abc family

And Myself*

I remember when Camilla was new and we were still struggling bleary-eyed through the feedings and the diapers and the how do we get this baby to stop screaming and SLEEP, for the love of all that is holy? it occurred to me at one point that some people have more than one baby at once. I think I asked Bryan, "How do people with twins do it?"

We agreed that we had no idea. HOW did they do it?

Now that I've been one for ten months, I can tell you: parents of multiples are rock stars, worthy of admiration and perhaps even adulation. If you know one, you should take her vodka. Or cookies. Or both.

I can't speak for anyone else, but I can tell you how I do it: by working harder and sacrificing more than I ever have before. All parenthood is the challenge of love embodied, but parenting multiple babies at once is like the Olympics of that challenge. No question.

But also, this is what I have found to be true: my twins do not get the same level of hands-on attention from me that my first two babies did. I mean, baby Blaise also didn't get as much attention as baby Camilla did because I had a toddler to care for at the time, but the difference was not as radical. I would go so far as to say that I am a different kind of parent with Linus and Ambrose than I was with Camilla and Blaise.

And whoa. Getting to a place where I can write that without cringing has been quite a journey for me.

If I have ever had a parenting philosophy, it was something like this: love the children unceasingly, and keep them as healthy and happy as is reasonably possible.

It's worked well for me in the past, but - especially with high-needs Camilla - the lengths to which I went to keep her happy as much as possible were... well, IMpossible when you have two babies. I brushed my teeth with her on my hip and ate meals with her on my lap and wrote blog posts while she napped in the sling on my chest. She slept curled up next to me, nursing at her leisure. She wanted us to be together constantly, so I made that happen. And although Blaise was not as needy, I did pretty much the same things for him.

But I'm sure you can already see how this approach would not work with two babies. This is The Twin Problem: LOGISTICS. 

You can't brush your teeth with a baby on each hip, nor eat with two of them on your lap, nor wear them both in a sling on your chest once they're out of newbornhood. And although now that they're big I do occasionally sleep with one of them on each side (and you can imagine how happy the one at my back gets when he awakens and wants to nurse) the super-vigilant co-sleeping I did in Camilla's and Blaise's early infanthood was impossible with Ambrose and Linus.

My pregnancy with the twins was not easy, but at many moments during the past 10 months I've found myself thinking of it wistfully. When they were in utero I could meet both their needs with almost no extra effort. It was blessedly simple.

Since birth, each of them has spent a (sadly, from their mother's perspective) large amount of time waiting - often with fussing, sometimes even with wailing - for my attention while I tend to the other one. 

Maybe that doesn't seem like a big deal to you. Babies cry. Then they get older and quit crying and don't remember it.

But for me, it's not that simple. It never has been, and who knows why, but I have a constant and near-pathological need to keep everyone around me happy. Oh, I can (and do) put it aside to discipline my older kids. I can be tough when I need to be. But babies? I want babies to be happy.

One time I was on the phone with Miriel while I changed diapers, and she could hear one of the babies wailing as I wiped and rediapered the other as speedily as I could. I huffed through tears of frustration- why do I not have four arms? I need four arms - and she sweetly but firmly pointed out that maybe, just a little bit, I was putting too much pressure on myself.

"It's so hard having two babies at once," I told her. "It's this constant reminder that I can't keep everyone happy all the time, and it's heartbreaking. I want to keep everyone happy all the time." 

And my sweet sister laughed and said, "But you can't! And I think you should take it as a compliment from God - he had to send you twins in order to teach you that lesson."

Having Linus and Ambrose has pushed me and pushed me, and if parenting were a sport I'd be a seasoned marathoner by now. I work harder and am more efficient than I have ever been.

But I've also learned, finally, that my parenting philosophy could use some balance. Bryan and I have struggled through this past year, and we're (blessedly) stronger and happier than we were last spring. It could so easily have gone another way, though, without focus and counseling and a large helping of grace.

So here is my new philosophy, and I think it's much better than my old one:

Love my family unceasingly, and keep my marriage, my children, and myself as healthy and happy as is reasonably possible.

When I look at it that way, being a different kind of parent than I was before the Twin Adventure no longer seems so bad. Ambrose and Linus have given me so much more than just themselves, and I'm slowly getting to a place where I can be glad for that.

 

*In case you read the first version of this post and are confused: a reader (Erin, in the comments below) pointed out to me that I'd inadvertently implied some things I absolutely did not mean to imply. So this is the new, edited version of this post.

The only way out is through

Linus spent eight days at the hospital. Checked into the ER around 4pm on Wednesday February 22nd (Ash Wednesday - appropriate!) and got in the car to go home at 4:30pm on Thursday March 1st. Eight days was eight nights, too, and since Linus hated the hospital crib, Bryan and I dozed through those nights (I did five; he did three) sitting up in a recliner holding the baby.

I find it HIGHLY ironic that on the 21st, I wrote a piece at Faith & Family about how 2012 had been tough on us so far... right before (what hopefully will have been) the toughest week of the year began. 

I have all these THOUGHTS about the experience, but I find it hard to write about them. I keep feeling like I should remind you (and myself) that eight nights is not so bad, that it's a blip in the grand scheme. That, wow, aren't we blessed to live in a time when a baby can get really sick and thanks to modern medicine, be fine a week later? Some children have chemo or surgeries; IV antibiotics and supplemental oxygen are simple and painless treatments by comparison. We're lucky to have health insurance that will (mostly) cover Linus's stay. Thank goodness Bryan has a job with paid time off so we don't take an income hit from this illness. Isn't it great that we live within two miles of a good hospital? 

And most of all, what a blessing that now that it's over, we've brought home a healthy baby and can go back to normal life. It was a hard week, but we don't have to grieve now. We can celebrate.

I will tell you what: it is hard to celebrate when you are as exhausted as I am.

