Four Kids

Well, I feel like I can say the honeymoon stage of having a baby is over.

Now, don’t get me wrong….we LOVE baby Orion around here. He’s the biggest and best delight. He’s a fairly happy and easy baby, although not once has he slept through the night in his 7 months of life. The past few weeks he has had four teeth break through and the poor thing has had more than a few miserable days and nights as a result. He’s also on the move, he’s been crawling for about a month now and is pulling up to stand and starting to cruise furniture. This also means that he is constantly getting into everything that he shouldn’t be getting into! And of course putting all manner of contraband in his mouth.

Sigh. Honeymoon stage….over.

Now, of course, I don’t mean that we don’t like baby Orion anymore. I mean that…his newness has worn off. I now feel like I am raising four kids, instead of raising 3 kids and having one baby to cuddle.

So, what is it like to raise four kids?

First- the transition to four was no big deal for me. It didn’t feel like that much more work and it didn’t feel like we had to rearrange much schedule wise. He just fit perfectly into our family.

My three big kids LOVE having a baby around. They ADORE Orion and are so good with him. There was absolutely never any jealousy directed towards the baby. However, they had a bit of a hard time towards each other for the first 6 months. There was a lot more bickering and fighting than usual, and it was like they were using up all their stores of sibling niceness on the baby and had nothing left to give each other.

Emotionally, I feel like I’m doing very well this postpartum. It was such a smooth transition for me, I am still waiting to see if there will be a hormonal crash. I think that because my pregnancies are so terrible, my postpartum feels just so lovely in comparison! I feel like I have been able to handle the transition to breastfeeding, carrying a baby around everywhere, and even the sleepless nights while still managing the needs of the other kids. I have been reflecting a lot on how I was 9 years ago when I had just one infant, or 7 years ago when I had two small babies. My anxiety and depression was sky-high and I was an emotional wreck much of the time. I don’t know if the difference this time is just maturity as I have aged, but having a baby with this mental state is much preferable to having a baby in that previous mental state!

Logistically, though…four kids is A LOT. One thing that has surprised me is that I am really struggling to stay on top of housework. I don’t understand this because while Orion added more clothes to the laundry, he doesn’t really make that many messes yet and he’s not utilizing tons of dirty dishes. I feel like I’m doing housework literally all day long and by the end of the day, everything I’ve done is already undone. I’m almost always late getting dinner on the table. I’m always behind on folding laundry. There seems to always be dirty dishes in the sink. I think I’m most baffled by this because I can’t figure out WHY. My three bigs do make a lot of messes, but they also help clean up. Sure, we don’t have a dishwasher, but again…this is not a suddenly new thing. I think the issue is that I’m spending a lot of time with Orion, breastfeeding him, laying him down for naps, having him in the carrier, being up all night with him…I’m just way slower and have way less time to do housework. I guess it’s the fact that all my time is broken up into tiny 10-15 increments in between attending to the baby that makes it hard to keep up with the housework.

If you have followed me here for any time at all, you have probably noticed that while our life is insanely full, we actually don’t do much extracurricular activities for our kids. Our current plan is that if there is an extracurricular activity at school, they are welcome to participate if they would like. If it’s outside of school (YMCA, other league sports, etc), we are not going to do it for now. I think this helps greatly because we all go to school together and come home together instead of feeling like I need to run 5 different directions in one day.

One interesting thing that I’ve been feeling is relief that our family is complete. It feels like we have been growing our family and having pregnancies/infants/breastfeeding for YEARS now and I think we are all ready to move into a new stage of life. While I’m holding Ori closer and soaking up every.single new milestone, I also feel this sense of peace that our family is how it will be. I know that sounds strange, so if anyone who completed their family and now has grown kids can chime in and explain if what I’m feeling is weird, or if you felt the same? Was it a relief to close Part I- the baby-having chapter and finally feel like you get to move onto Part II- the parenting chapter?

I am not sure what this whole rambling post is about today. I just kind of wanted to type out some of my thoughts and feelings in this current season. If you are still reading- bravo! My blog is mad at me that my posts have way too many words and my “readability” is undesirable. True story.

So, please…let me know. If you have multiple kids, did you feel any of these feels? Did you find four kids hard? Will I ever feel like housework is manageable? Will there ever be time in the margins again?