Life with Milo

Jake just said, "dude, you can't afford to poop. Your ass is on fire." That's not exactly about Milo, though. That's more about Jake and Milo. Today Milo pooped the poop of death, or rather, the poop of acidic fiery molten lava, the kind that burns away at the skin. Literally. We changed his diaper and he must have pooped an hour before that or so, and that hour left a burn all over his bottom and his legs. A weepy, red, angry burn. I can't imagine how much it must hurt. It must hurt to have his bottom wiped and it must hurt to have his diaper changed, and I can't blame him for screaming as loudly as he did.

Milo is amazingly good at calming himself even under the most stressful circumstances. Heck, I'd be crying too if I had a nasty, weeping burn and somebody started rubbing it. Milo brings his hands together in front of his chest and holds them close to each other, grasping at himself as he calms down. It looks like a deliberate calming mechanism. Milo purses his lips in a look of sad concentration, clasps his hands, and stares right into my eyes as his cries fade into wimpers, and then into silence. Sometimes he'll then start smiling even as his eyes are still red.


Milo's got some mad skills. He can roll from his belly to his back, and he can reach out and bat at a toy with pretty good accuracy. He tries and tries and tries and tries to grab those toys, and sometimes he succeeds. The best skill of all is one that Milo possesses; he can put himself to sleep. We can put him in the crib drowsy but awake, and he'll go to sleep. That is the gold star of baby skills right there.

Nora likes the mobile and the mirror; Milo likes the soft ball and the soft cube. He can't get enough of touching those toys. Milo also loves his little blue bear that hangs upside down. He'll hold entire conversations with the bear, sharing his little baby secrets in his deep, husky little baby voice.


Milo is a serious baby. He always looks like he's thinking about something deep, and sometimes I swear he's holding his head up with his eyebrows. His whole forehead wrinkles up in concentrated worry. Then, I pick him up, or I sing "Morning Milotown", or I say "Hi Milo man, hey there Milo", and he grins the biggest grin, changing his face entirely. He looks like a different baby smiling that wide, sweet smile. I don't know if I love him more when he looks worried, or when he lights up. Each time I decide I love him more when he's doing whatever he happens to be doing at the moment.

Milo's head is a little flattened on one side and, being the paranoid first-time parents that we are, we took him to the doctor to have her take a look at it. She wasn't worried about it but suggested that we do things to encourage him to rest his head on the other side -- the round side -- and otherwise stop worrying about it. So we've switched the changing table to the other direction, and I try to remember to hold him in my right arm instead of my left, and most successfully we put him to sleep with Nora on his left side. Inevitably Milo will turn his head and sleep facing her, every time. He looks like he's watching over her. I can almost see the child he will become, the man he will become.

Life with Nora

Nora loves to raise her arms and stretch them whenever she's not confined in the straightjacket swaddle we wrap her in to sleep. As soon as the velcro comes off, her arms shoot out above her head like some sort of victory gesture. Sometimes Nora will even eat like that. She'll spread her arms out and guzzle her milk as she grunts with satisfaction.

Nora grunts a lot. She grunts when she drinks, grunts when she sleeps, grunts when she farts, and the funniest of all, grunts right after she farts in some twisted baby expression of extreme satisfaction. We get a huge kick out of that.

Nora was the smaller twin, born at only 4 lbs and 9 ounces, so in the very beginning I was inclined to worry about her. But that disappeared pretty quickly because something about her just seems...tough. She seems resilient. Nora knows what she wants and does what it takes to get it. If she wants to eat, she yells, and she gets it right away. If she wants to be held instead of put in the crib, lo and behold I'll get to the end of the day and realize that somebody's been holding her almost constantly. When Nora gets mad, she cries like she's mad, not like she's distressed. She just sounds pissed.

Actually, she sounds exactly like Cartman from South Park. Any of you who have seen that cartoon might remember the way he whines to his mom when he wants something: "But mommmmm...." That's what Nora sounds like. I expect that she'll soon start telling Milo "Respect Mah Authoriteh!"

When Nora gets excited, which happens most often while she's looking at her mobile, she starts huffing in these high-pitched excited sounds. "Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah!" This baby girl is so verbal that I have a feeling we're going to have a real talker on our hands when she gets older. She's either cooing, grunting, or huffing in excitement.

