My wife said yesterday to me that I have to remind her how hard is to have a newborn if she ever wants to had another one. She said I have to record her while she was talking about how kids take up so much time and energy. She was talking about all those nights without sleep and days without proper relaxation hours. About being constantly under the pressure that you don’t have enough time for anything else but kids. For me it is also hard. All that cleaning, changing diapers, helping wife, playing with kids, carring them, giving them bath, reading stories to them.
Nights when the OD (oldest daughter) wakes me up are really the worst. Because usually she wakes up a few times at night crying. Challenging part is to wake her up and to soothe her. Most of the time she wakes up while dreaming something really vivid. I had a few laughs witnessing her how she was dreaming about her walking. But in reality she couldn’t move forward because her head was already touching the end of the bed. When I finally managed to wake her up she said in tears: “We must walk further dad” :) That was one of many vivid dreams she is having lately. What is so hard about waking kid up you might ask? When she dreams so vividly you must wake her up very carefully. You must be gentle while doing it. I found the best way to do this is to turn on the led light on my phone and talk to her gently about me being next to her and that everything is going to be fine. Sometimes also helps if I gently pet her hair.
Of course in the morning she has no idea that she woke up 3 times and she wakes up like every other day at around 6:20 am. I on the other hand am feeling like a truck drove over me last night. Can’t think how my wife must be tired taking care every night of our YD (youngest daughter) who wakes every two to three hours. There are days I find chores disgusting. I would rather just not clean a thing because it’s just too much for me. And I’m doing this for only one month now. Can’t think how other moms who decide to stay home can keep up with chores day after day… Sometimes I’m so tired I can’t go for a jogging. The other day happened to me I took a nap during the day and overslept time when I needed to pickup our OD. Sometimes when YD is unstoppably crying I wish she were just a little bit quieter even though I know she can’t help herself and with crying she is just saying to us that something is not right. It helps when I hum to her. But sometimes nothing helps. I just have to accept the fact that she might be in some kind of pain because of the digestion problems. Luckily for us digestion problems aren’t so severe as they were with OD.
The OD really misses alone time with her mom. I see in her eyes how she misses her while mom is most of the time with YD. We decided that when mom is with OD I will take YD to another room so they can have more bonding time by themself.
I ditched my exercise routine today to finally write something. And I’m glad I did because writing about life makes me happy. I will conclude this writing with promise to myself:
I will not complain about how hard it is when and if having a new baby. I wrote entire post about complaining and how hard it is. I didn’t mention all the things because I’m simply too tired. But this is the real promise. When and if I decide to have more kids, I won’t complain because I already know it is hard. Be a man and stand up for your actions.