Large family of 4 or more kids? I need your tips.

Do you have four or more children? I need your tips and tricks for managing and organising a large family for a new book.

We'll be covering everything from laundry and cleaning tips to advice on homeschooling with little ones afoot and moneysaving tips, and who better to swap and share advice than the people who know... the parents of large families themselves! That's better than an "expert" any day, if you ask me!

I will be sending out more details and some questions over the next few days so please do let me know if you would like to share your advice and the methods that work for you. You can answer as much or as little as you like - no pressure, but all contributions are welcome.

It doesn't matter where in the world you live, if you have a large family and would like to be a contributor please email me at family@largerfamilylife.com and let me know.

And if you don't fancy contributing or don't have more than four children please link back to this post. Write about it, talk about it, Tweet and Facebook it and share it any other way you can. The more people we reach the more tips we can gather!



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They were talking about me

Earlier on this week we decided to go to the local shopping centre to pick up some craft supplies and maybe a gift or two. Mike and I loaded up the minibus with the two double buggies and the nine youngest children and set off.

As is quite usual now, we were stopped several times during our trip, with people wanting to know if all the children are ours, how old the twins are and how many children we actually have and any other of the regular questions we get asked. It makes the trips last a little longer but people are so pleasant when they see us and ask them that we don't mind at all.

A lot of older people mention how many siblings they may have had, or others say how they wish they had a large family or how great Christmas must be. We, thankfully, have always received a position reaction.

As we were wandering around another store, we were stopped once again, for what was perhaps the fifth or sixth time during our not even two hour trip. We were asked how many children we had, talked a little with the couple who had stopped us and then continued our shop. Mike took the children outside the shop while I queued up to pay at the counter.

As I was being served a second shop assistant came off the shop floor and began talking to her colleague who was serving me.

"There's a lady over there with eleven kids! Eleven!" she told her friend.

We smiled at each other, with me thinking she'd obviously seen Mike and I talking to the couple we'd just left.

"Eleven?!" the lady serving me repeated.

"Yes! Can you imagine having eleven children?!" the first lady replied.  And as they spoke and laughed together, occasionally glancing over and throwing a smile my way as they did so, it dawned that they didn't realise they were talking about me!


As I stood there, listening to the conversation unfold as I was being served I wondered whether I ought to jump in and tell them that I was the person they were talking about.  They weren't being rude or insulting.  They were both laughing as they imagined having so many children themselves, and were dealing with all the usual questions between each other that people generally tend to ask when they find out the size of your family.

As I was debating with myself, the assistant serving me asked her colleague a question.

"Was the mum slim?"

Whoa!

Here is my cue to jump right on in here and do it fast!  If the lady who had overheard our conversation answered her friend and said, "Oh no! The mum is really hefty!" I would have been devastated!

"No, she's not," I interrupted, and they looked up thinking I was probably being incredibly rude after firstly butting into their conversation and, secondly, insulting somebody I didn't even know.

"I'm the mum!" I explained.

And now we had two apologetic, embarrassed ladies trying desperately to reassure me that no, I am not fat and making the "Wow! Eleven children!" comments.

I don't know who found the situation funnier; me, the assistants or Mike who wondered why I was laughing when I walked out of the shop.

I'll bet the ladies are just thankful they didn't say anything bad!



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Our Large Family Forums are here!

Just in case you missed it our Family Forums are now open.

You don't need to have a large family to join our Family Forums.  You might be planning to have more children, you might have a smaller family and not planning on any more or you might just be curious and interested in large families.  Everyone is welcome!

If you haven't joined our Family Forums yet you can click on over here to do so.  If you would like to you can also grab our badge (at the top of this post or in the sidebar of this blog) for your own blog or site and link back to it at the following URL: http://www.largerfamilylife.com/p/lfl-family-forum.html

I hope to see you there and please do spread the word to anyone you think may be interested!


