The girls finally came home from the NICU on Friday at 9 days old. 9 days sounds a lot shorter than the time actually felt. It was hard, but it was also a routine. Care time was at 2, 5, 8 and 11, so we made the 8am and the 5pm before and after work. When I first came home from the hospital, I wanted to camp out at the NICU all day long to be with them. What else did I have going on? Why on earth wouldn't I? But after the 8 and then the 11, I was so exhausted I couldn't take it, especially with no place to nap. So we had our two visits a day, and I pumped and slept and pumped and slept the rest of the time at home.
On Thursday, the day after they told us "one more week," suddenly the girls turned a corner and sucked down their entire bottles, which was the last criteria to go home. They told us we could room in with the girls that night and then take them home in the morning. So after five o' clock care, Matt and I took advantage of our free NICU babysitters for the last time and had dinner at the Cheeky Monk. Then we came back to spend the night in a creepy little windowless bedroom which was jammed randomly into the hospital like a room for psych experiments. It was a rough night; the girls were disoriented being away from the familiar NICU, and Hayley was particularly afraid of the dark. We ended up keeping the TV on all night long on mute so she'd have enough light to feel at home. She and Sarah alternated their freakouts, which was kind of convenient, since there was only one to soothe at a time. But it was frustrating to see one fire put out and sleeping peacefully while a new one started up. We couldn't help thinking, "If we only had one, it would be quiet right now!" Also, they still had their heart and oxygen monitors on, but the leads weren't that secure so we woke up several times to frantic your-baby-has-no-heartbeat alarms. That was really annoying, but the monitors were helpful too. When one started fussing, we could look at their heart rate and see if they were melting down or just sleep grunting. So it was a long night, but we made it through unscathed and took them home the next day.
The first few nights at home were a reeaalllly big adjustment. I won't lie; there were tears every day. It's not that the workload was even that bad; the girls do sleep a lot. But it was incredibly overwhelming to turn on a dime like that and suddenly live life on a three hour schedule. Matt and I each handle one girl per feeding session, so we couldn't even break into shifts and get more sleep. Feeding/changing/comforting takes about an hour, so there's no more than two hours of sleep at a time for either of us. (One and a half if I stay on top of pumping.) It's not terrible in itself, and we haven't even felt that sleep deprived, but it's just the relentlessness of it that made that initial adjustment so demoralizing. As Matt put it, we know that they'll be sleeping longer in four months, but when you're living three hours at a time, that feels like a geologic era away. On top of that, there was the intense guilt for having negative feelings at all when we'd finally brought our babies home, so it was a rough time.
Luckily, it only took a few days for us to get into a routine and adjust our expectations, and now we feel like we've got a pretty sustainable rhythm going. However, we know that's going to change when Matt goes back to work in a few weeks, and also when the girls become more aware of their surroundings and sleep less. So we've started planning for the future, the first step of which is to get onto a shift schedule at night. We've tried a couple ways of feeding both at once, but there are no clear winners yet. I tried crossing my legs and putting each girl into a knee crook, but they're still too floppy for that. I put them in their car seats and held a bottle in each hand, which worked better, but it was hard to get a good angle on the bottle and inconvenient to take them out to burp them. Now I'm envisioning a wedge with some small side bumpers to keep them in place. Then it will be more open for me to pick them up as needed, and I can make sure the angle is right. We can put both of them on the wedge and feed them with a bottle in each hand, or we could alternate holding one and using a bottle propper with the other, so each girl gets held every other feeding. It's the best option I can come up with since they're still too weak to nurse.
Now this brings me to a really sore subject. I know it's stupid to pay attention to internet comments, but they can still really hurt when you're new and inexperienced and just trying to figure out how to make everything work. I shopped around for bottle proppers and here are a few of the comments I found:
"What ever happened to mother baby bonding time. ... Their only small for a short time and every moment should be charished. Shame on whoever buys this product and shame on amazon for allowing it to be advertised."
"Babies need holding for their emotional health. If you want a whole nation of psychopathic demons in the future, just neglect to hold your babies at all."
"That's really pathetic."
"ya that is just really sad. never in a million years would i ever use something like that w/ any of my kids."
But the whole reason I'm getting a propper is so I can hold one of my babies when I feed them! I only have two hands; I can put a bottle in each one, or I can save one for a baby. Occasionally someone will add "I guess it could be helpful for multiples" in the middle of their judgmental frenzy, but that's almost worse. Like, "You're a pathetic, negligent, cold-hearted monster if you use a propper, but I suppose if you have twins you have to be." And unfortunately, there is a grain of truth to that. I wouldn't call it monsterdom, but I simply can't give each girl all the attention that I want to. If they cry at the same time and Matt is not immediately available, one of them just has to wait to be picked up. How many single babies get the "yeah, yeah, in a minute" treatment on their very first day home? I'm sure it will go a long way toward building character and patience in the future, but that's not what this time should be about.
Still, there are benefits. We may not have a single center of the universe, but we do have two. And when there's time to sit back and enjoy them, there's a positive feedback loop of adorableness. "Look at Hayley! But look at Sarah! Hayley's hair! Sarah's knees!" Every time I hold one, I think there can't be anything better and I'm afraid she's my favorite. Then I feel that way all over again with the other one. And when they clumsily flop their limbs at each other or a hungry Hayley tries to suck Sarah's nose, I can't imagine a single baby could ever be that cute on its own. So yeah, we may have more hassles, but everyone has hassles of some sort. Not everyone has this:
