Whew!...and other thoughts

I feel very blessed today. Today I got up and I, instead of wasting the usual hour checking stuff on the computer, ate a quick breakfast, started the laundry, cleaned the bathroom, called t-mobile to get texting added to Jer's phone, and did a pass through the house with the vacuum cleaner. After all that we went out to play for a few minutes and not 10 minutes later I got a call from someone wanting to stop by for a playdate. WHEW! my house is relatively clean and I have most of the stuff done for the day that I was hoping to get accomplished. If this would have happened yesterday it would have been a disaster trying to get the house cleaned to company standards!!! So I thank God for good timing and the little nudge away from the time-sucking computer.

In other news - three-year-olds still make me crazy. It's amazing how they do they exact opposite of what I ask them - don't touch that = touch it, please pick up that toy and put it away = total breakdown and sobs of "I neeeed help!", don't touch your baby sister's head EVER = pull on her head repeatedly, poke her in the eyes/mouth/nose or stuff stuff in her mouth whenever mom turns her back for even a second. Heaven forbid I should have to do something like go to the bathroom or switch the laundry. Luckily, they do love their sister so they don't seem to have a desire to harm her - they are just curious....and they think it's funny to see her make strange faces. Of course their favorite is when she fills a diaper - hilarious!!!! In fact a 'tooter' is soooo funny that it has caused the occasional smear in the underwear because someone is trying a little too hard to produce a laugh-inducing squeak. And they are GIRLS!!!! Their daddy definitely got his wish for tom-boys.

This morning I have been thinking about first time parents. Jer's sister is supposed to pop out a little boy any day now. It's just amazing how clueless we were about what our lives would be like when baby came. I read every baby magazine I could get my hands on, took the class on birthing, and watched my sister go through it all about a year before I did....but still totally unprepared. Yes I had two, so I was a bit different than everything I had seen or read - but still I think the general feeling is similar for most parents. At least the ones who didn't grow up around babies.

My poor sister went from being a wild party girl with a million friends and lots of drama - to living in a tiny apartment with a newborn, no tv, in a town where she knew no one. She was traumatized. She dreaded her second child's baby-hood because her first experience was so horrible. I'm not saying she didn't love her son - the life change was just a total shock. She was so isolated. I went from being a college kid in a fun college town straight to being married and pregnant in a rented farm house by a tiny rural town. Also quite a shock - especially since no one in that town had the same child rearing ideas I had. Being a stay-at-home mom and nursing your children was just not done. Everybody worked, a lot, and um, ew nursing?? My poor husband probably didn't know what hit him when I went into an extensive tirade after he suggested the baby (at the time there was just one that we knew about) would go to daycare while I worked. And then they showed up...I was induced so I didn't sleep more than a few hours the night before - so many things can go wrong with twin deliveries - the least of which involves pushing out one twin and then needing to have an emergency c-section for the other. The girls came out screaming! The screamed the whole first night, and the hospital didn't have a nursery. Once that night I asked them to take the babies so I could sleep a little - but when they did I could still hear a baby screaming down the hall (I think they just took them to the nurses station) so instead of sleeping I was bawling because my babies were so upset and I couldn't help them. So the second evening we were going to try to keep baby stimulation to a min. in case that had caused the upset the night before - of course we got in all sorts of trouble for asking company to stay away. And stuff really hit the fan when the company came anyway and we asked that people not hold the girls. There we were new parents - no confidence that we had any clue about anything - and people were punishing us for the first decision we made together...and they continued to punish us for several days thereafter (and it has come up again 3 years later).
We brought the girls home after two days in the hospital. I still find it hard to believe that they just let us walk out of there with two little humans. No one to check our credentials, no one to make sure we knew how to keep the little things alive - so much harder to get into college or buy a car than to have a kid! I cried the entire way home because I just knew someone was going to hit us and my teeny-tiny babies couldn't hold up to a car accident. We got them home and they screamed most of the time and only slept when being held. I was so upset because I wanted them to sleep in their beds! I knew they shouldn't sleep with me (or my mom) because all the magazines said it was dangerous! I knew I shouldn't give them a bottle because it would throw nursing off (but the nurse at the hospital still tried to get me to do it!). I had so many ideas on how things should go- but only managed to stick with some of them. Eventually the girls wound up sleeping in the bed with me while Jer slept on the couch. I would carefully place them a few inches below the pillows and tuck the blankets under so it was impossible for them to come up past the girls' chests. Even sleeping that way I still had to nurse each baby about three times before they would stay asleep (in between times the other baby was screaming - they didn't take paci's and I was only ever able to nurse them one at a time). So sleeping was totally different than I had expected - besides the not getting any parts - nursing them was extremely hard, but I had expected that....I hadn't been able to conceive the many different ways in which it was difficult though: the random visitors sitting there trying not to watch as I struggled to get them to latch on, the pretty much constant feeding for the first 3 weeks or more (they both ate every hour or so), Jer getting frustrated in the middle of the night while he held a screaming child and couldn't help calm her at all, the constant comments from the other room like "it wouldn't hurt them to give them a bottle of water" etc.

Well that's all just me reminiscing about the joys of those first few weeks. I was totally traumatized and about as close to being angry with God as I've ever let myself be (I always thought being angry with God was extremely dangerous). I was afraid if I admitted being angry he would just take one of the girls...so I stayed away from anger and was just exhausted. The hardest thing wasn't, I don't think, surviving those first few months. I think sleep deprivation in the short term is very survivable - as are screaming babies, although it doesn't feel like it at the time. The worst thing was the lack of sympathy from certain people. Of course, most people were very sympathetic, but a surprising number just told us that we were doing such and such wrong. Oh and let me tell you about the greatness of visiting people in the evenings and trying to describe the various difficulties of these little screamers and having them tell you (while holding a baby that is finally sleeping) that these aren't difficult babies!! They can't be! So of course we're lying or just belly-aching!

BUT man are twins great from about 9 months on...when they discover each other. I know that I have it a lot easier than other moms, when I'm at home. Going anywhere outside the home...well that's still harder than with one or with two of different ages.

AND I really can't express how much I appreciate this singleton baby. Not only is she just one, but she sleeps, eats, poops...all without much drama. She rarely cries - mostly she just fusses when unhappy.

Well I digressed all over the place...and this was all much more clearly written in my head. But it will have to do and I feel better because maybe now I can stop composing it over and over and over in my head.