Adventures in Baby Making

"So, are they sleeping through the night?"

My least favorite question.  The most frequently asked question (after the whole "are they identical" nonsense).

The thing is, N & C are pretty good sleepers.*  But the other thing is, every time I get asked The Question and admit that they are pretty good sleepers*, the universe laughs at me and N & C proceed to have at least 2 horrible nights, but usually more.  Every. time.  It doesn't matter how hard I try to acknowledge the Sleep Powers That Be with my responses: "well, for right now, they are sleeping through the night, yes, but you know, that could change at any moment" or "For now, yes they're sleeping great but we're on the cusp of some milestones so that could change at any moment".  I try so hard to be appropriately grateful and appreciative so that maybe, the pattern will break.  Never works.  Never.  Without fail crappy sleep immediately follows being asked The Question.

Some one asked The Question on Sunday.  It's been pretty rough over here since Sunday night.  I'm tired and cranky.  Do you think the Sleep Powers That Be want me to start lying?  Because I will if that's what it takes. 

In the midst of this wonky sleep stretch, I decided it was a great time to finally start calling around to start the day care search.  Infant care is pretty hard to find.  But is it really necessary to laugh when I say "Hi, I was calling to inquire about day care.  I have 9 month old twins."  Because I could do without the laughter.  It's not helping my crankiness.

That's all for now - I've got to turn in early as who knows what's in store for tonight.

*MAJOR DISCLAIMER: I understand that their sleep habits can change on a dime and I am prepared for every thing to go to shit at any moment.  Constant vigilance in expecting horrible nights is key.

Alumni Magazine Blurb Meme

Stacie over at The Twinkies  has come up with a fun new meme - the Alumni Magazine Blurb meme.  These are the instructions

Write two versions of a blurb to your high school or college alumni magazine. (If your school doesn’t have one, fake it. It’s just a genre.) The first should be the perky kind you always actually read in these things and the second version, well, less perky and more brutally honest.

This seemed fairly timely as I just received my own alumni magazine.  So here goes...

1.  Lori and J have recently welcomed their first and second child - twins!!  C and N are an absolute delight.  Lori is currently enjoying her days at home with the little munchkins.  Every day brings a wonderful new challenge as Lori is already preparing them to be academic superstars!  Lori is graciously volunteering her free time by taking on pro bono clients.

2. Lori, J and the best fertility clinic in the region are proud to announce the birth of their twins.  Against all odds, Lori was able to pass the bar (the first time!) while pregnant.  Shortly after taking the bar, she collapsed in complete exhaustion.  Nothing has changed since that initial collapse.  She still babbles about incoherently.  Especially at 3 am when Lori wakes in a cold sweat thinking about the $100,00+ loan she used to finance her spanky law degree.   These days, Lori spends her days with C & N and can often be found trying to figure out which baby has "poopy pants" and when she'll ever find a job using that spanky new degree.

So go ahead and give it a try - let the snark flow!

Dirty Little Secrets, Part 2

I know - this is just crazy, huh?  All these posts, and no one to read them!  Ha!  I don't want to jinx anything but maybe I'm back to blogging regularly after all...

So my next dirty little secret involves S-E-X.  For all that IF blogging involves conception, I often felt there was a lack of s.ex talk amongst us bloggers.  As if with all the talk of cooter cams, sperm and eggs, talking about se.x was just too much.  Sure, I wrote the token "will I ever be able to reclaim my se.x life again after all the IF damage" post.  Do we all just assume that as we deal with IF and treatments that the magic is a bit dim?  If that's the case, it doesn't get any better once there's a baby or two on the scene.

I've heard the stories - people unable to keep their hands off one another and jumping the gun before getting the green light at the 6 week post partum check up.  Didn't happen here.  Given the extreme sleep deprivation, I believe I may have fallen asleep during my post partum exam.  I have a feeling I was snoozing about the same time the doctor was saying "and it looks like you've healed nicely, you may resume sexual intercourse".

I've also heard the other stories.  From people who laugh at the idea of sex at 6 weeks post partum.  Oh no.  They were still too tired.  Geez, must've been about 2 months before they had sex again.  At which point they praise the patience of their spouses.  Didn't happen here.

