Whether you find yourself unexpectedly or intentionally walking through Walgreens carrying an infant in one hand and 6 boxes of pregnancy tests in the other, there are a few things to consider before that second baby arrives and the proverbial you know what hits the fan.
We hadn’t planned on having kids 13 months apart and I was completely unprepared for how hard it would be. From crazy sleep schedules to seemingly impossible outings to never-ending stages, I desperately needed a new word for hard those first few years.
From the start, my kids were in no way, shape or form on the same sleep schedule. Our entire life was spent with one baby sleeping and one or both awake. Despite our best efforts, they rarely napped together. It almost sounds nice, right? A little alone time with each… Truthfully, it not only left me with zero time to myself, but also left me so chronically sleep deprived that many days I couldn’t trust myself to drive, and others I wondered if I was sincerely losing my mind. I cried a lot as 4 nonconsecutive hours of sleep a night for months left me with very few coping skills. I believed that Guantanamo had nothing on my house. A one week stay at our house with very little, interrupted sleep and the perpetual sound of babies crying over Disney Junior could get the stubbornest minds to crack. I know it didn’t take long to break mine.
So getting out of the house seemed critical from the start. But with kids really close in age, outings are a logistical nightmare. There’s your awkward double stroller and oversized diaper bag overflowing with various sized diapers and accoutrements that you are burdened with everywhere you go. I’m sure it’s tough for anyone with multiple kids, but you can’t expect a newly walking 1-year-old to hold your hand in a parking lot while you carry a sleeping newborn. What do you do with the infant if you have to chase your toddler? What if your 1-year-old isn’t walking? You can carry both, or wear one and carry one, or stroller one and carry one, or stroller both… See where I’m going? It’s a logistical nightmare because you still have to take into account the actual errand you’re running. How do you carry that box into the UPS store? Where do you put a baby and toddler in the cart and still have room for groceries? How do you literally carry anything beyond your kids, that heavy diaper bag and your will to complete any given mission? And when they’re both walking and the stroller isn’t practical, you’re herding little squirrels like a crazy person anywhere outside your carefully childproofed home. On more than one occasion, once both my boys were strapped safely in their car seats, I’d collapse in mine feeling like I’d run a marathon and cry from the exhaustion of managing our chaos in public.
Mommy Owl says, “Raising kids is an endless cycle of telling yourself ‘I just need to get through this phase.'” Imagine that sigh of relief as your oldest finally exits the terrible twos only to realize your youngest is just now entering them. You get back to back phases! Just as your oldest ditches that last Pull-Up after a year and a half of dredging through the swamps of potty training, you get to start ALL over with the youngest. And so on and so forth with every phase until they begin to overlap and blend together and break your will to discover what fresh hell the next phase holds.
My strength and will depleted, there were days I felt like a failure. But there were many days I felt like a superhero, having survived the Secretary of State with a 1 and 2-year-old, or urgent care, or lunch in a restaurant with my grandma, or feeling two warm sleeping babies on my lap at bedtime. I can’t pinpoint when exactly it got easier. But it did get easier and that’s all I wanted to know while things were hard.
I know a lot of families with kids close in age. It’s not uncommon, for sure. But it does present unique challenges, especially early on. If you’re a family with kids super close in age who can relate, I’m still looking for that new word for hard.
Do you have children close in age, how do you deal? Share your best tricks!
Last spring I found myself with three children under the age of three, recovering from a C-section and trying to finish homeschool with my 7 year old while keeping my five year old interested in ‘school’ so he would be ready for kindergarten.
It takes a village. Our church generously provided meals for us for an entire month, I had playdates before baby so I could put meals in the freezer, and we had a beautiful shower for our first baby girl so that we had everything we needed including many Target gift cards. While, I rarely left the house by myself those first two months, I survived knowing we were creating lasting family memories and enjoying the spirit of our young kids.