(Note: Kaitlyn enrolled in the Begin with the Children program in 2016. Her twins joined the family in 2021. In her blog, she shares her feelings about parenting each month as her twins grow up. These are her feelings for the twins’ month 3.)

Parents are people, too! Now that the immediate post-partum period is ending for me, I am eager to get back to feeling more like myself. While my infants and older children still need a lot of time and attention, it is important for me to have my needs met, too.

If you look around, it feels like most of the “self-care” type articles discuss big outings and a lot of money. But large shopping trips, manicures, spa days, and vacations aren’t really in my family’s budget. That’s okay, because there are other things that actually pay off much more in the long run for me (even if they aren’t quite as fun upfront).

KinderKronicle Month 3 features an article titled, “Taking Care of Yourself.” After reading this article, I compiled a list of things that make me feel like a functioning human again during my child’s first year. Maybe there is something on this list that can help you feel a little better too!

• Run (okay… jog… slowly… or walk… the main idea here is to get a little sweaty doing some form of exercise!) I enjoy the couch to 5k program when I am trying to get back into shape. For the record, I do not enjoy running while I am in the process . . . it is the feeling of accomplishment afterward!
• Wash my face—it may seem a little strange, but it works for me. I went to Walmart and bought some inexpensive face wash that probably isn’t even that great for my face. But washing my face in the shower after my “run” is one of life’s simple pleasures.
• Get dressed and go get a treat or drink with a friend or family member. My first “outing” alone after giving birth was to go with a friend for one hour to a local Italian ice place… it felt nice to be out of the house and not worried about meeting the needs of anyone else for a minute.
• Buy one or two new outfits that fit. I dislike spending money on “in-between” clothes… but experience has taught me that even if I do happen to immediately fit into some of my pre-pregnancy clothes, they don’t fit “right” for quite a while. I feel SO much better having one or two things in my closet that I like for going out.
• Read—or some other pre-baby hobby you enjoy. While, for me, this often involves reading four pages of a book at night, and then needing to backtrack three pages the next because I can’t remember what I read, it is still important. The point is, reading is something I enjoyed before the babies were born and it makes me feel like myself when I have a book in my hand. Whatever you enjoyed doing before your child was born . . . do that. Even if it isn’t productive.

What types of everyday activities help you to feel human?
Do you have any tips for other new parents?
What has worked for you?

Our yearly extended family trip to Bear Lake was this past week. As I sat on the beach and nursed my twin babies (because that is 90% of my life right now), I watched my adult siblings interact with each other and with my children. I started thinking about Month 2 of KinderKronicle. A large part of that issue is about picturing what your goals are for your children and what traits you hope they possess as adults.

Taking the long view
Maybe it was the deep brilliant-blue waters, or the tranquility of this mile-high lake, but I found myself thinking about my family long- term. In the trenches of early parenthood, most parents don’t think about the fact that they will know their children as adults for much longer than they will know them as children.

I had my first son at age 24. I will be 42 when he reaches adulthood. If I live to be 100, that is 58 years of having a relationship with my adult child and only 18 years of having a relationship with him as an actual child.

While agency and personality definitely come into play, there is plenty of research teaching us how to increase the odds of raising a child to become a responsible, successful adult.

KinderKronicle wades through a lot of that research and presents it concisely in their monthly articles. The time we spend teaching and helping our children learn valuable life skills and lessons when they are young will have life-long effects, so it is important to look to the future as we make parenting choices now.

Creating a family mission statement as a guide
My husband and I have discussed many traits we hope to instill in our children. After one such conversation, we came up with a family mission statement to guide our parenting goals:

Call Family Mission Statement

As parents, we know where we want to go, but how are we planning on getting there? Allow me to share with you some of our goals and plans we’ve made in hopes that our family mission statement can be realized. Please note
that these are our goals—we often fall short.

Our family goals
Here are a few ways we are trying to implement our family goals and plans. We are constantly reassessing and adjusting, but our goals are our starting point.

