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Well, today is one of those days where I don’t especially have anything to say, but I haven’t blogged in awhile and feel guilty. Please indulge me. What’s new?

Babies are good. They are sleeping from about 8pm-7am with a few blips here and there. They are both mobile and I’m shocked each morning when they have moved, while still swaddled, from one side of the crib to the other. They are incredibly interactive and want to smile and giggle and study my face. They are also WIDE AWAKE. They rarely nap during the day which can be super draining but also fun. I’ve found myself laughing more with them and that’s good for everybody.

What else? Last week was hard. I know I say that a lot and those reading this blog (Hi Mom!) probably think all I do is complain. I don’t. Well maybe I do. But hell, it’s hard! Last week I attended a play date with two friends of mine with babies. I had been looking forward to it for some time. One friend has a precious six month old girl and my other friend has the sweetest little 3 month old boy. It was really interesting to observe them both as our babies are smack dab in the middle. The six month old was SO ACTIVE! I couldn’t believe what crawling looked like. She was on the move. She picked up everything she saw and put it in her mouth-including trying to steal pacifiers out of the babies mouths 🙂 She was so lovely though and I thought to myself how fun, albeit tiring, that age looked. The 3 month old boy is like a little Zen master. He is so so so chill. He kind of sat back on his mamma’s lap and watched my crazy train roll into the station. While it was really fun, and great for me to get out and interact with adult humans, I left feeling completely defeated.

First and foremost, it was exhausting to bring them over. I can hardly carry them in their car seats anymore and once we actual got into my friend’s house, I moved back and forth without stopping from one crying baby to the other barfing baby. My friend, on the other hand, seemed like she had everything together. Her house was pristine, her baby was clean and in matching clothes, she had this great mat set out for us to play on (our boy promptly puked on it upon arrival), her stroller snapped open and had all the appropriate hand wipes and buzzing toys. In other words, she looks to have her SH*T together. My other friend was equally organized. Oh and by the way, both of my friends have totally lost their baby weights and look like super models.

I, on the other hand, felt like Octomom walking in that house. I had puke on my shirt, I was wearing maternity pants, one baby had soaked his shirt with drool, the other started crying and didn’t stop until we got home, my stroller is so big I feel like I’m driving a truck down the street, I forgot bottles and formula and had to use my friend’s, and by the first thirty minutes of the playdate, I was really sweaty. In other words, I do NOT have my SH*T together. We went for a walk in her neighborhood and I literally  had to walk IN FRONT of my friends because my damn stroller took up the whole sidewalk. They suggested stopping for yogurt after-something I was really looking forward to (even though my Weight Watchers points were nil after I gorged myself on conversation hearts that morning). Before we got to the yogurt shop, however, my crazy train started screaming crying and I politely excused myself. I watched them walk away in their adorable skinny jeans with their children who didn’t seem like monsters and I started to cry. As I wiped the snot from my nose and tried desperately to lift my mack-truck stroller into the car, I dropped my purse and spilled everything on the ground. I put both babies in the car, slammed the stroller in, got in the front seat and felt EXTREMELY sorry for myself. I came home and used 5 more points on a glass of wine.

I know that everyone else doesn’t have it together. I know that their babies cry and spit up and poop their pants and that they feel unsure as mothers, wives and friends. And I know that they have days like mine. But it’s so easy to feel like I am the only one failing at this. Or rather, struggling with this. And I don’t want to be that annoying friend who’s all “I have twins, it’s so much harder” because truth is, a new baby is hard as hell no matter what your situation. Each day is different and today has been really good. It’s important for me to remember that and to reflect back to days like today when I’m covered in unspeakable baby fluids.

I have to tell you something. These past few weeks have tested me like no other. Honestly like nothing has testing me before. Our twins are 4.5 months old-almost 5 months old now. So much has changed with them recently-all wonderful and thought-provoking but still a change nonetheless. In the early days, they ate, pooped and slept. Literally. Now they sleep through the night (fingers crossed that continues). What that means, I’ve realized, is that they don’t sleep during the day. Not only are they awake, they are engaged and interested and curious about the world. They can see me-from across the room. They get jealous when I spend time with one over the other. They cry ALL THE TIME. They cry to manipulate. The second I come over to address the situation, a big smile covers their face and I realize it was all a gimmick to get me over there. I don’t know what do do with them when they aren’t sleeping. They’re too little to sit up straight in a bumbo or some other crazy contraption but they’re too big to just lie in their bassinets either. I put them on the stimulation mat: they cry. I put them in their swings: they cry. I put them in their buzzy magic chair: they cry. I put them on my lap and interact: they smile.