On Thursday the 1st, a mere six hours before we got Linus's discharge papers but when we were still unsure if we'd get them, I had a meltdown. The baby was finally doing well enough that he didn't need oxygen while awake and I could take him out of the room for the first time since his admission, so we went on a walk and then perced on a bench near the nurse's station. I was nervous about how the day would go and suddenly feeling like I just. couldn't. handle. one more night in the hospital, and WHAM the dam broke.

The nurses were kind and sympathetic, seeming unfazed by my sobs. The charge nurse sat and chatted with me for a while, which helped. I hugged Linus and tried to snap out of it by thinking positively, but I couldn't find the energy. Couldn't pull out of the tailspin.

Then one of the techs - a woman with young children of her own who'd been particularly sweet and helpful during our stay - brought me a box of tissues. "I'm sorry I can't stop crying," I told her. "I'm losing it."

And she said, "Thank God! I was starting to worry you were a robot!"

Say what?

"You been here for so long and you just so cheerful all the time. It doesn't seem natural!"

Well, shoot.

In my mind, everyone else handles things better than I do. Everyone else has it harder in some way. Here I am struggling along, and I beat myself up because things could be worse, because I could be better. It's a hard place to live, full of woulds and shoulds and coulds... and, as it turns out, pretty damn far away from reality.

My sister, who tells me the truth even when I don't want to hear it, pep-talked me on Wednesday.

"It's not just that you play Reverse Pain Olympics and think that everyone else always has it harder than you do," she said. "It's that if you can imagine your own life being worse than it is, you think you have no right to complain."

Whoa.

Think about it, she told me. If you met one woman coming out of the hospital whose child had cancer, you'd be sad for her. But if you then met another woman whose baby had been there for a week with pneumonia, you wouldn't say to her, "Suck it up! Other people have cancer!" You'd feel sorry for her too.

And of course I would. So why do I not offer myself that same courtesy?

Here's the truth: having a baby in the hospital is awful. Period. We were lucky, yes, that Linus was not in critical condition, but every day he was there was much harder on us than normal life (which is already pretty hard). The logistics of managing four children as young as ours, including nursing twins, when one baby is hospitalized? Mind-boggling. Exhausting. Absolutely zero fun and something I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy.

Five days after we brought Linus home, I'm grateful for a happy ending, but I am still recovering. I haven't gotten a good night's sleep in weeks. The babies are making up for lost calories by nursing around the clock. I pushed pushed pushed myself for eight days and the sick-baby-crisis adrenaline and the ordeal-is-over endorphins have worn off. Now I am a jumble of exhaustion and pushed-to-my-limit craziness, liable to burst into tears at any moment.

But also, I'm proud of myself for pushing through, for doing something extraordinary (even if it's the undesirable kind of extraordinary) without losing it. I was worried that I wouldn't be able to handle it (I knew for a couple days before he was admitted that it was a possibility), and then I felt like I could do a day or two but not more, and then I felt like I could do just one more day, or another 48 hours, but that was it... and somehow I kept plugging along and I made it through eight days and I feel pretty much like a champion right now. I am awesome.

Oh! Also, though, we got a huge amount of support. Really, a staggering amount of support (I am STAGGERED), from so many people who love us, from people who said "yes" when I called and asked "could you?" and from all of you lovely people on the Internet who sent words of encouragement and comfort and commiseration. I can't tell you how much I appreciate it.

Linus and Ambrose all RSV-ed up. Poor babies!

Home and healthy, hooray!

Update, Hospital Version

Hey all! This is Arwen posting now (it was my sister Miriel for the last couple of times). I've been updating Twitter and Facebook but I forget, sometimes, that not everyone uses/checks those. Sorry about that!

So, the hospital stay has ended up being longer than we expected. Tonight will be night seven. Linus has RSV and ended up with a pretty nasty case of what they think was bacterial pneumonia. His chest x-ray on Saturday looked much worse than the initial one last Wednesday.

Fortunately, they kicked him up from the original antibiotic to a stronger one, and forty-eight hours later (this morning) he looked much better. He's weaning off the supplemental oxygen, slowly but surely. His anemia is still a concern, and is causing them to hold him to higher standards for oxygen saturation levels in order for him to go home, but none of the dangerous complications the doctors initially feared have happened.

We'll see how he does through tonight (Tuesday) and make a plan tomorrow. I think at this point the best-case scenario is that Linus does super-well overnight and comes home in the morning. More realistically, he could get finally weaned off the oxygen tomorrow during the day and get discharged in the evening. It's possible that (big sigh of exhaustion) we might have to stay tomorrow night as well.

And then there's always the possibility of unforeseen complications. But, well, we can't foresee those, so there's no point worrying about them.

Oh, and Ambrose is sick too, but seems to be pushing through with no problems. He's been sick for six days now and is definitely on the upswing, praise God.

Thank you all so much for your prayers! You've helped carry us through this past week and I appreciate it so much.

Another Linus Update

Thank you all for your kind words and prayers. As of this morning, there are some additional hurdles facing my sister and her family. For convenience, bullet points!

• Linus's initial diagnosis (bacterial pneumonia) is now looking more like RSV. Anyone who's been around here for a few years knows that the Mosher family history with RSV is not a pleasant one (Blaise was hospitalized for 10 nights with it as an infant), and the complexities of a viral as opposed to a bacterial infection will be hard on Linus's body, especially with his low hemoglobin. The changed diagnosis will also mean a much longer hospital stay for Linus. Please pray for complete recovery, for no complications, and for as easy an illness as possible for my sweet little nephew. Please also pray for wisdom for his doctors. 
• Ambrose has developed a cough, which--in Arwen's words--makes him sound like Linus three days ago. Please pray that he does not end up with a serious infection. He's a little hardier than Linus, so we can hope that he will be able to fight off anything secondary. 
• Blaise and Camilla. The "big kids" (who, at 3 and 5, are really not all that big) are having an understandably difficult time with the upheaval in their daily routines and with Arwen being out of the house much more than normal. Please pray for them to be consoled and calmed.
• Arwen and Bryan. The logistical mess that Linus's hospitalization entails is stressful enough, but the hardest thing for my sister and her husband is having to see their kiddos suffer, and being unsure when all of the sickness and upheaval will end. Please pray in a special way for strength, courage, and peace for them.

