Tag: babies

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mom enough

I’m no attachment parent, but I have an attachment child.

The whole internet, or at least, the mom-heavy corner of it that I frequent, is abuzz over a particularly trollish TIME magazine cover and accompanying cover story that asks “Are you mom enough?” The cover depicts a model-pretty 26 year old mom breastfeeding her nearly 4 year old son, and the story it teases is a largely biographical piece about the father of attachment parenting, Dr. Sears.

This is not a post about that piece, so much as it is a post about my experience of reading that piece.

Jon went golfing this morning. I’m glad he got to go, and I’m not mad that he went. But it coincided with a difficult morning for me and the Bufflo Gals. In the 6ish hours he was gone, I swear, there were not 5 minutes during which one or the other of the girls was not crying and/or screaming. There were not 5 minutes in those 6ish hours in which I was not holding one or the other, feeding one or the other, shushing one or the other, or changing one or the other. I’m rather proud that it was not until around hour five that I send Jon a text inquiring when he might be home and suggesting that I may or may not have been losing it.

It was while balancing both of my girls on my body, intermittently shoving a pacifier in one mouth or the other, bouncing Etta on my knees while feeding Claire a bottle (of formula, which Dr. Sears would frown upon), that I read the TIME piece about Dr. Sears.

This was about hour 4 of The Screaming.

And when I read that he thinks allowing kids to cry for more than a moment damages their brains, and that he encourages parents to soothe every single cry, and attend to every single whimper, well, I wanted to punch him in his face. And then I wanted to dare him to spend 6 hours alone with my twins and try to achieve the impossible feat of never letting one or the other cry for more than 5 minutes.

At least once per day, I will be feeding one while the other sits in a Boppy, bouncer, or bassinet, screaming her head off until her little face is beet red, because she too is hungry, or in need of a change, or desiring some snuggle time. And I will have to just leave her there, because if I stop feeding the one I’m feeding, I will then have two screaming babies on my hands and not nearly enough hands to comfort both of them. This means that sometimes, by which I mean at least once a day, one or the other of my babies is crying for 10 minutes, or more. Deal with THAT, Dr. Sears.

The thing about grand theories of parenting is, they’re grand in theory. They almost never work in totality, across the board, for all parents and all children. I find many of the feminist criticisms that attachment parenting asks too much of mothers (and alienate fathers) very valid. I find the scientific criticisms of Sears’ claims that normal amounts of crying damage babies’ brains comforting, because my babies are going to cry unless I grow a second set of arms.

At the same time, I’m thankful that attachment parenting folks have popularized things like babywearing, something that has worked very well with Etta, whom I refer to as my “attachment child” because she likes to be very close to a warm body at all times. We joke that the solution to most Claire problems is to feed her, and the solution to most Etta problems is to hold her.

Bottom line: take what’s useful to you from parenting gurus, but don’t make it your religion. And don’t you dare suggest to a new mom of twins that she’s damaging her kids because they cry sometimes. Because you’ll make her cry, and then she’ll want to make YOU cry, and THAT might cause some damage.

 

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my babies robbed me

They don’t always sleep this peacefully. Mama could use some caffeine. (photo by the amazingly talented Christen Byrd, whom you should let shoot you sometime!)

My babies are adorable. They’re also thieves.

And I’m not talking about my belly button, though that still hasn’t come back, and I’m afraid it never will. Once it popped, it just can’t stop?

No, I’m talking about coffee.

I LOVED coffee. At one point in college I had a four cup per day habit, but had recently cut back to one beloved cup each morning. Fair trade CSA coffee, brewed in a French press, no less. For most of my pregnancy, I continued to have my one cup of coffee per day. It was a ritual I continued to enjoy, and clung to perhaps more tightly since I was deprived an evening glass of wine.

Then, sometime in the 3rd trimester, when I was the size of a house, something weird happened. Coffee no longer tasted good to me. I’d make a cup, thinking maybe something was just off the day before, have a few sips, and then find myself unable to drink anymore.