Okay, those are really the only stories about post partum s.ex I can recall hearing.  So when the N & C's 4 month birthday rolled around, and the magic still hadn't returned, I started to worry.  Would I ever be hot for my husband again?  I figured maybe I should just give it a try, maybe once we got started, it would be more fun than sleep.  You never know until you try, right?  Not so much.  Maybe if I hadn't been gritting my teeth trying not to think about the pain, it could have been more fun than sleep.  But as it was, sleep would have been my preferred way of passing the time at that moment.

Fast forward 3 months, and still leery of voluntarily subjecting myself to such pain again, the magic had definitely not returned.  So a few weeks ago, much to my husband's shock and amazement my surprise, I had a hankering.  And I acted on it.  And it didn't hurt.  The next night when I got the same hankering, I acted on it again and J nearly died from the shock of se.x 2 nights in a row.  Now don't get too excited, such craziness hasn't been repeated but at least I wasn't gritting my teeth in pain - in fact, I actually enjoyed myself.  So maybe it just might happen again.  And in less than 3 months.

If you've been doing the math in your head, you'll realize that we've had s.ex 3 times in 8 1/2 months.  I know, pretty impressive, huh?  But I have hope - I've seen a glimmer of the magic.  It's just taken a while to see the glimmer and that is my dirty little secret.  Or not so dirty actually.

Dirty Little Secrets, Part 1

I know - 2 posts in the same month!  And the post title implies more to come to boot!  I've had these posts (Part 1 and what I hope will be 2 and 3) on my mind for some time - it's only now that I have the mental energy to write them.  But anyhoo - everyone has their own take on issues they feel no one tells them about the transition to motherhood but that should be told.  Here's mine.

I really, really hated my husband for the first 2 months after N & C were born.  As in "oh fuck, why did I marry him and how the hell can I get out of this?"

I would say that J and I had a very strong relationship as we got closer to the birth of our babies.  We certainly had plenty of time to contemplate the shift in our relationship and family.  Yet, still we were entirely unprepared for the impact parenting newborn twins would have on our loving marriage.  Some of the issues were genuine and others the result of sleep deprivation, stress and hormones.  But at the time that distinction was irrelevant.  Almost every time I slipped out of the house to run errands, I ended up sitting in some store's parking lot, sobbing and screaming on the phone to my uber-fertile best friend about how much I hated my husband.  Every single thing he did infuriated me - without fail.  I was so confused as to why I was feeling so much rage toward the man I was pretty sure I loved.  On all those stupid baby shows on tv, everyone says something to the effect of how they love their husbands oh so much more when they see them holding their baby.  So that was my expectation.  We would bring our babies home, J and I would gaze lovingly at them and then at each other and all would be fuzzy and lovely.  When I said as much to my uber-fertile best friend on one of these parking lot phone calls, she reminded me of when we visited our friend S after the birth of her first baby (she was also the first of our friends to have a baby).  While visiting S, she and her husband got into a vicious screaming match about using the microwave to heat formula.*  It was ugly.  Uber-fertile best friend and I left that visit, talking about their shaky marriage.  Both of us having bought into the "love the husband on a whole new level" crap, reassured ourselves that clearly S and her husbands marriage just wasn't as strong as our marriages.  We would obviously sail through the shift to parenthood.  Ha!!

Even feeling as strongly as I do that this is one of those dirty little secrets, there's a part of me that worries that I'll hit the Publish button only to hear silence in return.  That what I think is a dirty little secret about the motherhood transition, is in fact, just me having been crazy and hateful - everyone else is gazing lovingly at each other.  Maybe so.  All that matters though, is that now, I am incredibly glad that while at the courthouse getting sworn in to the bar at 5 weeks postpartum I did not file the divorce papers I had mentally prepared.

*She had a breast reduction and despite her best efforts, could not breastfeed.  But more importantly, why do I feel these "choices" need to be explained?  Probably a topic for a whole other post.

Anyone there???

