A dear friend expecting her second child recently confided that she had lost sleep wondering if she would be able to love her second as much as she loves her first. My first impulse was to laugh and tell her she was being silly.

Until I remembered that I had worried about the exact same thing when I was expecting my second. In fact, I had struck a deal with my husband, saying he would need to love the second since I would clearly not be able to match my feelings for our firstborn.

Needless to say, I was wrong.

In that spirit, here are seven myths about having a second child. Full disclosure: I fell for all these misconceptions myself.

Myth 1. You will not be able to love the second child as much as the first.

It may not happen all at once, but trust me, it happens. For many parents, the intensity of feeling for our firstborn can be startling. I had never experienced that depth of emotion before, so I couldn’t imagine that it could happen twice. It can be shocking to realize your capacity for love.

Myth 2. It will only be twice as much work to add another child.

No, the workload will increase by a greater multiple than two. Having to constantly meet the needs of two children, especially if they are close in age, can feel overwhelming, especially in the beginning. Unlike with the first baby, there’s always another little human who needs your attention, so it’s not as easy to catch naps when you are sleep-deprived. It’s also normal to worry about neglecting the older child, who all of a sudden seems so much older. But a little independence and responsibility, even for a toddler, is a good thing. There will be days that pass in a blur, but it does get easier.

Myth 3. What worked with the first will work with the second.

Yes, you are more experienced and, hopefully, more relaxed about parenting the second time around. But just because the first was a great napper doesn’t mean the next one will be. Just because the first loved veggies, don’t expect another adventurous eater. Intellectually, we know each child is different, but it still feels like a rude shock when you realize that your firstborn’s excellent sleep habits likely had little to do with your superior parenting skills, since those same skills aren’t doing squat this time.

On the upside, the challenges you faced with the first may never arise with the second.

Each child will reach milestones at different points. One will sit up, walk, talk or read sooner than the other. Avoid jumping to conclusions. Remember that there is a wide range of normal, and if he or she falls within that scope, relax.

Myth 4. You will be just as diligent with the second as you were with the first.

The truth is there will be fewer baby pictures (forget the baby book right now), fewer early childhood activities and less one-on-one time. The reason is rather simple: There’s more to do but no additional time to do it. Plus, in the wisdom you’ve accrued from child number one, you realize that making flashcards for a baby is a largely worthless endeavor. But while the second child may get less of your undivided attention, he or she gets a better, more experienced parent.

Myth 5. You’ll lose the pregnancy weight as quickly as you did with the first.

Perhaps if you’ve got a team of support staff, including a trainer, housekeeper and cook, you can expect to get that pre-baby body back quickly. For the rest of us, it takes longer. Even if the extra pounds melt away relatively quickly because of nursing and lacking the time to eat proper meals, things will not look quite the same. Um, ever.

Myth 6. You won’t have a favorite.

Oh, yes, you will. It will change depending on which child is making your life slightly easier that day, week or month. Don’t feel guilty about this. You should (and will) love them equally, but there will certainly be times when you like one more than the other.

Myth 7. My child will finally have a playmate.

They may seem more like mortal enemies than best buddies, at least for a while. Get used to squabbles, whining and accusations: one child claiming the other always gets away with everything, is loved more and never gets caught being bad. There will also be, however, moments of great friendship and hilarious overheard conversations between the two. Those make up for all the “He’s so annoying!” and “She’s touching my stuff!”

I still believe the greatest gift you can ever give a child is a sibling. Underneath the bickering and fighting is a very deep bond of a shared childhood and family experiences -- things only a brother or sister can understand.

For years, my husband has been waiting to share this cinematic moment with our son.

He is a superfan of “The Godfather” trilogy, having watched the films at least a hundred times. When our son turned 13 this spring, the teenager started asking when he would be allowed to watch the series with his dad. They decided, a few days before school started, that the time had come.

While I also appreciate the magic of these classic films, my husband’s devotion is on another level. He has most of the dialogue memorized, has read all the backstories and can answer just about any trivia question related to these three movies. I think 13 is a little young for such an intense story, but I figured my husband would be discussing the themes along the way.

This would be their thing.

It took them about 10 days to get through the series, and each night I could overhear the annotated viewing experience my son was getting. I also heard a fair amount of indoctrination, as my husband posed the question, more than once, about whether this was the greatest film of all time. (There is one correct answer to that question.)

Afterward, I asked my husband if he’d had to fast-forward the movies during the inappropriate parts. There were only two brief, racy sex scenes in nearly nine hours of viewing, he said. It’s a story about the mafia and gangsters, so it’s rife with killings, beatings and violence. And yet the violent scenes from decades ago are less gory and graphic than what would earn an R-rating today.

He was more concerned about the scenes depicting domestic violence.

“I didn’t want him to see Michael Corleone slapping his wife or Carlo hitting his wife,” my husband said. He mentioned at both these moments how deplorable these actions were, just to reinforce the message to our son.

