Brace yourself this is a long one and I’m not sure if I need advice or just people who understand!
We have 2.5 year old fraternal (b/b) twins and 5 month old (b/g) twins and we’re drowning.
I just finished my maternity leave which was 8 weeks longer than my older twins leave which was so good but also so hard. My husband was off with me for 6 weeks and then worked part time the rest of my leave but now that we’re back full time and all the kids are at daycare I’m not sure how we are going to make it.
I am trying to stay in the workforce because my income potential is worth it in the long run and it would be very hard to leave and come back to my career so leaving isn’t really an option but we are getting absolutely rocked by daycare prices (we are at the cheapest place we could find) and cannot go part time or anything like that (we’ve explored every option in length).
We literally have no where in our budget to cut funds other than our groceries and yes when we talked about a 3rd we considered the cost of another set of twins and we could afford it but that was before our daycare raised their prices for the first time in 3 yrs $100 per kid per week and our car was totaled and we had to take on a car payment, plus everything else just generally getting more expensive.
We don’t qualify for any programs and it just feels like we can’t keep our heads above water and then we get into the actual part of having 2 sets of twins and the absolute chaos and logistics nightmare that is every second of every day.
We have a ton of family “help” aka people who can come entertain the older twins and maybe hold a baby but it tends to be more exhausting having people over.
Our older twins are an emotional roller coaster and the babies are just another piece that makes every step 15x more challenging. Older twins are crashing out, babies aren’t sleeping at night or napping.
When will it get easier? I have to be moving and doing something/coordinating something every second I am awake and I’m exhausted. My husband is fantastic and takes on as much as he physically and mentally can as well and we do everything together as a team but we’re both tired and get snippy when we’ve hit our capacity which is like 10 minutes after our eyes open each day.
What do I do? My job is flexible wfh but it’s a lot of mental energy and my self care is genuinely just making sure I eat, drink and shower right now since I’m pumping and breastfeeding on top of it all. We mix in some formula to take the pressure off a bit too.
I’ve got no ideas how to give us some reprieve. It’s kinda too much for one parent to take on alone without help and I just don’t know how we are going to make it through this and hearing it’s such a short time, etc., genuinely doesn’t help because I’m not sure I’m going to make it into the next minute. (Clarifying I mean make it as stressed and not mental health crisis concerns).
Anyways I’m crashing out a bit and hit the wall during a long 3 day weekend after just going back to work last week. Thank you to everyone who reads this and can empathize that having multiples is so amazing AND can still be so incredibly hard at the same time.