Today we have a new guest writer who shares her thoughts on bringing home baby #4:

When I was first asked to write an article for KP about what it was like to “bring home baby number 4” my initial response was flattery and then disbelief.  I wondered why anyone would want to read about that.  So few people choose to go this route, but after thinking about it a bit I realized that my experience adding one final family member to our crew was most similar to when we had our first.  Every parent has a first child (or two) and it is with this in mind that I write this.

Waiting for our final baby to arrive lacked most of the excitement of a first birth.  I was excited but (like all the other times I was expecting) I had “The List” and that took precedent.   A ridiculously long list of things I needed done before baby arrived.  Everyone’s got one, but since this baby was also arriving along with Fall my list consisted of all sorts of yard and gardening work that I knew would fall by the wayside and make next Spring insurmountable.

One of the major differences is that when I was waiting for our first born I read every piece of literature regarding pregnancy, labour and delivery, breastfeeding, parenting a newborn, etc, etc, etc.  I must have been the most educated expecting mother on the planet.  I knew what to expect, how to get what I wanted and how to fix nearly everything that could possibly happen.  I treated this as my new job and wanted to be as prepared as I could.  As babies two and three came along all that knowledge got pushed aside by lack of sleep, poor self-care and lots of tears.  By the time I was expecting my final babe it was clear, I had filed all that information so far in the back of my head that on rare occasion I would recognize that once upon a time it was part of my parenting bible.  Right now this well-seasoned Mom has an over tired, inconsolable, over stimulated, colicky, refluxing, crib hating babe that I can’t quite grasp, or so I think!

Her birth came and after a short meet and greet with her sisters, life continued on as if she’d always been here.  My eldest went to school armed with a picture of our newest member and my other 2 had all the same demands of me as always.  I don’t feel like having a fourth child increased my work load at all, but I’ve noticed I have less time, patience and energy  to do it.  Those three factors make it feel like I’m lost most of the time. I get the necessities done, but there is this group of “things that can wait” that are piling up into a mountainous heap.  I know some things are getting completely buried in there and I’ll never see them again.  It sounds terrible at first, but I’ve come to realize that if they get buried maybe they weren’t that important in the first place.  I had the same overwhelming feelings when my first was born. In fact, I’ve had them every time we had a new born.  I’ve only gotten better at letting all those “supposedly” important things sort themselves out.  When you’re in survival mode what has to get done, gets done.  I knew that when I had my first, but I didn’t live it until I had to.  I wish I had grasped that much sooner.  It would have made for a much happier home.

Having 4 little people at home means you miss so much.  Even on your best day you just can’t be 100% physically and emotionally present even the majority of the time.  This means you miss their cues for being tired, hungry and sick until it’s blatantly obvious because they start acting out.  When you have your first it takes a while to get to know your child and their cues, so you run into the same issues.  Every kid’s different.  So while I’m struggling to get to know this new little person, I’m missing so much of what’s going on with my other kids and things get really messy, really quickly.  With my first, even when I could see her cues I wasn’t always quite sure about how to soothe her or get her to sleep.  I was still in the stage of figuring out what kind of parent I was going to be.  So even with one child, things would get hairy in the blink of an eye.

I guess the biggest thing that shocked me was the effect our final babe had on how I viewed our marriage.  Since the birth, I’ve felt that I’m maxed out.  I’m sure everyone gets it, but this time it seems to be lingering and the first thing to go from my list was hubby’s needs.  This was how I knew I’d turned a corner.  Other times I would still try to take care of him and he had come to expect it.  This time I get done what I can and let the rest get buried.  If it means he has to go out for lunch because I didn’t pack one or wear one of his least favourite shirts or search for underwear in the dark because I didn’t get laundry done, then so be it.  Then I bury the guilt and move on.   When we had our first I remember how disappointed I was in how involved he was with our baby.  He was definitely not the father I had envisioned and because of that I pushed him away.  We’ve had several years to “rehearse” and I feel that we’ve both improved.  But when there’s a limit to how much you can extend yourself something’s got to give so I decided that this time it had to be him.  I couldn’t sacrifice myself or this ship was going down.  I stopped taking care of him, just like I had the first time around, but for different reasons.

So many people call me Super Mom or think I have some inordinate amount of patience, but the reality is that I am not, nor do I have even an average amount of patience.  I’m just like every other Mom out there, whether it’s their first or their forth.  IN fact I’m pretty sure that most fist time moms have a better grasp on what they’re doing than I do.

About your Author | Guest

As always, you and your ideas are wonderfully welcomed. If you are interested in getting involved with KamloopsParents.com simply email elizabeth@kamloopsparents.com and we can chat! Your stories and images are fabulous!