Baby Times Two – 8 Week Update

Baby #2 is eight weeks this week, and I thought I’d post a little update on how everything is going. Thank you again for all your kind words of encouragement and comments – and I’m sorry I’ve been behind on the posting and responding lately. I hope I can catch up soon!

In the meantime, a few pieces of advice, and my thoughts on life with another baby –

1. First of all – it’s getting better! Because I’ll be honest, the first week was really hard. I basically forgot everything I ever knew about newborns and was in total shock that I now had created another life form that cried every hour. And if you think that might be your life for the foreseeable future…of course you sink into a pit of gloom. But it’s gotten so much better and I think if someone had just told me that line, over and over again my first week, I would have done a lot better. Sometimes you just have to hear out loud, what’s logical. It gets better. It gets better!

2. Next, my answer to the question that I know I asked everyone with multiple children  – is two kids two times harder than one? 

My answer is that it’s actually around 1.5X. But largely because you don’t do a lot of stuff with baby #2 that you did with #1. With Baby #1, we treated him like a little emperor. Drawing a bath? Measure the water temperature precisely with a special thermometer. Swaddle kind of maybe touched a tiny bit of the ground? Throw it in the wash. Baby crying for no reason? He must be bored, as he’s a genius. Quick, fetch the Einstein gizmo!

With Baby #2, we do none of that. To be honest, she’s kind of like a potted plant that we drag around. I still coo at her, and play with her and love and nuzzle her. But all that extra worrisome pampering…that’s all gone. If I had known what I knew with Baby #2 with Baby #1…man, I would have had such an easier time.

3. Am I glad that I spaced my kids (relatively) close together? Yes and no. Yes because I only want two and now we’re done…but honestly, in retrospect, I think it would have also been good to wait a little longer. My son wasn’t yet two years old when our daughter was born…he was still a baby himself. And it’s a hard transition! Not to mention the guilt you feel yourself. I checked out of the hospital less than 24 hours after I checked in (and that’s including labor), just because I felt so bad to be away from him.

4. Finally, my one piece of advice, to those who are considering their second.  If you have one kid (or none), have a list of experiences/destinations you want to do/see, and are always saying to yourself, I should really do this but…and if the rest is “it costs money,” my advice would be – DO IT. If it doesn’t put you in debt or financial jeopardy of course.  Then DO IT. If its a matter of buying things vs experiences…choose the latter, every time. Otherwise, you may not get the chance again for years and years. I now curse every time I think about those wasted holiday breaks when it was just my husband and I, and we didn’t go to Mexico, or Vietnam, or Austria, or Hangzhou, just because it was too much work/more expensive/too many holiday days. If I had known, I would have done them all. Back then, we thought if we just skipped something, we could make up for it in a few months, or maybe a year. Now? It’s like…five years down the line.

But overall, and yes I know I say it all the time – it’s been worth it. I’m happy to be on this adventure with #2, and thank you all again for being here with me.