I am asked on a regular basis how the twins are doing, which I appreciate, because people care about them. But I tend to answer the way you reply to someone in passing saying "hey how's it going?" I generally automatically say "I'm good, how are you?" I may or may not be good, but I'm sure the other person doesn't really care about a whole long story about how I am. So when I'm asked how the girls are, my first instinct is just to say "good" and move on.
'Good' is also relative. If I think about how far they've come, they're freakin fantastic. My not-even 3lb baby and my just-over 3lb baby are near 20lbs at 10.5 months/8 months 1 week corrected. They were on CPAP machines, required feeding specialists to drink their bottles, and had terrible reflux that caused them to stop breathing; now, they can burst your ear drums with their screaming, chug a bottle in 5 mins, and have graduated from pepcid. We also have twin friends who have faced much more medically complex and traumatic situations. These babies are making strides too, but in comparison, my babies haven't faced as great setbacks, so, relatively speaking, they're 'good'.
But every day, I feel like we are still living in a shit show. Things got easier, but other things became hard. Right now, things are still physically demanding, but I think about when they'll be mentally demanding - like awkward teenager things, or confronting your kid about drugs, or being a strict parent and your kid says they hate you. These things break your heart and are just as draining, and I'm not sure if you can compare which one is worse (the physically or mentally demanding). It just stinks that when I thought things would be easier, it's still hard, just different.
I realize babies go through stages of crappiness, it just feels like this one is dragging. Here's the latest...
We are just getting over bad diaper rash that probably started some time in December.
We can sit up on our own, but it's anyone's guess how long it will last. 10 minutes? 30 seconds? Who knows. Rolled up blankets are always around us for the inevitable flop backwards.
We're not crawling, we're not pulling to stand, we're not getting up on all fours, we're not army crawling.
We can get out of sitting by kind of throwing ourselves forward, but we can't get into sit.
We started early intervention PT this week - an hour for each girl - it was a freakin workout for everyone. Madeline cried for much of the hour, Delilah fought me on everything I tried to have her do. PT through atlantic health is supposed to be every week too, but they couldn't schedule us for a month, so...
Diaper changes are a struggle. It's like wrestling a cat. We twist and turn and cry and kick our legs. As soon as the diaper is open, we immediately grab at whatever we can, or try to pull the diaper out from under out butt. I find it's easiest doing it on the floor in between my legs so I can rest my legs on top of the baby's arms and keep them out of the way. The only problem there then is being kicked, or the other baby pivots her way over and wants to investigate the dirty diaper.
Feeding is always frustrating - we like to bang our arms around, knock food on the floor, blow purees out of our mouths. It's a wonder they get fed solids twice a day. I hate feeding them in general. Madeline does well with purees and has a much better grasp on finger foods, but she still manages to collect food in her lap rather than in her bib. Delilah is the menace - she bites the spoon before it's all the way in her mouth and food goes everywhere - every spoonful.
We have been very cranky lately, and I run through the gamet of what it could be - diaper? hungry? bottle? teething? sleepy? bored of whatever position we're playing in? bored of our toys? Today for example, nothing made them happy and it was just hours of on and off cranky crying until bedtime.
I suppose some of this is my fault for wanting to go back to work - I wanted a break from mom-ing 24/7 - HA. I'm an idiot. Now I teach from 8-12, and then I'm on baby duty from when I get home until bedtime. Except it's just about non stop bottle, diaper change, outfit change bc we spit up and drenched ourselves, solids, another bottle, did we get any PT in?, naptime, is it bath night?, don't even think of leaving them alone because they'll just flop over and cry as soon as you walk away to do anything. It's constant needing something, and there's two of them, it's so hard.
But I've been too much of a debbie downer and that's not why you come to read this blog... you want cute baby pictures and videos, so here we go.
Madeline was grumpy wherever she was so I pulled her into my lap, but she clearly had ants in her pants and would have rather flopped away as well.
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