And that’s the really hard part of this. They are happiest playing with me. And that feels really great. But listen, it’s also exhausting. The day starts around 8:30am and I do not sit down until around 11am when they both fall asleep (site: right now) for about 15 minutes (btw: the girl just started wailing as I was typing the words “asleep”). Then I make bottles, then I feed everyone, then I burp everyone, then I get puked on, then I change diapers, then I put one on the floor while she wails and try to play with the other. Ten minutes pass, I put him on the floor and play with her. He wails. I just feel like I’m reaching a breaking point.

And then something else big happened this week. I debated blogging about it because it felt personal and like I was crossing a line in terms of privacy vs. sharing. That said, those of you who read this blog (IE: blood relatives) have praised me for being brutally honest about this whole journey. So I guess I’ll share. I have been nursing the babies since they were born, supplementing with formula because I never made enough milk. In the past few weeks, however, my milk supply has decreased significantly. I spent an hour on the phone Monday with the lactation specialist at my Doctor’s office and she essentially told me, with twins, to rebuild a supply I would have to nurse one, then give a bottle, nurse the other, then give the bottle, then pump for 20 minutes. And even then it isn’t even guarrenteed that it will work. There is no time for me to do all that. Once one finishes eating, he/she starts wailing and wants to play. Then the other starts crying. Oh and for me to increase my milk supply, I need to be eating all the time and drinking gallons of water. Where I am supposed to find the time to make food? Much less put it in my mouth. And water? For that to work, I need an IV drip in my arm. Anyway, after hanging up the phone, I decided I’d give it a go.

I tried to nurse both babies at the same time and neither baby was interested. Then they started wailing-I mean WAILING. About that time our baby boy grabbed hold of my insulin pump tubing (by accident of course) and ripped it out of my stomach. I had put the new set in just five minutes before (something I hate to do and dread each time because of the pain involved in inserting the needle). He yanked the cord and blood spilled out all over me and all over him. Almost exactly at that moment, he leaned over and threw up all over himself, myself and our girl. I felt this bile moving up in my throat-this PMS style rage and frustration and exhaustion and sense of failure and I could taste it in my mouth before it came out. I screamed across the room at the top of my lungs “FUCKKKK!”. Both of my babies looked up at me with their perfect innocent expressions and their mouths turned down and their little chins began to wobble. They were so scared of the person who, since the moment they were brought into this world, was warm and cuddly and comforting. They cried. Not an angry wail but a sad, frightened wimper. My heart broke, as it is breaking again right now, and I just sat there with my shirt up and my pathetic failing breasts hanging out and blood and spit up smeared all over my pants and I just bawled my eyes out. The three of us just sat there and wept for several minutes.

I need to accept that the breastfeeding journey is over. I have mentioned several times on this blog how important I think it is to listen to your body. My body directed my decisions through much of my pregnancy and I feel it is doing the same now. I am sad to stop nursing them and I will sincerely miss the connection we have but I need to let it go. Having children is the single greatest lesson in letting go. The need to control is moot. Children dictate what is or isn’t these days and my need to control and manipulate each move is futile. There is something peaceful in acknowledging this chaos-in accepting the fact that these two little beings will dictate what will or will not happen for the time being. It is cathartic to exhale my breath and accept life for what it is. And you know what’s really funny? What reminds you how interesting and magnificent life can be? As I sat here typing this I-feel-sorry-for-myself soliloquy, our daughter rolled over for the first time. I looked up from my whine fest to see that she was no longer on her back but instead on her tummy with her big beautiful eyes wide open studying the fabric of our rug. Moments like these kick you in the ass man. They say “This is life. This is now. Be HERE. Be present”. Deep breath in. Deep breath out. Go.

