LIFE // HOW WE ADJUSTED TO LIFE WITH 2 KIDS

So writing this post 18 months into life with two kids seems a bit silly but recently we’ve been getting a lot of DM’s from you about when it all clicks.

We don’t sugarcoat around here because that is helpful to no one and honestly, looking back at the time when Alfie and Ace were born, it was hard. But before you know it the hard part passes and you have two children who love each other more than anything and happily play together.

We aren’t parenting experts but we are mum’s of two who have just been through it so here is what we learnt:

ROUTINE SAVES LIVES

We honestly would have died without a routine. The second babies naturally followed the first so they had their bath and bed around the eldest. We easily got them both on 3 hourly feeds (7, 10, 1, 4, 7) and everything else fell into place around it.  Routine saved us.

BATH AND BED HELP

This was our hardest time. We used to text each other everynight around 6pm saying “FML FML FML THIS IS SO HARD” What helped us was starting the bath and bed routine earlier. We had them both in the bath around 5.15pm and the babies were having their milk by 5.45pm. To this day Alfie can’t stay up later than 6pm – it’s engrained in him.

Having somewhere to put the baby after it’s had a quick dip while the bigger one plays in the bath was useful. Take the baby clothes into the bathroom with you, get them all changed in there while the older one is in the bath and plonk them down. We either used the babybjorn bouncer or the AngelCare bath seat doubled up as a chair while they were tiny.

LOVEBOMB

The baby doesn’t know anything yet. The older one does. Ace and Alfie spent the majority of their newborn life in a crib in the corner of our lounge while we played with Leo and Belle. As soon as the toddlers backs were turned we love bombed the babies but our priority was making sure that our attention was on our eldest.

GET OUTSIDE

It might seem hard but even going out for 10 minutes a day helps so much. We’re not huge fans of staying indoors with kids. It might seem hard at first but it gets easier and you’ll be thankful you did. Neither of us bothered with double buggies (our gap was around 2.5 years) but a sling really helped. Sam was not a sling person with Leo but that all changed with Alfie as it meant she could be handsfree to take Leo out for a little while.

NO FUSS PARENTING

We are convinced that the reason why these second babies sleep so well is because we never had the time to fuss over them. With our firsts we would rock them to sleep and then wonder why they needed us to settle them well past turning one. Ace and Alfie have pretty much self-soothed their whole lives. In fact, Ace will not fall asleep on Gemma no matter how much she tries but would sometimes find it useful!  They have their bottle, a little cuddle and then they get popped into their cot while we go off and settle the older ones.

This is a bit of a brain dump because it all fades away after a while but we really just want to reiterate that it is such a short period of life and you all get into the swing of it so quickly! We felt guilt that we didn’t shower the babies in the same love as we did the older ones because we didn’t have the time, we didn’t rock them to sleep and we didn’t take them to as many baby classes but it doesn’t matter, our older kids are going to school at the time when the babies will need us the most, so then we will be able to give them so much more attention. We love them. We love them both the same. And they love each other and that is the best thing ever to watch. Hope this was helpful.