I'm really getting nervous about fitting this baby into our lives. I'm scared, TBH.

How did that transition go for your family? Did you do anything to facilitate it? I'd love any BTDT or ideas on how to make things go more smoothly.

it was really hard the first few weeks. colin was super jealous and i was hormonal and teary and wondered hy i ever thought it was a good idea to have a second baby. after the first few weeks though, things got a lot easier. colin got used to sharing his mama and now he loves his sister to pieces. he gets jealous occasionally but nowhere near the hell of that first week.

well, we are only on day 8 as a kid family here but it has actually gone much easier than i expected.

Hunter has been a little jelous of his sister but mostly he just wants to know that Mama still wants to cuddle with him too. I make a point to put the baby down while she is asleep (the kid loves her moses basket!) and hold Ds in my lap. He has asked to try to nurse and I have let him. He has forgotten how to latch on and suck so he's not getting anything but it makes him feel good so I let him ( I wish he still remebered so he could relieve a little pressure for me! LOL). YK?

Hunter is 3 (his bday was the day before Callan was born!) so that may have something to do with how well he has adjusted. We talked alot about the baby before she was born. He didn't seem suprised to see me holding his sister for the first time adn was really excited to meet her.

Now, this next week may be a completely different story because Dh had to go out of town for work and we won't see him for the next 3-4 weeks...

I am sure that everything will be

I'm still waiting:rolleyes:

SOoooo much easier than the adjustment from 0 to 1!!!
You are already in mama mode full swing and you will not have all those "what do I do with a newborn" jitters because you have been there!
Your older child will adjust just fine, because they have to ya know? For us the first few weeks were only hard in that I wanted to spend 110% of my attention with the baby and resting but the life of a toddler goes on and they still need you, so just make sure they know you are still there for them.
Another mama gave me a piece of advice once that has been very valuable... Once in a while tell the baby (for the other child's sake) that they are going to have to wait for mommy to finish with his brother because it is his turn to have mommy's attention. When my oldest hears this it makes him happy to know that he won't always take second place to nursing, diapering, rocking the baby and he feels special. Even though the baby has no clue what you are saying :) your other child will and it makes an impression.
Best of luck to you! Can't wait to hear about your new little one's arrival!

The birth of Kajsa was a wonderful thing. :) Ds had asked for a baby sister when he was 3 and when he was 4 she arrived!

Many times during pg I had worried, "what am I doing to our happy little family?" I worried that ds would feel left out, but that didn't come to pass.

We made sure to meet our ds's needs as they arose and I was careful to not rearrange all of our lives to fit around the baby. She adapted to our family, not we to her. did that make sense? I wore her almost constantly, she slept with us, went everywhere with us -- kind of attached to me -- and we didn't change the routines that our son was used to. Hope that was clearer. :)

To be honest with you, it was super easy for us. But, we have always envisoned a large family, and motherhood is the one thing that comes naturally for me--things that frustrate others (sleepless nights, whining, spit up, diapers) I take in stride. So. . .going from one to two was easy and two to three was a snap! Can't wait for number 4!

I've done it twice and it was hard both times. I always say it was harder than going from two to three.
When I had Shannon in 1988, Ashton was 19 months. She was wonderful, we never had any probs with her, but I remember wondering if I would EVER get to take a shower again. Now I know that the worst thing was a lazy husband who NEVER helped me. He's gone ;)
When I had Jason, Cathlin was 27 months. Poor thing....she was the center of EVERYONE's attention, and it was really hard on her, despite the fact that I think we did everything we could to help her adjust. We kept her in our bedroom, and I tried to keep her routine as normal as possible. But we went through a lot of trying times with her being rough, rolling on him, pushing him down....you name it. He's real close to being big enough to lay into her ;) It's getting better with them though, and I think they'll be close as they grow up since everyone else is so much older.

One thing that helps is to drastically lower your expectations. I never expected things to smooth out in X amount of time kwim? I just figured it was going to be different from now on and it was.

Soren was a very easy baby, and Airon was far more flexible than I thought he would be. Now, Airon did turn three and all heck broke loose. I just think that is a difficult age. Adding a new sibling was very hard for him at that point.

As far as the extra work and hugs and kisses? Those were a non-issue here.

