I’ve missed blogging here. And I have missed two months of posts already. It’s not because I’m too busy (well, my hands are always full) but it’s mainly because I’ve started a new project. I recently joined Young Living Essential Oils and I realized that I’ve been thinking a lot about how to make our lives, my family’s lives, more natural and more environment friendly. So I decided to make a new site and share stuff about that journey here. It’s going to be informative, helpful and just overall uplifting. 🙂
I’ve also been busy DIY-ing my son’s first bday. Wow, first birthday! It definitely feels like it went by faster the second time around. Our celebration is going to be a small, intimate event that’s why I am able to DIY it. Anyway, Light and her dad have been doing their own project too. Light has a podcast already. I figured that the podcast can be the site’s content for now while I take care of other businesses.
Getting to my topic for this post, I had a second to just take in what my life has become since having another child. It is definitely better now and I have adjusted quite well compared to the first few weeks (and months) of having Siris. I’ve talked about my guilt here. Of course our family feels complete now that he is here. It has become a whole lot more fun too.
But for those who are wondering what to really expect (those things you never really thought about) when you have multiple children already, just read on to find out.
#1 Expect to spend less time with your first born
Or other children. Being a breastfeeding, hands-on mom with no yaya (or nanny), and with the cooking and the taking care of the newborn, my time with Light is basically doing the necessities, the feeding and making sure she takes a bath. And I have struggled with this. Even writing about it now makes me feel sad. Because I felt like that’s the only spare time I have for her, those must do chores. Those and the occasional scolding for doing something expected from a child at her age.
Sometimes I wonder if she noticed the change. Sometimes I would just hug her or fix her hair, or hold her hand. And she would look at me like, “why is she doing that?” Was it so long ago that she’s forgotten how I used to do those things to her for no reason at all?
#2 Expect jealousy
This is, of course, expected. There will be some form of jealousy. But how? I think every child acts in a different way. At first it’s going to be from the older child, but as the new baby “matures”, he’ll know about it too. With Light, she wanted more attention and she would talk like a baby. We have taught her to do things on her own, or at least we practice it as much as we can. But when her brother came, it was just harder to ask her. She always wanted mommy or daddy to do it for her.
#3 Expect (obviously) fighting
My kids started fighting as early as Siris became 6 months old I think. And I expect it to get worse as they both grow older. Sharing is probably the hardest to ask of Light. There are rare moments that she would share her toys or her brother’s toys (that she is playing with at the moment). Of course, Siris doesn’t understand most of it yet. He’s just going to get things and put them in his mouth haha. Or he’ll cry when his sister grabs something from him. I think what I did not think about was how I would handle the “fighting”. Does the big sister always have to give way? Or all is fair play?
#4 Expect for some changes in how you raise your child (from strict to lenient or vice versa)
It can go either way. You could become a better parent because you know now what to do and not what to do. You could also become more lenient and allow all things haha. I, admittedly, is more lenient now compared to when I was raising baby Light. And I thought that I’d be surer with the whole parenting thing. But I actually feel more lost. Because every child, every baby, is different I feel like I’m a first time mom again.
#5 Expect to lose your S#!+ (coz you will 100%)
I think no parent can really describe how demanding and life consuming (if ever there’s such a term haha) raising multiple children can be. Or even just two kids like what we have now. I dunno if I’m just impatient or I lack understanding on how to deal with tantrums but I find myself losing it. A LOT. Since having another baby. And it’s usually poor Light who takes half of it (just half ^_^) when I do. 🙁 The other half I take it out on my poor husband. Poor them. It is not fair, especially to Light and I have to constantly remind myself to calm down, take deep breaths, analyze why I’m losing it, so I don’t take it out on anybody, most especially on Light. I have to do things to make me relax and happy (even if it means ignoring the kids for a little bit) so I don’t lose it. But yes, expect to lose your cool as calm mommas from time to time.
Mommy
Hi Mommy, I definitely felt those things that you’ve mentioned here. I just had another baby and I’m also breastfeeding–tandem feeding to be exact since my daughter also wants to feed when she sees that I’m feeding her baby brother. For the first few weeks, I felt emotional I’m crying whenever I see my daughter cause I felt like I can’t take care of her since I have another baby. It was torture for me but then I was able to cope up with the help of my hubby. Now, my 2 yr. old daughter is very sweet to her baby brother and I felt blissful. It was hard at first but when you see both of them and they are happy and healthy then everything is just amazing.