The Truth About Having 3 Kids Under 5

In just two weeks, my oldest child will turn five years old. Which means I’ve spent the last seven months being mom to three kids under age five. It’s been a juggling act, for sure. The reality is that young children are needy. Their ability to do things for themselves is limited. I spend a lot of time every day running back and forth from one child to the next; wiping tears, bums, faces, and hands; buckling and unbuckling them from car seats and highchairs and boosters; endlessly feeding three bottomless pits with three varying degrees of ability and willingness to eat what I make; and trying to ensure that everyone gets the much-needed one-on-one time that they deserve.

I’d be lying if I said that I don’t feel overwhelmed a lot (most) of the time. But now that Eden isn’t so new and I’ve had a little practice taking three kids out of the house on my own, I’m not as scared to run errands or take the kids to the park without Michael around to help. That means being outnumbered 3-to-1 out in public, typically with one child on my hip or worn in a baby carrier, one child rolling around by my feet (because waiting in line is hard when you’re 2), and the third pulling on my free hand as she tries to tell me a story. We’re quite a spectacle. Often someone will look at me and my flock of small children and will say five words I’ve gotten very accustomed to hearing.

“You have your hands full.”

I still haven’t figured out how to respond to that. I mean, yes. My hands are very full. Both in the metaphorical and literal sense. But no one said that to me when I was a 25-year-old mom of two children under the age of three who was struggling so much with postpartum anxiety and depression that I had to close my small business and start taking medication for the first time in my life. No one told me, “you’ve got your hands full” when I was a first-time mom playing the role of single parent while my husband was in initial entry Army training for the first nine months of my baby’s life. It was just as true then as it is now. But no one said anything.

What is it about three kids that signals to society that you’re officially stretched too thin? So many moms told me when I was pregnant with Eden that the transition to three kids is the hardest. “You’ve only got two hands,” they’d say. Again, true. But most tasks require two hands, whether that’s changing diapers, making meals, or cleaning up giant spills. It isn’t like I can give one hand to one child, another hand to a second child, and just leave the third kid hanging. Someone—usually more than one someone—is always going to have to wait. That was as true when I had two children as it is now that I have three. I did an interview with Psalm when she was three years old, and one of the questions was “what is Mommy’s favorite thing to do?” Her response? “Mommy do’s one thing a time!” Because whenever she’d nag me for something she wanted while I was in the middle of another task I would respond with, “I can only do one thing at a time, Psalm.” Nearly two years later, I still remind her of that daily.

I’m not trying to minimize the struggle of moms of three kids. Especially those of us with three very young kids. Rather, I’m trying to increase our empathy for moms of two kids, or moms of one, or four, or more. The reality is that motherhood is hard, no matter how many kids you have. And there isn’t a “you must have this many children to be a struggling mother” rule. I struggled with one baby. I struggled with two. In fact, for me personally, the transition from one child to two children was the hardest by far. I’d kind of figured out how to be a mom to my 2-year-old, but adding on another baby completely changed the game. Psalm was a fantastic big sister and loved Oliver from the get-go. But our relationship faltered. She was angry with me for not being available whenever she wanted me. It got so bad for a while that she wouldn’t let me pick her up or hold her, and she would cry for her dad and wanted nothing to do with me. My anxiety manifested itself in angry outbursts, and we both spent way too much time yelling and crying in the first few months after Oliver was born.

I don’t share this story lightly. And I don’t share the fact that I’m an anxiety-ridden, overwhelmed, struggling mom most of the time lightly either. I share it because I firmly believe that our personal weaknesses as moms don’t make us bad at being moms, they make us human. And humans struggle. Because life is hard. Life is also good, and beautiful, and exciting. So is motherhood. It is the best, most beautiful, most exciting thing I’ve ever done. But gosh, it’s hard sometimes!

