How to Survive your First Days with a Toddler and Newborn… Alone
I was lucky to have a lot of help when Coyote was born. Melvin was off for 6 weeks and my parents also were able to visit for 2 weeks. They spoiled me with all their help, but I did not take this for granted! I knew that once the time came, I would probably struggle being alone with 2 small humans! With my anxiety I knew I had to take some steps to help prepare myself. Here is how to survive your first days with a toddler and newborn.
How to survive your first days with a toddler and newborn
One. Remember to “give yourself grace” I feel like this a phrase often used with stay-at-home moms. If you think the life of a stay-at-home mom is easy… you can graciously dismiss yourself from this blog because I will be the first to tell you it is NOT easy. It IS hard. It IS rewarding! Anyway, give yourself grace! Just do what you need to do to get through the day. This was my number ONE mistake. I decided I could do everything that I could do when I had help. That being laundry, diaper laundry, working on this blog, cooking dinner, just to name a few. Plus all the normal things like making the bed, getting us all dressed… You may think “what’s the big deal?” Well this is all done on 5ish hours of interrupted sleep and that was just luck!
So don’t try to do everything! Set yourself a goal of 0-2 things to accomplish. I say zero, because remember this is how to survive your first days with a toddler and newborn alone, and its ok to take it easy!
Prepare, Prepare, Prepare
Two. Prepare! I did a few things to make my first days easier!
Each night I set the coffeemaker so it would be ready in the morning. It was nice to wake up to the smell of coffee!
*I set out what we would wear the night before.
*We made sure the downstairs was clean and organized before heading to bed each night.
*I set the washing machine to finish before Melvin left for work so he could put it in the drier and would be done by the time I woke up.
*I brainstormed some activities I wanted to do with Moose. For example, Wednesday I decided IF we were ready we would go to our local playdate. If not we would do a puzzle and play in the front yard. Well, we weren’t ready so puzzle and outside time it was! Also, try to have a few special toys that are for “emergencies” that only get played with a couple times a week.
*Do grocery pick ups if you can. And ask your partner to pick it up if you don’t have the energy to. We made this a fun “activity” we needed diapers, so we did a pickup and then went to the Starbucks drive thru. We didn’t have to get out of the car but we got what we needed and got out of the house for a bit. Baby slept. Moose got a treat, a cake pop, and I got a Chai tea and also was able to listen to my current book (check out my latest book blog here)
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How to Survive your First Days with a Toddler and Newborn Continued…
Plan
Three. When trying to plan for how to survive your first days with a toddler and newborn be sure to…
Plan something for you. I like to reward myself for making it through the few hours I am alone with the kiddos. As I said above we went to get Starbucks one day.
Another day I took a bubble bath and read.
One day I went to dinner with a friend.
And another day my neighbors and I went for bubble tea, we just talked in the car, went through the drive thru for our drinks and came home. We are all moms so it was just nice to chat and catch up!
For a couple of the days I went for a 15 minute walk ALONE.
And soon I will be starting to go to the gym for workouts alone!
It can be anything, but make sure it is something for you! Something that you enjoy doing!
Delegate
Four. I touched on it a bit above, Delegate. Ask your spouse to help out, ask friends for help, in most cases I am sure they would love to help out. Yes your spouse is back to work so they are probably tired in a different way too. But they can do a few things like a grocery pick up. Taking the kids or one of them alone for a bit so you get a break. And along with this you can work together to get everything done smoothly.
We quickly fell into a routine. Which wasn’t easy. My first week alone was the week of Halloween so as you can imagine there were a lot of fun events!
But our routine looked a lot like this…
Hubby gets off and takes one kiddo while I keep the other.
Mommy me time. For me this is taking a walk or a bath ALONE, where I could read or listen to a book!
One of us cooks dinner, the other baths the kids
Eat dinner and do story/bed-time.
Shower.
Mommy and Daddy time. We started watching a show together a couple nights a week. Or just sitting together doing our desired activity while catching up.
Bedtime.
I am lucky that I quickly realized that I couldn’t do everything and needed to set up some ways to help me. I hope that this “how to survive your first days with a toddler and newborn” helps you! Remember you don’t have to do it all either!
Give yourself Grace
Prepare
Plan &
Delegate!
You have got this mama!!! How are some ways you prepared for your first days alone with your kiddos? Tell me below!
