Considering a third baby? Read this.

If you are even considering getting pregnant with a third child, it is important for you to know certain things.

Needless to say, I won't be the only one warning you about how your life will change once the third baby arrives. You will get many warnings about life with three kids, both warranted and unwarranted, from many different people. 

When you go to the bank in the third trimester of your third pregnancy, the bank teller will smile sweetly at you and ask you if you are expecting your first baby. When you smile back sheepishly and tell her that you are expecting your THiRD child, her expression will change. She will know the balance in your savings account, and she will suddenly be telling you with her eyes that you CANNOT afford a third child. 

She may be right.

When you and your family bravely go to Chuck E. Cheese one night for dinner during your thirty seventh week of pregnancy, the manager will specifically come over to you, corner you, and tell you with a very tired face that he too has three children. He will share with you that he is working seven jobs including this one, just so he can send his children to college. He will say that the third child changed EVERYTHING, and you will sense that he does not mean "change" in an amazing, exciting, revelatory way. 

He may be right.

Many many other people will warn you that you and your husband are about to be to be outnumbered, as if you and your children are at war with one another, and you are about to LOSE that war.

They may also be right. 

Listen. Having a baby, whether it be your first or your ninth, is always incredible. Babies are beautiful creatures. Everything they do, even the expressions they make when they are farting, is adorable. There is no denying the cuteness. But no matter how cute that baby is, the reality of life with three kids is pretty UN-cute.

For instance, your day is going to begin at 3:30 a.m. No, you are not suddenly going to become a morning news reporter. You probably chose not to pursue news reporting as a career because you specifically wanted to avoid having to wake up at 3:30 a.m. And yet... Your adorable baby will wake you up at 3:30 am, screaming for nourishment.  You will feed him, burp him, change his diaper, and rock him back to sleep. At 4:30 am, your middle child will wake up, completely convinced it is time for breakfast. You will show him the dark sky outside his bedroom window, tuck him back into bed, kiss him on the forehead, and tell him not to open his eyes for another three hours. By about 4:45, you will JUST be falling back to sleep when your oldest child will wake up, begging you to help her find her iPad so she can watch YouTube videos of things being made out of Play Doh. At 5:15, your middle child will wake up again, and will threaten to cry loud enough to wake the baby if you don't bring him downstairs for breakfast immediately. So you will bring him downstairs and you will feed him Cocoa Puffs.

Also, you are going to immediately brew a very BIG pot of coffee. You are going to drink 3/4 of the pot before 6 am.

Getting your family out the door of your home is going to take 27 days of planning. You will need maps, strategies, back-up plans, emergency contacts, and a member of the military to make it happen. Your eldest child will somehow forget to wear socks or shoes. Your middle child will wear all of his clothes backwards, will take fifty seven hours to decide what he wants to bring to school for show and tell, and will suddenly want to talk to you about every rock in your front yard before he gets into the mini van. Your baby will hate his car seat so much and will cry so hard it will make him spit up all over his onesie and blanket, so you will have to change him, and then you will get him back into his car seat just in time for him to poop in his diaper.

You will have exactly thirty four seconds to get your own body ready to leave the house in the morning. Your self-maintenance routine will have to be uber efficient, and will need to be able to be completed during the time you are idling in your mini van at a red light or stop sign. You will keep your deodorant and your eyeliner in your pocketbook and you will not care that the man in the car next to you is staring at you as you stick your left hand under your right armpit while applying your eyeliner with your right hand.

You are going to need to make sure your place of employment offers a very liberal "sick day" policy, because for 359 days out of the year, at least one of your children will be ill with something very highly contagious. On the days when your children are NOT deathly ill, you will go to work feeling like you are going to accomplish a lot. Twenty minutes later, the principle of your eldest child's school will call to tell you your daughter stuck a bead up her nose and they can't get it out. 

You will know all of the names of all of the staff at the pediatrician's office. You will have a chair that you consider YOUR chair at the pediatrician's office. You will seriously consider bringing a sleeping bag and camping out in the hallway outside the pediatrician's office just so you can save on gas.

You are no longer going to eat at meal times. Dinner will be spent holding and feeding your baby with one hand while pouring ketchup, buttering noodles, cleaning juice spills, cutting chicken, peeling apples, and wiping faces with your other hand. If you intend to eat, you will need to make yourself a plate of something edible, hide it under your shirt, and sneak into the bathroom to eat it in under four minutes. You will need to learn to consume food without ever needing to actually chew it. 

Also, your eldest child will become obsessed with collecting very teeny tiny toys that are exactly the right size for your baby to choke on.

