Hello! It has been awhile. When we left off, Annalee was still in the NICU. She finally got discharged on November 18th, and we’ve been settling into life since then. Our total time in the hospital was just over 4 months. 53 days inpatient, 55 in NICU for Margo, and 74 for Annalee.

See, the thing is, life with twin infants isn’t that hard. It makes me wonder why one baby (Sam) ever seemed so hard. Life with a 3-year-old is hard. And life with a 3-year-old PLUS twin infants is some next level shit.

Here are some things I learned:

I’ve built a life that I currently cannot sustain on my own, and I need to accept it. For the first time in my life, I cannot function without help, and I need to delegate. Sure, I could make it for a day or two, but evenings are hard. Really hard. The twins aren’t the hard part. When Sam is at daycare, things seem pretty doable. But juggling newborn twins in the witching hour, plus Sam in his witching hour, is next-to-impossible with one person. It’s also hard with two people. And three people. My sister has been here for a few weeks now, which has been a big help. But I don’t like the feeling of needing help in order to function. I’m used to being independent, so this has not been an easy transition for me. It’s hard to accept that I need help, not just once in awhile but every day. Erin has been in Japan this week, which has made this reality set in even further. I’m trying to think about this as an opportunity to really learn how to let other people in, to build a community, and to delegate. 

Exclusive pumping is annoying but also very liberating. We haven’t made much progress on the breastfeeding front. This is partly because it’s just hard to find the time to try more, and also because we’ve gotten into a routine with bottles and pumping. The nice thing about bottles and pumping is that it is time efficient. At night, I can feed both babies and pump in 15 minutes (I know because my Spectra pump has a timer). The other nice thing is that it gives me more freedom. I still have to pump every 3 hours or so, but other people (Erin, my sister) can help with the feedings. This means I get a bit more of a break than if I were exclusively breastfeeding. Another benefit is that it’s easier to leave the house with bottles and a bag of milk than it is with the daunting fear of having to tandem breastfeed in public.

Efficiency is a good thing to prioritize with twins. Sometimes I think I should do operations as a profession because I spend so much of my time thinking about how to be more efficient (how can I take the most efficient route to work? How can I grocery shop as quickly as possible and without back-tracking?). With infant twins, I can’t really pinpoint one thing that makes us efficient. Sure, the tandem bottle feeding + pumping is one significant element. But it’s also all the micro-operations that add up. I’m very swift at diaper and clothing changes. Diaper changes are funny because if you go too slowly, the baby often pees all over the place, but if you go quickly, you can avoid the pee situation. We are also pretty good at getting out of the house with the twins. When we need to go somewhere, I work backwards. 

• 30 minutes before departure: diaper and clothing changes
• 25 minutes before departure: pump and tandem feed
• 8 minutes before departure: put babies in car seats
• 4 minutes before departure: grab 2 bottles. fill small cooler with a bottle of milk. check diaper bag for bare essentials, which include 1 change of clothes per baby, diapers, wipes, a&d ointment, burp cloths (essential for tandem side-laying feeding on the go), blankets (also essential for tandem side-laying feeding), baby carrier if needed
• 1 minute before departure: load babies and diaper bag into the mini van and GO! (the double Snap n Go carseat stroller is always in the van)

I wish we had potty trained Sam before the twins came home. We have been slow on the potty train with Sam because he’s so opinionated, and it seemed like it would be better to wait until he was more interested. Now that I read a book about potty training (which makes me a total expert), I wish we had pushed this issue sooner. Now we face the daunting task of trying to potty train Sam over Christmas break while taking care of the twins. Thank goodness my sister will still be here!

Transitions are hard for dogs. Patches has had a hard time transitioning to the twins. When we brought Annalee home, she had the saddest look on her face (wtf? There’s another one?), and she was clearly stressed. It didn’t help that my sister had just arrived and we’ve had a handyman finishing up our bathroom remodel. In retrospect, we should have handled this better. I wish we had stepped up her training again before the twins came home, and I also wish we had taken more care to keep her comfortable with all these changes. She’s doing better now, but I still feel like I need to keep a close eye on her because stressed Patches is not the nicest Patches. 

Now both girls are 3 months old, and they both weigh over 11 lbs. They mostly act like normal 1 month old babies, aside from a few minor issues that we are working through with physical therapy. Thankfully, we qualified for an early intervention program, so a physical therapist will come to our house every 2 weeks to help them. Our current focus is getting them to not always turn their heads to the left and working on baby sit-ups.