Things We All Were NOT Prepared for When Having Kids…

Well it’s been an extra hot minute since I’ve written a blog post. Since May actually. Which is too bad because I actually really like writing. So I thought it would be fun to share ‘things we all were NOT prepared for when having kids’ based off the feedback I got on the IG story where I posed this question. I’m not going to lie, a lot of the responses had me cracking up. But they are/were all SO true. Some of the responses Kyle & I have yet to experience. Although I have no doubt that those specific ones are on the horizon for us sooner rather than later! There were quite a few redundant answers so obviously I’m only going to highlight those once…

 

 

Teething lasts 972 days.

That was my ‘things we all were NOT prepared for when having kids’ response. Like neither Kyle nor I had any idea that kids’ teeth don’t just ‘come in.’ Some take weeks. Others cause night after night of pain. A few seem to just appear out of thin air with no prior warning. Then multiply all that chaos by 2 with twins and it’s literally been teething season for 15+ months straight in our house. And that is not an exaggeration, I promise. Abram has had all of his baby teeth – minus his 2 year molars – for about 6 weeks now. THANK GOD. Oliver on the other hand still has one freaking canine tooth that we’ve been able to basically see under the gumline for 2 full weeks that STILL hasn’t broken the surface. Fun times. It sounds like a lot of you feel our literal pain in this part of parenting. Now to share the rest:

 

• Dishes and laundry are NONSTOP

• How little personal space or time to yourself you actually have

• The amount of liquid that can come out of a small human – don’t bother buying new furniture or rugs in this stage of life!

• Potty training is not for the faint of heart

• Your schedule is based completely off of THEIR schedule

• How difficult finding good daycares, a good nanny, solid babysitters would be

• That just because you have a kid (or 2 or 3) that each one can come out and be completely different

• Just how much you will think about/talk about sleep

• Why changing clothes or diapers or putting their shoes on has to be such a BIG deal

• The anxiety you have about leaving your babies alone with anyone else – or just all the anxiety in general about everything

• How often little ones get sick

• Breastfeeding isn’t always glamorous, easy or even possible in some instances

• An obsession around bowel movements will become a real thing

• Your adult friendship dynamics can really shift/change and you may lose some in the process

• All the crying/tears/meltdowns for reasons you can’t understand and they can’t communicate to you

• Meal planning, preparing and clean-up is a never-ending cycle

• The way you become unphased by things like cleaning up puke, getting food spit into your hands, drinking backwash after your kid drinks out of your water bottle…

• Exhaustion – not just physical but emotional + mental too – and the way it can take a toll on your entire body

 

Three responses to things we all were NOT prepared for when having kids really hit me hard:

 

1. How important having family/a supportive village around you really is – especially if you live far away from them
2. It’s OK to have your own routine and follow your OWN intuitions
3. That PPA/PPD is real and intense and not talked about nearly enough

 

All three of these were repeated multiple times. And I think all three of these need to be talked about and addressed more openly and regularly. In the age of Instagram, blogs, the internet in general, it often times (at least for me) feels super overwhelming about what the ‘right’ things are to do. I feel like I’m constantly Googling ‘is xyz normal’ and then I realize Googling random things at all hours of the night should not be normal itself. HA! With Oliver & Abram we at least tried to do things ‘by the book.’ Like trying to figure out sleep training – which we ditched quickly. I mean those 2 big boys are the perfect example of how no 2 babies are alike. I mean cripes, we were doing the SAME EXACT THING for them in terms of feeding, wake windows, tummy time, bedtime routine, etc. and they both had different sleep needs/preferences. Now with Samuel we’re focusing on him as an individual and doing what works for him, and us, and not readying 412 articles on what we ‘should’ be doing.

And then the family side of things. Dang if those responses didn’t scream at me. I’d give anything to not have my parents & youngest sister 9+ hours away. I also wish my other sister didn’t move from 1.5 hours away to 5.5 hours away. Neither of those drives are really day trips ya know? While it sucks, it also makes me appreciate the time we do all get together even more than I already did.

Ok that went from a pretty funny Things We All Were NOT Prepared for When Having Kids… blog post to a little darker at the end. Oops. Not my intention! Just keeping it real, as always. This mom’ing 3 under 2 thing is a rollercoaster, y’all. So that’s where I’ll leave you today. But now I really should get working on writing up Samuel’s birth story…since he’s almost 3 months already. YIKES.

 

xox