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Why I get up at 5am

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I have written before about how I strongly recommend waking up earlier than everybody else when you have a family to look after.  I recommend it even more so after the events of this week.

I have been waking up at 5am for almost four years now.  That is every single day, with weekends included.  I wasn't always an early riser and it took some training to get used to doing it but I quickly realised that I far preferred the benefits that it brought.

Getting up before everybody else gives me the opportunity to "get my head straight".  I can prepare myself, physically and mentally, for the day ahead.  I can breakfast and have a coffee or two in peace.  I can get the chores started and get ahead of my work and I can get myself dressed and ready before the small people start demanding my time and attention.  I can deal with my online banking, my emails and I can write up a blog post or two.  I like having the quiet time before the busyness of the day begins.

If I can get myself that one hour it makes a lot of difference to my whole day.  This was brought home to me this week when I did the unthinkable and overslept.  I hardly ever oversleep and if I do it is rarely by more than ten minutes.  With a couple of babies to get up for during the night sometimes the tiredness tends to kick in.  This week it gave me a real good kicking and I ended up oversleeping not once but twice.  Furthermore,  it wasn't by minutes but by over an hour each time!

By the time I awoke, the children were already awake and demanding my attention.  The chores that would normally be done and out of the way were left so that I could deal with the kids.  I hadn't had a coffee, hadn't had breakfast and hadn't even had time to run a brush through my hair, let alone get myself dressed and made up for the day.

As the morning passed by and I tried to play catch-up on the things I would normally have dealt with I got more and more stressed and short-tempered.  Before I knew it lunch time had arrived and I still hadn't caught up on everything.  I hadn't eaten all morning, not having had the chance to eat breakfast after all.  The laundry was behind, schooling started later and I was trying frantically to prepare materials for lessons that I didn't get the chance to do already.  The hoovering and dusting wasn't done and every crumb on the carpet screamed at me.  The result?  I was rushing around, maligning myself and getting in a fouler mood as the day went on.

I hadn't realised until this week just how much having this time in my day means to me.  I hadn't realised until now just how much the benefits far outweighed anything that the extra few minutes of sleep could give.  I appreciate far more the things I can do, the amount I can achieve and the peace of mind it gives me when I am firm with myself and my early morning starts, and this in turn goes a long way to improving my mood for the rest of the day.  And the rest of the family appreciates that!

I often hear from other mums who say they wish they could do that, or have thought about trying it but then finish with, "... but I'm really not a morning person".

You don't have to be a morning person.

You just have to be firm with yourself for two weeks.

Don't look at me that way. 

Two weeks.

That is all.

Try getting up before anyone else in the house for just two weeks and work out your own little routine.  Make the most of having your morning coffee in peace and note how many chores you can get done in that time, without having to rush and without having the distraction of little ones under your feet.  See if it makes any difference to your mood (once you've got going and stopped cursing my name under your breath).  Try it out and see if it gives you a head start to your day, allowing you to get on top of things before they get on top of you.

I much prefer my 5am starts to a day of rushing about, getting an already stressed me into a worse mood as the day progresses.

I am willing to bet you will notice the benefits too.

Let me know if you try it.


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We have some breaking news to tell you!

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I know what you are thinking.

You're wrong.

Earlier on I asked for your opinion on what you would like to see on this blog.

One idea we came up with was to have a forum where we could all gather and form an interactive community.

Well, after another morning of work I am pleased to announce that the Larger Family Life Family Forums are here!

We wanted to provide a safe, comfortable place where we could chat and get to know our readers better.  It isn't just a place for large families but for everyone.

There is a forum for general chat, as well as somewhere to share your pregnancy, a homeschooling forum, a cooking forum and a healthy living one.  We also have a forum for old style thrift.  You can leave your comments and suggestions for anything else you think we should include.

Whether you have a large family already, hope to have a large family one day or are simply curious about them, I hope you will register and join in to make this new community grow into a great place to be!