Um yeah, so I guess I kind of suck at the whole blogging with kids bit.  I miss it though.  I've been trying to keep up on bloglines.  Most of the time, I'm in the middle of a post and one or both of my bambinos is in need of attention.  I don't want to be one of "those" bloggers that just drops off the face of blogosphere, though I suppose that's exactly what I've done.
Not much on my mind tonight other than the anxious wait for the latest HP book.  But I just thought I'd post and let you all know that we're doing well over in our little corner.
I'm not exaggerating when I say that there is not a single day that goes by that I don't look at my babies and think "wow, how lucky am I?"  It really is that great.  But don't be fooled some days are monumentally harder than others though for the most part we've got a good little routine going. 
As much as I'm enjoying being home with Nate and Catherine, I've just started my job search in earnest.  I really need to get out of the house before I lose my shit.  I have most definitely not discovered domestic bliss.  It's not that I mind being home, I'm just an uncomfortable with the dynamic being an at home mom creates with my husband.  A little to June Clea.ver for me.  Makes me a little bitchy.  When I asked him to get me a bottle of wine on his way home one day and this is what he bought, I realized I wasn't exactly hiding my feelings all that well.  Relying solely on J's income feels very imbalanced to me.  I hope once I'm working it will be more that we both do a little of this and a little of that rather than I do this and he does that.  If that makes any sense.
Well, that's really all I have for tonight. 

Still Recovering

Much to my continued surprise, I seem to still be recovering from the NICU experience.  A part of me feels like I should be over it by now as the twins were just there as feeders and growers with no major issues.  They were not fighting for their survival.  This part of me makes the other part of me feel like a drama queen for still feeling sadness and stress about the time they spent in the NICU.

My uber fertile best friend's oldest son had minor surgery recently.  As she was talking to me about her angst at leaving her boy in the hands of others, she told me she just couldn't imagine what I went through leaving the twins every night in the care of the NICU nurses and doctors.  That's when I realized that it doesn't matter how healthy my babies were in comparison to others in the NICU - that's not the part that I'm still struggling to process.  No matter why your babies are there, you still have to walk out the door and leave them in the care of others.  A truly difficult thing to do when you've just brought them into this world.

My family has been giving me a hard time about the fact that I respond quickly when the babies cry and that I don't let them cry it out.  Aside from the fact that the babies are way to young for crying it out and it's not really my style, I still get so upset thinking about all the times they must've cried and I wasn't there to comfort them or they weren't comforted at all if their nurse was caring for another baby at the time.  It's hard for me to believe that they have no memory of their time in the NICU and that it has not affected them on an emotional level.  I guess my quick response to their crying is my effort to somehow make it up to them.

I'm having a hard time falling to sleep after Catherine's 3AM feeding.  The other night I just kept reliving the NICU days.  There's so much I would've done differently if only I'd hadn't been recovering from childbirth and had the energy.  I still feel like I should've been there around the clock as if my constant presence would've translated into an earlier discharge date.

I'm not sure where I'm going with this post except to say that the NICU experience is still a painful on for me and I don't know what to do about it.

Going Out

Before I get in to the nitty gritty of my post (not that it's all that gritty mind you), I have a bit of an admission and explanation.  One of the many little things that keeps me from posting, is my inability to think of clever post titles.  I know, wicked lame huh?  In an effort to post more, I've given myself permission to ditch titles and just write.  It's not like my titles have ever been particularly creative or clever so I'm not sure what my deal is - I end up giving it way too much thought.  So there it is, I just had to get that off my chest.

I've started going out more regularly with the kiddos.  This has been a big deal for me.  When they were in the NICU, we were advised against taking them out until April when RSV season has passed.  Not relishing the thought of being cooped up, I raised the issue with our new pediatrician (you know, the one NOT affiliated with Satan's HMO).  The pediatrician said it was fine to take them out, just make sure people washed their hands before touching the kiddos and to perhaps the busiest places that were overly crowded.

