So everyone asks, “How is it having 2 kids now?”
I have heard a few things:
1. Two kids is NOT twice the work…it is way harder.
2. Having two kids means you find out how good your husband is. Meaning the wife had been taking care of child #1 so now the husband has to either care for child #1 or child #2.
3. Having 2 kids is the hardest. If you can care for 2 kids, having 3 kids is a piece of cake.
Okay, lets start with comment #1. I actually do not think having two kids is twice the amount of work or even way harder than twice the amount of work. I always thought having ONE kid was way harder than I ever imagined so having two kids isn’t so bad. Don’t get me wrong, it isn’t easy but it isn’t way harder than I expected. Maybe I expected the worst and it hasn’t been so bad. Stacy is a good sleeper, she is healthy and Jack has taken to her better than I could have ever imagined. I on the other hand completely forgot what it is like having a newborn.
I have come to the realization that I am not good with a newborn. I have no patience at all and it seems that I have little to no patience with Stacy. If she is fed, had a clean diaper and I am carrying her then there should be no reason for her to cry. If she cries for longer than 2-3 minutes, I refuse to carry her and I just put her in the crib to let her cry it out. I remember with Jack I would try to rock him until he calmed down. With Stacy, I just put her down and walk away without a guilty conscious.
Comment #2 – I dunno if this really applies for Aya and I. I was happy just having one kid and assumed it was highly likely we would only have one child so I didn’t want to miss anything with Jack so I tried to be around as much as I could so I wouldn’t miss anything when Jack was growing up. I think Aya and I have split up the parenting and responsibilities fairly well so I don’t think there is any pressure to see how well I will do with two kids. Basically it is one kid per adult at our house. One kid will always draw short straw when they are stuck with me!
Comment #3 – Yeah….right. This is just like when couples with no kids always get the talk from couples with kids about how great kids are…how easy kids are…then you have a kid and they are SUCKER, welcome to the club! No way am I falling for that trick. 3 kids are out of the question unless I win at least a $10 million dollar lotto jackpot!
Since I went back to work right after Jack was born, I feel like I missed out on the first 6 months when Aya was on maternity leave. Now that I am not working I wanted to be sure I experienced everything with newborn Stacy. I was trying to get up whenever Aya got up to breastfeed. I wouldn’t do anything but I just wanted to be there and keep everyone company. Umm, that was a mistake. I am not geared to sleep 3 hours, wake up for 30 minutes and go back to sleep. After 3 days of that I was down right irritable. I stopped waking up in the middle of the night, but I do try to take the night shift when Aya is tired and needs extra sleep.
This is why I am even more grumpy: I start my day at 6 am when Jack wakes up in the morning. I am used to it so that is no problem. The problem is that I am used to going to sleep around 11 pm. 11 pm is when Stacy wakes up and I take over for Aya. I do not like to nap during the day time so now 11 pm rolls around and I am tired!
For the most part Stacy sleeps a majority of the day and usually most of the nights. Unfortunately, when Stacy is awake she likes to be awake from 11 pm to 3-4 am. Thus that means I will be up 21-22 hours because at 3-4 am when Stacy wants to be fed again that signals the end of my shift and I wake up Aya and I go to sleep until 6 am when Jack wakes up.
Phew…to make a long story short, having two kids is tiring, mostly because the newborn baby sleeps so erratically and my body just can’t adjust fast enough with the lack of sleep so I am back to being grumpy and irritable. Ahh, the joys of parenthood…it’s FAN-tastic!