Nora has discovered her fist, and is now able to get it to her mouth with fairly reasonable accuracy. For some reason Jake and I both just love this. She is so cute, sitting there sucking away on her fist. The other day Jake was holding her and she started sucking on her fist, and we both said "awwww...how cute." Jake remarked "This makes it all worth it." That's such a lame parent cliche, but I knew

exactly what he meant. Somehow watching our little girl suck on her fist like that, watching her accomplish that major baby feat, it made everything seem worth it. All of the broken nights and all of the tears, all of the frustrating days seemed to melt away as we sat there, transfixed, grinning like a couple of idiots as we proudly watched her shove that fat little fist all the way into her mouth and start sucking.

Mama and Daddy love you, you little grunting fist-sucker, you.

My Guys

I've Got a Fever, and the Only Prescription is More Cowbell

Here are things about life with Jake:

When Jake moved in to this house, we completed the job in a day with the help of his friends, his parents, and their minivan. Later we started unpacking boxes to sort things out in the basement room, and I pulled out a framed picture of...Christopher Walken. The guy owns a photo of Christopher Walken. I don't know what that means.

Jake spends the day at home taking care of Nora and Milo with his mom while I go to work. Thursday I had to attend an 8:30 meeting, a noon job talk, a 1 p.m. lunch, a 4 p.m. meeting, and a 6:30 dinner.  It would have been impossible for me to have done all that without Jake caring for the babies at home.  

When the toilet runs, Jake fixes it. I don't know how to do that. I've never bothered to learn.

Sometimes I attempt to tandem nurse the babies, and it sort of works. But the only way it works is when Jake is right there to place them, and to pick one up and burp him or her when necessary. When I don't try the tandem thing, I nurse one while Jake feeds the other. Those babies are getting fed by Jake almost as much as by me. They're spending just as many hours in their father's arms as in my arms. 

On the one hand, I think this is wonderful and it's exactly how I want it. We are deliberately working on having a peer marriage. On the other hand, the LLL book on raising multiples tells me that it is critically important for the babies' abilities to attach that they get fed by one person only, and that person must be their mother. So then I feel guilty for breaking that rule. (The book is called "Mothering Multiples", but I think they missed part of the title as it should really be called "Stay-At-Home Mothering Multiples"). 

 

Jake can't really feed a baby without simultaneously singing a song. He doesn't sing songs designed for babies. So I get to listen to him sing "Mysterious Ways" or "Sweet Caroline" when nursing. 

 

Jake does the taxes, and thank goodness for that. Our tax situation is ridiculously complicated.

When I was first married to Jake, I worried that he would get some fatal disease and die. The whole thing just seemed too good to be true -- he seemed too good to be true -- and I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. I still get unreasonably worried whenever he gets sick. 

Jake isn't perfect, of course. He leaves the faucet handle wet after brushing his teeth, and he's not very good at being quiet when I'm trying to sleep, and he sings way too many bad 80s songs. But the ways in which he isn't perfect are so minor when you compare it to what an asshole I'm capable of being. There's no way I could raise Milo and Nora without Jake doing everything that he is doing. I just couldn't do it. Having two babies is hard on a marriage. We're together all the time and yet we have no time together. I can see how that would drive people apart. I don't think that will happen to us; I hope it won't. Instead, we're dealing with this sort of like it's boot camp. Once you survive boot camp together, you're more bonded than ever before. 

Now if only I can get him to get rid of that creepy Christopher Walken photo.

Immaturity

I've never been great with authority. When somebody tells me to do something for a reason that makes sense to me, I'm great at doing it. So when I got a gestational diabetes diagnosis, even though the diagnosis was a little iffy I followed through to the letter. I avoided sugar completely and balanced my carbs with proteins and fats and kept my blood sugar under control.

When the lactation nurse suggested that I find ways to increase the amount of fat and dairy in my diet, I followed her advice. It doesn't hurt that it's fun to drink milkshakes.

In contrast, when the dietician suggested that I avoid all fish and all sushi while pregnant, I ignored her because it was clear that I'd read a lot more on the subject than she had. 

