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What’s Different With Baby 4?

I like to think of myself as a pretty confident mom. I’m the oldest of 8 kids so when my first came along I already had a lot of baby experience. For me, becoming a mom wasn’t nearly as difficult as it was for many of my peers. Even adding my second child wasn’t really a problem. It’s the third child that got me. As my husband says, we went from man to man coverage to zone defense. A 5yr old starting kindergarten (we homeschool), a toddler who was just potty trained, and an infant made for a really interesting couple of years.

I wanted to have my 4th another 2.5 years after my 3rd but it just didn’t happen. Now, my 4th has arrived 4 years later and I’ll be honest, he’s not nearly as difficult as my 3rd. So, what’s different?

  1. I have help – My other kids are older. They’re 9, 6, and 4. All of them old enough to help and old enough to not injure the baby. I can send people for diapers, have them load the dishwasher, get me a glass of water, play with the baby, etc. I didn’t have this many assistants with the first 3.
  2. Nap schedule? What’s that? – With the older kids having activities and such, our weekly schedule is the same, but our daily schedule is different. So there’s a lot of napping on the go. Luckily, my little guy likes the car. I remember with the others we were actually home most of the day and we had this nice nap schedule. That’s just not happening this time around. Baby sleeps well pretty much wherever so he’s getting his naps. Just not in his bed.
  3. Baby can sleep through anything…except silence – The first week I tried to tell my older kids to be quiet. Then I gave up. The baby sleeps right through it. But, send everyone away with Daddy for a few hours and the baby doesn’t know what to do with himself.
  4. Baby is well entertained – And I don’t have to do all the entertaining. Yay! Older siblings are great for playing with baby and as the baby gets older, there’s more they’ll be able to do.
  5. I follow the advice to “sleep when the baby sleeps” – with the first one you can sleep whenever so I didn’t worry about this. This time around. I have a baby who goes to bed at midnight, who also likes to play between 2 and 4 am and then kid’s schedules which require me to be up before 8. So, guess what, if I have the chance to take a nap while the baby’s sleeping, I take it. And I don’t feel one bit bad about taking a nap instead of cleaning my house. Because I’ve figured out, if I’m too tired, nothing goes well in my house.
  6. I do actually get to shower alone – My kids are older, old enough to survive without me for 20 minutes. Plus, think of all the snacks you can consume while Mommy’s in the shower. Who wants to pass that up by asking for permission first? I can shower when the baby’s sleeping or playing and the kids will leave me along unless the baby’s crying. I remember with my first it being so hard to shower when she was awake because she didn’t want to be “alone” in her bouncer by the shower door. With 3 entertainers for the baby, this isn’t a problem.
  7. I don’t need a baby monitor – I have a baby monitor. But with 3 live baby monitors running around, I don’t actually need it. I’m alerted if the baby sneezes in his sleep.
  8. Zone Defense – and last but not least, I’m already on zone defense so what’s one more? It’s not like I was keeping up with everything anyways.

What’s been different for you as you’ve added multiple kids?

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Lots of Theories

I commented to my husband the other day that first time parents (and those without children) have a lot of theories but experienced parents have no theories at all, just lots of practical advice. He thought it was funny.

But, really, it’s true. We share all our helpful tips for surviving life with 3 or more little kids and laugh at each other’s stories and no one feels compelled to tell anyone else how they could have done it better, we’ve all been there and we know how it is. We may give practical suggestions if we have them and if we don’t have any practical suggestions we just laugh and share our own funny story.

For example, I was complaining about how hard it is to get the straws clean on those Take N Toss cups with straws because the straws fall through the silverware basket in the dishwasher. She pointed out that she just leaves the straw in the cup lid and sticks them on the top rack in the dishwasher…brilliant! Why didn’t I think of that? That just saved me 5 minutes washing dishes every day! Actually, my middle child likes to chew on straws so she ruined all my straws by chewing on them. I just threw them away and started buying the red striped disposable straws. I notice when I was at my friends house the other day that she has also switched to the disposable straws, she must have had the same problem I did. You’ll note though, not once did we discuss our theories for getting our child to stop chewing on all the straws, we just switched to disposable. Very practical.

And the question of how to keep your kids from waking you up at 5 am convinced that it’s morning. I tell my oldest 2 that they can’t get me up until it’s light outside. The’ll play barbies in their room for an hour waiting for it to get light and then come get me and ask for hot chocolate, and a host of snacks for breakfast. There’s no, “you just tell them to stay in their room and punish them when they don’t” talk, we discuss how we explain to our 3 yr old in a way that they can understand when it’s considered “morning” and they are allowed to wake us. One of my friends uses a timer on her kids lamps and when the lamp turns on they can get up. Another mom just sends them back to bed if they get up too early. And someone else just has them join her in her bed until it’s time to get up. But, not one of us is convinced that our way is better than the others, it’s just what works best for us and our kids.

And potty training, we all just smile and nod. So which candy did your child prefer? Did you use a sticker chart? You still using pullups at night? And then we launch into our most embarrassing/funny stories thus far. My kids love public restrooms. If they even think there might be one at a store they instantly have a need to go to the bathroom. The other day, I was shopping with the kids and headed into a dressing room. My girls were ecstatic, I had, without being asked decided to go into a public restroom. I had to leave my two sweaters with the nice ladies running the dressing room and take my kids to the bathroom and then come back to the dressing room and try on my sweaters. Now, I don’t try on a lot of clothing with all three kids along so up until this point the girls had not realized that there was such a thing as a dressing room at a store. According to my kids, next to public restrooms, dressing rooms are the greatest thing ever invented by stores. And our Sam’s has a child sized sink in their bathroom. Thanks a lot guys… I have to plan an extra 20 minutes in Sam’s just so the kids can go play in the sink. (they always have to urgently go to the bathroom the minute we step into Sam’s).

And the number of times our kids have removed their clothing at inappropriate times, and said things we just didn’t want them to say…don’t even get me started…we all just smile, laugh, and know that that’s just how life goes.