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New Mummy Blog: Two Children Under The Age Of Two - Send Help, Please

Sleep when the baby sleeps, say the books. What about the hyperactive toddler, I cry?

It’s been a month since we became a family of four, with the arrival of our little boy Henry, and we’re slowly getting used to having two children under the age of two.

People warned us that one plus one feels like it equals an awful lot more than two but, while on occasion it has felt like we have a menagerie of children, most of the time this warning has happily so far proven false.

Having two children is MUCH more exhausting than having one [Yahoo/Copyright]
Having two children is MUCH more exhausting than having one [Yahoo/Copyright]



One plus one does feel like two – but that’s plenty to keep us busy, thanks very much.

But while we’ve yet to feel outnumbered by our children, that’s not to say it hasn’t been a steep learning curve.

There’s plenty that we didn’t see coming – and plenty that we did, but couldn’t prepare for anyway, like: with two tinies, you can never have enough hands. Or time. I am constantly juggling the wants of both children, as well as mentally assessing who will be in less jeopardy if left for ten seconds while I deal with the other.

Henry and Honor get through A LOT of nappies between them [Yahoo/Copyright]
Henry and Honor get through A LOT of nappies between them [Yahoo/Copyright]


Or, with a newborn and a 20-month-old, an astonishing percentage of the day is spent dealing with nappies. With a newborn who feeds every other hour and poos with every feed, and a toddler who likes to tell me she’s “done a poo poo” in her nappy (even when she hasn’t),

I’ve no sooner put a clean nappy on one when the other needs changing.

Meanwhile I have not a hope of finding time to go to the loo myself. And when I do, I certainly don’t manage to go BY myself, with my toddler following and commentating throughout: “Mama wee wee chair. Pss pss.” (I’d like to clarify that she calls the loo a chair).

And despite our two babies having completely different routines and body clocks (Honor is in bed by 7pm, while Henry still needs to feed on and off all evening), they have an uncanny knack of synchronising the times they decide to play up.

Inevitably it’s bath time, when Henry is crankily refusing to be put down and Honor is running around naked, refusing to get in the bath or brush her teeth.

Getting my two children to bed is a mission each night [Copyright/Yahoo]
Getting my two children to bed is a mission each night [Copyright/Yahoo]



All of this means I am tired ALL the time. I thought I was tired when I had one child. I thought I was tired when I was pregnant with my second. I laugh in the face of that tiredness. That was child’s play compared to now.

Sleep when the baby sleeps, say the books. What about the hyperactive toddler, I cry?

The poor baby gets the short straw here, too. When Honor was tiny and feeding through the night, it was as serene as being woken by a hungry, wailing baby could be. At times I almost enjoyed being awake at 4am, feeling like my baby and I were the only people in the world.

It's nice to enjoy a moment of quiet with each child [Copyright/Yahoo]
It's nice to enjoy a moment of quiet with each child [Copyright/Yahoo]

This time round, when Henry wakes in the night for a feed, as babies do, it feels like a cruel trick I have little patience for. There’s not a hint of serenity there now.

But alongside the juggling, the chaos, the lack of serenity, comes the magical part of two under two – the way my heart has expanded to love two children so very utterly.

I have two wonderful babies who fill my life with so much happiness and fun that the tiredness, the nappies, the lack of hands and of time, don’t matter one little bit.


[New Mummy Blog: I'm Struggling To Breastfeed - Why Isn't There More Support Available?]

[New Mummy Blog: What I Wish I Could Tell Everyone Who Visits My Newborn Baby]