• Show love, put in the time, be intentional: First of all, we decided early on that we want to be authoritative parents. As KinderKronicle Month 1 explains, “Studies show that children reared by authoritative parents grow up to be the
  healthiest, happiest, and most successful.” Authoritative parenting requires mutual respect and love for children. One way that we try to do this is to spend one-on-one time with each child periodically. We are working on putting our phones down more often and making our time together more intentional. We hope that building these relationships with each other will help our children to develop the character traits in our mission statement.
• Provide opportunities to learn and do hard things: We also try to provide opportunities for our children to do hard things, and we help them see those things through to completion. We do hard things together . . . Big puzzles. Long hikes. Learning new skills. We try to show them the joy we feel when we accomplish something hard (and how it is okay to be frustrated in the midst of the “hard”). We praise effort over outcomes. We point out when a child overcomes a fear and celebrate successes as a family. When they tell us something is hard, we reply, “good thing that we like to do hard things!”
• Encourage interests: When one of our children has a newfound interest, we try to run with it. We go to the library, take mini field trips, watch videos on the subject, and learn from others. We encourage questions and get excited about answers. We allow our children to see us enjoy learning new things (and sometimes failing along the way).
• Support each other: Our children attend each other’s games and performances. They cheer each other on and find joy in each other’s successes.

  What goals do you have for your family?
  What would be in your family mission statement?

When my son was six-years-old and my daughter was three, I learned that I was expecting twins. Thankfully, Begin with the Children was still by my side.

“I just really want this whole twin newborn experience to strengthen our marriage rather than pull us apart… because I really feel like it could do either,” I cried to my husband one night when I was around 33 weeks pregnant. I knew my husband would be my best support if I could kindly and effectively communicate my needs, but I also knew that was much easier said than done in my typical short-fused postpartum state. Here’s what we came up with:

Basic ground rules for Mom and Dad Communication
I started the conversation with, “We are both going to be tired and frustrated at times with two screaming babies in the middle of the night. We need to avoid having conversations about major decisions or venting frustrations when one of us is too tired to think straight.” My husband nodded, “I agree. We need to be able to table topics for a time when we are both in a decent mood and somewhat rested. We are going to need to take turns resting in the daytime. Sometimes I might need a nap, but I think mostly I’ll need to get out of the house and exercise.

And it will be good for me to spend some time with the older kids. I’m worried about them feeling ignored by us. I’m sure you will need some one-on-one time with them too.” Our conversation continued over the next two weeks. We discussed how we could help each other during the night without resenting each other, how we could help our older kids through the adjustment, and how we could keep our marriage happy and alive. At the time, we had no idea just how important these conversations about responsibilities and teamwork would be.

Our unity and communication skills were put to the test
When I was 35 weeks pregnant, I received an urgent call from my doctor about the blood work I had done earlier that day. “I’ve talked to your high-risk doctor and we both agree that today is a good day to have babies!” It turned out my platelet levels were dropping rapidly. Four hours later, I had two little babies in my arms.

The first few days were difficult but wonderful at the same time. We had a lot of visitors, a lot of help, and a lot of love. This major life adjustment seemed to be going exceptionally well…until it wasn’t. I ended up back in the ER with an infection, my daughter and husband caught the stomach flu, my son caught a cold, and we had faulty medical equipment sending off alarms every three to four minutes around the clock.

Effective communication between me and my husband was key
I can say, without a doubt, that effective communication was the key to us weathering these challenges together. If we had not communicated with each other and agreed on our goals and parenting responsibilities before the birth of our twins, we would have been a mess afterwards! I’m sure this is why, as KinderKronicle Month 1 teaches, “The first element of parent leadership is unity between Mom and Dad…[and] what builds Dad-Mom unity? A major element is
communication.”

Because of the conversations we had had weeks earlier, I make it a priority for my husband to get out of the house to exercise every day. And my husband makes it a priority for me to have time to spend with my older children. I read to them, take them on brief outings to the library, and even spent a whole day at an amusement park with them.

We divided our responsibilities
My husband and I also figured out our nighttime routine. Our babies need two feedings of special preemie formula each day. My husband does one of these feedings during the night so that I can pump and get back to bed a little bit faster. This also helps me during the day because I don’t have to make bottles, feed babies, and then pump.

Typically, I nurse and put the babies to bed while he gets the older kids to bed. We do our best to share the load. Some days we share the parenting load 50/50. On other days, it may feel more like 80/20 or 20/80. We try to be patient with each other because we believe that it will all even out in the end.

It is hard to believe our twins are officially one month old! As taught in KinderKronicle Month 1, communication continues to be our focus. We are working together to make room for our new babies, solidify our parenting style, and adjust to being parents of FOUR.

Consider this:

How do you divide up the load?
Have you found that communicating your needs beforehand helps make
things easier when you are in the midst of the hard moments?
Has listening to the needs of your spouse made life a little smoother?

