My Roman Empire is wondering how do people "do life" with more than 1 DC?
I have one DC aged 3 and life feels so full on at the moment. We do want a second but I had horrible HG with him where I was in a terrible state for most of my pregnancy, unable to care for myself and in and out of hospital a lot. I was on strong medication too so lots of worry about baby's health as well.
Because of this and how busy life feels even with the one, I'm still (kind of) on the fence whether to put my body through this again even though long term we do envision ourselves as parents of 2 DCs. So the dilemma is - suffer in the short term (with HG), then have a very very busy life for years but have 2 DCs to love and dote on or chose a comfortable life now, not putting my body through HG again but be kind of lonely in the long term. We're not from the UK originally, and both me and DH are only children so our DCs will be our only family here.
Both me and DH are working full time, we're as organised and as efficient as I feel we could possibly be with our time so that we can do all the things that need doing on a daily basis. DC sleeps very well so no lack of sleep or anything, and things are generally going very well - compared to many of my friends who have poor sleepers, 2 and more DCs I'm even ashamed to admit that we struggle with how busy life is.
I thought I would have time to work out by now as I have a bad back and need to do stretching/Pilates in order to keep pain at bay, but most days I'm so exhausted by the end of the day that exercise it the last thing on my mind. And if I do, this means we then only have an hour or so to have dinner and do everything that needs doing before we need to go to sleep. I also need to sleep at least 7 hours a day as I have a chronic migraine with aura that flares up if I don't have enough sleep. I can't exercise in the morning as DC is a very light sleeper and as soon as I'm up, he wakes up too. Some days I feel so frazzled with all the stuff that needs doing and then I remind myself we only have the one and I feel guilty about feeling this way and start wondering how on earth will we manage with two. At times it feels like me and DH are like passing ships, passing DC between each other when we need to go to an appointment, have a work trip etc.
Parents of two DCs, how do you manage? Do you have time to workout, do you have time for your partner? Or is it just a time in your life where you've accepted other things take priority? I'd be grateful of any insight into the life of a family of 4!