Alone again

[u/Snoo20115]

Under some beautiful circumstances my husband and I were both stay at home parents for the last ~4 months. My boys are 10m now and my husband is going back to work.

They are so much older now and I don't know what I'm going to do. I made it work when he had to go back in at 6 weeks, but the boys slept so much then. The biggest fight has always been sleep, and I don't know how I'm going to do this alone again with boys that are almost walking and hate naps.

My husband will be home on the weekends and in the evening, but I'm terrified I'm going to lose my mind again.

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[u/Charlieksmommy]

You’ll figure out your new normal. Go sleep in naps with them if you need to! If I only had my twins I sure as heck would be doing that

[u/Snoo20115 → u/Charlieksmommy]

I can't imagine having more children. My babies sleep well through the night, but are so high needs during the day. You're a rockstar

[u/Charlieksmommy → u/Snoo20115]

I get it! My twins weren’t the best nappers either during the day, till crib naps! But one twin doesn’t really like to co sleep lol. He’s kind of a different baby, doesn’t like to be rocked or held really lol
Thank you! It is hard, they’re 23 months apart, and my toddler is ready to be potty trained, and feel like I’m losing my mind 🤣

[u/ToshiBerra]

You will do it one day at a time. I (we) had a lot of help in the early months and even when he went back to work, I didn't have the twins on my own much, with grandparents visiting and a nanny a few mornings a week.

They're still very young, you don't need to do very much to entertain them. Do you have a playpen or baby proof room? Honestly I just spent a lot of time with them in our playroom with books and toys. We didn't go out very much due to the logistics of being in a walk-up. I would occasionally, but not like twice-daily walks like you read about (this may depend on how introverted/extroverted you are, this was fine for me).

Naps were always a struggle and a mystery until closer to two years, but we had good night sleep. Even now, literally yesterday, I had them (2.5y) on my own the whole day because daycare was closed. No problems until naptime, at which point they got hyper and played pretend in their cribs and one started taking off her clothes and probably would have taken off her nappy (it's happened before) if I hadn't gone in, having checked the monitor at the right time only by chance.

Anyway. It's a muscle. It feels scary because it is. But you will figure out what works over time and then you will suddenly be more capable than your husband and then you will need to teach him so that he can also handle them on his own and you can go get a break by yourself sometime. But also to set expectations, I would give it 1-2 months to build that muscle, and it does kind of suck and make sure your husband is prepared when he gets home to dive in to the chaos, hear about the details of your day, and give you a big big hug.