Now, promptly upon delivery, my heartburn, which had reared its ugly head after such foods as say, a glass of water, disappeared. My bladder was suddenly able to hold more than a teaspoon of liquid. But my taste for coffee has yet to return. And you know what that means?

I am enduring newborns, without caffeine.

Heaven help us all.

 

The above photo is from our newborn photoshoot, which I will write all about very soon. In the meantime, you can see more photos on the website of our amazing photographer and friend, Christen Byrd, whom we highly recommend.

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parenthood one month in

Saturday was my due date. Instead of being in labor, I spent the day with my ONE MONTH OLDS. They’re already growing up so fast! There’s no way they’d fit in the little preemie footie pjs they came home in just four weeks ago. Amazing how time flies when lived in 3 hour intervals between baby feedings.

Time also apparently flies between blog posts around here…sorry about that.

The truth is, my life is rather boring but happy at the moment. I’m not kidding about the living in 3 hour intervals thing– we followed the “golden rule of multiples” from the start, which is “one up, both up,” and mercifully the babies are on roughly the same eating/sleeping schedule, which works out great until I’m home alone with them and they’re both screaming with hunger at the exact same time, and I can currently only feed one at a time because they both like to try to drown in their food, or dribble it all over themselves, or choke themselves by sucking the nipple too far into their mouths. Luckily, until June, Jon is home with me most of the time, and we can just both feed a baby at the same time. This also means we can trade off at night and get longer stretches of sleep!

In a similar vein, I’m no longer mournful about not being able to breastfeed. Formula may be stinky and expensive, but it’s also fast and easy, and it allows my husband and me to share in the feeding of our babies. It also means I’m getting much more rest than I would be if I were nursing, and I’m enjoying having my body mostly to myself after 9 months of sharing it with two other people. I get to drink wine in the evenings! More than one glass even, if I’m feeling crazy!

Another thing that’s working out great is cloth diapering. I was really hoping it would work for us, and it totally is. I don’t find the cloth diapers to be any more disgusting to deal with than the disposables we used for the first 2-ish weeks, and when we have babies spitting up and such all the time, we’re already doing an extra load of laundry every day anyway. If anyone is particularly curious about what we’re doing, I thought I’d give a quick rundown.

We have a “stash” (oh cloth diapering lingo!) of 36 newborn all-in-one diapers (aka AIOs). They are BumGenius XS’s, Lil Joeys, and some Kissaluvs. (When the babies are bigger, we’ll switch to my stash of one-size pocket diapers.) I chose AIOs because they’re the easiest to use, and the most like disposables. I could probably wash every other day, but I just do a small load every day because I’ve got other stuff to wash anyway. I run the dirty diapers through a rinse and spin cycle with no spin, and then I add in the other laundry and do a “sanitize” cycle on the heavy duty setting for extra water. We tried All Free and Clear detergent, but I wasn’t crazy about it (I felt like the diapers still kind of smelled), so now we’re trying Tide Original Powder. I figured I’d exhaust all my available-at-Target options before moving on to more specialty detergents. I’ve been mostly drying the diapers in the dryer, though I’d like to line-dry them more often.

I think the cloth diapers are really cute, and I like that we’re not creating tons (literally) of trash by using disposable diapers. Other folks use cloth for health reasons, but those weren’t one of my top priorities. Most of all, we’re saving a ton of money over what it would cost us to have twins in disposable diapers. I know some folks try to claim the energy and water from washing is just as expensive, but with our high efficiency washer and dryer, it’s totally a negligible cost.

As far as the babies themselves: they are perfect. Sure, Claire sometimes reminds me of a hungry hungry hippo (do NOT get between that girl and her bottle), and Etta is our little Fussbudget who wants to be held all the time, but they are the most precious and beautiful little things I’ve ever seen. When they’re snuggled together? The cuteness is somehow multiplied by a factor of 10. I’m so looking forward to seeing their personalities develop.