With each baby, the newborn stage has gotten less stressful and scary. My anxiety has centered less on my baby and more on meeting the needs of my older children. I’ve done pregnancy four times and babies three times now, so it’s no longer uncharted territory. Having a 5-year-old? That’s a totally different story. As my children get older, their personalities and needs become clearer and more defined. In some ways, that makes meeting those needs a little bit easier. But it also means having to tailor my parenting to each child. That has been the biggest challenge for me of having three kids.

Psalm’s love language is quality (and quantity) time. She wants my attention during every single second that she is in my presence. Getting her to play and solve problems independently is the biggest struggle she and I face, and I expect that it will continue for her entire childhood. Even though she is the oldest, the most capable, and the most helpful, she’s also the one who is always underfoot. She can be clingy and demanding. She’s impatient. I dedicate multiple times during the day for direct, one-on-one connection with her. We do “together time” every afternoon while the other kid’s nap, where she gets to decide what we play and gets my undivided attention. We do school together. And at night she likes to cuddle and read books. Even with all this time together, she seems to have an insatiable appetite for my attention. That has been true her entire life, and the more kids that get added to our family, the more time with me she has to sacrifice, which can be hard for her.

Oliver is my troublemaker. He’s the one who dumps entire packages of goldfish crackers on the floor and then stomps them into millions of tiny crumbs. He flushes objects down the toilet that are just the right size to get far enough down the tubes to be unreachable before clogging up the pipe. He climbs on the furniture and draws on the walls and chases the cat. His little 2-year-old body is in perpetual motion, even when he’s sitting. Unless, of course, he’s snuggling me. Because Oliver’s love language is physical touch. He’s a little tornado, and I cannot turn my back on him for five seconds without him getting into something he shouldn’t. But when he needs to feel loved, he comes crawling into my lap and rests his soft little head on my shoulder and just lets me hold him. It’s pretty hard to stay mad at him when his response to my exasperation is to walk up to me with arms extended and say, “Mom, I want you hold me.”

Eden’s love language is still a mystery. After all, she’s only 7-months-old. But she is also my youngest, least developed, highest needs child. She nurses every 4 hours, needs constant diaper changes, has to be carried everywhere, and must be watched constantly when she’s around her sibling’s toys. There’s sleep training, introducing solid foods, and ensuring she gets the stimulation she needs to learn and grow. Even after having three of them, taking care of a baby is still lots of work. Eden was also my first colicky baby and has a dairy sensitivity that requires me to carefully watch what I eat. Despite all of that, I appreciate having a baby a lot more now than I did with my oldest. I cherish the sleepy snuggles and toothless grins and throaty giggles and wish she’d stay this way forever. Until she wants to stay up all night, of course, and then I’m eager for her to be a little older.

Between Psalm’s constant need for attention, Oliver’s constant need for supervision, and Eden’s constant need for care, there are days when it feels like I cannot leave my children’s presence long enough even to go to the bathroom. I go through a phase after every baby is born when I feel like I’m lost in the sauce. I lose sight of who I am outside of “Mom”. Eden is old enough now that we’ve developed a routine and I’m starting to exit that fog a little bit. We still have hard days, when I feel like I can’t do it all and I never get a second to breathe. But I had those days when there were two kids, and I had them when there was one. And I expect that as my kids get older, I’ll continue to have those days.

Here’s the truth about having three kids under five. It’s not all that different from having two kids, or one kid. It’s always exhausting and stressful and frustrating and rewarding and joyful and exciting to be a parent. True, you learn to let a lot of things slide by the time your third kid rolls around that you wouldn’t have let slide with your first. And you get better at learning which needs are immediate and which ones can wait, both for yourself and your kids. But there are always challenges you didn’t see coming, and it’s always a juggling act. If you’re on the cusp of being a mom of three, don’t panic. You’ve got this! There will be a steep learning curve, as there always is when you add someone to your family. But you’ll adjust and soon you won’t be able to imagine life without that baby in your family. And if you’re an overwhelmed first- or second-time mom, don’t let comparison to moms of 3+ kids get to you. You have your hands full, too, and what you’re doing is a big deal, no matter how many kids you have.