So, back to every single detail of my day. The intent of this post was just to outline the time management and organization that two babies take, but I keep getting side-tracked with other notes and observations. I'm running with it, though. I find that I'm already forgetting details of those wild early days, so it's comforting to preserve this day in the life for history.
So where was I? Right, playing with babies and wishing I could hold them both at the same time.
10:30 - Time to feed the babies again. They eat every three hours, which is the same schedule they had when they were brand newborns. They were on a four hour schedule for a while, which was awesome, but we couldn't maintain that when Sarah decided to stop eating. She just couldn't take in enough calories with only four meals a day, so we had to add an extra one back in. Hayley could do four meals easily, but that would require seven different feed times at 7, 10, 11, 1, 3, 4, and 7, and the nap schedule would be disastrous. So, three hours for everyone! Eating and napping at the same time is by far my most important sanity saver. It is everything. Sometimes one baby will wake up early, and I just can't bring myself to wake the other one up at the same time. No one is happy at the end of those days.
10:55 - Hayley is done eating and I'm in the middle of Sarah's feed. The doorbell rings; it's our Early Intervention coordinator, Jolie. I told her she could come by around 11 so I could sign some paperwork, but I was hoping I'd be done feeding the girls by then. It throws Sarah for a huge loop to have Jolie come in and coo at her; she's startled and intrigued and she can't even think about her bottle anymore. It's kind of ironic, since we're using the service to get help for Sarah's eating issues.
Sarah does manage to eat some more, and when she's done, I notice that both she and Hayley have very sleepy eyes. Jolie and I have just been chatting so far; I haven't been able to sign anything yet with an armful of baby, and now I need to put both the girls down to nap. This is kind of a helpless feeling. I have stuff to do. I have someone sitting in my house waiting on me to do a simple task, and I have to put it off even longer because the perfect-put-down window is razor thin. If I catch it, the girls will lie down, blink prettily, and fall right asleep. If I miss it, they will scream, scream and scream. Luckily, Jolie is in the kid business so she understands, but I still feel bad and rush through the process. Scoop up Sarah, take her upstairs, lay her down, kiss her forehead, repeat with Hayley, then stand between the cribs with my breath held.
Yep. Too late, screams all around. So now I'm bouncing back and forth between the babies, trying to offer pacifiers, but they just fall right out of their screaming mouths. I frantically shush, pet foreheads, and keep shoving pacifiers, but to no avail, and I keep imagining Jolie downstairs, whipping out a notebook and writing, "Cannot quiet crying babies."
I give up and go back downstairs. There's nothing else I can do. If I pick them up to cuddle them, they'll go quiet, but they'll be even more livid when I put them back down. So I tell Jolie that they're going to cry for a few minutes, but hopefully they'll fall asleep soon. She tells me, "Good for you! It's so great that you can let them cry. That's going to help you out a lot in the long run." It's nice to hear that, but as she goes on to talk about the paperwork I'm signing, I can't hear a word she's saying. I see her lips move, but I'm only thinking, "Crying. Crying. I hear crying. Hayley stopped, but Sarah's getting worse. She's not going to fall asleep. She needs a pacifier. I have to go to her!" And meanwhile I'm just signing and signing. I probably sold the girls' organs or something.
Finally, I tell Jolie I need to go check on them, which is kind of embarrassing since she just praised my backbone. I run upstairs, kiss Sarah's crumpled, teary face (which breaks my heart), and give her a pacifier. She takes it easily now since she's too tired to put up a fight, and her eyes close immediately. Success! And relief!
I finish up quickly with Jolie, and as she leaves, she tells me how impressed she was with Matt for actually coming to the girls' evaluation earlier, and what a fantastic father he is for being so involved with the girls. She also tells me that I have a wonderful attitude as a mother because I don't try too hard to be perfect or do everything I did before, like keep up my appearance. Not in those precise words, but yeah. (I didn't tell her, "Actually, this is exactly what I looked like before, minus the barf.") But it did make me think. Matt and I put the same effort level into the girls. Obviously, I spend more time at home, but I keep Matt posted on everything that happens during the day, and we're equally involved in their eating, their exercises, their sleep scheduling, their milestones, their doctors' appointments, etc. It never occurred to him not to be, and I think most of my dad-friends feel the same way. Yet for equal effort, Matt gets praised for going far above and beyond, and I get praised for not trying too hard. I think that says a lot about society's expectations: mothers are martyrs and fathers are idiots. I mean, Matt really is a fantastic father, and I know how lucky I am to have him. But still, we both found it strange that Jolie was all aflutter simply because he came to an appointment. Anyway, just a bit of social observation.
11:15 - Jolie is gone, the girls are asleep, and it's Friday. DVR'd Project Runway time! I settle in with a Diet Dr Pepper and thank the girls yet again for being good sleepers.
12:00 - I hear hooting coming from the baby monitor and the episode is only two-thirds through. Oh well, it was a boring one anyway. (Menswear... who cares?) I bring the girls downstairs, but it quickly becomes apparent that Sarah was only pretending to be done napping. She is pissed. PISSED. She starts crying, then howling, then screaming like her hair is on fire. Her face is purple-red, her eyes are scrunched shut, and her little toothless mouth is huge and quivering with rage. This is pretty unusual; I've seen them cranky when they wake up too early, but this is a whole new level. So I pick her up and she instantly quiets in my arms, but she really needs to go back to sleep. I decide it's time for a walk; even as out-of-her-head as she is, I know she's no match for a gently jostling stroller.
