…and by beautiful mess, I mean chaotic blur.
I am slowly emerging from that whirlwind of sleepless nights and endless feeds that comes with having 15 months between babies and two extraordinary things have now happened:
- I am almost back to feeling like me again.
- I am experiencing selective memory syndrome where the hard parts are starting to fade only to be replaced with all the happy clappy memories.
Down in the depts of my mummy soul there will always be memories of those times that will never leave me, times where I was a weepy shell, a terrible wife, a frustrated wench and a guilty wreck (basically, motherhood in a nutshell).
But I am here to tell you that it is not only survivable, but I would even recommend it.
After a very unexpected surprise, our daughter came into our lives as a quiet, pleasant, thoughtful little thing. She was easy, never fussed and we gleefully high-fived each other thinking we had hit the parenting jackpot. So much so, that when she was the ripe old age of six months old, we decided to replicate our situation with another wonderful human.
What I am saying is that biology tricked us, it tricked us real good.
15 months after Little Miss was born, our handsome son exploded into our lives. He was everything I imagined little boys to be, and the exact opposite of our daughter in many ways. He was loud, demanding, fussy but he was also funny, snuggly and very, very energetic.
I now had two babies who needed me 100 per cent of the time, and usually at the exact same time. I would like to say this is the time where I came into my own, managed beautifully and was a kick-ass mum. But I felt overwhelmed, I was exhausted and I couldn’t see how it would ever get easier. I spent oh-so many nights darting from one bedroom to another, willing them to not wake each other as they inevitably always did. I learnt how to multi-task like a mother trucker.
Luckily, my daughters placid nature meant it was a lot easier than it could have been, but she decided at 18 months to stop wearing a nappy which forced me to potty-train her. I remember racing around the house after her with the potty in one hand and the baby latched on in my other. I hadn’t been prepared for how physical having two children so close together would be; with lifting the children into car-seats, lugging the double buggy (aka contraption from hell) out of the boot, breaking nails with the fiddly clip-on bits, manually wrestling them into prams, highchairs, bumbos and cots.
It was also quite a lonely time especially in the winter months. Meeting friends for coffee became increasingly difficult as my pair would run in different directions as soon as you put them down so it was impossible to hold a conversation. I felt judged as I sweated and grabbed and chased. It was probably just me giving myself a hard time, but I wanted so badly to be that graceful duck gliding across the water with no one noticing the frantic kicks underneath. I was more of a rabid goose, manically swimming sideways with a catatonic look in my eyes. Truthfully, it was double the work but I was simply condensing the baby years. Theses are the hardest times but even though the days are long the years are really short.
Within two years everything changed.
Once one of them could put on their own shoes and understand when I said no, it began to get a whole lot easier. I started to see the bigger picture. They were inseparable, they wanted to watch the same TV shows (In The Night Garden theme song haunts my dreams) they ate the same consistency of food and enjoyed all the same activities. They went to play-school together and had the same friends. Having two children at the same stages is, in fact, easier in many respects. You are not flip-flopping from baby needs, to child needs, back and forth which can be just as tiring. They will both hopefully believe in Santa up until the same point and they earnestly lap up all my stories of fairies and magic which I then hear them discussing together.
Now they are both in school, they remain the opposites in personality but they are the greatest of friends. I see them taking turns to push themselves on the swings and melt when I see their heads bent close together colouring in. I feel like some kind of of war hero from the ‘battle of the babies’ and how I survived the toughest years relatively intact.
If you find yourself in this situation know this; It is only this mental for a very short time. Soon you will emerge from this stage, dizzy but delighted. You will feel so proud and you will forget even the toughest times.
In fact, I forgot so much that I went and had another baby.
Three years later.