And today, when my mother-in-law told me that I should not drink milkshakes because they're too fatty, I promptly went out to the cafe on my way to work and ordered a chocolate milkshake. I'm contrary that way.  

More Superstitious Thinking

Maybe if I don't look when Jake tries to feed Milo this time, maybe if I resist the temptation to look and see what's happening, maybe this time Milo will eat instead of screaming.

Maybe.

Happy Birthday to Grandmom

More videos. In the first one Milo is "rolling" although really flopping over, but other times he does do a true roll from belly to back. In the second one Nora and Milo are being their usual happy selves.

I think that Milo and Nora are both eating somewhat better now. Nora seems to have improved and Milo also seems to be getting better, although he still has trouble. We elevated the head of their crib, and we keep them upright after feeding them, and we've switched to different bottles, and I keep them on an angle with their heads up when nursing, and those things seem to have helped. Milo is also taking medicine for reflux, so maybe that's the real thing that is helping. It makes his pee stink so that I constantly think he's crapped his pants only to find out that he hasn't. Seems like that's a really annoying side effect of this medicine, which is basically Zantac, and I briefly wondered why adults would put up with that. Then I realized that adults taking Zantac generally don't pee their pants 10 times a day, so it's not an issue.

I hope they're eating enough and gaining enough. I wish we had a tiny baby scale so that we could know that they are gaining well. I wish that I were able to produce 100% of their food without having to rely on formula to supplement the rest, but that issue and the way LLL lied to me is a subject for a whole other post. Suffice it to say that now I feel a little less panicked because they don't seem to be going on hunger strikes as often anymore. Hopefully they'll continue to grow nice and chubby.

Bigger Than Your Average Pacifier

Nora and Milo haven't really started to notice each other much yet, although they do seem to sleep better right next to each other. Yesterday they were playing together in the crib (and by together I mean something more like "near each other"), and Nora decided that Milo's head looked like something good to suck on. Here she is contemplating it:

And then she just goes for it:

Isn't that funny:


This last one I just like for how wild and crazy Milo looks:


I must be getting attached to these kids or something, because I think they're pretty cute now.

Can't Eat, Can't Sleep

The babies have developed a problem that is driving us nuts. Halfway through eating, they'll start to scream and reject the food (either the bottle or the boob, but it's worse on the bottle). Suddenly getting them to eat more than just a couple of ounces has become very difficult and seemingly traumatic for them. It doesn't happen every time, but it happens most times. They're fairly easy to soothe (at least for me), but once the food source is introduced again, they'll immediately start screaming.

This started with Milo a week ago or so, but now it's happening with Nora too. The doctor suspected reflux and gave us a medication to give Milo, but so far it doesn't seem to be making a difference. We've tried several nipples already, we've tried burping them more often, we've tried switching them off a lot between bottle and breast so that we're always doing a baby juggling act, we've tried heating the breastmilk so that it's a little warmer, we've tried different formulas when it's necessary to supplement the pumped milk, we've tried feeding them in different positions, nothing seems to help. Next we'll try different bottles with their own special nipples that are supposed to reduce gas. 

Every time I am nursing Milo and Nora is screaming when a bottle comes near her mouth, I wish I could be nursing Nora. 

Every time I am nursing Nora and Milo is screaming when a bottle comes near his mouth, I wish I could be nursing Milo.

I can't have them both nurse at once, at least not yet, as every time we try it all falls apart after about 5 minutes. I can't nurse them one at a time or I will be doing nothing but nursing 24 hours a day, almost literally. Plus I have to work.

The babies seem to have regressed with feeding, and want to eat less now than they did a week ago or so. They have also regressed with sleeping. They used to go 4 hours between feedings in the beginning of the night, at least once and sometimes twice. Now they're back to every 3 hours no matter what we do. I have already lost my ability to sleep early in the morning now that my mom is gone. She used to soothe them and watch over them after my early morning feeding (4 a.m., 5 a.m., 6 a.m., whatever). I'd get an extra hour or two of sleep knowing that she was taking care of them and knowing she would wake me when they needed to eat. Now, I don't have that anymore and the babies are kind of restless in the early morning, so I have to stay up and soothe them. That means that when I get up for the 4 a.m. or 5 a.m. feeding, or whenever it happens, I am up for the day. That, in combination with getting less sleep early in the night because the babies no longer go 4 hours between their first night feeding, means that I am not sleeping.

