fyi: novel!!! mostly for me to remember these days 10 years from now.
it’s monday morning, I was up nursing the girls from 6-7:15am. I hear charlie in his room singing the abcs, away in a manger (his favorite song), reading his truck book and then I hear his “HEY MOM!!!!! HEY MOM!!!!”, which is my cue that I need to get him out of his crib soon. I am thankful that ellie and claire both went back to sleep easily. I go downstairs get charlie up and we start our normal morning. he drinks some juice and we play cars while I pump and he tells me “mommy pump baby sisters milk” over and over. I make some oatmeal and we split it. all is going well. it was sunny out so I decided to try and burn off some of his steam by playing a little soccer outside until his sisters wake up. we go outside – run a few laps in the yard and I start to hear the girls wake up. it is 9 am and this is when the fun starts.
ellie woke up first so I start feeding her while playing cars with charlie. he wants a snack so I make him a snack – ellie is still eating. I try to coax him into reading some books on the couch so I can just sit and nurse, which he does for about 2 books. ellie is my putsy eater so occasionally I look down and realize she is really just sleeping so I go into the room to change her with a very loud charlie following me. he climbs up the crib to peak at claire who is sleeping soundly and I whisper to him to try and be quiet so claire can keep sleeping. he then drops a car on her and is singing “away in a manger” really loud to her (it is his favorite song and you should hear some of the mash-ups he puts together with “twinkle twinkle little star” or “happy day to you”). anyway - thankfully, she stays pretty asleep, but is starting to stir, which is my cue to finish up with ellie so when claire is up I can feed her. I finish nursing ellie, while putting in the “fish dvd” (finding nemo) hoping it will distract charlie for a little bit, but he is only entertained by dvds for about 10 minutes. I think ellie is done because she continues to fall asleep so I swaddle her up, try to burp her (but she never willingly relaxes and burps so she gets agitated later) and put her in the “jiggle chair” (lamb papasan chair). I grab claire and start her feeding session this time trying to get charlie to work on puzzles with me only to put in the “car dvd” (cars) to try a different distraction. I hear ellie start to cry out in the room so up we go (me, claire and charlie) to investigate why she is upset. it is quite difficult to nurse one baby, keep a toddler from crawling into a crib to pounce on his sister and sooth an unhappy newborn.
this is where I have my first bout of mommy guilt for the day (well you could argue that putting 2 dvds in by 945 would give me some mommy guilt, but now that is just survival). so ideally I would be able to burp ellie long enough to make sure she didn’t still have any bubbles left in her belly to bother her or I would be able to hold her while she works on some bowel issues, but with 2 other kids needing my attention I have to let her fuss it out. I offer her a pacifier she takes it, looks ok and then spits it back out and cries more. when it was just me and charlie I would hear moms talk about their mommy guilt and really didn’t understand what they were talking about. since march 23rd I now know what it feels like to want to give all your kids a certain level of attention, but you just can’t. now I know they are all having more than just their basic needs met, but it is heartbreaking to want to give more and not be able to.
anyway – on to the rest of my day. so ellie is upset and claire is nursing and charlie is getting bored. thankfully, ellie settles down (after a little spit up) and falls asleep peacefully. claire finishes up and since it is a nice day out I decide to load up the kids in the stroller and take a trip down to the park. claire was not really settling down so I thought a stroller ride would help. we load up and start down to the park. I knew going alone might be a challenge because I would have 2 infants in a stroller and a wandering toddler, but I figured it was worth a shot. anything is better than sitting in our house (which causes me to go nuts!). we make it to the park and I unload charlie. he takes off to the big kid park stuff instead of the toddler section, which is where I was hoping he would play. claire then starts crying so I pick her up and start nursing her while keeping an eye on charlie. by this point he has climbed up the big kid equipment and is waiting to go down a slide (he wants to hold your hand when he goes down). so I ditch sleeping ellie in the stroller and go over while nursing claire to hold charlie’s hand as he slides down. I try to coax charlie back to the toddler section by bribing him with fruit snacks. he walks over, but won’t entertain it. he wants to follow all the big kids he sees playing at the other section of the park. so back he goes to the top. this time he is standing up near a bridge that has a cut out section where kids can go down a fireman pole. I was nervous one of the big kids would bump him and he would fall off. (whoever designed parks was definitely not a mom with 3 kids under 2). after maybe 10-15 minutes I decide I can’t handle leaving one of my kids unattended (mommy guilt again) and bribe charlie back into his “king of a castle” seat to walk home. phew! we made it.