I am also a person who can survive on little sleep so none of that stuff starts to get to me until about age 2. LOL

You'll do great! Take advantage of any help you are offered. You can give Eli more cuddles that way.

If there is one thing that I regret it is that I didn't have Airon on any sort of set schedule or routine at that point. He was still sort of ruling the roost as far as choosing eating and bedtimes. So, to put him off, was very hard. He would want it *now!* and I couldn't always do it then. Both of my boys have a very flexible routine regarding eating now. They also have a very predictable and enjoyable bedtime routine. IOW, I know when they are going to bed and they will fall asleep quickly when I take them. To me, it is easier to incorporate a new one into an established routine for older kids than it is to try to work around 2 differing schedules (and yours too!). I would never schedule a baby, but it works pretty well for toddlers and older kids.

smooth as butter!

I knew what to do and it was easier to do it

PLUS

as time went along they really took care of each other and now that we have finally added number 3 after a seven year gap

they are really major helps and the 3rd was even easier to fit in!

It seems simple enough...

...until a day like today when we came to church and discovered that we'd forgotten to put Rose's training pants on under her pretty dress!

She was walking around "commando" all morning AT CHURCH.

:eek:

She was walking around "commando" all morning AT CHURCH.

That is so funny! You'll remember that for a long time. The other day I took Airon (old enough to dress himself!) to a softball game with one sock on and one bare foot in his sneaker. He dressed himself, but I never even thought to give him the *once over*.

well as my hubby put it! one new member and it changes everybody life!

our new cutie wakes us all up! lol including her sister! her sister loves her though! not at all jealous! she sits adn talks to her and hold up toys to her! but thye are almost 6 years apart! so maybe that has somethign to do with it!
it's hard on me!


bf is not easy! well at least not for me! and i'm not as used to being the only ONE that can feed our baby. the changing dipes, spits up are ok. the new smll to my clothes is funny! breastmilk store!!!!!!!!!!!! and i wish all baby poop could be odorless like this ! :0)

but it hasn't been easy! my daughter is 9 days old! and i still can't get around like i want to! c-section, i still cry sometimes. and i think to myself this is what you wanted?????? and you got it now!!!!!!!!! and i get a littel depressed! i don't get enough sleep, b/c as soon as i do, baby is up!

but all in all i know there's a joy in me for my new daughter and i love her. but there are times when you quesstion yourself for the first few weeksi guess. it just dawns on me i'm 24 with 2 children and married, and a housewife. kinda allot to swallow tsometimes.

oh well! what a difference a new one makes! :D

for a few weeks before and after ds (#2) was born.
MY Dad would play with dd who was about 2 1/2 then, the only problem was that she didn't speak much German and he didn't speak much English so she had quite a few tantrums because Opi told her not to do something or she didn't understand him.
She was good with the baby most of the time, wanted to kiss and hug him alot.
I made a point of still being the one to put her to bed, she really loved that time alone with Mama.
My Mom would hold ds after I nursed him and I would put dd to bed, read her a few stories and cuddle with her.

After they left it was alot harder to keep dd busy and do things with her. But she also learned to help me with him.

Monika

I don't remember a lot of jealousy (maybe the is selective memory). Ara was pretty pleased with her new sister, she was 2.5 when Simone was born. The two things I had a very hard time with were getting absolutely nothing done and nursing. I am use to being a pretty darn effecient person and getting lots done during the day, but after Mone was born I had to cut back a lot more than I expected.

And nursing, ahhh yes, well I stinking hate tandem nursing. Never wanted to do it, we had planned to have our second after Ara weaned. I ended up greatly limiting Ara's nursing, which caused lots of battles.

One thing we did that was definitely a great help was we transitioned Ara's bedtime routine to John putting her down at night. I would nurse her, then she would go to John for stories and cuddles. I don't know what we would have done if we handn't changed that.

Well, I found the first couple weeks were a breeze...Shayda was a sleepy baby and Micayla seemed to be pleased with being a big sister and was very helpful.

Then Micayla got sick. Really sick. Puked every night for a week. About the same time, Shayda suddenly 'woke up' and it became full blown severe colic. She also had a really bad cold and cough and was miserable. It was hell...I have no idea how I stayed out of the looney bin. As it was I ended up with severe PPD and ended up staying for a month with my parents, so they did a lot of childcare while I 'recovered'. I started getting 'in the swing of things' when Shayda's colic subsided.