I'd read about the stupid things people say when you're out with twins on message boards and on other blogs but I thought they were exaggerating.  Surely people aren't really that clueless that they'll ask if your boy/girl twins are identical??  Well they are.  Others who have gone before me have not exaggerated the extent of the cluelessness out there.  One of my neighbors who has an advanced degree in some intimidating sounding biology field even asked if they were identical.  Her mother, a doctor, was standing right there and gave her a hard time.  I had to chuckle.  She did kind of deserve it.  Of course, I usually have to tell people that they are boy/girl twins even though they are covered head to toe in blue and pink.  I can't find girl clothes in blue and vice versa.  Is everyone color blind?  Is there a color blindness epidemic in my area??  One woman asked whether they were identical and I said "well one's a boy and one's a girl" thinking that was all I needed to say.  She then asked if I could tell them apart or if they needed to be naked for me to know which was which.  Oy!  People also seem compelled to either exclaim "oh look twins!" when we walk by, as if we're a circus side show.  I mean, really, twins are a bit more common these days thanks to people like me.  We should not be drawing this much attention.  My other favorite is when people ask "oh are they twins?"  Part of me wants to respond that no, they're not and they are actually 2 years apart.  Nate and Catherine are about a pound apart in size.  The fact that they are twins should be fairly obvious.  There is no way they are at least 9 months apart in age.  C'mon people, use just a little bit of common sense.  Just a little, it's all I ask.

The other morning J and I took the kiddos out to breakfast.  It was a weekday (J does not work a traditional 9-5 day) so the diner was not too crowded.  We sat next to an elderly woman who was sitting alone.  Her face lit up as she saw us get settled into our seats.  We struck up a lovely conversation and she had such nice things to say about twins, mentioning what a blessing it must be and other such positive things.  She then made a passing remark that she'd never had children and my heart just went out to her.  Obviously I didn't press, so I don't know if it was an issue that she hadn't married (a bigger obstacle to having children in her youth) or if she experienced infertility which is now what I always assume given my own experience.  Anyway, some people are so kind that I enjoy the opportunity to  chat with a stranger.

Oh, and the going out part would be so much easier if J and I actually fit comfortably in the car now that there are 2 car seats in the back.  I thought my little vol.vo wagon could handle it but I'm starting to wonder if we're headed to mini.van ownership.  My dream car is a mini.cooper not a mini.van. 

Since You Asked...

In her comment to my last post, Jenny asked to see some pictures of the kiddos.  And I'm only too happy to oblige since I do think they are awfully damn cute. 
My sister was here for a few days helping out while my Mom was away.  We did a little photo shoot try to get good shots for their birth announcement.  So here are the pictures we'll probably use.  The kiddos are 2.5 months in these shots. I might not leave them up for long so enjoy them while you can.

 

Reemergence

By now we're coming up on the magical 3 month mark.  I say magical because so many people have reassured me that things get better by 3 months.  I've been skeptical but recent events have me thinking they might be right.

For starters, I signed up for a yoga class that meets once a week.  It's a beginning class and once I finish the series, I can drop in to other classes that meet at different times.  My first class was last week.  Is it okay to say that my favorite part of the class is the last 5 minutes when we lie down and close our eyes?  Definitely worth the money.  I've never really done yoga before preferring pi.lates.  I debated jumping right back into pi.lates but I'm glad I am taking it easier with yoga.  Last weeks class made me realize how my body has physically suffered because of the pregnancy.  Thanks to the bar exam, the first half of my pregnancy was spent on my ass studying in the library.  Thanks to bed rest, the last half of my pregnancy was spent on my ass watching tv.  Not much chance to get any exercise and my thighs quickly deteriorated into a jiggly mass of cellulite.  New parenthood has also been more physically demanding than I anticipated.  I'm constantly getting up and down, never sitting still for long.  There's always a baby to interact with, feed, change, etc.  And when not doing all of that, there's bottles to wash (oh, to have a dishwasher would be heavenly!), formula to prep, and diapers to be retrieved from the stash in the basement.  My joints only recently stopped aching.  So taking this yoga class felt a bit like my body was reemerging from its pregnant state.  It was finally being asked to do something unrelated to gestating or parenting.  It felt good.  Well, until one pose had my boobs being squished.  Since I am still attempting breastfeeding, they are a wee bit sore and did not like being squished.