(I know that not everyone who reads this blog and cares about Arwen and her family is a pray-er. I'm writing in a hurry and in a bit of distress, so please forgive my defaulting to that language--I do not mean to sound alienating!! Your good thoughts and kind words are truly and deeply appreciated.)

Thank you, all, so much--

Miriel

 

Please Pray for Linus (updated!)

Update, Thursday 2/23, 10:45am: We have good reasons to be hopeful this morning! The doctors think that Linus has a normal, bacterial strain of pneumonia, so it should respond well to antibiotics. He has an intermittent low-grade fever, but that's a big improvement from last night when it hit 105. He still has an oxygen cannula, but seems to be doing well with a lower-level flow, which is another good sign. And Ambrose is doing just fine! 

So there are many things to be thankful for! But please keep praying and thinking good thoughts for my sweet godson and his family. As far as I can tell, the goals are: fever completely gone, cough completely gone, O2 levels normal without any intervention, hemoglobin levels up somewhere closer to normal. And rest for Arwen, who was sitting up most of the night with a baby who decided he doesn't like hospital cribs. 

Thank you all for your kind words, thoughts, and prayers. I know that your support is a source of encouragement to Arwen and Bryan!

*****

Hi everyone,

This is Arwen's little sister Miriel, writing to ask for your fervent prayers for baby Linus. He was admitted to the hospital this afternoon with a respiratory infection, low blood oxygen saturation, and radically low hemoglobin levels (hovering at 4; normal is 11). 

Our biggest concern is Linus's immediate health. Another major concern is long-term complications; the combination of low hemoglobin and respiratory distress can cause chronic congestive heart failure. 

If you have extra prayers to spare, please offer them for Ambrose, who will be separated from his mama for long periods of time over the coming days and, against his stubborn will, needs to learn to take a bottle so he can eat. And pray for Camilla and Blaise, for resilience and consolation for them in a time of upheaval. 

Please also pray especially for my sweet sister and her wonderful husband. This is so hard on them and they are already exhausted (two babies will do that to you). Arwen's wonderful friend Lauren is there to help her, which is a great grace, but they can still all use as many prayers as you can send their way. Thank you so much.

(Update: Linus has been diagnosed with pneumonia, so they're starting him on a course of antibiotics. His hemoglobin is also showing an upward trend--he's at 4.7 now. This is good news; please pray that the upswing continues.)

Breastfeeding and Guilt

Okay, so I kinda learned my lesson the last time I wrote an off-the-cuff blog post from a tweet. I do better when I have time to think and state things carefully.

For the record, my official position on teething is that I think it can - and does for many kids - cause real pain. I remember my gums aching as my wisdom teeth broke through! The part of "teething" that I don't "believe in" is the part where, when babies are fussy and drooly and chewing on their hands for weeks on end, and possibly sleep badly some of the time in there, people are all "it's teething!" and when the teeth finally break through after months of this, they think it proves the connection. It seems to me much more likely that a variety of factors (especially the oft-overlooked developmental ones) cause babies and toddlers to act in a variety of ways. And in my own parenting, I find it more helpful/productive/satisfying to look for those factors rather than to throw my hands up and blame the whole mess on the teeth. But if you like blaming teething, go for it! I couldn't care less.

Moving on.

I am going to talk about breastfeeding and guilt, because I have spent a LOT of time pondering this topic and I'm curious to know what other people think. I have no intent to blame or shame ANYONE, and in fact I want to give you a hug, no matter what your experience of feeding your baby was. Yes, YOU. I like YOU.

I'm writing this, honestly, because I want to help. I've witnessed a lot of guilt surrounding baby-feeding choices. I also just finished several months of extremely helpful cognitive therapy that took me from anxious wreck to a person who could write this piece and mean it. So I'm now a Believer in that approach and I want to help people Solve Their Problems! By Thinking About Them Differently!

That sounds naive. But seriously, this particular train of thought has helped me (as you'll see) deal with some of my own mother-guilt struggles, so. It's worth sharing, I think, just in case.

But it comes with a disclaimer! I am writing this the same way I did the teething post, just kind of spewing it all out, so please give me the benefit of the doubt if you think I'm being judgemental/hasty/irresponsible/whatever. I like you! I support you! I am pro-breastfeeding and pro-mother and I just want everyone to be able to find the best solutions for her family AND to feel good about those solutions.

----------------------------------------------------------

I fed Camilla and Blaise food from McDonald's yesterday. Chicken nuggets, fries, and a chocolate chip cookie each. They had milk to drink, but unless you think ketchup is a vegetable, this was not a balanced meal.

Not only that, but my kids eat fast food on a regular basis. I'm not going to name the exact frequency because it might make some of you feel smug and some of you feel worse about yourselves, and that is not the point. The point is, they eat fast food. Because it's so processed, I have a low opinion of fast food as nutrition, but I give it to them anyway.

And! I don't feel guilty about it. I might sigh inwardly if the frequency of fast-food-feeding increases in a particular time period, and I might resolve to make the next few meals extremely whole-foody and balanced. But I don't feel guilty.

You know what I have felt massively guilty about in the recent past? My babies' NICU time. Specifically, the fact that while they were there, I didn't sleep at the hospital with them, hold them for every feeding, or spend hours doing skin-to-skin time with them.

