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Back-To-Back Babies: Coping with the Daily Stress
by Karen Pruitt Fowler

It took my husband and I over four years to get pregnant with our son. Then it took a little under four months for me to get pregnant with our daughter. No one was more surprised as I was when that test line came up pink. It had only been four months since the birth of my son, and I had even been taking the pill faithfully. We had gone in less than two years from being a childless couple, praying to someday be parents, to an (almost) family of four.

So far we have survived the wonderful chaos. Our son is now 17 months old, and getting into everything constantly, and our daughter is already developing her own distinct personality at 3 months-of-age. It has not been easy, by any means. There have been numerous occasions when I have contemplated just how long a person can stay awake without literally dropping dead from exhaustion. New challenges have shown their faces; like how to keep my son from lovingly clobbering his sister, how to get them both asleep at the same time (thus giving me that brief moment of solitude), how to keep one’s ear-piercing screams from waking the other, and mainly, how to keep my self sane.

I have put together a selection of tips and advice which I find very useful in coping with the day to day career of raising two very small children, while helping your body finally get back to it’s before-babies mode. Enjoy!

Take a moment for yourself. When the pandemonium around you threatens to prevail, run for cover! Get your kids someplace safe, like the crib or playpen and go seek nirvana in another part of the house. I seek my shelter from the storm in my bathroom. Don’t laugh, it just happens to be the only place where no one will follow me. Even my husband knows better to invade my haven.

Don’t loose your muse! Make a conscious effort to do the things you love. Seek out experiences that inspire you, or invigorate your senses. Keep your past interest and add some new things to your repertoire. Take an art class, read some books, learn the craft of photography. Doing anything that will remove you from the constant surroundings of your home will suffice, whether mental or physical. Your children won’t miss you for a few hours, and they will probably be glad to have a happier Mommy come back to them.

Drown yourself in hot water. Okay, maybe don’t literally drown yourself, but devote a few minutes to soak in the tub, where you can enter into a blissful state of non-thinking. Go overboard with your escape. Light a few hundred candles, put on some soft music, sprinkle in some smelly bath salts, and turn out the lights. Do not, under any circumstance think about the laundry, the bills, or whose diaper needs changing! Make it clear to your husband that you are not to be interrupted, even if the house is burning down! (The water will protect you from any flames.)

Let your house crumble around you. No one expects a new parent to have the cleanest house on the planet. Do you really need to do another load of laundry? I make it a rule to only do laundry if one of us will soon be going without clothes. Are the toys strewn about the living room actually going to kill you if you don’t pick them up? Well, maybe that’s a bad example – I’ve just about broken my neck a few times while stepping on an ill-placed action figure. The bottom line is this: what is more important, spending quality, stress-free moments with your children or dusting every nook and cranny in your home?

Send your kids packing. Take your children to Grandma’s for a few hours so that you can have the house to yourself. While it is nice to go out occasionally, sometimes it is better to just be home alone. Relax, kick back in front of the television, or even do housework. This is your time to do whatever comes to mind. Clean out your closet, catch up on correspondence, or start crafting that memory book you’ve been itching to do.

Trade your kids for the day. Pick a day each week to trade kids with a friend, neighbor or relative. One day you keep her kids, while she roams aimlessly around the house, and the next time she gets your kids all day. While this has an upside, it also has a downside. When it’s your turn to be the sitter, you will have a house full of whiney rambunctious kids. On the other hand, when it’s her turn to keep the kids – Yippee! You’re free. One note of caution however, beware of the Mom who conveniently keeps easing out of her day to keep the children. While this may legitimately happen from time to time, a mom that does this on a regular basis may have found a sucker providing free daycare!

Get surfing! Use those precious moments when the kids are napping to do something totally mindless, like surf the World Wide Web. You can’t do housework during this time- you’d be crazy to risk waking the kids. So sit on your rear-end, and exert no more energy than it takes to maneuver the mouse. Let your brain turn to mush as you wade through the endless host of material available on the internet.

Snooze before you loose. While the babies are sleeping, follow their lead. Don’t even think about tackling one small chore before resting your weary eyes. Babies are notorious for waking instantly at any moment, so grab that nap while you can!

Stretch like Gumby. Toting children around is the quickest way to get bothersome knots in every major muscle group in your body. So when a moment arises, take the time to stretch your body in every which way imaginable. Stretching will not only release some tension from your over-stressed day, but it will help increase circulation to your entire body. This can be an instant pick-me-up for an otherwise sluggish mother.

Throw everything out! Use disposables whenever possible. Paper plates, plastic cups, and bottle liners can seriously cut down on your dishwashing load. While this may not be the best thing for the planet, or for your budget, it is sure to save your precious time for more deserving endeavors.

If you are a sleep-deprived, stressed-out, overworked mother of small children you can only benefit from trying out some of the tactics to making life a little bit easier. Hopefully, you will find several of these, or at least variations on some of them that will work for you. What do you have to loose, but tension, anxiety and a few moments of time?

Karen Fowler is a freelance writer and a SAHM of two children. She writes fiction under the pen name Elizabeth Raye (visit her site www.elizabethraye.com ) and is the new Infertility host on BellaOnline (visit this site at www.infertility.bellaonline.com/Site.asp). She lives in Eastern Virginia with her family and contributes regularly to local and regional publications.

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