The Things People Never Told Me Before I Had Kids...

When you're pregnant it seems like every person tells you the following things:

"You better rest up because you won't be sleeping again for a while!"
"It'll take you a while to fit into those pants again."
"Are you sure it's a girl because you're carrying like a boy?"

The list goes on and on.  By your 7th or 8th month you're so tired of hearing the same things and just anxious for your own little one to pop out so you guys can start your lives together.

There are two big sections to my thoughts on the things people never told me before I had kids.  The first is baby STUFF.

THE STUFF

Being a mom that now shops almost completely second-hand or clearance, I can tell you that it's something you don't think about when you're preggo.  You fill your registry with all of these glorious things you want and then suddenly the baby arrives and you a.) don't even have half of it and b.) don't end up using most of it.  My biggest take-a-way from having two newborns is that they like what they like and so all of those $25 sleepsacks you thought were awesome, the fancy baby bottles that reduce air, those pacifiers that have cute little sayings on them...your kid just may not like them.  So then you starting buying bottles and sippy cups and different pajamas and everything else until your checking account has run dry, all to keep them happy.  This also includes diapers.  Some people swore to me Huggies were the best, some people swore Pampers, and other people said "hey the Costco brand is great!"  What I didn't realize is it's about what works for every child.  Case in point, Olivia was a preemie and had TINY legs.  So Huggies did not work for her, they always, always, ALWAYS leaked because they didn't snug her legs enough.  She wore strictly Pampers until she switched to pull-ups at around 2.5.  Isabella on the other hand was a normal sized baby.  I went back to Pampers Swaddlers and when I realized she wasn't leaking at all, I switched to Huggies because they're cheaper.

Strollers and car seats...holy moly.  When Olivia was born everyone had the simple Graco Travel System.  No biggie right?  Not that expensive right?  Great!  Registered, bought, done.  Except I ended up hating that stroller and it continues to collect dust at my mother-in-laws house.  It's horrible for everything but storage (the storage is great).  When I bought a double stroller I read the reviews, did my research and sure enough, it got used 4 times before I sold it and got myself another single stroller.  I now have sold two strollers and bought two City Mini Singles because they work with exercising, Disneyland, day trips, mall trips, everything.  And I got them both used for an amazing price.  Car seats...between two sets of grandparents and us it's a total of 8 car seats.  You've got that right, 8!  Only one is a booster because after I bought the booster, that's when I found out she should be in a five point until she's pretty much graduating from high school!  Kidding...sorta...  Anyway, these are things you slowly find out as you become friends with other mommies and as word spreads on social media like fire.  But things I wish I would have known before I invested and reinvested and invested again in something.

Back to buying things second-hand.  I just got a $400 car seat for $55 that will last Olivia and Isabella until the year 2020.  Yep you've got that right...I WILL BE 40 THEN.  And the sad part?  Because I'm looking for 5-point car seats that will accommodate their height and weight until they're probably 8 or 9 years old, I still have 3 more to buy to replace the ones I bought because I didn't know any different.  These are the things I wish someone would have told me before I had kids!

I've learned that some things work for your family and some things don't and because we don't all have the income or convenience to just go and buy something that works better for our situation, I do a lot of buying and selling of my items with other moms.

Next up, THE KIDS

People tell you when you're pregnant that you're never going to sleep again.  In the uncomfortable, exhausted pregnancy state you smile it off thinking "well it's only the first few months and then it'll get it better."  Right and wrong (sorry new moms).  The newborn state is a beast in its own.  It was really bad with Olivia but worse with Isabella because Jeff was working 24 hour shifts, so I was the sole caretaker of her night and day.  Getting up every 2-3 hours to feed for a half hour and then spend 15 more mins to put her down, then spend another 15 mins falling back asleep and then waking up an hour later to do it all over again.  You reach depths of exhaustion you will never ever understand until you do it.  The whole mantra of "sleep when the baby is sleeping" is honestly BULLSHIT.  It only works if you literally do not want to cook a decent meal, do some laundry, grocery shop, buy all of the crap the baby has changed his or her mind about (diapers, bottles, etc.) and make sure your house is clean enough to at least not be declared condemned by the city.  All of those people who said they were going to come by and help and visit, usually don't.  They want to give you space and within a couple weeks you are literally begging people to come over because you're going crazy.

