Reply to Transition from one to two kids

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[quote=Anonymous]It may be a little too close now, but my advice for anyone else following along pregnant with number two is to start thinking through your routines and how you’re going to do them with two kids. I know way too many parents of one go to the playground and follow their toddler around the entire time.  Then they have the second one and are shocked that their toddler doesn’t know to stay with a grown-up, or stay in one area to play. But nobody ever taught them that they have to stay with the group. They were the leader and the parents followed. Change that before your toddler blames it on the baby!

And think through things like getting ready for school routine and bedtime routines. I started my toddler‘s preschool routine half an hour early as soon as I hit the second trimester and started incorporating some quiet activities at the breakfast table before breakfast. Then once I had the baby my toddler was already used to sitting quietly at the table for half an hour doing a little project and that gave me a window where I could nurse the baby in a chair nearby.

For a bedtime routines, I used to do the whole thing in my toddler‘s room, but I knew once I had the baby I would need a minute to transition the baby so I could focus on the toddler alone for the last three minutes of bedtime routine at least. So we switched to reading in a rocker in my room, then singing songs together there.  Once the baby came, we were able to transition pretty smoothly to reading while I nursed and rocking together until the baby dozed off enough to transition to a swing.  Then I could go spend five minutes putting my firstborn into bed before returning to transition the baby to the bassinet.

In my experience, building our routines so that it was possible for just one person to handle both kids for most parts of the day from as early as possible was really helpful.  A lot of my friends in the same situation did it on the fly and the solution was to divide and conquer, but the problem with that was that then neither parent was ever all the way off. It was important to us that we still get to go do things without any kids along. DH and I have always switched off bedtimes and by the time my maternity leave was done we were both back to alternating who did bedtime. He does three nights a week, I do three nights a week, and a sitter does every Saturday. That means we each have three nights a week that we can stay late at work to impress our employer, meet with friends, go see a movie, go to the gym, etc. It helps us to still feel like people outside of being parents.[/quote]

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