 |
| Six month old photoshoot |
Wow! I cannot believe
that my twin babies are already 6 months old.
I don’t want to sound cliché but time SERIOUSLY does fly!
Over the past 6 months my life has gone through so
many different changes from being on maternity leave, new dynamic in my
marriage, going back to work after maternity leave, finding childcare for my
babies just to name a few.
I feel like there are so many people just throwing
information at you while you’re pregnant, after you have the babies and the
whole time during the past six months.
The best advice that I could give a new mother is to do what works best
for your family.
I have made a list of the top 10 things I have learned over
the past six months and I will share them below.
1. Planning is very important.
I cannot stress this enough.
Thankfully I am a planner (I can tell you what I will be doing 5 years
from now), so this being important works well for me. I’ve learned that with the babies it is best
to plan ahead for every thing that you are going to do for the day and even a
few days in advance. Now, I understand
that planning EVERY detail of every day is not realistic, but aiming to plan
helps the days and weeks run smoothly for me.
I have a weekly planning schedule that I do every Sunday (
I will share in a future blog post), this helps myself and
my husband stay on the same page for the week.
2. Babies are on their own time schedule…not YOURS.
I learned this when trying to leave the house for the first
time alone. I had decided that I was
going to take the babies to visit my family who live approximately 45 minutes
away. I had planned the entire day and
packed everything accordingly. I wanted
to leave the house by 10 am. Well at
9:55 as I am placing my son in his car seat, he decides that he wants to have a
blow out. So I had to change his entire
outfit that was coordinating perfectly with his sister. As the clock begins to approach 10:20 I am
ready to place him back in the carseat.
As I am getting him buckled back into his seat, I look over at my
daughter who now has spit up all over her clothes now. (I thought it was a good
idea to feed them right before we left the house and it backfired). Needless to say I learned that by them being
on their own time schedule, I should allow myself more time for the
unpredictable events.
3. It Is ok to walk
away.
I have loved every single moment of being a mother and I am
so happy of the double blessings that we received. However, from 6 weeks to 3 months my daughter
had colic. She would literally scream
for about 1 hour non stop and there was nothing that I could do to make her
stop. She was not hungry, her diaper was
clean, she did not show any signs of a sore belly….she just literally screamed
for 1 hour. This was very frustrating to
me, not because she was screaming, but because my daughter was screaming and
there was nothing that I could do to console her. I quickly learned that it is ok to walk away
for a little bit to regroup. I think
walking away helped both of us because I was no longer tensed and she was able
to let her screams out without me hovering over her.
4. People will give
you unsolicited advice.
I have received so much advice. Everyone has a cousin’s, uncle, neighbors,
brother with twins and they can all tell me how to raise mine. I have quickly learned to let unsolicited
advice go in one ear and out the other one if this is not something that will
work for me and my family.
5. New level of Love
While I was pregnant people would always tell me that having
children was a love that you have never experienced before. I could not imagine that. If you know me, you know that I am SOOO in
love with my husband, and I couldn’t imagine another type of love that would be
even close to that. I knew that I would
love my children…but I had no idea that I would love them this much. I joke around a lot and tell people that I
was just not ready to love two people so much.
Having children really is a new kind of love and it is the best thing
that has every happened to me. I am
forever grateful.
6. No sleep and still
functioning
I learned that I can actually function without sleep. My husband tells me all of the time that
sleep is a hobby to me and that I worship sleep. He’s a little extreme, but he is right I am
in love with sleep. Having my babies has
shown me that I actually can function without sleep and I just didn’t think I
could get as much done without sleep as I have.
7. The babies are
testing me ALREADY
I’ve often heard that babies and children will do what you
allow them to do. They do tests to see
what they can get away with. The other
day my daughter was laying on her boppy lounger on the floor and I was sitting
on the couch overlooking her. She
started making a loud scream noise out of the blue, so of course I looked at
her to see what was going on. She then
stopped crying, looked up at me to see if I was looking at her. When she saw me looking at her, she decided
to do the scream again while watching me out of the corner of her eye. How does she already know that I will come
running if she needs me….she is 6 MONTHS and already trying to trick me.
8. Every Stage is Fun
I’ve heard so many mothers say that every stage is fun when
raising kids. This statement is so
true. I have been able to find something
that I love in every single stage, and as the stages progress it just keeps
getting better and better.
9. Truly the Best
Part of Me
Bringing my twins into the world has seriously been my
proudest moment. These two little people
mean the world to me and they are genuinely the Best Part of Me
10. Changes a
Relationship
All of my friends with children have told me over and over again
that having children can really change the relationship. Of course I did not believe that. My husband and I have been together twelve
years, so at this point I’m thinking how could these two babies come into our
lives and change it? They can’t possibly
change it that much.
BOY WAS I WRONG!!! (this needs a full blog post)
We have learned how to deal with the changes. Some of the changes are great and others just
needed some adjusting to be great.
I hope my experiences over the past 6 months can help a new
mother or help someone give advice to a new mother.
Thank you for visiting!!
XOXO
Katrina Zackery