I felt deeply, heart-wrenchingly guilty about this. Sometimes I sobbed until I couldn't see straight, so worried was I about whether I *should* be there, and about how my babies might suffer because I wasn't.

For reference: when Linus and Ambrose were in the NICU, I was with them 3-4 hours a day for various feedings/visits, so each of them got about 1.5-2 hours of time with me, plus about an hour of time being held by Bryan.

But it doesn't matter exactly how much time it was. It could've been more and it could've been less. The point is that it was the best solution we had then, and with it I managed a tenuous balance of protecting my mental health, meeting my physical needs, and being there for my older children. If I'd been at the hospital more, those things would've had to give, and it wouldn't have been pretty.

Rationally, I KNEW that we were making the best choices we could, and that it was the right thing for us. Rationally, I have no regrets.

Irrationally, I still get a pang when I see a picture of a mother doing Kangaroo care with her late-preterm baby* or when I read about any parent who spent more time than I did with her baby at the NICU. Almost nine months later, even with a happy ending of healthy, well-attached babies and a thriving family, I still FEEL that I should have been with Ambrose and Linus 24/7 during that time. I feel guilty that I wasn't. It makes no sense, but it's true.

In comparison, it is easy for me to process and reject any hint of guilt I might feel when I read about someone else's children lapping up organic quinoa-flaxseed-kale salad for lunch. "Good for that family!" I think, and then I move on. My kids eat more processed food and fewer vegetables than they would in an ideal world. We're working on it. There's no need to berate myself.

SO. (And here is where I tie in the breastfeeding thread, in case you were worried I'd forgotten the topic!) WHY would I have crushing guilt over a set of GOOD - if difficult - choices we made for our family, while neatly side-stepping any guilt over some less-than-optimal ones?  

Why, also, does a blog post by a woman about her wonderful breastfeeding experience - yes, even one that is devoid of judgment of others' choices - almost invariably draw sad/angry/self-flagellating comments from women who did not have the same experience? While a post about a family's organic diet, while it might draw some annoyed comments if it's too judgy, does not generally strike the same sensitive chords in mothers' hearts?

(I said generally! Standard disclaimer about exceptions, etc.)

I have a theory about one of the big reasons, and it is this: HORMONES.

Hey, I'm exclusively nursing twins. You know who expects that? Hardly anyone. Even most dedicated breastfeeding advocates give a pass on nursing multiples. But I am positive, deep-down to-my-core SURE, that if I had stopped nursing Ambrose and Linus for whatever reason, I would feel guilty about it. I would have grief and regret and I would second-guess myself and it would be painful. And all of this would happen DESPITE the fact that people do not expect me to nurse the twins. 

It would be totally irrational, just like my guilt about the NICU thing. But I'm sure I would have it anyway.

When my babies were in the NICU, my mind KNEW that the best thing for my family was to take advantage of the excellent care L&A were getting and to focus on providing for all our other needs too, the better to keep us happy and healthy and ready for the way life would change when they came home. My mind knew this, but my body screamed at me: be with your babies! Be with your babies! You have to be with your babies!

I wonder if ceasing breastfeeding doesn't also cause women's bodies to play tricks on them in this way. I know way too many women who fed their babies fully or partially with formula because it was the best choice for their families at the time, who are rationally confident in their decisions, but who still struggle with grief and regret months or even years later. It's sad.

And yet it makes sense from an evolutionary perspective: over most of human history, only a woman who had abandoned or lost her baby would stop needing to make milk during his infancy. Women who did feel guilty at the prospect of abandoning their babies - and who thus stayed with them instead - would be more likely to have their children survive, and thus the guilt would be genetically reinforced from generation to generation.

So maybe it is is actually CODED IN, so to speak. WHOA.

I know the message my body screamed at me in the NICU weeks was instinctive rather than rational, and maybe that explains why pumping (which I later hated) was soothing during that time: it reminded my body that my babies were alive and that I was still caring for them.

I believe instinct can be helpful, but I also know better than my body, and in that case, my babies were fine at the NICU without me. They were sleeping, often through their feedings, even. A lot of the time they were under the bili lights and I couldn't have been holding them even if I were in the room. I'm sure that they would've benefitted at least a tiny bit from my presence (as babies always do) but not as much as my family and I benefitted from my being elsewhere.

My babies were carefully cared-for and in the best place for them. My body just didn't know it.

In the same way, babies these days can be fine without milk from their mothers. They can eat formula or milk from other sources, and they can be fed by bottle by their own mothers or by other people who care for them. But maybe... maybe those mothers' bodies just don't know it? And thus: the guilt.

Recognizing that my body was responding instinctively to the NICU separation, and working through it rationally, has helped me a lot. I know people process things in different ways, but I wonder if some women who are struggling with guilt over feeding choices could be helped by recognizing the hormonal/instinctive aspect? Especially if it's all retrospective and there's nothing they can do to change the choices anyway.

I'm curious: what do you think?

 

*Pictures of parents with early preterm babies just make me feel profoundly grateful for how lucky we were. 34 weeks is a HUGE blessing, prematurity-time-wise.

Were Little Boy

I posted this on Twitter yesterday, and I'm still chuckling about it (although only because the alternative would be whimpering, and I try not to go the whiny route).

I made nachos for lunch today, and Blaise wanted some, but neither a) with meat, nor b) without meat. Uh, it's called the law of non-contradiction, kiddo. You can't get around it.

Oh, yes. Blaise is three.

When Camilla turned three I thought I was going insane. How had my sweet, rational, affectionate little girl suddenly become this crazed impossible-to-please monster? What had I done?

This time around I have a slightly more balanced perspective. I know I haven't gone insane. HE has gone insane, and whatever developments are grinding away in his brain must be serious, demolition-level stuff, because the histrionics are so ridiculous they're hilarious.

But Blaise. Oh, Blaise. That kid has my heart.