Also, your two older children will love coming up with new fun games like "let's see who can stick their fingers as far into the baby's eyes as possible" or "who can break the baby swing by using it as a human catapult?"

Getting all three of your children to bed is going to take eight and a half hours. You will need to fill up 2 water bottles, break up six arguments over who gets to play with what toy during bathtime, brush 40 teeth, read 81 books, and sing 172 lullabies. Your eldest will try on seven different pairs of pajamas before settling on the ones she wants. Your middle child will ask 2,693 questions about the universe. Your baby will spit out his pacifier nine million times and cry every single time it happens.

And finally, at 1:37 am, you will feel relaxed enough to watch a few seconds of TV and fall into a deep, deep slumber, until you are once again woken at 3:30 am.

And yet, despite this crazy life, you will have zero regrets. Why? Because everything that third baby does is going to be absolutely adorable.

Party of Five

'

And then there were five of us. 

It's still so strange to me, because for many minutes of almost every day, I still feel like I am my twelve year old self... Just with a job and a few wrinkles and car keys and a mortgage... And THREE kids. THREE.

In the months leading up to Erez's birth, I was told by many friends, acquaintances and strangers that the third child CHANGES EVERYTHING. I was told that my husband and I would henceforth be outnumbered and powerless in our own household, that we would instantly age by about ten years, and that the only way to get through parenting more than two children is to not care about anything. I always half believed these folks and half thought "meh, it can't be THAT bad!"

And it's not. THAT. BAD. But in the month since Erez was born, I have come to nickname our home "Casa de Chaos" as a term of endearment. Our bundle of joy came with a bundle of adjustments for everyone in our family, and we are all still acclimating, slowly but surely.

Erez himself is adorable. He is tiny, cuddly, sounds like a pug dog, and has eyes that seem to fill up his entire face. For the first week of his life, Erez was such a super calm baby that I almost thought something might be wrong with him. Then I brought him home from the hospital.

I honestly feel bad for the kid. He went from the cushy warmth and serenity of my womb to the quiet sterile tranquility of the hospital to the absolute madness of our home. His siblings love to get right up in his face and squeal at him or shake things at him, try to dance with his tiny body, and seem to have screaming contests whenever he is trying to nap. 

And then there are the digestive issues. His first formula made him gassy and fussy. The second formula made him constipated and fussy. He went from being a happy baby to a very very sad and cranky baby right around week three, I believe mostly because his system just wasn't dealing with the nourishment he was taking in. The third formula seems to have made him a much happier, calmer baby again. Fingers crossed. 

Generally, Erez seems like my "old soul" baby. I can't quite describe why I feel this way, and maybe my perception will change as he grows, but his little face seems wise, serious, concerned. He smiled at me this morning and I was so thrown for a loop, because I have gotten so used to his furrowed brow and pensive expressions.

As for the rest of us, well, Oren probably had the worst of it. He went from being my baby boy to needing to compete for lap time and hugs. Shortly after Erez came home, Oren started waking frequently at night, having more nightmares, throwing more tantrums, getting more boo boos, and just generally being super sensitive. He seems to have settled in to the new normal a bit and the anxiety seems to be waning, but my heart definitely broke a little bit for him. If I could somehow add hours to the day, I would add an hour where I could just hug Oren and make sure he knows that he is (and will always be) my beautiful little boy.

Ember has been awesome. She has taken on the role of older older sister like a champion. She wants to hug the baby, feed the baby, carry the baby, and I think she thinks she could do a better job than me raising Erez. She has acclimated and compromised without much fuss, just the occasional need for lots of attention. Her ability to adapt to a pretty enormous change has really impressed me.

Chris is doing well, other than continuing his ongoing battle to get adequate sleep. He has been an amazing partner, doing all the stuff I have no time to do anymore, kissing my forehead and hugging me when I seem overwhelmed, and keeping this parenting gig light and fun and silly, even in the stressful moments. It goes without saying that I wouldbe nowhere without him. Actually, scratch that. I would totally be in an asylum without him.

And me? After getting over the initial shock of what it is like to care for three kids, I am doing really well. I'm finding my groove. Yes, I still spend a great deal of my time feeling guilty over my inability to breastfeed the baby, over my upcoming return to work and Erez's daycare attendance at such a super young age, over my lack of availability to Ember and Oren, over my talent for eating a crap ton of chocolate even as I finally attempt to reclaim my body after five years of pregnancies and surgeries. The list of things I feel guilty about is truly endless. But I have always been rather good at beating myself up over things I both can and can't control. The good news is I am also getting better at recognizing my own limitations, patting myself on the back for staying sane and positive (most of the time), and appreciating all that I have, which is SO VERY much, especially now that we are a party of five.