If I’ve learned anything thus far, it’s that some days are significantly harder than others. We are about eighteen weeks in. That translates (for those who are tired of all things pregnancy and kid related being calculated in weeks) to about 4.5 months. Remember though, these kids were seven weeks early so we are really looking at about 2.5 months old. Anyhow, as I was saying, some days are beautiful, perfect, God-affirming days. Others challenge me as a mother, as a wife, as a friend and frankly as a person.

Take today. It’s Monday. This past weekend my husband and I went away and left the babies with my parents and sister. We took our two hound dogs (our original children) and headed to a relaxing weekend get-away. I was nervous going into it. I wasn’t sure I could spend two nights away from my babies. That said, we scheduled massages upon arrival and the moment my head touched the massage chair I remember thinking, “Yeah, I’m pretty certain I can do this.” That night we had a romantic dinner followed by a horse and carriage ride home. We drank wine and wore robes and turned off cell phones. As we were falling asleep that night, I began to have a little panic attack and felt desperately, maternally like I needed to get home immediately. Instead I rolled over, took a Tylenol PM and slept like a newborn baby.

The next day we had a leisurely breakfast and took a long hike with our pups. We napped, we went to a beer garden, we ate another yummy dinner, hell we played Croquet! That evening we watched a movie and roasted s’mores by our fireside. Again, cut to me sleeping like a newborn. We came home Sunday fully rested and missing our babies like crazy. I felt certain that I had a renewed sense of patience and that I would be calm and collected for the week ahead.

Wrong.

Today has been brutal. In the early days of our babies, it wasn’t so bad. Essentially, they ate and slept. On the same schedule. Now when one falls asleep, the other immediately wakes up. No matter what contraption we put them in, they cry. They want to interact with me each waking minute which is wonderful and fascinating but also exhausting and all encompassing. Guess what? Right now I am sitting in the guest room with the two dogs and the door shut. The babies are howling in the other room but I needed to get away. I don’t feel good about that. They are crying and they want their mamma and I know that if I go in and pick them up and play with them, they’ll be happy. But I am tired and overwhelmed. I’m wearing a gigantic tee-shirt and my husband’s boxers. It’s the middle of the afternoon. And yet I don’t know what to do. On the one hand, the thought of getting out of the house each day and going into work sounds wonderful. On the other hand, and weighing slightly heavier, the thought of handing my babies over to a daycare instructor and missing giggles and eye contact and sneezes breaks my heart. I am depressed sitting in my pjs at 1:26pm on a Monday afternoon while the world continues outside my window, and yet I’m not sure I’m ready to give up this time with them. I want to be a good mother-one who doesn’t lose her patience and doesn’t raise her voice, but I swear this is harder than I thought it was.

I told my mom the other day that the best part of my weekend away was that there were 48 hours where nobody needed anything from me. Here at home one baby needs a pacifier, the other kicked their blanket off and is cold, the dog needs to pee and the other one wants water. Once all these tasks are completed and I finally sit down to work, a baby decides to wake up, another wants to sleep but has just spit up everywhere, the dog starts barking at the mailman and the second baby gets scared and starts crying. It’s never ending madness. And yet I’m not sure I could live without it.

I know I am being hard on myself. I know that I am doing the best I can. I know that we-my husband and I-are doing the best we can. I also know that our babies are fine. If I don’t read Shakespeare aloud each afternoon, enroll them in baby French lessons and breastfeed them until they are ten, they will still be positive members of society. Hmm. On that note, I just realized it’s silent outside my door. Looks like everyone fell asleep-pacifier, blanket, spit-up and all.

Before I start, I have a picture that would go PERFECTLY with this sickening post, but because my daughter will one day have a significant other, I will refrain from using it.

