This pregnancy has been different than my others for many reasons and when I imagine the baby being here I can't help but to be excited about having older children with a newboorn. When my youngest was born my oldest was only 20 months old. I was raising 3 babies ages newborn, 10 months old, and 20 months old. They all required basically the same thing. Two were still in diapers and the other still required my help every single time that she used the potty. Two were still nursing/being bottle fed and one still needed me to assist her too during meal times. One napped constantly and two napped on the same schedule. I truly feel like I had it easy because their growth stages weren't all over the place. They did the same things at the same time and we kept it all flowing along great. I was able to nap a lot during my pregnancy with our oldest because I didn't have any children yet. With our 2nd and 3rd napping was out of the question. When the kids weren't awake and taking up all of my attention, I was needing to put my attention on house chores.
With this pregnancy my older two girls are in school and my son/youngest is almost 4. He loves nap time so we nap together every day pretty much ha. It's amaze balls. I do house chores while he's eating or building a Lego tower but most of the time he helps me clean. Chores are a breeze these days because we live in a 1000 square foot cabin with less than 1/4 of our belongings. (Post coming tomorrow that stems from that topic) Even when the girls are home it's the same kind of deal. We clean together and I 'touch up clean' while they eat or play. We all take a nap in my bed together. It's so nice to have older children while you're pregnant and I have complete faith that it'll be the same once the baby is born. The kids are very helpful and eager to learn things. Eager to be involved. Sure they bicker daily and make plenty of messes. They are busy, busy, busy but things are still simpler now than it was when they were all 3 babies at once. They aren't as dependent on me and it's just easier. I'm cherishing it a lot because all too soon they will be teens and that scares the shit out of me. I am not ready to raise teenagers. God needs to bless me with more grace before I have to deal with mouthy teens.
Let's move on from the teen subject before I stroke out ha.
I know that I'll need to find a balance in how much the baby needs my attention once he or she is born and making sure that the older kids are never left out but I'm not worried about it at all. Just about anything that I do with the baby, the kids can help me do too. We have lots of loved ones to snuggle baby while I spend alone time with my other children. I will not be that mom who sits around holding a newborn all of the time while her older children do their own thing. That's something that I can say with 110% certainty. If baby cries constantly and wants held, I will ask my mom for help. If baby doesn't sleep and that leaves me overly tired, I will ask Brian for help. I've raised 3 kids on my own while Brian worked and aside from rarely asking my mom or grandma to baby sit while I went to a doctors appointment I never asked anyone else for help. Even with that mom didn't baby sit until my kids were older and my grandma just watched them for the first time in the last 3 months but asking for help with the baby is worth it to me if it comes to that. I refuse to neglect my other kids just because we chose to expand our family. Asking my mom to come over and cuddle a fussy baby for a bit in no way makes me reliant on her to raise my kids! I don't see it coming to that but if it does, it does.
I don't care if I have to baby wear a newborn with 1-3 preschoolers on each hip and my back every day, I will do whatever it takes to make sure that all of my children know that they are still Momma's babies. This was literally my only concern about adding a baby to our family now that there will be such a big age gap (atleast to us it's a big gap). I refuse to fail my kids by constantly taking my attention away from them because we have a new baby. Yes, this could be my last kid and yes, I want to take in every second that I can enjoying baby hood but life isn't just about me and at the end of the day I won't get these moments back with ANY of my kids. I will spend my alone time cherishing coos and tiny baby cuddles when my older kids are in bed, when Brian is holding the baby, or when the kids are at school but when they are home life will revolve around all of my children. To me it's not just about knowing that I never turned my kids away when they wanted to play with me or wanted held. It's about knowing that I went out of my way to hold them and play with them. They didn't have to come to me to get that attention. Obviously with 4 children they are bound to need things at the same time. From the baby crying because he or she needs nursed and an older child crying because he or she fell down to changing the baby's diaper during a brawl between the older kids. I know the chaos of mom life and I know that it almost never goes perfectly but I make it work. I will bandage a boo boo with a baby on my boob. I will wipe a dirty butt while I'm breaking up a fight. I will read a story with 4 kids on my lap. I will do whatever I need to do to DO MY JOB and do it fairly. I have zero doubts about that. I may be bald eventually and my house chores may get pushed to the back burner but I have no doubt that I will do what I was born to do, be a mom. This is the life that I begged God for for a lot of years. This is the life that I pretended that I had since I was 4 years old. This is the life that I told Brian that I wanted on our very first date because he wasn't worth my time if he didn't want this too. This is who I am and this is what makes me, me. Those onry and adorable little humans are my heartbeats and I never want to fail them. I know that I probably will because I make plenty of mistakes but I can sure do my very best to be the mom that they deserve.
There are zero ways to be a perfect mother but their are a billion ways to be a damn good one.
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