Two weeks ago he fell down the stairs at 6pm and I had him to urgent care before 7, so sure was I that he'd broken his arm. Praise God, his arm is fine, but waiting to get the x-ray took a couple hours, and I was there with him for a while before Bryan switched me out. (Babies won't take a bottle. Bah!)

As he sat on my lap in the exam room waiting for the doctor, munching an apple and watching me play games on the iPad, he snuggled his head into my shoulder and whispered, "I love having Mama-Blaisey time."

Me too, buddy. Me too.

2011 was a tough year for all of us but I wonder if - Bryan's and my exhaustion and general strung-outed-ness notwithstanding - it wasn't hardest on Blaise. Camilla was old enough to understand and anticipate the babies' birth, but Blaise couldn't, and I imagine he must have been surprised when we took him to the hospital to show him two (!) brand-new brothers.

(My sister Tirienne told me that after Blaise went to see the babies, she asked him what they were like, and he held up his hands close together and said, "Dey're really little and tiny." For some reason that description tickled me.)

But then we brought the babies home and - while Blaise loves Ambrose and Linus and has never tried to hurt them or acted out toward them - both his devoted parents were suddenly very, very busy. Our household has never had such a stressful year, and I can imagine dealing with it as a two-year-old has been bewildering, to say the least.

In my head, Blaise looks like this:

Still a baby, always my baby, in a onesie and a diaper, the skin on his chubby arms and legs soft. My baby Blaise loves to cuddle, is enthusiastic and fascinated by the world around him, but is sweet, always so sweet.

But, the eyes of mother-love aside, this is a truer picture of him:

That striped/pink item is not some bizarrely-shaped sofa cushion. It is his sister. He is sitting on her.

My Blaise, my always-sweet baby, is a first-degree stinker who is filled with glee at each chance to pummel his sister, or tackle her, or grab a toy out of her hand and run away cackling while she chases him shrieking.

So... "always sweet" might be overstating it, is what I'm saying.

Yesterday Camilla and Blaise took a bath, and near the beginning he was threatening to dump water on her head. I told him he'd have to get out if he did. That was enough to deter him... until about twenty minutes later, when he was ready for bathtime to be over. I heard Camilla wailing, ran in to discover he'd poured an entire cup of water on her face, and told him he was done. He grinned, "Okay, Mama!" then hopped out of the tub. 

Did he do it because he knew the threatened penalty was now affordable? I'm hesitant to ascribe that level of craftiness to a young three-year-old. But he's got the potential. The SEEDS are definitely there. And I think we're going to have to get more creative with discipline as he grows.

(He worked the system! My sweet baby worked the system!)

Blaise is a middle child all the way - a little tentative, a little attention-hungry.

In this picture, for example, I was trying to get a shot of Camilla in her pretty new dress. 

 He JUMPED right in front of her, showing no remorse when she whined. I had to hide my laughter.

Those are small (or as he would say, "tiny," his stock word for all things diminutive) train engines clutched in his hands. Percy and Gordon and Hiro from Thomas the Tank Engine (Puh-cy, Goa-don, Hee-ro), his favorite toys. He takes them to bed with him. Lines them up, end to end, and lies on the floor pushing them in a circle around him for ages. Ten to fifteen minutes at a time, anyway, which is an age for a three-year-old. Just him, whispering "chug-chug-choot-choot" and talking about shunting and puffing and all sorts of train-related things.

He's verbal, surprisingly so for a kid who didn't say a word before 16 months, but if he's frustrated or upset he clams right up. I try - and mostly succeed - not to compare him to his sister, but shoot. She was so much easier to reason with, even as a three-year-old, and I'm finding myself adjusting, tweaking, reassessing my approaches to keep up with him.

I think of Blaise as resilient because he's always been so much less emotionally needy than his sister, but in his way he is just as sensitive. Last week he was distressed for a couple days over a dream he'd had that we left him alone at my parents' house - as much as I tried, I could not get him to fully realize that it was just a dream - and he was so forlorn. He teared up every time he talked about it and I wanted to gather him into my arms and never leave him again, so sad did it make me.

His speech quirks are disappearing rapidly. (Until a few months ago, he inserted "no" randomly into his sentences instead of using proper negatives. I miss that so much.) But he still does one of my favorites, saying "were" instead of "our." "Were babies" he calls Linus and Ambrose, bestowing fervent if none-too-gentle kisses on them. I find myself saying "were" instead of "our" sometimes too; I think it's my subconscious way of trying to prolong his error.

To prolong his toddlerhood, really.

Blaise is our tough guy, rough-and-tumble, fully capable of terrorizing his sister and other people bigger than he is. (Ask Bryan, who handles his night-time wake-ups, all about that.)

But he is soft too, still little, still in many ways that sweet baby I see when I imagine him. Over Christmas we went back to our hometown for a week and he had a great time: playing with cousins, running wild at the grandparents', but after six nights he was ready to go home. He wanted "were house."

I promised him that we would stay there, stay home for a couple of days, and on the strength of that assurance he rested on the drive.

I can see in him the big guy who will someday leave us, who will be excited to grasp his independence and stride out to meet the world. But for now my baby just wants to stay at home, to be with the people who love him best. 

Three can be a challenge, but on my Blaisey it's just as lovable as every other age has been. 

This is really just a long tweet

So I mentioned on Twitter tonight that I "don't believe in teething anymore" and some people, reasonably, were all, "Wha-ha-ha?"

I tried to answer but it wouldn't fit in 140 character segments, and I thought about writing it down somewhere else because I don't really use my blog for stuff like this, but then I realized that just because I don't doesn't mean I can't, so here we are.

Obviously I BELIEVE in teething, in that I know that babies cut teeth. Trust me, I know - Linus and Ambrose have each cut six in the past six weeks. They've done a LOT of chewing on Mama (mostly my fingers, thankfully - I don't tolerate biting while nursing).

