Struggling with 4dc, baby routine help needed please

[natenewt]

I have 4 dc's, youngest is 3 months, 3 years, 7 years and 9 years. I stupidly thought it would all be fine when baby number 4 comes along, I'll just follow a book with routines in and baby will slot right in yes? No.

I've been broken, I'm not enjoying my kids, I'm constantly trying to get the baby to sleep when she wants to be awake and to keep her awake when she wants to sleep. I've thrown the book away this morning and she's slept when she wants to so far. Only trouble is she always wants to feed at 8.30am, the time I need to leave to get the others to school/pre school. She wakes in the night for a feed at around 3.30/4.30, only takes around 2oz then no more until 8.30am. The rare occasions that she's slept through, she still doesn't want to feed earlier than 8.30!

Then we have trouble when all the kids are around, she gets woken up constantly from naps, she gets more an more grumpy and then both younger dc's are crying for me while I have to cook tea.

I've no family to help/friends all busy with their own dc's, husband works all hours. How do you all cope??? What can I do to make things better?

Anyone?

I had this with dc3

As much as I would love another I daren't!

It does get easier, older dc soon learnt to be quiet when little one was asleep, any noise and they are sent upstairs

The feeding thing shoukd get better as baby gets older too, mine improved massively once started having some porridge

I only have 3 DC but 2 things that helped me

1. White noise/music in baby's room. Means a constant low level noise so less likely to be woken by sudden noise from other DC
2. A slow cooker and/or batch cooking. Meant I could cook when ever it fit in then defrost/serve from slow cooker at tea time (tea times are hard!)

Re feeding. I often did a split feed around school run. So would feed baby at about 8.15 (whether he demanded it or not) then finish the feed once we were back from school run. HTH

I have 4dcs, things were pretty tricky when dc4 came along, but we somehow always made it to school on time ... Just... The older ones were 5, 3 and 22 months when dc4 came along.

I bf on demand, so I didn't have much choice when I could feed her, however, I did try to fill her up before 8-ish so that I could focus on getting the others ready. Would giving dc a bottle say 7:30-8 help?

As soon as I could, I sat dcs (I did this also with dc3 and it was pretty successful) in high chair in the middle of all the action (eg in the doorway of the downstairs toilet, when hair and teeth were being done, the middle of the kitchen when getting ready) and often let her such on a piece of toast to keep her occupied. I also often didn't dress the smaller ones til I got home.

Yay to slow/batch cooking. Roast chicken drumsticks and used lots of frozen veg. It's all very tricky, but baby is still only 3 months. I wore a sling a lot around the house also...

Mine are now 7, 6, 4 and 2 - getting ready in the mornings are still tricky in a very different way!

Thankyou all. I've used the sling tonight, and she has been better. I use the slow cooker a lot in winter, but hadn't thought to get it back out, so will do that from tomorrow.

The feeds are difficult, as she also doesn't cope well with me trying to split the feed. I try to feed her at around 7.30, but she will refuse it and gag.

You've had good advice already - if you can try and split the feed, then I would - I used to do that when my fourth came along. All four of mine had severe reflux, so that added to the fun . I had the baby in the sling a LOT in the early days, and also used a bouncy chair in the middle of the action when I really needed both hands free - making packed lunches, breakfast etc......

I would also try to batch cook at the w/e so that I could just pull out a spag bol or something that I had already prepped.

Just remember it WILL get easier! My fourth 'baby' started school this week .