once we get home, it is time for ellie to eat again, but it is also lunch time for charlie and claire is still not happy. I put claire in the swing because it sometimes helps soothe her, but our swing is in our living room which is good and bad. good because if I am in the living room I can attend to the baby in the swing without leaving charlie (which makes him act out), but bad because if I need to change the other baby’s diaper I need to get charlie to follow me into the nursery willingly so I can keep an eye on him. he is usually quite gentle and safe with the girls but definitely has 2 year old moments where he will push the swing extremely hard or try to share matchbox cars with them. I think I prepared charlie some crackers, buttered toast and water for lunch while feeding ellie. more mommy guilt. I finish feeding ellie and try to get her to settle, but she wasn’t having it. I fed claire again to see if hunger was her issue, but it really wasn’t (sometimes feeding them is easier than anything else). at this point it is charlie’s nap time. both girls are oscillating between looking peaceful and full on newborn cry (think wah wah wah while they are red-faced and shaking). since ellie and claire really don’t cry that much I feel like when they do I really want to be able to soothe them. I tried a bunch of different ways to make them happy – changing positions, more burping, unswaddling, swaddling, etc – nothing worked. so I left claire, the more calm of the two, in the swing and took ellie downstairs to put charlie to sleep. last week I was able to get charlie down for nap without having one of his sisters with me, which I liked because I was able to give him the focused attention he is used to. while trying to read him a bible story, ellie is on and off crying (which gets charlie all concerned) and I hear claire on and off wailing in the swing. at this point I was losing it. I was tearing up trying to read to charlie because I felt like despite all my efforts all 3 of my kids were not content. charlie noticed my tears and looks up concerned “mommy cry??”. after one story, charlie asked for another one, but ellie is losing it so I have to tell him no and I lay ellie on the bed to put charlie in his crib against his will. I offer to tickle his back and sing him a song while ellie is screaming on the bed. he says “sister cry?” and I feel guilty I am basically ignoring her. finally I say “I am sorry charlie, but I have to help your sister. I will see you after your nap and bubba will be here when you wake up”. I leave my sweet crying toddler with my wailing infant. more guilt.
thankfully, I get upstairs to see claire sleeping peacefully in the swing. I am then able to care exclusively for ellie, which I was happy to do. fifteen minutes later my mother-in-law laura comes in and holds ellie so I can eat and drink something. I had a big sigh of relief because I knew I didn’t have to repeat that morning until thursday. she had volunteered to take charlie for me from monday through wednesday since bill was covering a really busy service and wouldn’t be around to help in the evenings (I can barely handle morning and naptime I know I can’t handle ALL day and night yet without help). I then was able to take a little nap and when I woke up laura (aka bubba) and charlie took off. I then walked inside to my quiet house and cried a little because I missed him and was overtired. after just a few tears, I replayed the morning and reminded myself how overwhelmed I was and that I would have 2 mornings of quiet, which I have thoroughly enjoyed (even though I really missed charlie). bill didn’t get home until 10pm monday night so I was extra glad charlie was in hudson with bubba and pappy. thank you bubba and pappy for giving me a break. I will hopefully have enough energy to make it through friday now.
I am not beating myself up about this mommy guilt. I am writing about it because it is a new experience for me to have to divide my attention between kids. I also want to remember the day that it hit me. in 2 years, I will be chasing a 4 yr old and 2 – 2 yr olds at a park and I will reread this and think to myself man that was easy. Lord help me!
ellie enjoying some peaceful sleep on the couch and tummy time. something that we can only do when charlie is on vacation.
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