I keep falling asleep sitting up when somebody is nursing. I fall asleep sitting up during meetings. I am so tired that I feel sick every day. I am seriously losing my shit here, I can't take this. I must be too old to handle it. 

At work we're bringing in candidates for our search, so that means I have to be in just about every day this week and next. I have to go to lunches and dinners with the candidates, I have to interview them, I have to watch their job talks. Somebody has to feed the babies when I am gone, and I hate the idea of them both screaming (maybe in pain?) at the bottle during those times. I can't handle being at work so much when the babies aren't eating. I can't not be at work. Not sleeping means that I have no perspective on anything, and I'm on the brink of losing it constantly.

I don't know how we're going to make it through this.

Another Video

This time it's Nora!  The video is about 10 days old.

All the Way Down to Janesville

Jake's grandmother is 92 and lives in Janesville.  Janesville is a town south of us and it takes about 45 minutes to get there.  I know I'm living in a small town now because people talk about Janesville as if it's on a different planet.  Jake will call up his grandmother and ask her how the weather is down there in Janesville, in complete seriousness, even though he could easily hop in the car and actually be there in under an hour.  I had some commutes in San Diego that took longer.  Anything that's more than about 5 or 10 miles away here exists in a different town, and if it's in a different town it's automatically far away.

A couple of years ago we spent an evening with her and after dinner we decided to play Uno Attack.  I think Jake's grandma had a special secret strategy up her sleeve, and nobody ever clued in to it.  She would act all confused and befuddled, and would hold half of her cards facing the wrong way, simply to lure us into complacency.  Then when we were fooled into helping her play the game, she would go on the attack and beat us all.  She won every time.  

Jake's grandma is a sweet lady.  The only negative thing I ever heard her say was in reference to Iowa.  "Iowa is not a state I like," she said, out of the blue.  

Suffering from a number of diseases in addition to sheer old age, Jake's grandma has been getting sick of living.  But she kept saying she was hanging on until the babies' birth, as she wanted to see her great grandchildren.  She was excited to hear about the babies, and Jake talked to her shortly after they were born.  She has a December birthday too.  Jake's mom printed out a bunch of pictures and sent them to her, so she could see photos to tide her over until the time that we would come visit in person.

When the babies were born we planned to take them down to Janesville to visit Grandma S. once the weather warmed up a bit.  We were waiting for Jake's mother to arrive, so that we could all go together, and we were waiting for a non-frigid day.  I also just wanted to give the babies time to get a little bit bigger, older, stronger.  I didn't feel great about the idea of hauling them all the way down to Janesville on a cold and snowy day when they were just a month old, especially since they'd be visiting a nursing home.  

Last Saturday, she had a cold.  The next night, she went to the hospital with pneumonia.  Just a day later, she passed away.  

How I regret not taking the babies down to Janesville.  It was only a 45-minute drive.  

Sad

My mom left on Thursday. I thought I appreciated her while she was here, but I appreciate her about 10 times more now that she's gone and I'm noticing the hundred little things she did every day for us. Mom, thanks for all of the peanut butter cracker deliveries while I was pumping!

Living in Between

The other day we woke up to frigid temperatures and ice crystals on the windows. The next day it warmed up so much that by mid-morning it was raining. The night before the rain, I had a sore throat. I slept for about 45 minutes, then we fed the babies, then I slept for about an hour and a half, and then I had to get up during Jake's feeding because both babies were crying. Then I slept for about 2 hours, and got up at 5:15 to get ready to feed the babies. I fed them at 5:30, and by the time I was done it was about 7 a.m. and I had to get ready for work, because I had a couple of meetings to attend.

So I showered and dressed, feeling sick with my sore throat and headache and stuffed up nose. Fed the babies again from 8:30 - 9:45, pumped from 9:45 to 10, and then headed out the door to catch the 10:11 bus so that I could be on time for my 10:30 meeting. Because I had two meetings and would see lots of people, I put on some nice clothes and wore my nice boots instead of my clunky, ugly-but-practical snow boots. It was just raining, not snowing. So I hurried out the door in the pouring rain with my umbrella and my work bag and hurried down the sloping driveway, the ICY sloping driveway, because the rain was starting to freeze, and you can probably see where this is going...

