Am I the only person that gets tired and grumpy during pregnancy and the first year of a baby's life?

[BottySpottom]

As the title says, I find the hormone mix during pregnancy and the tiredness afterwards quite a challenge to deal with (esp being quite 'old'!).

We have talked about going from 3 to 4 (still not a large family by this board's standards, I know), but I really worry about the impact it would have on our existing three. DC1 esp has spent much of his little life with me being pregnant or having sleepless nights with a baby. I worry about the impact of another 2-3 tired years on them. I'm just not as energetic or fun when I am pregnant/tired.

Sorry, I meant to ask how the rest of you handle it?

Better than me obviously

Sorry you didn't get any replies before .

I haven't really got anything helpful to say, except you are not alone! I have only got 3 dcs, so shouldn't really be on this board at all. But I can say that I also feel tired and grumpy during pregnancy, and only really start to feel myself again once I stop bf - which in my case has been at around 12 months with each of my 3.

As for how other people handle the tiredness etc, and whether older children suffer when mums are pg/looking after babies, I try to remind myself that it's a relatively short period of their life, compared with the lifelong positives of having siblings. What the older dcs might lose in terms of your undivided attention and boundless energy they gain in lifeskills and happiness from having siblings - well, on a good day anyway...

I've been tired and grumpy for the first 16 years of my baby's life

Thank you both.

I had come to the conclusion that mums of big families didn't 'do' tired and grumpy, which is why they had big families in the first place!

I just worry about the psychological impact of having a parent who is grumpy a lot of the time, and what it does to the self esteem

I would agree with the tired and grumpy part, we had IVF a few weeks ago and the hormones make you very sick and tired, similar to early pregnancy and I have to say I'm really worried now about the impact of having another.
My Dh is home right now due to redundancy so all is well at the moment but when he goes back to work it's going to be a nightmare.

Oh dear, I am a nightmare and then I forget and then I'm a nightmare. DC4 is 8mths and yesterday whilst feeding him mid afternoon I fell asleep for three and a half hours!!!

Oh my word Posie - now that really is tired!