A month in, motherhood has both changed and not changed me. I feel like the same person, even though I was worried that I wouldn’t. Sometimes I look around and feel like I’m playing house and wonder who entrusted us with the care of these two little people. But at the same time, I’m surprised by how much I don’t mind all the work that care involves. I used to have a hair-trigger gag reflex, but now I can deal with all manner of the disgustingness babies produce without batting an eye (though the nasty smell of formula spit-up in my hair still makes me want to run for the toilet).

I’ve still not spent an entire day alone with the babies, and we have basically only ventured out to doctor’s appointments and church, and then always with Jon. The very idea of going somewhere alone with the babies seems VERY daunting to me at this point. Two infants is just a lot to handle.

As for all of my fears about how having twins would rob me of some of the specialness of a new-baby experience, they were both founded and unfounded. I read the posts of new moms of singletons on one of my pregnancy message boards and see things like how they never let their baby cry for more than just a second, how they’re always rushing to comfort their baby, how they never put their baby down, even how exhausted and frustrated they are, and I almost want to laugh AND cry. With two infants and only one me, if Jon’s not home, sometimes one baby just has to scream her head off when I’m feeding her sister and can’t stop to feed her too. I’m always having to put one baby down to pick up another. And nighttime feedings take twice as long because I have to do the whole routine twice. I must resist the urge to say, “we had only one baby home for a week and it was SO EASY.” Seriously though, my theory is that 2 babies are 4 times harder than 1, though I should probably save that sentiment for the multiples message boards– infancy is hard, no matter how many infants you have.

I still get plenty of baby snuggles. I still spend hours staring at their tiny faces, gazing into their currently still-blue eyes. I still have babies falling asleep on my chest. I still feel very bonded and connected to both of them. And all of us are doing so much better than I could have possibly imagined either while pregnant or just a month ago.

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baby room reveal and BIG update

BIG NEWS: Etta and Claire will be born tomorrow! Our c-section was originally scheduled for this coming Monday, 4/2, but at my appointment this morning, my blood pressure was elevated, I had started to retain a lot of fluid, and Claire wasn’t as reactive on the monitoring as the doctor would like her to be. My doctor said my body and the babies were telling her that it’s time for them to come out. Initially she was talking about getting them out today, but Claire perked up a bit with further monitoring, so we bought ourselves until tomorrow morning, first thing.

I’m glad, because we still had a lot to do: finishing touches on the girls’ room, finishing thank you notes for shower gifts, straightening up the house a bit, and packing a bag for the hospital. In fact, right after the doctor told us tomorrow would be baby day, I said to Jon: but we have to finish the room and I have to take pictures so I can blog it before they come!!! Clearly I’m an insane internet weirdo. But hey: check out our babies’ cute room!

This is the view standing in the doorway of the room. I didn’t set out to have a themed room, but it quickly developed a color palette based on the crib skirt and pillow fabric, and we ended up with a bit of an animal thing going on. What I am most proud of about the room are all the handmade touches, by me and by other folks who love Etta and Claire, and of all the stuff that we already had that we were able to repurpose for the room. The only new furniture we bought were the two cribs, which are BabyMod from WalMart and were a gift from my family. The white dresser, from IKEA, we already had, the little yellow table used to be a nightstand in our guest room, the futon was in our living room, the white tables on either side of it were in our bedroom, and even the rug, which strangely matched perfectly, we already had from IKEA.

This is the view from in front of the bathroom door. Bonus Tinycat sighting! The purple dresser/changer is one of the coolest repurposed items in the room. Our friend Sean found the solidly-built dresser by the curb while walking his dog and carried it home for us. Jon refinished it, and I found the cutest green knobs on sale for half off (which made them $1.50 each) at Hobby Lobby. It’s chock full of our cloth diapers! The four animal paintings were painted by my dad after some he saw in a catalog. They were the first animal items we got for the room, which is what led to the unofficial theme.