This weekend, I made dinner.  I know, pretty wild and crazy.  Not only did I make dinner, but J and I ate it together without a symphony of crying babies.  I have the vague notion that we used to do something like that pretty regularly.  It was delightful.  I'm hoping it's something we can do again one of these days.

Very slowly, I'm feel like the fog is lifting.  Don't get me wrong, I'm still exhausted and overwhelmed by the needs of my babies.  My mom is still here everyday that J is at work so I'm rarely alone with them.  But I think it's becoming slightly more manageable and that's a good thing.  Hopefully this feeling will also translate into more regular posts.  Hopefully.

2 Months Down

The kidlets just had their 2 month birthday and we celebrated by taking them to the pediatrician.  A pediatrician that I like.  Who is NOT affiliated with Satan's HMO.  That's right folks, my nemesis, Satan's HMO, has been kicked to the curb.  We finally have insurance coverage that gives us access to a wide variety of doctors who are  not direct employees of that HMO. To say that I am pleased with the switch would be an understatement.  While under the care of Satan's HMO, on 2 separate occasions I raised issues with their pediatrician.  I was blown off on both occasions and told there was nothing to worry about.  Within 24 hours of raising the issues, my babies ended up being readmitted to the NICU (after Catherine was discharged and then when Nate contracted RSV).

For the most part, life with twins has been going much better than I anticipated.  Of course, my Mom is here with me everyday while J is at work so I feel like I'm cheating and getting off way too easy.  There is one aspect of caring for the kidlets that could be going just a wee bit better.  Breastfeeding.  I started out with a fairly healthy attitude when I decided I was going to try to breastfeed the twins.  If it worked, great - if not, I at least gave it a shot.  Somewhere  along the way, I've become obsessed with getting them to breastfeed.  And it's not going all that well.  I'm trying to figure out how much more energy I can invest in the quest to breastfeed but truthfully it's exhausting me.  Nate is doing a pretty good job at the breast and Catherine just doesn't get it.  Naturally, a great deal of guilt ensues as I've been spending so much time with Nate on the breast which means my Mom or J ends up feeding Catherine.  (Guilt about the division of my time/attention will likely be a topic for a future post)  I usually only feed Catherine if her hunger is perfectly timed with Nate's breaks on the boob.  And I won't even discuss my efforts to pump so she can at least have a bottle or two of breast milk.  I laugh when I look at all the breastfeeding supplies I bought naively thinking that of course I could feed them both.  It's the supplies to store milk in the freezer that have me most amused - I think I currently have 3 ounces frozen and that's just to make me feel better about buying all those damn freezer bags.  I have an appointment with the lactation consultant in my new pediatrician's office on Tuesday.  Hopefully it will help me figure out what I'm doing because my approach to breastfeeding has been a bit haphazard- sometimes I nurse him, sometimes I give him a bottle.  Because the other part of this whole thing is that I'm not really fond of breastfeeding.  It feels very weird to me to have to get in a state of partial undress to feed my baby.  Not to mention, I think it's boring.  I can't help but watch the clock.  The other day, Nate was at the breast and I was eating lunch and reading a book at the same time.  I can't just sit there and nurse him.  It makes me crazy.   It doesn't help that he nurses for very long periods because he's got a fairly leisurely style.   I know such sentiments are terribly un-PC but it's the truth.  Sure there are moments when I gave lovingly at my son but most of the time I'm thinking about other things I could be doing - you know, like taking care of Catherine.  And lets not forget about the nipple and breast pain courtesy of my friend the breast pump.

J and I seem to be doing okay with the transition to parenthood.  One thing I've discovered is that when I am sleep deprived, I don't like him very much.  It doesn't matter what's done or not done - I just don't like him when I'm tired.  Needless to say, making sure I get enough sleep is something he's very concerned about.

I feel badly that I've fallen into the category of bloggers who have a baby and who rarely/never post again.  Hopefully as I either adjust to sleep deprivation or it diminishes, I'll be able to post more frequently.  Because had I been posting more these past 2 months, the focus would've been how much I hate my husband.  Which would've been bad since I really do love him, even if he does get a bit more sleep than I do.