I was excited to grow our family, but in the back of my mind, I was petrified. I knew what having a newborn was like (the first time around, it was not fun for me) and having a toddler around made that seem very challenging.

When we brought home our new baby to our 2-year-old toddler, the only thing I could think about was, “How do we handle TWO of them?”

In this list, see what worked for us and what you can do to get by and survive in the early weeks with a newborn and a toddler. I promise, it gets easier!

Key tips (what you should take home from this list!)

  • Prepare in advance for a change in the duties of each parent once the baby comes.
  • Assign each parent to one child to divvy up what needs to get done by bedtime!
  • Connect with other parents who also have a newborn and a toddler. Ask around and start a group!
  • Use a baby carrier in order to be hands-free with the newborn and give your toddler attention.
  • Witching hour is tough: devote time to giving the newborn what he/she needs in order to keep things calm in the house.
  • Ask for HELP, whether it is family members, neighbors or friends.

Train in advance

I talked to a lot of parents with two young kids leading up to the birth of our second baby. What a lot of them said was to prep in advance:

  • If Mommy has been doing bath time with the toddler and you know that Mommy will be constantly feeding the baby when the baby comes, start doing bath time with Daddy in the weeks leading up to birth.
  • If Mommy has been doing school drop-off, prep Daddy to start doing drop-off and pick-up and learning the ropes of which items to take home and bring on which days.
  • The same goes for grandparents: if your toddler will be spending more time being cared for by grandparents or other family members, provide some tips like cues about potty, or meal times or how to put your toddler down for a nap.

These “trainings” really helped us, as part of the things to get done before the baby came. It was especially useful with bath time and bed time, as I (the default “all things newborn” parent) was usually tied up with feeding or having the baby nap on me.

Divide and conquer

You’ll hear this constantly from parents of two little ones: “Divide and conquer!”

We found our own definition for this, which was: Mom gets the baby, Dad gets the toddler. If you can each focus only on one child and their needs, until bedtime, things become a bit clearer.

For example, if I focused solely on the baby, I’d either get the baby fed, or to take a nap, and if I got the baby sleeping in the baby carrier during dinner time, I could be present at my toddler’s bedtime story.

Conversely, if Dan got the baby to sleep on his lap in the glider, I could do our toddler’s bath time and put her to bed completely on my own until the baby woke up and needed to feed with me.

Laser-focusing on one child allows your mind to ease just a little bit during all the chaos.

Find other newborn-toddler parents

One of the helpful things I did was stay connected with other parents who had a newborn and toddler, at the same time we did.

Luckily, I had already started a mom/newborn group on Facebook, and from there, it became a Whatsapp group.

One day I asked who among us already had an older child at home, and said that we should start a sub-group called Toddler-Newborn parents. From there, we were all able to share tips and hacks of having two young kids at home, and it’s helpful to feel less alone and all the camaraderie!

I recommend this a LOT if you have the means and community to start a group similar to this.

Baby-wear and use a baby carrier

My baby carrier (and collection of them) absolutely saved me while having a newborn and a toddler in the early weeks. And this still applies to this day—I’m just using a bigger baby carrier for a bigger baby now!

Once I found my groove with “popping the newborn into the carrier,” BAM—he’d fall asleep, and I’d be free to take a walk with my toddler, sit with her while eating dinner, or even (in some rare instances) put on her pajamas after the bath. It became an art form!

If you have a newborn who won’t nap in a bassinet, or, if you just want the baby near you for warmth or comfort, baby-wearing is the way to go.

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I regret that I didn’t figure out the techniques of wearing a baby carrier sooner, with my first child. With my second child, I knew it was what I needed to be doing, as a second-time mom.

TIP: A lot of moms are thinking about what to put on a baby registry for a second child and a new or “better” baby carrier is a really good one!

(I had a lot of good luck with the Baby Bjorn Mini carrier this time around - you can see how I use it with a newborn in the video here)

Define the routine

Luckily for us, we defined the routine of coming home from daycare and all things leading up to bedtime, for our toddler.

And in the early weeks of having a newborn, I chose to go by this routine, as to not introduce additional variables that would make things confusing.

Our nights looked like this:

  • Come home from daycare
  • Play a little bit while Dan made our toddler’s dinner
  • Sit at the table and eat together
  • Juggle the newborn sometime during this time frame either with feeding or napping
  • Bath, pajamas, brushing teeth, story time, bed.

The baby threw things for a loop some days when both of us could not be present at the dinner table, but given the rough expected schedule, nothing ever went awry.

Get your toddler to sleep well (somehow)

The nights that were the hardest were when the baby didn’t sleep well, AND the toddler didn’t sleep well. If our toddler woke up, it was because there was trouble with finding the favorite stuffed animal in the crib, or, “I need water,” or “I need a snack.”