I put both of the girls into their car seats, and of course Sarah starts screaming again as soon as I set her down. Her baby siren goes off while I strap her in, then strap Hayley in, then go into the garage, get the stroller out of the trunk, unfold it, go back inside, get Hayley, take her into the garage and click her into the stroller, then finally go back inside for Sarah. She sobs while I carry her outside and click her in, and then halfway down the driveway, she's perfectly calm. Works every time.
The stroller is front and back, not side by side, and both seats face me. I put Sarah in the seat farthest from me, since I want her to sleep. Hayley gets the coveted eye contact seat today. That's usually the deciding factor in who sits where: the sleepy one gets the back and the perky one gets to be up front with me. If both are awake, I may decide based on who's being social versus who seems interested in looking at the world. Or if one is spitting up a lot or just seems to need me more, she'll go up front. If all things are equal, sometimes I'll switch their positions at the halfway point of the walk. Or, if it's very sunny outside, I drape their gauzy blankets over them and immediately forget who's where.
I have the blankets over both of them today since I want them to have a little darkness, and five minutes into the walk I peek underneath. Both of them stare back at me with huge eyes. That's a little unnerving; they're beginning to resist the stroller! Five minutes after that, they're both still wide awake, so I give up and uncover Hayley so she can look around. Sarah stays in the dark though, and finally she drops off. We walk for over an hour through the neighborhood, past the elementary school with all the kids out for lunch and through the greenbelt area where I can spy on other people's back yards. I'm hot and sweaty, and I'm sure the girls are too, but at least they're quiet and happy.
1:45 - Back home, I lay the girls on their playmat to cool off. Hayley's a hot-blooded baby, and she's completely sweaty all over. Sarah gripes about being laid down, so I pick her up and tell her I'm not about to walk her around for another hour. Then she defiles her diaper and coos happily at me. I guess sometimes that's all it takes. So I change her, lay her back down, and she's perfectly happy to look at her dangly toys. I watch them for a while and am amazed at how quickly they're learning. Just a couple weeks ago, it was all they could do to flop an arm in the general direction of a toy. There was a lot of guessing on our parts, "Did she try to touch the monkey? She brushed it's foot, was that an accident?" And now we find them gripping monkey feet and parrot tails all the time. They still have only about 80% accuracy, but it will probably only be a few more weeks before they're grabbing toys out of our hands. It's just incredible how much and how quickly they're learning.
2:00 - Sarah starts griping again and I realize I'm half an hour late for their lunch. Oops. Sometimes it's hard to stick to the clock schedule, but the most important thing is to keep them synced to each other. I feed Sarah first since she's the one complaining, and since Hayley's still having fun with her toys. I do try to mix up their feeding order occasionally, but it never lasts. It's just to easy to get Hayley's quick feed done before settling into Sarah's endurance trial. I worry sometimes about Sarah being the squeaky wheel getting all the grease, so I try to give extra attention to Hayley. Then I worry that Hayley is getting more fun time while all Sarah's time is maintenance. I don't think I'll ever stop this emotional bean counting, but I don't know if that's bad. I should always be cognizant of who's getting more attention, because I know that they will, and I want to be as fair as possible. But if I over-analyze, will that over-emphasize the issue to them? Or is it even in my power to de-emphasize it? I guess I'll find out when they start talking and telling me how unfair I am.
2:45 - The girls just about fall asleep during their feed, so I put them down to nap, and luckily they go down easily. I take this nap window to clean out my closet, something that's been eating at me for ages. I'd like to work on the shirt I'm sewing for Matt; it only needs buttons and buttonholes and it will be done. But the sewing room is right next to the nursery, and the machine has started waking up the girls. Well, there was one time that I started sewing and one of the girls woke up. It could have been a complete coincidence, but I'm not willing to test the theory. Lots of baby care aspects foster superstition that way.
4:00 - I have a garbage bag full of clothes to give away, and the girls are making wake-up noises again. Umm... I don't really remember the rest of the day now. But you can see the pattern. Babies wake up, I change them, I feed them, I play with them, they go to sleep, I take care of some business, and it all starts over again. And again. Matt comes home around 6:00 when the girls are usually in their last nap. We talk. If the babies are awake, Matt plays with them and exercises them on the mat. Dinner gets made/delivered, and we either eat it with a baby in each of our laps or let it get cold until after they go to bed. We each informally pick our "ward" for the night and bathe her (if time permits), feed her, PJ her, and put her to bed. They're usually down by 8 to 8:30, and 99% of the time without any fight. When they're overtired during the day, they scream when they're put down, but when they're overtired at night, they just pass out. I don't know why, but I'm not complaining!
After I run the bottles through the dishwasher, Matt mixes the next day's formula and fills them. Then we get about three hours to ourselves, enough to watch a movie, work on our hobbies, or just hang out and play Scrabble on our phones. I go to bed when I chose to, between 10:30 and 11:30, and it's very rare that the girls will wake me up until the morning. It's vital to my morale that the amount of sleep I get is in my hands, not theirs.
And that's it! That was my very long-winded description of "how I do it" with twins. It's a full day, but as long as I stay on top of my schedule and basic home maintenance, I don't feel like I'm drowning. It doesn't always work out, of course. Just last night, the girls missed their last meal, Sarah woke up to eat in the middle of the night, then Hayley woke up an hour early and Sarah woke up an hour late, and the schedule was chaos. But I got them sorted out by dinner, and they both went to bed full, happy, and on time. And tomorrow is a new day to get it right from the beginning.
So the moral of the story is: Don't pity twin moms, because we probably don't have it as bad as you think. But don't make fun of us for being obsessed with our schedule, because we couldn't survive without it!
Now here, have some silly Sarah faces.
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