanations as to why we felt so constantly wrung out — ranging from depression to mid-life crisis to demonic curse — without considering that maybe the problem was that oh yeah we'd just had our second child.

Because having a second child, as it turns out, is far harder than people realise — particularly for the people having said child.

A lot less time and far more pressure

For the most part, it's not something that gets talked about. Fortunately science (science!) has done it for us and found that life satisfaction takes a massive hit with child number two.

After having their second child, Andrew and his wife felt wrung out. ( Supplied: Andrew P Street )

It's not the seismic, exciting, life-altering event of number one, and then suddenly you're looking after two small people — which means you have a lot less time and a lot more pressure, minus any ability to tag-team with your partner to grab some much needed downtime.

As Leah Ruppanner, Francisco Perales and Janeen Baxter wrote in The Conversation, "Second (and third) children do not introduce a new role into parents' lives, but rather increase the demands of the parent role."

As a result, parents find that their mental and physical health takes a big hit with two kids thanks to the effect of chronic stress.

And that's especially true for women in cisgendered, straight relationships, where both partners tend to slot, unconsciously or otherwise, into traditional carer/earner roles.

(And if you want to depress yourself about the ways which Australia's parental leave system and work culture subtly but forcefully discourages men from choosing to be more hands-on parents, then you should pore over Annabel Crabb's recent Quarterly Essay, 'Men At Work': the patriarchy does a hell of a number on dudes as well, it turns out.)

Falling over the finish line at the end of the day

After reading some of the research I started contacting friends who had their second kid in the recent past, asking the question "how have you been?"

And the answers had a lot in common.

None felt anything but positive about how much they utterly adored their children, but no-one seemed to have had a smooth ride. More than one couple admitted that their relationship nearly crashed and burned in the wake of number two, so desperate were they feeling.

One described themselves as feeling like work colleagues tasked with a high-intensity project and an urgent yet permanent deadline.

Pretty much everyone, male or female, felt they were inadequate parents and often felt guilty that they were either neglecting child number one now that the new one was around and/or not giving number two the attention they did the first time around.

Everyone confessed that they felt as though they were only just falling over the finish line at the end of each day.

For Andrew P Street and his wife, welcoming their second child was more challenging than they had expected. ( Supplied: Andrew P Street )

And what's more, almost all of them admitted this was the first time they'd told anyone about how this period had been for them.

Part of it came from feelings of self-blame at not handling what they had assumed shouldn't have been a difficult period, but also because busy parents get rapidly isolated from their social groups and they couldn't remember the last time they'd just hung out with friends and talked about how things were going.

Things do get better

If that all sounds a bit grim, there is definitely a light at the end of the tunnel.

Adjusting to a second child allegedly settles back to normal at about four months, according to a study by the University of Michigan, although it might just simply be that after a third of a year of sleep deprivation, you no longer have the energy to have feelings anymore.

But the main message in all of this is for any parent of a new baby who's feeling that they're not coping the way they should be: you're right to feel stressed and exhausted, because kids are stressful and exhausting.

And as our child starts to inch toward toddlerhood, and the new year gleams like an as-yet-unsmeared sliding door, we start to get hints that things will indeed get gradually easier.

Or, at the very least, plateau at a superior and even more adorable quality of difficult.

Andrew P Street is a freelance writer.