Please spread the word wherever you can!  The Family Forums are ready and waiting.  They just need a community to use them!

Edit: It has been brought to my attention that people using IE or Firefox to register cannot see the captcha code and so can't complete their registration.  I have tried it out and can confirm that the captcha can be seen if you use Google Chrome though I don't know what the problem is with the other browsers.  All I can ask at the moment is if you can please use Chrome to register with, then once registered you should be able to use the forums in your normal browser.  In the meantime I will try and find a solution to the problem of the invisible captchas in other browsers, but as I'm not techie minded at all don't hold your breath that it will be any time soon!  I apologise for the inconvenience. 


It seems to be working okay now so there's no excuse not to sign up!



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Eight children under 8 years old (including newborn twins)

That's what we currently have. In fact, at the moment the age range of "the younger ones" is 8, 6, 5, 4, 2, 13 months and 3 week old twins.

People often say that the older children (18, 17 and 12) must help out a lot with the younger ones. I tell them that the oldest two are no longer living at home and the answer is almost always a surprised "Oh!". If I were to look into the future ten years ago to where we are now, I think I'd have fainted! There is no way I could have imagined having so many children so close in age and when people often ask, "How do you cope?", especially with a couple of newborns thrown into the mix.  

Here are some tips on what I have found works for me:


Take some time out after having a new baby


The week after the twins were born coincided with the week that half-term was scheduled.  This meant that the kids had a week off their lessons and I had a week off from teaching them.  Whether or not it was scheduled, we'd have had that week off anyway.  It took pressure off and allowed us all to simply veg and focus on settling with the new babies.


Limit visitors


People often want to come and visit new babies and sometimes it can be a little overwhelming to be dealing with so many people coming in and out the door in a short space of time when you are busy and dealing with a gazillion things already.  Don't be afraid to say, "We need a little time and I'll let you know when we're a little more settled.".  Usually they'll understand and won't mind waiting a week or two to visit.  If they are offended, well, that's not your problem to deal with.


Let things slide for a while and accept it


Sometimes it's necessary to accept that some things need to take a back seat.  For example, I will normally hoover the house (downstairs only) twice a day.  Since having the twins it has usually only been done once a day.  At first it grated me and I felt a knot in my stomach that I wasn't "keeping up" as I normally would.  Then I realised that as long as we were a) fed and b) had clean clothes to wear, I was doing okay!  If the crumbs on the carpet really bothered me I could run the sweeper over them even if I couldn't go the whole hog and get the hoover out.  Ok, so maybe I couldn't let it go completely!


Avoid unnecessary trips out


Packing up everything and getting everyone loaded onto the family bus can take a lot of time and effort.  Slow down.  Take time to stay at home and just take things easy.  Have a family movie afternoon, sit in the garden (weather permitting!) or read together.  You can do plenty of things with your new baby in tow.  Take a week or two to rest and remove any unnecessary trips or appointments from your schedule.


Organisation


One thing that has evolved greatly as my family has grown is realising how great the need for organisation is.  Keeping the laundry rotating rather than thinking you'll deal with it later, or keeping an eye on the groceries to make sure you don't run out of milk first thing in the morning is a must.  I have to admit, for the first time in a very long time we have failed on the latter.  Thankfully Mike is home and able to make an early morning run for a milk top-up.  If he were not here I would be having a nightmare to get nine of the kids out of the house in the early morning to go and get the stuff I've run out of.  This would create havoc with my stress levels, the children wouldn't be happy at being dragged out without having breakfast and meltdowns would occur all round.  So organisation is the key.  Note to self: Take own advice - remember to check the milk in future!


Routine


As with organisation I feel better when things run to some kind of a routine.  The younger children's nap times are always around the same time each day as are meal times and bed times.  Sleeping and eating are the two most important things to keep on top of if you want to avoid children's melt downs so if you have these two worked into some kind of set schedule you've won half the battle.


