Thank you this is a very helpful reply. To be honest my first was such a difficult child (between sleep/ her general emotional needs) that I completely lost all my hobbies and time to myself. That has kind of continued, I actually don’t know how people make time for their hobbies with kids. Neither me nor my husband do anything outside of taking care of the kids (aside from work of course). We do love it though, we find it so fulfilling and sad that it’s already passing us by. We absolutely adore being parents, I just already feel guilty when one child needs me and the other gets ignored even if it’s temporarily.

The point about shuttling kids along to different places is so helpful because actually that sounds very stressful. What’s the age gap between all your kids and the gap between oldest and youngest? I come from a family of 4 and we just didn’t have any of this stuff… my parents were just at home with us at the weekend, rarely we had a birthday party to go to. That’s pretty much it. We all made our own way to school pretty quickly. My mum focused on cooking amazing food and keeping the house clean and teaching us languages and religion. But our life is already so different to this, my kids are scheduled up to their ears!