So the transition for US sucked. I was lucky that Shayda was a pretty laid back baby, only nursed every 4 hours (she'd actually 'refuse' if I offered before 4 hours...) and that Micayla was old enough to understand a lot (she was just over 3.)

I'm dreading the transition from 2 to 3 though, because Shayda's going to be younger than Micayla was...but it appears I may not be tandem nursing this time as she is definitely weaning herself. So who knows, it might be easier.

Just want to say my experience isn't necessarily typical, I know a lot of people who said the transition from 1 to 2 was easier than from 0 to 1 although that wasn't the case with me at all. HTH. Good luck, no matter what happens, you'll do fine!

we kinda had mixed emotions here. FOr the first month and a half my husband helped SO MUCH adn DAniel was great! He started sleeping 6 hour stretches at night(which is unheard of in this huse) and the baby slept all the time or was always pleasant... WE all slept in our big ol bed adn everything was fine.

then Dan must have realized we weren't taking her back or something, lol... he stopped sleeping at night again, started acting out A LOT and not behaiving. And he got really sad between month 2-3... strange things going on. He misses me alone.

So? Good and bad. I wish I could reassure you that everything would be fine, but it seems like we all have different stories.

WEll, actually, either way everything WILL be fine:) Life always works out, and my Mom keeps telling me it gets better between 4-6 months.... 2 1/2 more months to go....;)

The whole nursing, baby care thing was a breeze.

I talked with my older one, who was 3 when the baby was born. We talked a lot before the birth about how the baby was going to be small, needed to nurse all the time, would need to be held, and have diapers changed. We even diapered some of his stuffed animals and dressed them all up in baby clothes, so that he could help.

I think what helped us tremendously for the innitial transition was a gift. I bought something I knew my oder son really liked, in this case a $6 bubble gun that automatically blows bubbles. I wrapped it all nice, and put it in my car to take to the delivery room with me.

At first my son was mostly scared of the hospital room and wanted nothing to do with me. We broke the ice by telling him the baby had brought a present for him. He and his papa opened it, and then he was fine playing with that for a while, while looking at the baby and getting used to the whole thing. Without that gift, i think it would have been a lot harder.

It was really beautiful later, when he came back to visit me that afternoon, papa and grandma left, and I was alone with my two boys. I undressed the baby to change his diaper, and my older son and I talked about him, discovering his anaatomy together. All the finger nails, toes, penis, etc... always making comparisons to older ds. This really broke the ice too.

One thing my mother said to me, which proved incredibly invaluable is: "alwasy let the older one know there is place for him too. If the baby is nursing, then he can have the other lap is he wants. You will have to make that adjustment in position to make it possible. But if the older one always knows there is room for him, then he won't mind letting the two of you be alone."

I found this advice to be amazingly true.

Don't worry, you will have enough love for both. Just remember how you would feel if your DH came home with another woman and told you "this is going to be OUR new wife. I really love her, she's going to stay in our bed everynight, and I'm going to spend a lot of time with her. But I still love you, and she will never replace you." Perhaps your little one will feel that way, and so you have to remember that.

there will always be ups and downs. But you will all get through these. For us things really settled down by 4 months. I think it would be wonderful if you could leave the baby every once in a while, even if only for 20 minutes, and get outside, away from the baby and be with your older one. That's the biggest thing, they miss having you all to themselves, and even a few minutes of undevided attention makes a world of difference.

Just love them.

Puja

I had heard from someone that the first six weeks are the hardest. I totally experienced the opposite. My eldest is now almost 3 1/2...and he is hyperactive (among other things!). He was 2 1/2 when DD was born. She is now just about 10 months and has recently begun being totally mobile (crawling). NOW it's getting hard.

