Those first 12 hours after Heath was born were bliss! I must say, I really enjoyed having a baby during the day (opposed to at night). It just all felt so much more relaxed, and Kere was able to spend the day with me to keep me company and let me sleep when I could.
Paisley came to visit with my mum, sisters and dad about 3.30pm. I felt so emotional seeing her and watching her interact with Heath for the first time. It was such a surreal moment seeing my two babies together. She was smitten with Heath and kept patting his head!
As I said goodbye to Paisley and my family I started to feel emotional. I didn’t like having Paisley being passed around family members, I just wanted to be home with her, Kere and Heath. However the breast feeding wasn’t going the best as I was still experiencing a bit of pain when Heath was feeding. I used up most of my expressed milk to give my nipples a bit of break (through syringe feeding). We had a lactation consultant come visit us the next day and she gave me some tips and positions to try and see if they helped. My nipples continued to get worse and they started blistering, bleeding and bruising again. So day three I decided to call it quits! I knew going into it this time round I wasn’t going to put myself through the same pain and stress I did with Paisley! I wasn’t going to let it get so bad I ended up back in hospital!!
This also meant we could go home, I said to myself I would stay in hospital until the breast feeding was sorted and because I was stopping I felt happy enough to leave. So, after two nights in hospital we went home.
At home I quickly developed mastitis again, but this time we were on top of it much quicker and because my boobs/nipples weren’t quite as sore as they were with Paisley I was able to massage them a lot better! So with taking antibiotics and massaging twice a day I was able to get rid of all the blocked up milk and therefore get rid of the mastitis! However it did take me a good 10 days or more to get them sorted and those 10 days were so painful! It was awful not being able to really cuddle or pick Paisley up because they just hurt so bad! I also hated being in the room when Heath was crying as I could feel more milk coming in (for those of you who don’t know, when your baby cries is can cause your body to start producing milk as it can sense your baby needs feeding) so this was also very painful for me!
All of this combined with the normal hormonal highs and lows that come with just having had a baby I was starting to feel quite stressed and anxious! I just wanted everything to settle back into normal life, only I seemed to forget that things weren’t ‘normal’ anymore. Well not our old normal, we now had a newborn as well as a 15 month old.
The change going from one child to two is quite massive (well it was for me). On one hand I felt guilty for not being able to give Paisley as much attention as I use to, and on the other hand I was feeling guilty for not being able to just sit and give Heath cuddles like I did when Paisley was a newborn. It was such an emotional struggle for me, feeling like I wasn’t giving enough attention and love to either child!
It felt like I had to choose, when they both needed or wanted me, I had to pick, who am I going to tend to first. Most the of the time it was Heath, obviously, as he was the baby his needs generally came first. I felt like I began to resent him for this, resent him for taking away my time with my daughter and making me choose him over her.
I think the hardest part initially was that Paisley didn’t understand. So when I was having to feed Heath or put him to sleep Paisley would get upset that I couldn’t give her attention or read her a book. It made me feel so guilty.
A lot of my emotion around this stemmed from the fact Heath was a very unexpected pregnancy and I struggled emotionally through that pregnancy with the idea of having two such young children and how we would do it. I know I’m not the first person to have children close together and there are people who have had kids closer in age than me, but we all have different personalities in how we cope with things and this sort of thing really stresses me out. I’m such a control freak so, feeling like I didn’t have a choice in such a huge decision really effected me!
Once my mastitis cleared up and I wasn’t in so much pain I was able to start playing with Paisley a bit more which then meant she was happier to sit and wait or play quietly by herself when I needed to tend to Heath! Also Heath started sleeping longer stretches which gave me more time to spend with Paisley!
I’m Not going to lie, the first 2 months were a constant learning curve some days Heath had great naps and I got lots of time with Paisley and other days he just wanted to be held all day and all Paisley did was watch kids videos on YouTube. It literally felt like the videos were raising Paisley more than me! As a mum there is so much pressure and expectations around how you should raise your children. To me, it felt like I was failing as Paisley was watching a lot of television and no housework was getting done.
When Heath was around 3 months old both kids and myself got really sick! Paisley and Heath had bronchiolitis and I had sinus infections (safe to say we had our fair share of trips to the doctors). That was an extremely hard time because both kids were very unhappy and super clingy! It was just heart breaking not being able to really give them both the cuddles they wanted! Heath actually coped with it quite well so I was able to put him down for some naps still and give Paisley some love and attention. I had a fair few breakdowns over this time though, having just had a baby, trying to cope with the new challenges that came with having two kids and then trying to cope with us all being so sick just became too much for me to handle! Thankfully I have the most amazing supportive fiancĂ© who was there to help as much as he could – and when we couldn’t afford for him to take too many days off work I was able to stay with my parents too and get help from them! I really don’t think I could have managed through this time without all this support!
Slowly the kids and I started getting better and finally things started to settle down! This was around the time I started eating healthier and loosing weight which I think also helped immensely in getting me back into the rhythm and feeling normal again. I started to get more energy, which meant I could play with paisley more and get outside with both the kids for walks! As soon as I started to settle into life with the two kids and stopped stressing and feeling so anxious I noticed a huge change in the kids too! It really is so true that your children pick up on your emotions. When I was so stressed and emotional the kids were unsettled too!
Around 4 months Heath started to cat nap during the day and was ending up in our bed during the night. At 3am one morning while up with Heath I decided enough was enough and I sought help from a sleep training company. I know these methods are not what everyone agrees with and that’s fine, but for me it was an absolute life saver. To start with it was very difficult! The first week was extremely stressful, we made a lot of changes to how Heath slept (such as getting rid of the dummy and un-swaddling him). There were many times I thought about giving up and just going back to what we were doing before, but I wasn’t happy with how he was sleeping previously and it was beginning to take a toll on Paisley, Heath and me. So I stuck with it! Yes Heath did cry, a lot, but I would go in and give him cuddles, and I always knew his cry’s were just for cuddles, he was fed, changed and burped. Slowly but surely he started to cry less and less until he was able to put himself to sleep with just a couple of little grizzles! To be able to put Heath in bed and know he would go to sleep on his own just meant I had a lot more time to spend with Paisley and doing jobs around the house. It also meant he was able to learn how to link sleep cycles so it wasn’t long before his naps became a couple of hours each and only waking once in the night again (which helped make him a lot happier too and he was getting the sleep he needed). This is when things really fell into place, and since then have been smooth sailing (mostly).
I always knew going from one child to two would be difficult, but I never expected to go through all the emotional stress that I did. I think the only way I was able to get myself out of the rut I felt like I was in, was to seek help from those around me and to cry on the shoulders of those who love me when I needed to. We can’t always do these things on our own, and sometimes we as mums put so much on our plate and think we need to be super woman and do it all. It also helped a lot when I finally stopped putting so much pressure on myself to be the ‘perfect mum’ (there literally is no such thing) this was when I was able to relax a bit more. So what if Paisley watched a lot of tv, so Heath didn’t get cuddled at every nap! They are perfectly happy kids and they are my kids. I needed to realize I had to parent the best I could for me and my kids and not how society expects us to. Obviously now that Heath is older Paisley watches next to no television as we are all able to play together. So these moments are fleeting and we just have to do what we can to get through the day sometimes.
Paisley and Heath are the lights of our lives and I am so happy the are so close in age! They are becoming best buds and I can’t wait to watch their bond grow stronger.
Sometimes the universe knows what we need before we do – and our family needed Heath!
Healthy for Me and My 3 