Shop online


I am a big fan of doing my grocery shopping online.  I hate shopping at the best of times, whether it's for groceries, clothes or anything else.  I hate the busyness of shops, the checkout queues, the parking, carrying the bags around... the lot, so shopping online is, in my opinion, one of the greatest developments ever.  I click on what I want, pay by card and get it delivered to my door.  Lovely and stress-free.  (Well almost.  I'd be happier if the delivery driver could also unpack my shopping for me.  Yes I know, I'm so demanding and hard to please).


Use a slow cooker


Throw a selection of ingredients in in the morning.  Switch on.  Eat a yummy, hot meal in the evening.  Easy!


Have a supportive husband


Yes, I've been very lucky with this one I know.  Mike is more than halfway off his parental leave period now. It's been great having him home and spending time with him.  He's been a great help with everything, from looking after the kids to helping with the housework and laundry.  He's even been honing his cooking skills with fab results.  I am really going to miss him when he goes back to work.


There are a few more things I could probably add to this list but those are the suggestions to get started with.  What have you found works for you?


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Large families - what's in a number?

I was having a conversation about something-or-other with my mother-in-law earlier this week when she mentioned something referring to a family with fourteen children.  I asked her whether the number seemed high to her.

"Fourteen?" she asked, as if she was thinking about it for the first time and I explained what I meant.

On Monday it was my birthday.  Ben and Stephanie came over for the day along with my parents and we had all eleven children in the house together.  As we gathered around the table to fill our plates with the selection of food we had set out Mike and I cast our eyes around it and commented to each other on how there still didn't seem to be very many children there.  I have blogged before about family size and how we've experienced the feeling that not everyone is present even when we are all there.  It just doesn't feel like there are that many of us.

As Mike explained it, when you think of 11 children you imagine them to be taking up so much more space, and for things to look far busier and manic than they actually are, like scenes from the Steve Martin film, Cheaper by the Dozen or something.  In truth life is a lot calmer and not as hectic as you'd imagine.

Like I said to my mother-in-law, when we had only four children and watched a programme about a family with fourteen, our reaction back then was, "Wow! Fourteen!" whereas now it doesn't seem such a big deal at all.  I then asked her again that as she's now familiar with us having "so many" ourselves, did she think of fourteen children being a high number.

"No.  I suppose not!" she concluded.

So what do you think?  How many children do you have and how many do you consider to be a lot?  Has this figure changed as your family has grown?  I'd be interested to hear your comments.


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Large families and sickness

Being a mum to a large family and living life blogging and writing about large family life, there isn't much I will say is too hard about it all.

Normally, I'll be telling you that having more children doesn't really make as much difference as you'd imagine.

Normally, I'll be telling you that it really was harder work when I only had two or three children.

Normally, I'll be telling you that the change from a small family to a bigger one was gradual, so I haven't been left feeling like I'm cooking or washing for an army.

Today isn't a "normally" kind of day.

The sick bug is rife in our house at the moment.  It has passed through Paddy and Mike, and then hit Sid before bedtime last night resulting in a major scrub down of the kitchen, lobby and downstairs shower room which was host to the puke-fest.

During the night, when I was trying to ignore Braxton Hicks and backache, I realised that Mike wasn't in bed.  He was scrubbing the bedroom carpet in the next room at 1am.  Harry now has the bug too.

Normally in a larger than average family it will take a week or two for a bug to work its way through each family member.  By which time it isn't unusual for a new bug to take over.  We had colds a couple of weeks ago, remember?  Now it's time for the tummy bug to make an appearance.

So, four members of the household have already had it.  That leaves baby Joseph, Oliver, Eddie and Caitlin to get it now.  I am sure it won't take long.  I am dreading it.

It also leaves me.

Almost 34 weeks pregnant with twins.  Already uncomfortable, in pain and having dealt with one thing or another over the last almost three weeks.   My back is now playing up.  The tenderness across the top of my uterus, put down to bruising from the babies, is increasing day after day and a stomach bug is definitely the very last thing I or these babies need.