But when we were visiting the pediatrician with the newborn twins, he happened to mention conversationally that "teething isn't real." And I had the same reaction as my Twitter friends: "Wha-ha-ha?" Of COURSE teething is real. Babies cut teeth, and it makes them act crazily, and that's just the truth.

He mentioned, though, that studies have found that parents often attribute symptoms to teething when their children are not actually cutting teeth. He hypothesized the symptoms are probably caused by developmental leaps or by mild viral infections. I pooh-poohed, and ranted a little to Bryan on the way home.

But then I thought about it more, and I thought about how with Camilla and Blaise, I blamed lots of fussiness and various symptoms on teething... only to have the symptoms pass before they cut a tooth. Or, conversely, I'd find they'd cut teeth and expect fussiness/sleep/whatever to improve, only to have the symptoms continue for a while, apparently unrelated to the teething.

I went looking and found that the doctor wasn't lying about the studies. I thought about how it makes sense that people would imagine a cause->effect relationship with teeth. A baby acts a certain way, eventually his behavior changes, the only obvious thing that happened in the meantime was a tooth cutting - of course you're going to think that teething caused the craziness.

So I decided to pay super-close attention to Linus and Ambrose as they teethed. Our kids are late-ish teethers, so the twins didn't get their first tooth until almost 7 months, on December 3rd. They cut the first one (bottom right middle incisor) on the same day, after having basically no fussiness or unusual sleep interruption beforehand. They had a couple truly awful nights later that week, which we thought might be connected to the second tooth cutting, but they also had a cold then (thanks, older siblings) and the cold passed and the sleep got better before the second tooth came. 

Over the next six weeks, ending in mid-January, Linus and Ambrose cut five more teeth each. (They now have the bottom middle incisors and all four top incisors.) During that time, they had some random fussiness, including one particular week where all they wanted was for me to hold them. (That is REALLY FUN when you have two babies.)

But here's the thing: I was watching closely, checking their mouths every day, and their behavior seemed to be almost completely unrelated to their teeth. We did notice a couple times when one twin would have a slightly rougher night than usual, and in the morning he'd have a new tooth. (Conveniently for our purposes, L&A cut their remaining teeth at different times and even in different order.) But that was the extent of it. Otherwise, their fussiness and random sleep interruption seemed to be unrelated to teething.

So that is why I don't believe in teething any more.

I'm curious: what has your experience been? I'm interested! Especially if you've got some hard data (or as close to data as you can get with this kind of stuff, anyway).

Share your stories! Tell me I'm an idiot! Let's all be mom-geeks together!

2011, Vanquished

I decided I didn't want to skip this meme, so I just changed a few of the questions to be more relevant to my life. Hasta la vista, 2011!

1. What did you do in 2011 that you’d never done before?

Was hospitalized for a reason other than to give birth (to stop pre-term labor, thankfully with success). Gave birth to twins. Came home from the hospital and left babies in the NICU (definitely the worst part of my year). Nursed two babies. Brought home and cared for two babies. In general, the newness in this year was related to the Two Babies. 

2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

My new year's resolution was to survive 2011. It was close, but I squeaked by.

In 2012 I want to feed my family more vegetables, give my big kids more attention and affection, and try to be gentler with myself. We'll see how it goes.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?

Not anyone geographically close, but it was an Internet baby BOOM. In particular I was anticipating the births of A'Dell's Charlotte, Diane's Leo, Maggie's Emma, and Maureen's Ann Marie, but I could name another half-dozen Internet cuties as well. I have a lot of Twitter friends with new babies, and sharing the experiences (especially in #midnightfeedingclub) was a big part of keeping me sane this year.

4. Did anyone close to you die?
 

Thankfully, no.

5. What countries did you visit? What states did you visit? What counties did you visit?

Well, what with going to our hometown (which is ninety long miles away) two entire times, plus making a trek all the way from the southern part of our state to the northern part of our state (with babies in tow)... I bet I was in eight or ten different counties this year. Wow! That is almost a dozen whole counties.

You can call me intrepid. I won't argue.

6. What would you like to have in 2012 that you lacked in 2011?

Peace.

I have wound myself so tightly trying to manage my life that I am not so much living as I am ricocheting from task to task with no time to enjoy or even to notice the good things I have. That needs to change. This year, I hope it will.

7. What dates from 2011 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?

May 5: My friends on Twitter were talking about Cinco de Mayo margaritas and I was sitting in a hospital bed watching contractions peak on a monitor and listening to a neonatologist talk about NICU time. It was the day I let go of my plan/hope of having full-term babies and bringing them home right away.

May 12: In the first hour of this day Linus Michael and Ambrose John came (practically) flying out of me and our life was (for the third and fourth times) changed forever.

May 13: I was discharged from the hospital and left my babies there. I cried a LOT this day.

May 27: We brought Linus home from the NICU without Ambrose. More crying. (Sense a theme?)

May 29: Finally, both of them home! A joyous day. 

December 25: Christmas at home with our little family. The year was almost over and I think this was the first time I realized and affirmed that we will live through this.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?

I kicked butt this year. I gave birth to TWO babies! I exclusively breastfed them (I'd been lucky to have had easy nursing experiences before, but this time I worked HARD to feed my babies.) I managed to be a primary, stay-at-home caregiver to four children under the age of five for many months.

I was more exhausted, more strung out, more despairing at the hugeness of this job than I've ever been, and I still pushed through.

2011 was the year when I realized that that "cannot" is really - no, really, as cheesy as it sounds - NOT in my vocabulary.

9. What was your biggest failure?

I'm tempted to name a bunch of little things, but they are so tiny in comparison to the success of this year that I'm refusing myself permission to list them.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?