The first 6-8 months were not *that* much different. Now, I should state that DS was potty trained and sleeps thru most (75%) of the night. Because newborn babies sleep all of the time, it really wasn't too tough. But now that Quinn is mobile and up most of the day (and night!) it's getting a little tough. Sibling rivalry is starting- Holden will be playing toys and Quinn wants them, so he freaks out. But all in all, it's not really bad. I think that ONCE you get over the initial shock of having *A* child...you know, becoming a parent....any subsequent children aren't as bad! We did a lot of prep work on DS with the baby. He was 100% involved in the pregnancy issues, came to almost all of our prenatal visits, helped the midwife check heart beat, blood pressure, etc. We read lots of books on "a new baby" in the family. He helped me shop for her things and set up her changing table. He also visited us in the hospital about an hour after she was born (it was a C-Sec, otherwise it'd been sooner!).

Maybe I am really lucky, because my kids REALLY love and adore one another, which makes it that much easier, I think.

My biggest piece of advice is to really really prep the older siblings. Have the new baby's "stuff" set up early.

Best of luck!

Amanda

cami, i have really been wondering just how to answer this...but decided that the truth will suffice.

it was terrible. what made it so horrible? i don't really know, but i was really bad to jake those first few weeks. i yelled in his face and was angry with him so much. i wanted him to take a nap. dh went back to work when erin was a few days old. i feel like my behavior those first two weeks or so permanently altered jake's personality. i was depressed, temperamental, you name it. i have no idea why it was like that but it was horrid.

the reason i decided to go ahead and tell you about it is that it did work out. after a few weeks i started getting some sleep, not much but enough. everything just started to fall into place again. i tried very hard to not yell at my son anymore and for the most part was succesful in that. it was a struggle for two or three weeks that i would never want to repeat.

ftr, the adjustment for zero to one was bliss, two to three was even easier. it was just one to two that was horrible. as ashamed as i am about it i did consider suicide those first couple of weeks, i felt like these beautiful babies deserved so much better. if i could go back in time and change anything i have ever done it would be redoing those first two weeks...but alas i can't.

what could have made it better? i have a few ideas:
~some kind of support person, even if only 30 minutes a day
~dh staying home from work for a full week
~a friend to call or visit
~relaxed expectations for myself

cami, i am a short drive from you. please tell me if you need me mama. i would not want anyone to deal with such a rough adjustment alone having btdt. i mean it!!!

much love mama!

danica

us the first time around with our daughters but I think with this set of children, Ezekiel and his brother or sister due in February it will be different because we are older and wiser and want them more so then we did our daughters. Our daughters came very early on in our marriage and we were not prepared for them, we wanted them of course but not the way we want our Ezekiel and this next one. I know that probably sounds awful but considering the circumstances we were given and how poor we were with our daughters until they were well into their teens well it is only natural that there would be problems. I grew up with parents whom were well off so going from that to dirt poor was very hard for me and having children in the midst of all that was hard also. When I was young I had no patience whatsoever and was very self centered as some young people can be. I hated worring about where our next meal was coming from, if it were just me and my dh it would not of been such a big worry but because there were babies it drove me rather insane I think. I had to use the food hampers often and nothing was new around our place, everything was very old and tattered. We could barely pay rent let alone pay for winter boots. So you see it was hard. I think now that we are better off finantually now (not rich by any means) but at least I can pay for new clothing if I should choose to and I can buy food for my children and not feel that I have beg borrow or steal to do so. So yes this second baby the second time around will be good for everyone in my family even Ezekiel!

Originally posted by eema
cami, i have really been wondering just how to answer this...but decided that the truth will suffice.

it was terrible. what made it so horrible? i don't really know, but i was really bad to jake those first few weeks. i yelled in his face and was angry with him so much. i wanted him to take a nap. dh went back to work when erin was a few days old. i feel like my behavior those first two weeks or so permanently altered jake's personality. i was depressed, temperamental, you name it. i have no idea why it was like that but it was horrid.



I feel for you mama, I went through something so similar with my first daughter when my second one came along. We were dirt poor and it was so hard for all of us. I was so young too and so niave. I also had PPD in a bad way and had to take meds to get me through it. I posted here about my experience but failed to leave out this for fear I suppose. I still fear this as it scared me so much to be such a miserable mama at the time. I am so glad you worked it all out as I did and are doing well now. I totally understand you. Hugs mama. :)

Two was a breeze. Now ask me about #3, that was another story!! YIKES!!!