There are certainly some relevant life lessons apparent in the trilogy: Crime doesn’t pay. It’s hard to extricate yourself once you are entrenched in a criminal enterprise. Be careful who you associate with. You can’t demand loyalty from people; you have to earn it.

Even though there were no political discussions around their viewing, the timing couldn’t have been more apt. Recently, the country witnessed the unfolding of an extraordinary political scandal in which the president’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, pled guilty to crimes he said he committed at the behest of then-candidate Donald Trump.

This is uncharted territory. Perhaps a cinematic masterpiece can shed light on a powerful family patriarch embroiled in payoffs to porn stars and models, betrayed by his fixer, threatened with the collapse of his dynasty.

A Wall Street Journal report described the scene when Trump originally said he didn’t know about the hush-money payments to the women, and referred questions to his attorney.

“Mr. Cohen, who that night was staying aboard the yacht of Trump donor Franklin Haney, which was docked in Miami, grew irate on the ship soon after Mr. Trump made his remarks distancing himself from the Clifford payment,” the Journal reported. “Mr. Cohen was swearing loudly as others on the boat were sipping their drinks, the person said.”

Francis Ford Coppola could have directed that scene.

I would argue that “The Godfather” is ultimately an epic narrative about family. I asked my son about his impressions of the story.

“It was compelling,” he said. “It was pretty dark, but very good.”

When I asked him if he had any takeaways from the movie, my son quoted Al Pacino’s character in “The Godfather: Part II”: “Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer.”

In 2018, art imitating life.

It’s either the best things or worst things that happen in threes.

When babies come in threes, their parents spend their lives on both sides of these cliches. Their kids’ milestones are met as a crowd: birthdays, braces, bickering. And then there’s that event you start worrying about nearly the minute multiples are born: paying all those college tuition bills at once.

The Scotts, the Pauls and the Craigs, three St. Louis-area families with triplets who graduated this year, have made it through the chaos of juggling the schedules of three high school seniors at once. Now, they’re dealing with three goodbyes.

Nichelle Scott, mom to triplets, first had to contend with the logistics of leaving. Her daughters, Sophie, Sydney and Sammie, each picked a different college far from home. Two had the exact same assigned move-in date and time slot. Nichelle ended up flying with Sydney to West Virginia University, while their dad drove Sophie to the University of Alabama. They helped Sammie move in at Regis University in Denver a couple of weeks later.

“Every other thing was shared until this moment,” Nichelle said. Now, “everyone is going to find their own identity.” Her daughters decided early on they were going to explore different paths for college.

It’s a similar situation for the Paul triplets, who are heading to various schools in Missouri. Michael will be attending Missouri State, Lauren is staying in town for St. Louis University and Bethany is going to the University of Central Missouri in Warrensburg. Their mom, Cindy Paul, said it has been strange to see other high schoolers go back to school, knowing her kids aren’t part of that anymore. She’s going to miss the noise and chatter and laughter that have filled their house.

“I won’t miss the laundry,” she laughed.

Surprisingly, they weren’t the only set of triplets in their graduating class. The Craigs spent a nonstop week helping their children move into their new housing. Their daughter Grace needed to arrive at the University of Kansas a week early for sorority rush. They moved her in on a Sunday, then drove back home to help Maggie pack and drive her to Purdue University. They drove home the next day only to head back to KU with Charlie. Their eldest child, Olivia, is starting her junior year at Ohio State, so as soon as they returned from dropping off Charlie in Kansas, they loaded up her stuff to drive to Ohio.

“My husband took a week’s vacation so we could take our kids to college,” Becky Craig said. She will be facing an empty nest in one fell swoop.

The rush of activities was constant in their lives. Every weekend, there were football games, tennis matches, lacrosse games, band competitions, she said. “I think our weekdays are going to be very quiet.”

She says she has worried about everything as they prepare to leave. The triplets have always had one another, and now one will be apart. Will she feel left out? Will the two at KU rely too heavily on each other?

There’s a powerful pull toward the number three. John Allen Paulos, a professor of mathematics at Temple University, writes in a column for ABCNews.com that there is a sort of numerical mysticism about it. It might be psychological, perhaps deriving from the structure and limited complexity of our brains, he suggests.

“The appeal of the trinity in Christianity and other religions, the philosophical triad of thesis, antithesis and synthesis, and even the setup of many jokes seem to stem in part from a natural resonance with the number three,” he writes. Humans seek patterns, and easily spotting threes offers a way to order a disordered world.

But three kids at once can make life complicated.

For the Scotts, parents’ weekend falls on the exact same dates for each of their freshmen.

Nichelle Scott cried when she saw the schedules. It set up an impossible choice.

“I’m not going to any, because I can’t make that decision,” she said.

A change that each of the moms mentioned was the transition from chaos to quiet in their homes: walking into a clean house, making meals for just two people, filling the sudden surplus of downtime.

“Although I am extremely happy and proud of my triplets, I will have an ache in my heart every day at 2:45 p.m. when they don’t burst through that door at home,” Cindy Paul said.

For now, it’s time to say goodbye.