I might've had a mild case of preeclampsia the week before the babies were born; the doctors could never agree. I had mastitis in mid-summer which fortunately passed quickly, but I was miserable for a few days. I suffered a couple killer headaches and a bunch of minor ones that I'm pretty sure would stop if I could manage to get enough sleep and stay hydrated. Bah! But otherwise, a pretty healthy year.

11. What was the best thing you bought?

Camelbak hydration pack, which got me through bed rest and which I still keep in bed with me at night so I can drink water without even sitting up. That thing rocks.

Also the iPhone 4s. It's my first smartphone and I'm hooked.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?

Bryan's. I always chuckle inwardly when people ask me if he "helps" with the children. If you know him, you know what a ridiculous question that is. He matches me stride for stride and I'm continually amazed by his willingness to sacrifice his needs for mine and the kids'.

Lauren's. Having her at the other end of the phone line is a big part of the reason I'm sane. She has been SUCH a good friend to me this year, in all my most pathetic moments, and has supported me without wavering even as I'm struggling to cope with a blessing she's seeking. THAT is a true friend.

And my whole family's. My sisters especially have each given a lot of their time and energy to help me this year; my parents, as usual, go above and beyond; and my brothers are better at admiring baby pictures than any other young single guys I know. All of them are a blessing to me.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?

Honesty, I can't read every third news story lest the horrors keep me up at night with the Bad Thoughts. But that whole Penn State thing was especially awful.

14. Where did most of your money go?

Probably to the mortgage, as usual, but we spent an unprecedented amount on medical bills this year. Our out-of-pocket costs for L&D and NICU time were pushing five figures, and we have decent health insurance.

We can't afford to have twins OR a preemie again anytime soon, is what I'm saying.

15. What did you get really excited about?

This was not really a year of excitement. It was more a year of trying not to be terrified, then being relieved when things turned out okay, then being exhausted and overwhelmed, then continuing to be relieved when time marched on and we somehow managed to survive.

I *am* pretty excited that 2011 is over now. I expect 2012 to be a much better year.

16. What song sound will always remind you of 2011?

It's an unbeatable combination, really: shrieking + cackling + wailing + gulping/swallowing.

The shrieking is Camilla, upset because Blaise is beating up on her. The laughter is his, obviously. One baby is wailing because I am not holding him. The other is gulping/swallowing because he is nursing, which is the reason I can't get up from the couch to solve the shrieking/cackling/wailing.

It is SAD how many times this exact scenario happened to me this year.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
 

– happier or sadder? This is complicated.

On one hand, I am worn thinner than I've ever been, and am exhausted and overwhelmed a lot of the time. I cry often.

On the other hand, I am relieved, both that my twin pregnancy had a happy ending and that we made it through the first eight months with two babies. And also, we HAVE those babies, and Linus and Ambrose are a joy and a gift in themselves.

On balance, I'm going with happier, but I hope that this time next year I am happier AND rejuvenated AND more content.

– thinner or fatter? Thinner. But this time last year I was in the second trimester of a pregnancy during which I was specifically trying to gain weight. So that's not saying much.

– richer or poorer? Poorer. Did you read the part about the medical bills? And we've just decided to send Camilla to private school next fall, so watch this space for the same answer next year.

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?

Being gentle and patient with my husband. Listening to my big kids and enjoying them. Giving myself credit. 

19. What do you wish you’d done less of?
 

Blaming myself and viewing every weakness as a failure.

20. How did you spend Christmas?
 

At home, just the six of us, on Christmas Eve and Christmas morning. 4:30pm Christmas Eve Mass, appetizers for dinner, reading The Grinch, A Visit from St. Nicholas, and the account of the nativity from the Gospel of Luke, hanging stockings. Opening stockings with the big kids at 8:00am before the babies were up, eating cinnamon rolls and bacon for breakfast, opening family presents one by one around the tree.

Later in the day my family came for a big dinner, and we continued our Christmas celebrations over the following days, but the evening of the 24th and the morning of the 25th were perfect.

21. Did you fall in love in 2011?
 

With my baby boys, of course.

22. What was your favorite TV program? 

As is my tradition when a baby is born, I re-watched all of Gilmore girls. I still love it.

23. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?
 

I don't hate anyone.

24. What was the best book you read?
 

My best reading experience this year was re-reading Harry Potter, the whole series from start to finish, in November and December. That is one incredible story.

25. What was your greatest musical discovery?  Did you, by any chance, perfect your recipe for blueberry muffins this year? Would you like to share it with the world?

As a matter of fact, I did and I would.

26. What did you want and get?
 

Two healthy babies, praise God.

27. What did you want and not get?
 

A full-term birth for my babies. A reasonable amount of rest, of both the emotional and physical types.

28. What was your favorite film of this year? How much pizza did you eat this year?

A truly ridiculous amount. I'd like to say that will change in 2012. We'll see.

29. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
 

I turned 29 on August 23rd. It was a fine day. I remember very little about it, just as with most of the days in the babies' early months.

30. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?

If I'd spent more time appreciating how hard I was working instead of blaming myself and worrying about unimportant details.

31. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2011? Have you showered this week? Good for you!

Thank you!

32. What kept you sane?
 

Bryan, Lauren, my family, my friends outside the computer and (sort of especially) on Twitter. My support network rocks. Also, I started going to counseling in mid-October and over two-and-a-half months it has already helped me immensely.

33. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most? Can you sing the theme song from Thomas & Friends? Do you hate it?

I can and I do. What a freaking earworm. 

34. What political issue stirred you the most? Did you manage to read any magazines?

I always page through my issues of Cuisine at Home and Cook's Country and Bon Appetit with excitement, even though I'm currently unable to try many new recipes. Looking forward to more cooking once things settle down around here.

35. Who did you miss?
 

My sister Miriel and my brother Brandon, hundreds of miles away. Lauren, ditto. The year I learn to apparate is going to be the year my life finally improves immeasurably.

