Reply to Another spacing question - #3 after a big gap between #1 and #2?

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Reply to "Another spacing question - #3 after a big gap between #1 and #2?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I found my 2 year 3 month age difference extremely challenging for almost the whole first year.  Things got better at 9 months when I got very serious about cry it out.  I had colicky babies, though.  The crying was deafening.  That said--  I'm pretty happy with the age difference now.  I would NEVER put myself through that again on purpose, but having a 3 year old and a five year old is quite nice.  By the way, I work full time, but I did have a decent amount of help 40 hr a week nanny and a helpful husband.  My two year old decided to wake up every time she heard the baby cry.  She became scared of going to bed and would wake up and yell for us when the baby woke her up.  We were zombies for a long time.  The stereo crying was pretty awful... and unexpected!  My two year old was actually very verbal, but she regressed and begged us to feed her and hold her in our laps all the time.  I did somehow manage to toilet train her during all this madness (before returning to work).[/quote]

Wow, that sounds almost exactly like us. Our kids are also 27 months apart. They weren't colicky babies but that second baby was/is just difficult. Despite multiple attempts using different methods, the second baby didn't sleep through the night once until she was 14 months old. Naps were/are always a struggle with her too. She's just a crappy sleeper. And of course the older child dropped his nap right at age 3 (I was not ready for that!) Also, the older kid regressed and wanted us to do everything for him. I guess he was jealous of the attention the baby got because in the months after the baby was born, he got very clingy with me, started having sleep issues when he had always been a great sleeper before, wanted us to feed him all the time and carry him around everywhere whereas before baby he always wanted to assert his independence, would whine and cry about everything whereas before the baby he was very verbal.

Of course every kid is different and I'm not saying your kids would necessarily have the same issues ours did. But, all this to say that if I could go back in time, I would've spaced them out more (I think ideally I would've had a 3 year spacing maybe even 4). and if a friend or family member asked for my advice, I'd advise them to go for a 3-4 year spacing too. It was a very stressful first year after  my second was born. Second is only 15 months now so I don't really know how it'll be yet but I do think this spacing will be nice when they get older at least.[/quote]

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