Having 4 kids isn’t for the faint of heart and quite honestly, the thought of Mark going back to work tomorrow terrifies me and makes me cry just thinking about it. We’ve gotten off to a rough start with our little Josie girl, but the big kids all love her and so do we.
Jamison was most interested in her when we brought her home. He points and her and says “baby” every time he sees her and now (at 12 days old for her) he’s also saying Josie. He cried a few times when she cried in the beginning but he’s over it now. He loves to try to help with her by handing us wipes and he loves pointing to her and looking at her when we hold her or she’s in the swing or bouncer. Hopefully he will always been this gentle with her. He really is a sweet boy so I think he’ll be a good big brother.
Ben actually wanted to hold her right away, which surprised me. He loves to talk about how cute she is and he’s said multiple times “I want to keep her.” Or he asks if we can keep her or get to keep her. He always wants to make sure she’s going with us when we leave and he asks to touch her a lot too. It’s a lot different from when Jamison was born as he didn’t want to touch Jamison for a few days and it took like a week or two before he’d hold J.
Abbie is a natural of course. She asks to hold Josie ALL the time, and I try to let her as much as possible, but Abbie has also had a cold recently so I’m trying to keep her away from the baby. All the kids know they need to wash their hands before they get near her and also use hand sanitizer and Abbie changes her shirts when she gets home from school. Yes, I’m being anal, but no, I don’t want a newborn to get whatever crud is going around and land in the hospital. Again.
The house is pure chaos right now. The boys run around and make as much noise as possible. Abbie is constantly talking about something or other or doing her crafts that make huge messes. The baby is held pretty much all day by either Mark or myself. She cries when we put her down. I am able to wear her some, which helps. She isn’t nursing great at all because we’ve been bottle feeding her and supplementing her. I try to pump as often as possible, but in the chaos of everything I don’t have a lot of time. And when I do have time, I just want to sleep and not pump. I can get her to latch occasionally, but she almost always falls asleep on me immediately, so her nursing sessions last about 3 mins. She’s a lot easier to keep awake with a bottle.
Our adventure as 6 begins. I’m excited and terrified at the same time, and I’m not sure which one is more prevalent right now. Hopefully we’ll get into a routine soon and I’ll get the hang of managing 4 kids all day by myself and we won’t have so much to worry about with Josie. Thank God I’m in this with Mark. He’s a God send in more ways than one.
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