To avoid these specific things (and your toddler will have their own specifics) we did things like:

  • Emphasize a full dinner (to avoid hunger overnight)
  • Use crib bumpers (to avoid stuffed animals falling out)
  • Use a sleep sack of a preferred style like a “walking sleep sack” to avoid blankets falling off and needing parents’ help to put them back on.

If your toddler falls into any of the categories above, two things I can recommend are:

You will be in charge of developing your own list of what helps your toddler sleep well so that you only have to deal with the newborn waking.

Be prepared for witching hour

Witching hour was the hardest part of having a new baby and a toddler. The baby would either refuse sleep, or constantly want to cluster feed, right when our toddler would get home from school and want to play with Mommy and Daddy.

Witching hour took a few main routes in our house:

  • Dan would bottle-feed the baby while I did dinner and bath with our toddler.
  • I would baby-wear and go for a walk outside to get the baby to nap.
  • I would also baby-wear and be present sitting at the dinner table with our toddler, with the baby napping in the carrier.
  • Have someone come over to help with the baby (or the toddler) so that there are extra hands.

Witching hour is TOUGH and seems never-ending. But as I write this, with our baby now six months, it is a memory of the past.

Try to avoid newborn burnout

This one is hard, but try your best to avoid being burned out by having a newborn (which is very tiring!) and a toddler (also tiring—in a different way!). If you are a little more energized, you can be the best parent possible to both children.

This could mean a few things:

  • Try to figure out how to find time for yourself when you have a newborn, to recharge.
  • Sleep whenever you can. I found that I could find ways to sleep with a newborn if I took a little nap on the couch while the baby was napping nearby. I went to bed early, and tried to rest.
  • Break up activities. If your toddler wants to go to the zoo, you don’t have to push yourself to take the newborn as well. Stay home, and lay low. You can always do activities when the baby is a little older.

Ask for help

One of the best things that could’ve happened to us in the first three months of having a new baby and a toddler was that my parents lived 8 minutes away from us. It ALSO helped that both my parents had pretty flexible working schedules.

On days when we just felt tired, overwhelmed or when Dan had a lot of things to do around the house, we invited one of my parents over to help take care of “all things toddler” as soon as our toddler came home from daycare.

If one of my parents could play with our toddler (whether by taking a neighborhood walk, building some towers with blocks or reading books upstairs), Dan could prep our toddler’s entire dinner, while I did the baby’s 5pm feed or nap. It really took stress off our shoulders.

Ask for help beyond family

Our neighbors across the street are our favorite, and they have two elementary school-aged kids. They’re very understanding of the baby-toddler struggle, having done it themselves in recent memory, and in my final months of pregnancy, I said, “If we’re feeling overwhelmed, would you be available sometimes to have your kids play with our toddler while we figure things out on a day to day?”

They said of course, yes. So that made us feel better to have some type of help and care scenario worked out in case we had a day where the newborn was being tough and things around the house just needed to get done.

Take parental leave up front and early

This is one of our new suggestions and it’s because it really worked in our favor this time.

With our first child, Dan took 5 weeks of parental leave in the beginning so that we could “learn the ropes of having a baby.” Then, he figured it would be fine to go back to work, so he went back to work for 4 months, and took the rest of his leave in the summer when our daughter was 6, 7 and 8 months old.

With a second child, right away, I said: “We’ll need all hands on deck with two kids under 2.5 years old. Can you take all your leave at once, when the baby comes?”

This was the right decision. Having two parents on parental leave was 100% necessary for having two kids under 2.5 years old, what with having to be present and helping both children eat, bathe, play and nap or sleep.

If you and your partner can take all of your baby-bonding time in the beginning, it may really help the balancing act of two tiny humans who need you all the time.

Remember you’ve done (some of this) before

You are not a first-time parent! I had to keep telling myself this during the witching hours, the crying, the “everyone needs Mommy right now” and the general fatigue.

Having had a newborn before (and feeling like the phase would never end), I came into parenthood with a bit clearer picture, the second time around, that babies DO grow, and they do change—rapidly.

I knew that the 5pm naps on my lap, the tiny baby sleeping on our Dock-a-Tot and even our toddler’s refusal to eat dinner some nights would be passing fads.

Remember that your sanity will return

If you feel like you are losing your mind, you are not alone, in the early weeks of balancing a newborn and toddler. After all, you probably knew you were ready for a second child, and knew that there was some sort of challenge to your sanity coming shortly. We did!

In fact, I remember back when I only had one baby, that one of the benefits of joining a new mom support group was that I got to hear from other moms. I remember a mom with a newborn and a toddler saying how the over-stimulation of having both kids needing her at the same moment was too much, and she had to go have quiet time in a room, alone, away from everything.

It’s true: the stimulation can be excruciating. The action, the sounds, the demands and the mental load can be a LOT for new parents, especially when a new baby comes home.

Know that you are not alone and that you WILL get through this. They will not be young forever. Despite the chaos, your toddler will love the baby and you will love both kids! The first few weeks and months are “just a phase.”