amitymamaThe Attachment Parenting Community

shaymic · 09-08-2002, 03:11 PM

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!

Mamaselena · 09-08-2002, 03:38 PM

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....

Puja · 09-08-2002, 03:44 PM

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

09-08-2002, 04:53 PM

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

danica · 09-08-2002, 06:15 PM

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

DreamingMama · 09-08-2002, 07:29 PM

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!

DreamingMama · 09-08-2002, 07:34 PM

Quote:

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.

pj and the bear · 09-09-2002, 11:19 AM

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

motherofpearls · 09-09-2002, 12:23 PM

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.

mamabear · 09-10-2002, 02:18 AM

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.