36. Who was the best new person you met?

Besides the babies, which is sort of obvious, I'm going with my new online-turned-real-life friend Laura. She's a long-time blog reader who's local, and while I technically met her in 2010, she's been awesome this year - so helpful and supportive and fun. I'm grateful for her.

37. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2011.

Self-flagellation is a very bad idea.

38. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year. Do you like cheese?

Yes, as long as it's melted and not too pungent.

Good-bye, 2011!

Merry Christmas! (2011 recapped)

I sent this letter out with our Christmas cards this year. I've blogged a lot of this stuff, but it gives a pretty good update on our year. I would've sent this to every blog reader if I could've - and I'm praying for the greatest blessings for all of you in 2012!

Dear Family and Friends,

Merry Christmas! I hope that this letter finds you well and celebrating the holidays with those you love most.

2011 has been a roller coaster marathon of a year in our household.

The first big event was in early January, when a 16-week ultrasound revealed that our identical twins - who were due to be born in June - were boys. That ultrasound and further ones found the babies healthy and thriving, thankfully.

While I could still travel, Camilla and I flew to the DC area to visit some dear friends and my sister Miriel who was living there at the time. On the trip we had high tea at a hotel downtown, a highlight that Camilla still talks about months later! It was a treat for me to travel alone with my “big” girl - at four she’s inquisitive and easy to excite; I loved watching her enjoy the trip.

In late February, Bryan took what would turn out to be his only business trip of the year. He’s never had a year with this little travel, and it couldn’t have happened at a better time. The kids and I stayed with my parents for the week, and it was then, around the 25-week point of my pregnancy, that I started having the contractions which would cause my doctors to put me on restricted activity (a modified form of bed rest) for the remainder of the twins’ gestation.

The rest of the winter and early spring passed slowly, although in retrospect it seems to have gone by in a flash. We made it through March, and then April. Bryan handled the household chores; I spent a lot of time on the couch concentrating on growing babies; Camilla and Blaise worked on their self-amusement skills. (Those skills have come in handy since!)

Then came May, our whirlwind month. After a short hospitalization to stop preterm labor and a few days at home on strict bed rest, our twins decided it was time to come, so they did!

Linus Michael, at 5 pounds 7 ounces, and Ambrose John, at 5 pounds 12 ounces, were born at 12:38 and 12:41am on May 12th, at 34 weeks 3 days gestation.

In case you’re wondering about the names: the babies are named for early saints. Linus is traditionally considered to have been the second pope, and Ambrose was a great scholar and doctor of the church. Michael is Bryan’s middle name and St. Michael the Archangel is a special family patron, and John is after my grandfather and St. John the Baptist.

The twins’ birth was a crazy one but surprisingly good, thanks in large part to my doctor, a maternal-fetal medicine specialist who delivers multiples regularly. I credit her with my managing to avoid a c-section, something that was important to me.

Having avoided surgery turned out to be an advantage over the next few weeks, since while I was recovering from giving birth, Linus and Ambrose were catching up from having come early. They spent 15 and 17 days respectively in the hospital’s Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. While I wouldn’t recommend NICU time to anyone, we had a sort of best-case preemie scenario: our babies breathed well from the beginning and only needed jaundice treatment and some tube feeding until they could get strong enough to eat on their own. And we’re lucky to have a great NICU just 2 miles from home, which made it much more bearable.

Still, the day we brought them both home was one of the happiest of the year. There’s nothing like being forced to spend many nights away from your newborns to emphasize the joy of having them with you!

But then the real work began. Having twins is like Extreme Parenting: all the normal baby tasks, doubled. There’s no way to spell each other, no way to get the breaks you get when you have a single baby. We were blessed to have my mom and sisters take turns staying with us for the first month, but caring for the babies is still a round-the-clock job, and Bryan and I would take turns moaning and blithering at each other as we sat up feeding twins in the middle of the night, near-drunk with exhaustion.

Fortunately, things got better. We got Linus and Ambrose off bottles onto full-time nursing, which simplified feeding. They started sleeping [somewhat] better. They held their heads up, smiled and laughed, and finally at around six months began sitting on their own. It’s two steps forward, one step back, but we are slowly making our way toward the time when (we hope) we’ll be able to really enjoy having twins.

In the meantime, we have two other kids to enjoy, and this has been a great year with Camilla and Blaise.

Camilla turned five in October and I’m casually homeschooling her for kindergarten, with a plan to send her to a local Catholic school for first grade next fall. She loves math and is making great strides in reading, and spends non-school-time drawing and creating all sorts of games to play with Blaise. When the two of them aren’t careening all over the house, she also deigns to help amuse the babies (for a few minutes at a time, anyway). She’s a delightful kid.

Blaise, who will be three in January, is a fireball of a kid, and while we’re working to (ahem) help him learn to curb his aggressive tendencies, we really enjoy his enthusiasm. He loves all things vehicle-related, especially “frucks and frains” as he calls them. He literally runs from place to place around the house, usually with a small truck or train clutched in his hand, so excited is he to find the next piece of mischief to manage. We’ve loved getting to know him as his verbal skills have developed this year, and we expect he’ll keep us laughing (and probably groaning) for years to come.

Bryan is still working at [redacted] and really liking a new project he started working on this fall. I’m still writing sporadically for faithandfamilylive.com, and looking forward to doing more as the twins get older and life settles down a bit. Neither of us gets nearly enough sleep, but we’re grateful for the crazy blessing of our little family, and we can’t wait to see where 2012 takes us.

And as a reward for making it to the end of this letter, here are a few extras the Christmas card didn't contain:

Linus (l) and Ambrose (r) just after we put the tree up in early December. New at sitting!

Camilla is always trying to convince me that she can carry the babies around. Here she is with Ambrose.

But look how happy they are when she's NOT doing that! (Linus)

Kids on Christmas Eve - Blaise with Ambrose, Camilla with Linus