I knew right away that a traditional rocker or glider wasn’t going to work with two babies, but wanted a comfy place to nurse and snuggle. So we moved a futon out of our living room, and it fit great! This way one of us can sleep in the room with the babies if we want, and if anyone is ever crazy enough to want to come stay with us, we still have a space for guests to sleep. Tinycat also thinks it’s a great nap space. Everything hanging over the futon is something we already had somewhere else in our home.

I already mentioned my DIY mobiles and origami lamp and re-made vintage lamp in previous posts.

Another awesome handmade touch in the room are these name prints by my awesome friend Christen, whom you may remember from our maternity photo shoot. She’s not just a super talented photographer, but makes adorable prints, which you can purchase from her Etsy shop. I love that they don’t match exactly, but go together just perfectly!

And that’s the room! I can’t believe that after tomorrow, we’ll have BABIES in those cribs!

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our babies have a birthday!

Just a quick update on Etta and Claire: they’re not even born yet, but they have a birthday!

I saw my OB this morning for my now weekly monitoring, and the babies and I look great. She had spoken to the Maternal Fetal Medicine team about our last ultrasound, and they decided that to be on the safe side, we should plan to have the babies at 36 weeks.

So…..April 2 is BABY DAY! It’s completely surreal to think we’ll just go to the hospital, have a c-section, and have babies in our arms by lunchtime.

I feel it is an auspicious date because April 2, 2006 is the day Jon asked me to marry him. Now that happy day gets exponentially happier!

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cursed sleep

At the beginning of my pregnancy, blessedly free from the all-day pukes called “morning sickness” that so many women suffer, my one persistent symptom (aside from having to pee constantly from the moment we got that little plus sign) has been INSANE TIREDNESS. Like, mono tired. Ran a marathon tired. Completely senseless tired. I spent a lot of time napping with Tinycat (who, it must be said, is a champion napper):

Now that I’m in the home stretch, it’s become frustrating because I’m still tired, and I’m increasingly incapacitated by my ballooning body, but I can’t. freakin’. sleep.

I know! Right this second, you’re thinking something along the lines of: oh poor naive dear, if she thinks this is bad, just wait til she has actual newborn twin humans on her hands demanding to be fed and changed and held all the time.

I KNOW!

And yet, it would be nice if I could sleep now. People say helpful things like, “Sleep while you can!” And boy do I wish I could. Between reflux (which is a nice way of saying “constantly throwing up in one’s mouth”), restless legs, difficulty rolling over which results in weird hip pains from being paralyzed in one spot, hot flashes, and having to pee every single hour on the hour of the night…. and I’m not sleeping much.

I’m thinking I might start “sleeping” on the futon in the nursery, not because Jon is somehow keeping me up, but because lying sleepless next to someone happily, deep-breathingly, sleeping away makes me irrationally, jealously angry. He’s off in dreamland, and I’m sitting there thinking NO FAIR NO FAIR NO FAIR.

In the meantime, not sleeping at night means lots of napping during the day, which perpetuates the vicious cycle. Perhaps I’m becoming nocturnal.

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A quick update on Etta and Claire

Just got home after another ultrasound with our maternal fetal medicine team. We got to look at the babies, which is always super fun–just looking at them reminds me that all this near-constant discomfort and pain are worth it. I also know now why my right ribs hurt all the time: both babies have their big ole noggins on that side.

Baby Etta was called an “Amazon baby” by the doctor because she’s measuring a couple weeks ahead of where we should be at 28weeks gestation at 3 lbs. 6 oz., and Claire is just slightly petite at 2 lbs. 9 oz. The discordance is nothing the doctors are concerned about.

