Top 10 of #2

I have a lot of friends expecting their 2nd child. Which means I've been reflecting on what I wish I'd done differently with my 2nd (if I hadn't been too sleep-deprived to realize it at the time). In case this helps any of my sleep-deprived friends, here's...

The Top Ten Things I Wish I'd Done with #2 but thankfully we all survived and eventually thrived anyway (as will you)

1. Get the epidural ASAP - before you think you need it. Statistically, #2 comes in half the time it took #1 to arrive. You'll think there's plenty of time, but you might be wrong, so get to the hospital and get the drugs or you may regret it. If I'd gotten them sooner, I wouldn't have needed the spinal, which led to a spinal headache, which severely cramped my first week with #2 (including 2 return trips to the hospital).

2. Get the baby to take a bottle. With my 1st baby, it didn't matter that I always had to be the one feeding him; I could sleep when he slept. With the 2nd, you have to stay up all day with the 1st. And while we tried all kinds of bottles/breastmilk/formula, I never let #2 skip more than one feeding. I really wish we'd routinely given him a bottle of formula per day so someone else would have been able to feed him!! I wouldn't have had to pump, I could have taken longer breaks/naps, and I might have been healthier.

3. Don't stress about a predictable nap schedule till he's 6-8ms old. Before #2, I hoped a schedule would prevent colic. Now I'm convinced babies with colic don't ever get on a schedule and are thus not included in the BabyWise stats. Regardless, I stressed about getting my newborn on a schedule when it eventually developed on its own months later.

4. Stay in town at least 3 months if you can. Both my boys naturally started stretching their nighttime feedings around 6-8weeks. Then we traveled for a weekend and the trend was shattered. #2 in particular reversed course until we finally...

5. Let him cry it out. We tried everything to get #2 to stretch his nighttime feedings. I waited till the 3-hr mark to feed him (which meant we lay awake every 3rd hour listening to him cry). We tried to rock him instead of feeding him. I tried to cluster feed him in the evenings. We tried cereal. Nothing helped. He was determined to shrink the time between contact to every hour if possible, even though that wasn't good for him either. At 5ms, we were all home and healthy, so Josh and I moved back downstairs (no monitor) and resolved not to enter his room 11pm-6am. It took 5 nights, but then he was sleeping through the night. Every night. Soon it was easy to drop the 11pm feeding and he went 7:30-6:30. It was pure bliss. We should have totally done it sooner.

6. Noise machines are a gift from God. We have one in every bedroom. Not only do they provide stability for the kids when you're traveling, they keep you from sleeping on pins and needles, worried one child will wake the other. They were especially helpful during our "cry it out" week, since Noah and Aaron's rooms are next-door to each other.

7. Daily tummy time (awake of course). No back-to-sleeper enjoys tummy time, but it is so good for them! I didn't think it impacted #1, so I didn't enforce it with #2. Big mistake. We might have saved hours (and dollars) of physical therapy if I'd just given him 5-10 minutes of tummy time, 3 times a day.

8. Don't expect your body to pop back in 3ms. Or 6. Or 9. It can come back eventually, but it'll take its good ole' time - and won't look quite the same even when it's done. That's ok. You've got two kids.

9. Teach #1 to help #2. I haven't been very good about this, but I'm working on it. I've recently seen how a family can turn sibling-hood into service, and I love that model (for our family in general as well).

And the big kahuna...

10. God created families. My mom gave me that quote, and it's become my mantra. God designed our boys to be brothers. He knew when they'd arrive. He expected them to share my attention. He has a plan for each of us, and we're all part of it. It's so easy to wish you could give all your attention to each of them (or neither of them, depending on the moment), but that's not the way God designed it, so apparently that's not what they (or you) need. So don't fight it. Lean on God and let him fill in the gaps, grow your maturity, teach #1 compassion, and generally make something great out of a mess. He's unbelievably good at it. Or so I'm hoping... ;)