Surviving vs. Thriving:
My Personal Story Of Adding A New Baby To The Mix
By Sara Davenport
Shortly after having my second child, I stumbled across an article about families that decide to have children close together, specifically less than two years apart. I wish I could point you to this article but there’s little to no hope of that happening since I read it during one of my newborn’s 3 am feeding frenzies. I actually remember very little about the article with the exception of one short phrase the author used to describe a family’s life with such young children back-to-back – surviving, not thriving.
When I read that line – surviving, not thriving – I felt like the clouds parted, a ray of light was shown upon me, and for the first time in several weeks I could see clearly. Oh my land! Was this article written about me? Has the author been watching ME “survive” from a distance? I was definitely doing just that – surviving. There was no thriving going on at my house.
My sister-in-law and several of my friends have recently added new bundles of joy to their families. A few have asked about my experience of expanding from a family of three to four and I’ve been honest – possibly too honest at times. My intentions are not to frighten but to set realistic expectations. It’s hard, possibly the hardest thing that I’ve ever done. I recently came across a blog that tells it like it is – Transitional Mom: Mom of Two by Sarah Scott. Scott is a new transitional mom of a 4 year old and 5 month old and states in her blog, “I am caring for young children. And, as much as I’d like to, I am not doing it right every day. No one in this house is getting as much of me as they want. Or as much of me as I want to give them. And I struggle with that. I wrestle with that. Sometimes, I get a roundhouse kick to the face by that.”
Scott’s quote couldn’t more accurately describe that time in my life. Every day felt like a marathon. More times than I can count, baby Camille would be crying, Wren would be crying and I would be crying too. Trying to meet two completely different sets of needs simultaneously was practically impossible. I would day dream about telling my husband I was running to get milk, slipping my passport in my purse, and just high-tailing it to Atlanta and getting on a plane – any plane – just to get away for few hours or days. Wren told me one night that she wanted Daddy to put her to bed, not me – insert knife into heart and twist. I was snappy, I didn’t sleep at all, and there were many days that I didn’t remember to brush my own teeth until well into the afternoon. It all came to a head one evening when I was trying to talk to Wren about her day, while bouncing a crying baby in my arms, and I just broke down. I started crying and ranting about how I had ruined Wren’s life, how she wasn’t being engaged properly, how we were forcing her to watch too much Dora the Explorer on TV and blah, blah, blah. The look on my husband’s face was pure shock and panic. It was official – I had gone off the deep end.
Fast forward to present day and my girls are growing and changing like weeds – Wren , age 3 and Camille, 18 months. I can look back on those first days, weeks, and months and breathe a huge sigh of relief. I survived … we all survived. I wish I could rewind and do some things differently, but at the end of the day I’m still married, my children are healthy and happy, and things are great. Of course there are still tantrums, time-outs (for me as well), fights about eating vegetables and lots of toy snatching. But we also have an abundance of giggles, wiggles, snuggles, stories, and field trips.
As time passes, things get easier and everyone seems to settle into a rhythm. I believe we can now be labeled as “thriving.” Ask me again when the girls are 13 and 15 years old. I’m keeping that passport handy just in case! 😉