The best news was that neither the tech nor the doctors saw a defect on Claire’s spine. Basically, based on her head anatomy, the presence of a “lemon sign” and the fact that her cerebellum has been pulled down trapping some fluid in her ventricles, mean that there must be a spinal defect somewhere. But, the fact that they can’t find this defect means it must be very small and is therefore unlikely to have a very large negative impact on her. It seems more and more like the neurologists will have to find it after the birth rather than seeing it in utero.

We are so thankful and hopeful. Both girls look great and are growing well and we can’t wait to meet them!

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nursery progress and a lamp DIY

To me, one of the more fun things about being pregnant is fixing up a room for the babies. I knew from the start I wanted to avoid having a “theme.” None of the rest of my rooms have a theme, so why should the babies’ room look any different? I wanted their room to look like it belonged with the rest of the house, and I knew I had to work with the navy blue floral wallpaper that we renters can’t change. So my goal was to incorporate lots of color and lots of handmade touches to make a room that goes with the rest of our house. I figured I’d share some of my progress so far:

The cribs are actually the only “new” thing in the photo, and they’re BabyMod from Walmart. Cribs were a tough decision for me, because I originally really wanted bright red cribs, which apparently do not exist. Then I thought I’d paint unpainted cribs, which also do not exist, unless I want to pay a zillion dollars or drive 4 hours to the nearest IKEA, which, it turns out, didn’t have the unpainted ones in stock anyway. So we ended up with gray cribs that actually blend surprisingly well with the aforementioned wallpaper. The dresser we already had, and there are three smaller nightstands in the room that we also already had. Even the rug was something we already had.

Early on, I decided moving our futon into the babies’ room made more sense than getting a glider, because this way, I could set the babies down on the couch, sit down in between them, and still feed them even if I were home alone. Also, the futon still functions as a place for guests to sleep, in case anyone wants to stay in a house of craziness, or for one of us to sleep in the room with the babies. It’s actually an espresso brown, I just have a sheet on it to protect it from Tinycat’s hair, since he likes to hang out in there.

To go on the futon, I made 4 throw pillow covers with fabric I happened to already have in my stash, that I think goes well with the rug:

And for Christmas, my dad made these four paintings to go on the wall: I think the animals are super cute, and he did a great job choosing colors that go with the other things in the room.

Now, while we’re not doing an animal theme, there will be some other animal touches, including some letterpress prints I already had around, and a vintage lamp my stepmom found at a flea market:

I immediately loved the little elephant, but knew I wanted to do something to spruce up his bland, faded shade. Initially, I thought of trying to cover the shade with the same fabric as the throw pillows, but since I’m making the girls an origami crane lamp like the one I made for my friend, I decided to incorporate the same origami paper I’m using for the cranes to make the two lamps “go” together. I cut each sheet of origami paper into 4 smaller squares and ModPodged them to the lampshade in a patchwork pattern. Then I glued some rickrack trim around the edges. I’m really proud of the results (though everything I ModPodge comes out a little wrinkly), and think the patterns of the paper echo the pattern of the wallpaper in a nice way:

I still need to figure out some sort of changing table/dresser, want to get an ottoman, need to hem curtains, and am planning to sew some crib skirts, among other things, but I’m pretty proud of how the babies’ room is looking so far. I don’t think it screams “baby” or “pretty pretty princess” but it’s still girly and fun and colorful. I can’t wait to get it finished!

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thankful that no news is good news

It’s possible I’ve gotten a little spoiled in that I’ve yet to go to an OB appointment alone. Jon’s got a flexible schedule, and he’s been willing and able to go with me every time. Until today, when some very important disaster training coincided with my appointment, and he couldn’t make it. Because I’m spoiled, my stepmom came with me instead. It was an uneventful appointment, and for that I am very thankful. Just a quick check in, a chat with my doctor, and off on my way, with a pat on the back because I’m still gaining the weight I need to for the babies. No bad news in the ultrasound room. No difficulty finding two little heartbeats on the Doppler. No real problems to report except that I’m still insanely insanely tired, and the constant heartburn is a little annoying, but overall I’m pretty happy for 6 months pregnant, which still feels insane to say.