I hate for this blog to focus so much attention on diapers and the bathroom, but as I swore to myself before I started that I would be as honest as possible, I’m going to be as honest as possible. Yesterday, after a fresh bath that made my daughter smell like perfection, I put her in her “magic chair”. We call it that because it looks like some sort of acid induced hallucination. There are bunnies and trees and shapes and if you pull a lever a loud version of “If you’re happy and you know it” plays on repeat. When turned on, the chair buzzes and rattles around. To me it looks like a terrifying nightmare of a place to sit, but for some reason, our daughter gets in it and is MESMERIZED. Anyhow, I put this delicious fresh smelling baby who’s wearing a new adorable purple owl outfit into her chair, turn on the buzz and watch as her face fluctuates from glee to curiosity back to glee and then a lot of giggling. I congratulate myself on a job well done and go back to my computer to try and get some work done. And then I hear it. A sound like no other. A sound that can be nothing but what it is. It’s loud and it does not sound dry. I look over at our daughter. She coos preciously and lets out a gratified “sigh”. Meanwhile, the chair continues buzzing and rattling and shaking. I know my fate before I even pick her up. The contents of her diaper have been buzzed and rattled and shaken for the past thirty seconds or more. The contents, therefore, are no longer in her diaper and my delicious smelling owl-clad baby is now covered head to foot in poop. 

I remove her from the chair-which at this point I have started screaming at and kicking-and carry her like a potentially detonatable bomb into the changing room. A decision must be made here. Do I put her down (in her current state) on the changing table, therefore soiling the table, the changing cover and, frankly, my hands? Or do I just say F&#k it and put the whole baby, owls and all into the tub? I went for it. I put her down on the changing table and watched helplessly as the diaper contents touched the beautiful white cover. I peeled the onesie off and over her head with the precision of the guy in the “Hurt Locker” so as to prevent any “content” from smearing on her face. I got the clothes off and looked down at my patient. She looked up at me and smiled. The diaper was a joke. I mean seriously, I might as well have put nothing there. It’s literally spilling over onto her stomach and back. I remove the diaper, throw it in the genie and just don’t allow myself to think about how disgusting that was, and I carry her (again like detonated bomb-but a naked bomb) into the bath to rid her of all that just happened. After I finished bathing her, she smelled again like a perfect bundle of baby. A few thoughts on the incident before I go:

1. Why oh WHY do they make onesies the way they do? Like why doesn’t Carter’s just go ahead and make an iron clad straight jacket to put on the baby? It’s not like, I don’t know, you have to take it off whenever a diaper needs changing; it’s not like the thing won’t inevitably be covered in poo or pee or spit up. The only way to get it off is over the head and going that route almost ensures said contents will fall on the babies face. Ridiculous.

2. Before we had babies, several of my friends were all “I’m not grossed out at ALL by my babies poops. I mean I find it really beautiful because I know exactly what she’s eating and so it isn’t gross.” Lies. Lies. Lies and a lot more lies. It’s disgusting. It smells, it has a funky texture and although I know EXACTLY what she/he eats everyday, I am unfamiliar with the monstrosity that emerges from his/her nether regions several hours later. 

I grew up with a lot of music in my house. My parents regularly played Creedence, The Beatles, The Band and Janis Joplin. As a little girl, I ballroom danced to Chopin in our living room with my dad. When I was ten or so, on a particularly long car ride, my dad asked my sister and me to debate him on the merits of Beethoven vs. Milli Vanilli (for the record, I’m still pretty sure we won). I played piano for almost ten years. Music was important to us.

And so I want it to be important to my babies. You’ve heard all the studies on the kids who listen to Mozart and Bach in the womb turn out to be rocket scientists or presidents. For what it’s worth, I found myself listening to a lot of Nina Simone during my pregnancy which would indicate my kids will grow up to be lefty badasses (I can only hope). What’s been really cool is that our son has shown a very early interest in music. Just last week I was feeling really stressed while driving everyone around. He was crying and fussing over the sun being in his eyes and his pacifier falling out (see earlier post on how often I pick up pacifiers) and nothing, I mean NOTHING would quiet him down. I put my ipod on shuffle and “Trenchtown Rock” came on. It’s a really good live version from 1975 that is especially jam-my. From the moment Bob said “One good thing about music, when it hits you feel no pain”, my son started smiling and giggling. And it wasn’t just a passing thing like gas or a funny shape or a sneeze. It was an actual response to what he was hearing. He continued to giggle and coo and smile widely for the entirety of the song. I was struck by the moment and the words of the song and how therapeutic music has been in my life and continues to be. 