I am bracing myself.

If I go quiet here you'll know why.

I must have missed the calm before the storm.  Please tell me that the calm also comes after the storm too?

Reassure me, please.


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The Final Countdown

How many of you have read that title and now have the song from the frizzy-haired eighties band going around in your heads?

I apologise.

I'll even apologise for the fact that the song will probably remain there for the rest of the day.

This isn't a post about almost twenty year old rock bands with bad hair. We really are counting down to something.

Early on in this pregnancy when we first found out we were expecting twins, Mike and I talked about how this amazing yet different turn of events would affect everything. Suddenly, knowing that we were not expecting one baby but two threw this pregnancy into a whole new light.

Rather than thinking in terms of a 40 week pregnancy which was likely to have a scheduled c-section the week before, with the usual aches and pains and developments of all the other pregnancies before it, we were now faced with the more uncertain maybe/maybe nots of a twin pregnancy. There is no precedent set. I had never experienced a twin pregnancy before and didn't know what it would entail. Indeed, neither did the medical professionals I was dealing with. This time it's all different.

Instead we were given all the if's, but's and maybe's. If problems occur then bed rest will happen, but if things take a turn for the worst then.... you get the idea. The things is, there is just no telling.

Thankfully, I have had a pretty uneventful pregnancy. As usual my iron levels have dipped. Now, as I'm coming to the final stages, I'm having to deal with more discomfort and more symptoms which will all go as fast as they came once the babies are born. We are at the stage where Braxton Hicks contractions are being watched and noted for any increase which may indicate a trip to the hospital, as these babies really could do with a couple more weeks staying where they are.

But the problem with living a life and raising a family independent of outside help means that sometimes you need to put extra plans in place. (Edit: I should say here that we do have constant offers of help from our neighbours-on-one-side (aka "The Nice Side").  They are the ones who looked after the children when I went into hospital for Joseph's birth.  I know that we have their help if we need it in an emergency or for an appointment.  What I wouldn't expect from them is to look after the children/run our house/cook our meals/wash our dirty undies etc etc if I were to be hospitalised or put on bed rest for a length of time.  We wanted to put plans into place so as not to burden ourselves onto others more than we need to.  There are a lot of us and it would be a lot to expect anyone else to take on for a prolonged period of time especially when they have their own lives to live and other commitments which do (and should) take priority over us, even though I know they'd be happy and willing to do it).  We don't know what is going to happen now. We can't tell if I'm going to hold on until the scheduled c-section date or whether labour will kick off in the next week or two. We can't plan yet we still have our children to consider and when you don't have people you can call on (Edit: to cover an indefinite period of days or weeks rather than minutes and hours), you need to think about what you're going to do.

Very soon after finding out we were expecting twins, we worked out how much money we would need to have set aside for Mike to be able to take a reasonable amount of time off work. By reasonable, we thought three months from the end of September. Our plan was that we hoped any complications wouldn't arise until well after the thirty week mark. Then if the babies did arrive early and end up in SCBU, he or I could remain with them while the other one stayed with the other children. My mother in law is kindly going to come over as quickly as possible to look after the kids while I am in labour or theatre but she still needs to get over from the next county and there is a limit to how long she can stay for.

We needed to work out finances and put plans into place to cover all eventualities. So we did. And by a wing and a prayer we can cover our costs so that this is possible. He's taking parental leave to last the rest of the year.

And he's finishing next Friday!

And boy, am I looking forward to it.

And the kids are looking forward to it!

And Mike is very much looking forward to it!!

So many exclamation marks!!!

I have now reached the stage where the tiredness is so difficult to deal with, and the discomfort and physical limitations are making me desperately slow and turning even the most minor tasks into major feats.  I am so thankful that we planned way ahead to make this possible.

I am ready for a little help.

And I am really looking forward to spending the time with him.

Just one more week to go!


Roll on!


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