After the newborn phase it's not much better.  First up it's sleep training so you can get them to sleep through the night without waking up so you can.  Then comes teeth which will wake them up frequently.  Snotty noses, vomit, diarrhea, bad coughs...yeah you pretty much don't get sleep until they're 3 and the teeth have come in, in which then you will have nightmares, more vomiting and plenty of stalling for them not to sleep.  And if you're unlucky they will come try and sleep with you at night.  And they move.  A lot.  And put a knee in your spine.  And smash your right boob.

And then they wake up early.  Really...freaking...early.  Be prepared to not sleep past 6 for a while and then 7 and maybe if you're lucky by the time they're 4 they'll sleep in til 7:30.  Seems late, except for the fact that you don't go to bed at 7:30 or 8, so you're tired from your Netflix marathon the night before.  Your sleep will never be yours again because even once they're lazy teenagers, you'll be up waiting for them to come home in time for curfew and wondering if they've been in an accident or who they're with.  No one prepared me for loss of sleep past the newborn phase.  Being a person that values my sleep A LOT, this is vital information.

The way kids push you to the brink of insanity is something I was never prepared for.  Having to ask 600 times to go brush your teeth and they still don't listen to you.  The fact that they were two steps from the toilet but still peed on the carpet because they've been holding it for 6 hours and would yell at you for even daring to ask the question "do you have to go potty?"  The arguing, the talking back, the timeouts that usually don't work, the way you have to teach them to be respectful to you and that you are allowed to tell them "NO!" but they cannot tell you that...the hitting, the biting, the licking, the fighting...none of this was I prepared for.  I was only prepared for tantrums.  And I'm talking 2-year-old tantrums I was prepped for.  4-year-old tantrums?  That's a whole new level of crazy.  The grating of the screams and the cries on you and your psyche is enough to make you run to the bedroom and scream into your own pillow.

And the next thing I wasn't prepared for and was the whole reasoning behind me thinking about writing this post...SIBLINGS.

I am an only child and never had the pleasure of sharing with a brother or sister.  It was all mine.  I didn't have to fight to be heard or get what I wanted.

When Isabella was born, despite the exhaustion of having two kids that sometimes wake up (all night) in the middle of the night and despite the constant illnesses the older one would bring home and give to the baby, I thought it wasn't so bad.  Tiring.  Busy.  Yeah.

Now the baby is turning toddler.  Full on melt-downs, fighting, pushing, yelling (you know, all of those awesome things her sister taught her...way earlier than she even learned them btw), screaming, fighting over Mommy, "MINE! MINE! MIIIIIIIINE!!!"  We are at a whole new level of parenthood.  My BFF had warned me about siblings fighting, so I already knew we were going to have issues with sharing and the whole nine yards.  I wasn't prepared for how much they would bounce off of each other to make things ten times crazier than they already were and to drain me of every ounce of energy and emotional stability I have.  Take them apart and you can handle one, but put them together and they are a force to be reckoned with!  They feed off of each other until the energy is so intense, both Jeff and I feel outnumbered, even though we're not.  We often just collapse on the floor or bed and let them run circles around us because we just don't have the energy anymore.  The only thing I can hope for in any given day is that they don't kill each other or get hurt in the process.

All-in-all would it have mattered if someone told me all of this (and more) before I had kids?  No.  Would I still have had them?  Yes.  But would knowing some of this change things?  Yes.  I would have bought different things so I didn't have to buy and sell so much and I may have had Isabella when Olivia was a little older.  The spacing between them is good because we didn't have double diapers, double cribs, double tuition to preschool, etc. etc. but I am now thinking it would have been better if Olivia was older.  Her being more mature for a sibling would have been key and would have kept us more sane.

Another random thing you can thank me for later...Don't buy toys with small parts - they end up everywhere and separated from their original mother ship and you will never be able to put it back together the way it came in the package. :-)