I’ve always taken comfort in the fact that no matter what happens in the world, songs that have once been will always continue to be. In other words, you can’t ever steal “The Weight”, “Ruby Tuesday”,  “The fifth movement” or even “Blame it on the Rain” (as a side note, in sixth grade my friend and I dressed up as Milli Vanilli for Halloween. This entailed us wearing matching jean jackets and braiding hundreds of little braids in our hair. Not remembering that we were both white and female, we felt confident people would know who we were. Nobody did. They thought we were “punks”. My dad quickly made us each a sign-one with Milli and one with Vanilli. Who knew Milli Vanilli would play such a crucial part of this post?). 

Things that I have learned in the past 3.5 months:

DO make sure nothing child related is stuck to your butt before leaving the house.
DO buy that extra bottle of wine at the grocery store that you are contemplating not buying because you are ready for your butt to go back to where it used to be and for your stomach to stop looking like an old man’s. (trust me when you get home and you REALLY need that wine and you don’t have it you will be stuck drinking something way worse and likely stronger)
DON’T look away from the changing table after a particularly upsetting diaper because chances are, the upsetting-ness isn’t over and the moment you look away, it ends up all over your changing pad.
DON’T spend money on adorable coordinated monkey outfits or dinosaur pjs because your child will barf  and then poop on them and all of that will probably happen in one sitting.
DO put the brake on every time you use your stroller. Just trust me on that one.
DO go to sleep whenever possible. Doesn’t matter where, hardly matters when. Just close your eyes when you can and sleep.
DON’T worry about your house being an effing disaster. This one is hard for me but I’ve had to consign myself to the fact that my floor will forever be covered in brightly colored machines that whizz and whirl and twist and buzz.
DON’T use cloth diapers. I get it. It’s really cool that people use them and hats off to those saving the environment but think about it this way: you’re already spending a considerate amount of your life washing gross smelling things out of cloth things, why add another cloth thing to that list?
DO take showers. With very little personal time, it’s easy to forgo the shower for say, sleep or wine or adult human interaction, but a shower goes a long way in preserving your sanity and frankly your relationships 🙂
DON’T EVER let both babies get hungry at the same time. If you do, you’re done for. You are playing a man-to-man defense and if you falter and switch to a zone during feeding time, you will lose. Instead, wake one baby up fifteen minutes before the other one gets hungry and feed them first. I really can’t stress this one enough.
That’s enough for now. I’ll update this periodically as more disgusting things happen to me.

I said this before-some days are so so much better than others. Today is not one of those days. Scene: I’m trying desperately to get some work done but outside in our backyard my two hound dogs (dogs that I previously considered my children-dogs that ruled this house and my heart before the babies came) are racing around barking at a leaf blower; our daughter has been screaming for 45 minutes straight and our son just threw up for the fourth time all over the outfit I changed this morning. He is now naked in his car seat (apparently this is supposed to help with reflux) while my daughter has been relocated to a different part of the house where, incidentally, she continues to scream.

So, what do I do?

You have to talk to yourself-you have to talk yourself down because otherwise the frustration and the exhaustion rises up in your body like your son’s reflux and awfulness comes out. It is your version of spit-up. You scream, you throw things, you tell them to shut up, you put your dogs in the crate, you stand on your porch crying your eyes out watching as young people picnic in the park, go for leisurely runs or lay out in the sun. You lament the life you used to have and wonder where it went and why you did this. You think horrible thoughts. You act like a disgusting person. So I talk myself down. I take a deep breath and say “listen, they are crying, this is bad…real bad. Go upstairs and take a minute then solve the problem. “

First I put the dogs in the crate and remind myself that while they aren’t outside enjoying the sunshine, they are also not starving and eating chicken bones on the streets of calcutta. Second, figure out why daughter is crying. Shockingly she wants her pacifier (you would have thought there was tiger in the room gnawing her fingers with the volume of her screams). Third, accept that son is not wearing clothes but that he seems happy with his current situation. Fourth, write blog to make yourself feel better.

These days are really challenging. They challenge you physically, and they challenge you mentally. I get up close to a hundred times a day and put a pacifier back in a mouth, change a tsunami poop diaper that was just changed minutes ago, put on a clean outfit that was just washed but is now covered in regurgitated breast milk, wind a mobile up so that the nursery rhyme that makes me want to stab myself starts over again, wash out bottles and begin prepping for the next feeding. And then I look at the clock and realize that three hours have passed and that my day is headed to a close. What do I have to show for it? Happy, healthy babies.