Having a Third Baby: What Was I Thinking?

As I look around my living room, I notice all the toys on the floor, and the mess that is my constant companion. It honestly looks like a hurricane has swept through my home. That’s my two year old’s mess. We are currently working on having her help clean up her messes, but it’s a constant challenge. She loves helping me do dishes, but she refuses to clean up her toys from the floor. Now, if she does help me, her “cleaning” is throwing stuff into her toy bin in disarray. I always have to go back in and sort through all the toys.

To help with this situation that is a daily struggle, I have implemented two rules for myself. The first, I do what I call a ten minute tidy. I usually do this twice a day for my own sanity. The first time is right after my daughter goes down for her nap, and then again right after I put her to bed. This ensures that at least twice a day, I can have some peace. I don’t know about you, but if there is a mess in my house, it leads to anxiety and I drive myself crazy with it until it gets tidied.

The second rule is that I go through my kid’s toy bin once per month and throw out broken toys, or little gadgets from Happy Meals or Kinder Surprises. (It’s amazing how quickly those accumulate in your home when you have small kids!) The things that are still good, but that my kids are no longer using are donated or put in a box to be rotated. (Sometimes, if a toy is out of sight, or out of mind, and the child sees it a few months down the road, it’s like it becomes a new toy all over again and it saves you from having to purchase new things).

As for my eight year old, well, it’s been a struggle in a completely different way. My kid loves to procrastinate, whether that’s brushing his teeth, getting ready for school in the morning, or cleaning up his clothes. I constantly have to monitor him when he’s playing online on Fortnite (You really don’t know what’s going on unless you play with them and get to know who they’re playing with). We spend time reading each evening (I read to him before bed, but he also does fifteen minutes of reading as well). We work on his spelling words each week night, and we prep for the next school day. Each night, I crawl into bed with a sigh of relief, having made it through the day successfully.

If you have kids, you know it’s work. You go from this easy, nonchalant existence, only having to fend for yourself to having these tiny humans depend fully on you. You are now completely responsible for someone else and it’s scary as hell. All these thoughts and worries go through your mind - all the ‘what if’s’. It’s so scary, that its a wonder we want to have kids at all.

Now, don’t even get me started on the new arrival phase. When you first have your baby (more so if it’s your first baby), you are fully unprepared for what the lack of sleep does to your brain. It’s like you’re living in this constant fog and you don’t remember one day to the next. I find that it’s an easier transition when you already have kids to going back and having a newborn, because you already know what lack of sleep is. On a good day, I get maybe six hours of sleep a night. My body doesn’t do naps. There’s just something about sleeping during the day that I can’t tolerate. I feel like I’m missing out on something if I try to sleep during the day. So I’m used to not getting sleep. It’s nothing now when my daughter wakes up in the middle of the night. Sometimes all she needs is a quick diaper change, some reassurance and cuddles and then it’s right back to bed. Sometimes, like today, something wakes me up thirty minutes before my 5:00am alarm and I realize I'm fully awake hours before the sun will rise. It’s a constant struggle.

Now, add all that to the fact that I am an entrepreneur and I work from home. There are days when I do work only four or five hours. I am much more efficient and productive than I ever was at any other job I worked at. I know it’s because I have a personal stake in my business. I’m passionate about it and I love what I do. My work is for me and my family - I’m not doing a nine to five grind for someone else, and I love and appreciate being able to do what I do every single day. However, there are times when I can’t always work when I want to. (Enter the two year old). Kids need attention, and constant supervision. They are very distracting and when you have them at home with you during work time, sometimes that work needs to be put on hold. My kids come first each and every time. After day homes and day cares with my first child, I refuse to ever put my kids in one ever again. (It is beneficial for a first child so they can get social interaction). I would much rather my kids be safe at home with me, not getting sick every other day and knowing that I can give them the attention they deserve.

Again, add on to this that I’m currently almost six months pregnant. You do the math. Exhaustion, pregnancy nausea, round ligament pains, having to get up to use the bathroom a hundred times a day - I’m sure you get the picture. It gets hard to pick up your toddler after awhile, and pregnancy hormones run rampant. Add the pressure of constant doctor appointments, crazy dreams and digestive issues. I’m doing all of this on my own as well, as my husband works out of town for weeks at a time - it’s enough to drive any sane person crazy.

Now all of these things are completely natural when you choose to have a family. You do what needs to be done. You work the extra time to support your family, you wake up in the middle of the night when your kids need you. Let’s not discuss all the other things that can happen in life. For instance, you might have some kind of health issue. For me, I had a gall bladder scare and suffered with an insane amount of pain straight for a week, not eating at all because it hurt every time I tried. (I will have a blog coming up soon talking about my experience with our emergency health care system and the system in general). You might have family issues; it seems all sorts of things pop up when you feel least able to handle it.

During these more difficult times, I try to tell myself that the universe wouldn't give me anything more than what I could handle. In the middle of the crisis however, all you want to do is break down and cry. It’s completely natural to do so, and crying makes you feel better. Have a good cry, let it out and then move on. Think of ways you can tackle each problem on it’s own. It might be hard to do it, but separate the issues at hand and tackle them. If there seems to be no solution at the moment, move on until one appears.

So, why then did I choose to have another baby? Was it to go through the pregnancy experience all over again? Yes. Was it to get some more tiny baby snuggles? Yes. Was it to grow my family and to let my kids have siblings they can rely on as they age? Yes.

Since I turned thirty, I always knew I wanted a larger than normal family. (i.e The Nuclear family of two kids). I want to be able to make large family dinners when all my kids can come home for the holidays, and just be surrounded by my loved ones and possibly (if I’m lucky) be there for my grandkids and even great grandkids). The fact that I’m forty years old is a matter of circumstance and I’m very lucky to be able to have a healthy pregnancy during this time of my life.

So, as I look on at the current mess on my living room floor, I remember all of these things. I know that the baby and toddler years fly by in the wink of an eye, so I don’t take any of it for granted. I try to cherish all the moments - good, bad and everything in between. I’ll be taking hundreds of pictures and crying from lack of sleep in between, and I’ll be enjoying every single minute of it. 🧡

Sandra