My life plan for 2014: I was going to carry my baby to term, have a great delivery, instantly bond with my son, and fully enjoy my maternity leave (complete with nearly 10 weeks off of teaching elementary school and plenty of support from family). My husband and I were going to love the newborn stage and provide a loving home where happiness prevailed on a daily basis. We even had a mental list of all the things we would teach our child and the values we wanted him to possess. Enter preeclampsia. Enter bed rest. Enter early induction, 34 hours of labor, an emergency c-section and a NICU stay. You can probably guess how quickly our “plan” for a smooth entrance into parenthood was dashed into pieces. This initial shock continued with us returning home to an empty house (my family was out of the country on vacation because nobody was planning on an early delivery). Worse, my husband didn’t have any time off due to starting a new job.

I felt disconnected from my son—like I couldn’t register that he came from me. I loved him and took care of him—but it all felt surreal for several days. I had never expected boredom to be a part of my postpartum experience. I had imagined days full of dirty diapers, playing, feeding, and crying. Instead, I had hours and hours of down time while my baby slept during the day. My whole house was in order (thank you nesting instinct), I wasn’t working, and I had only lived in my house for 3 weeks and therefore didn’t have friends in the neighborhood. I will forever be grateful for my mom’s friends who totally stepped up to the plate, and for strangers in my neighborhood who brought meals and expressed support

Still, this transition was hard in ways I had not previously imagined. All of my child development training and teaching experience felt like it was slowly turning to unused mush in my brain as I got lost in the day-in and day-out routine of caring for a baby. As a parent, there was no “work hard to help them grow and then send them home in a few hours” option. There was no break for collaboration, prep work, or professional development. Instead, breaks were slowly filled with laundry, dishes, or bills. I often joked with my husband that I needed a recording of an audience clapping for me every time I changed a diaper. I missed having others validate my hard work and talents.

As time went by, we slowly found our “new normal.” I returned to work to finish off the rest of the school year. Our son became more interactive as he learned to smile, laugh, and babble. I found myself enjoying each new stage that my son entered. Overall, things became REALLY good. I really did love being a parent. However, I still found it hard to be intentional with my parenting when my child was at such a young age. We just went through the motions of keeping everyone alive and happy each day- and honestly that was okay. It was a good life.

A few years later, we welcomed our daughter into our home. This pregnancy, although fraught with anxiety due to a recent missed miscarriage, was much smoother. I had a completely different hospital experience this time around. My daughter was healthy and able to stay in my room. Breastfeeding fell into place rather easily. Whether it was because I was more relaxed as a second-time parent or whether it was the lack of a traumatic birth, I’ll never know… but I do know the mother/baby connection was there at the moment of birth.

During this hospital stay, a volunteer entered my room and asked me if I would like to sign up for a program called Begin with the Children. I was wary at first, but she explained the free program to me as “parenting help that is delivered each month.” I figured that if I didn’t like it, I didn’t have to use it. I signed the paperwork and essentially forgot about it after that.

A few weeks after bringing my daughter home from the hospital, I found a package in the mail containing my first KinderKronicle. It took me a while to even remember signing up for this program. I flipped through the colorful articles and was instantly impressed that this WAS FOR ME as a parent, not for my daughter. It was covering topics such as building a strong marriage through communication, strengthening our family ties, and building a plan for the future. I was hooked.

Each month I would flip through the short articles and read interesting ideas about how to be an intentional parent. Although it covered some of my daughter’s developmental milestones, it really focused more on how I was developing as a parent- and that is something I had never studied in school. It made me think about what I actually wanted my family to be like, and how we could get to that point. It presented opportunities to discuss goals with my husband. I could count on the fact that at least one time a month, I would have a physical reminder to evaluate myself as a parent and to become better. I can honestly say that after the birth of my second child, I lived in the moment more and was more intentional about how we spent our time and efforts as a family. I owe much of that to KinderKronicle.

Fast forward to the present time, we are about to embark on another parenting journey… this time with twins! We are looking forward to starting over with the Begin with the Children program. In the happy chaos that our family is becoming, heaven knows we could use a monthly reminder to be intentional and in-the-moment at each stage of our parenting journey. Wish us luck! We are glad that the Begin with the Children program is here to help.

Kaitlyn resides in Utah with her husband and 2 (soon to be 4) children. She has a degree in K-6 Elementary Education and a master’s in Curriculum and Instruction. She owns and operates Little Critters Preschool from her home and enjoys the balance that she has found between working and staying at home with her children. She loves Cafe Sabor, Aggie Ice Cream, and automatic car washes.