I am so thankful for this uneventful appointment. I’m thankful to have a great team of doctors and nurses and genetic counselors and care coordinators. I’m thankful that, even though Claire will have to be transferred to another hospital right after birth for surgery and care, it’s the hospital where my husband works, right by our house, and one of the best in the country. I’m thankful to have family nearby to take care of all of us.

In short, I guess I’m just feeling really thankful. Possibly because I’m reading One Thousand Gifts, which is a book all about the practice of gratitude as the central practice of the Christian faith, which is a really great read so far, even though I don’t agree with all of it. The author seems to suggest that God causes all things that happen to us, be they joyful or painful, and I just can’t get on board with the idea that God causes things that are bad. That isn’t to say that I don’t believe that God works all things for the good, or that we can’t be drawn nearer to God in all things, or that we can’t learn and grow from every experience that happens to us. But I just can’t agree, though it has been suggested to me by well-meaning people, that God caused, for example, my Claire’s spina bifida. I am sure it will be an opportunity for learning and growth and drawing nearer to God, but I don’t believe God gives anything but good gifts to his children. I can’t believe God would cause disease or suffering and pain and still maintain faith in God. Spina bifida just happens sometimes. Even if you take your vitamins. Even if you say your prayers. Because that’s the way this world works. And God’s heart is broken along with mamas’ and daddies’ when they find out something’s wrong with their baby. And God rejoices when the defect isn’t as bad as it could be. That’s what I believe.

And so, I’m thankful for uneventful appointments, and for hope for the future, and for days when we don’t get any bad news. And I’m thankful for arms that hold me when the bad news comes too.

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six month pregnancy update

Jon and I last week.

I’m now 24 weeks pregnant. That means 6 months. Before I was pregnant, I thought 6 months was a whole lot pregnant. Now that I am actually 6 months pregnant with twins, I’ve discovered that while it is indeed a whole lot pregnant, I still have a long ways to go. Apparently I don’t look as big as folks think I should, because when they ask me how far along I am and I tell them “6 months, with twins,” they always remark how tiny I am. Well, the babies are just now breaking a pound in the weight department, and I have to get to 6 pounds each, so I have a feeling the growing is going to start speeding up in a hurry.

After our last ultrasound ended in scary news and tears, I was a little nervous about this morning’s appointment, but I have to say it went so much better. It’s always fun to get to peek at our girls, and we had a great ultrasound tech and a MUCH warmer Maternal Fetal Medicine specialist this time around. The great news is the girls are growing very well, with Etta (baby A) weighing in a little ahead of schedule at 2 lbs. and Claire (baby B) just slightly behind schedule at 1.2 lbs. There was a little fluid in Claire’s skull, but it looked pretty good, and there appears to be no sac on her spine, so again, the best possible scenario for spina bifida.We met with a genetic counselor and a nurse for the Arkansas Fetal Diagnosis and Management Program which will help coordinate all the various care Claire will need both before and after birth. We feel great to have such a good team of healthcare providers and are very hopeful for the best for Claire.

Both girls were still as wiggly as ever, and the tech managed to get one really awesome shot where it looks like Claire is giving Etta a kiss on the cheek. I realize it’s entirely possible that I’m only looking at this pic with a mama’s eyes, but I’m sharing it anyway. It’s sort of like a magic eye– don’t look too hard, and you’ll see two little faces, I hope. Can you see it?

Overall, I feel pretty good. I’m really exhausted practically all of the time, have been experiencing more and more rib and back pain, and am completely annoyed by all the heartburn. Still, I’m thankful I don’t feel too bad, and also thankful that I have plenty of time to rest when I need to. The craziest development is that we can now SEE the babies moving around in there from the outside. It’s a completely trippy experience.