wanted to second the advice from bluemountain. i found myself telling aliyah that she had to wait a minute, fairly often. but once i started telling nina that it was her turn to wait & that sometimes aliyah got to go first (for whatever), aliyah seemed to really hook into that. she started talking to nina more; my turn first this time, your turn first this time, etc. we got a total kick out of it...& it really helped.

the other thing aliyah wanted was to be part of *everything* at first. let me help you do this. let me hand you nina's dipe. we took pics of her helping & she was very proud of those pics, let me tell you! & she wanted several of the pics of them sleeping together on the couch taped to the wall above her crib where she could look at them.

sometimes it's easy...sometimes it's durned hard.

i am WAY more afraid about how nina will react to #3 than i was about how aliyah reacted to nina <sigh>. aliyah was 28 mos when nina was born. nina will be about 3 wks short of turning 2, & she's so totally different from her sister... i think once again aliyah will adapt okay, but for nina it will be harder.:(

I had an INCREDIBLE amount of life stresses piled on me during the pregnancy and postpartum, till Jacob was 3 months old. Things smoothed out a lot after that. Let's just say, I had pretty bad hyperemesis until about 12 wks, we moved from AK to FL when I was 12 weeks preggo, dh worked 80-90 hrs a week throughout my pregnancy, and I worked 30, at home with a toddler, I nearly hemmorhaged to death after Jacob's birth and so was extremely anemic for months afterward. Couple that with a just-turned-2-yo who wanted to nurse just as much as the baby, dh working 80-90 hrs a week as soon as Jake was *1 day* old, and then our business partners dropping all kinds of major changes (like wanting to sell the biz, or have us own it completely -- major transitions!) on us when Jacob was just a few weeks old. Add to that, that Jacob was a baby with digestive issues from the very start. And when he was 2-4 months old I had severe diarrhea, chronically, for 6 weeks (some kind of parasitic infection like giardia). It was incredibly intense!

But none of that had to do with *just* the transition from one child to two. I think if I hadn't had all of that going on, I could have handled the tandem nursing issue a bit better, more calmly, and avoided what ended up happening: Katie felt horrible about herself because I had to limit her nursing (and I did it in an angry way, because I had no reserves to calm myself at the time) so once dh was home from work for a few months, with us, I was able to heal some of that. Tandem nursing stunk for us, and Katie really really still needed to nurse, lots. So that was absolutely the hardest part, and until he was about 4-5 months old, she wanted to kill him. She *tried* to hurt him, constantly! If I hadn't been such an angry, stressed-out mama, I know that would have gone more smoothly, if not perfectly.

So...then...I got some parenting counseling to help me through...I had dh around...and we settled into a wonderful rhythm. Katie and Jacob now love each other sooo much, and 99% of the time get along fabulously. At 4 yo she can understand that he is a baby/younger and can't be expected to share or understand like she does. And she is really good about it. He has learned to be mellow and let her have her way sometimes. They just match each other perfectly. :) It's a great thing to see.

One of the best tips my parenting counselor gave me was to say to the older child, all day long, "I love you while my hands are busy." "I love you while I do dishes." "I love you while I nurse the baby." and so on...because to a young child, you do not love them while you do these things, you only love them when you give them your complete and full attention, and when another baby is there, that is part of what causes the jealousy...there you are giving attention to another *human being*! Also, to make sure to have one-on-one time, alone with the older child, *every single day.* Even if for five minutes. And allow them to play out negative feelings about the sibling in play...even encourage it if you see evidence of jealousy and rage elsewhere. They need to know that it's okay to hate the baby...because most likely they do...and they feel horrible about themselves because of it.

As Danica said...for me it was the life stresses surrounding that made it so hard...I would have liked to have someone around to help with Katie, just even for a short time each day, for 1-2 months afterward. Having dh home for a couple of weeks like he was with Katie, would have made all the difference. And not having hemmorhaged...not much could have been done about that, except in my case my dh and mom should have been better educated about what to do if they couldn't get in touch with my MW (I gave them the emergency backup sheet ahead of time but both of them forgot it existed! and I was too out of it to step in on my own behalf). Also, as far as nursing, I think that having a very firm plan of how I would limit Katie (e.g. three times a day for five minutes each time) would have been clearer for me and for her...easier for her to accept the limits. It was hard because I kept changing my mind; I would try to nurse her as much as she wanted, then freak out and limit like crazy. It was so, so hard.