My feet slid out from under me and I landed hard on my tailbone. It knocked the breath out of me and it hurt so much that I immediately started crying, loudly, and the neighbors all probably thought I was nuts, lying on my driveway in the pouring rain while screeching. My mother rushed out to help me up and said "I'm driving you to work", and I said "No, I'm fine, and I don't want to leave Jake alone with the babies", and I hobbled off to the bus stop, sniffling and feeling pathetic. The bus pulled up into a giant puddle that splashed all over me. The seat of my pants was soaked from my fall, and the front of my pants were soaked from the puddle. I got on the bus and spent the ride half sitting, half crouching because it hurt too much to really sit down.

I arrived for my 10:30 meeting only to discover it had really been a 10:00 meeting and I was half an hour late. I am not the kind of person who is late. I am the kind of person who generally has it together, who meets deadlines, who in fact completes tasks before the deadline. I am the person who is 5 minutes early for every class, for every meeting. Now I'm mixing up the times of meetings and I'm missing deadlines right and left and I'm falling on my ass, literally. Would it even be possible to do a lousier job at trying to balance babies and work?

My colleague and I had another meeting to attend after the 10:30 (er, 10:00) meeting, and we were half an hour late thanks to my being half an hour late to the first meeting. So we rushed down to the second meeting, and when I peeked in the door I didn't recognize the people in there, and it didn't look like the right meeting at all. So we rushed around trying to find the correct location for the meeting, worrying that they had ended it without us even arriving, and we found out that actually the meeting was scheduled for next week. We were off by a week. Again -- would it even be possible to do a lousier job at trying to balance babies and work?

I arrived home feeling completely wiped out, unable to sit down, stiff and sore, and harboring a cold on top of everything. Utterly defeated.

But the following picture did cheer me up:

This cracks me up. I'm very lucky that when I do have to go into work in the freezing rain to attend meetings, at least I'm leaving the babies at home with my mom and Jake. I don't have to worry about how they're doing while I'm gone, or about the care they're receiving.

Or do I? What on earth were my mom and Jake doing when this picture was taken? Those are my mom's hands, and the picture was on Jake's camera. I can just imagine them: "Hey, let's experiment by putting the babies side by side and seeing how they like it. Oh, looks like they're really starting to lose it. How cute! Quick, take a picture while I jiggle them as they look pissed off and start to cry!"

Well, it's best not to ask too many questions. They can perform all of the twisted experiments they want, as long as it leaves me time to fall on my ass as I attempt to negotiate my new life as a working mother.

Efficiency, Ladies, and Confusion

It is possible to take out your contacts while filling up the humidifier.

It is possible to eat lunch while making a phone call and paying the bills.

It is possible to write a letter of recommendation while pumping.

It is possible to write a blog post while pumping.

It is possible to fill the ice tray, get the mail, sort the mail, and go to the bathroom while holding a baby.

What I have not managed to master is the trick of getting a 3rd sleep chunk, showering, and eating lunch all in the same day. I sleep in chunks that range from about an hour at the worst to about 4 hours at the best -- barring an unusually bad or unusually good night. Typically they're about 2 hours. If I can squeeze in three chunks, I'm in pretty good shape, especially if one of the chunks is a little longer. But I can't get 3 chunks if I also want to shower and eat lunch. I can do two of the three. I just can't do all three.

The other day I was only able to manage two chunks and no shower, because I had been invited to a "Ladies Tea". The tea occurred from 9 - 11 a.m. and was hosted a couple of houses down from mine. Eager for some social interaction and eager to show that I'm not anti-social, after all, I decided to bring Nora to the tea and leave my mom to watch Milo. But the time slot meant no 3rd sleep chunk, and as things worked out, no shower either. I gussied up as best I could, which frankly wouldn't be a lot even in my pre-baby life, and headed on over with Nora. This was her first official outing and her first time in real clothes. Look how cute she was!


I love the little bunnies on her pants, and the matching bunny on her shirt/dress.

What amazed me was how many moms with babies were there and how great they all looked. They had all clearly showered. Not only had they showered, they were all wearing make-up and coordinated outfits. They all had enormous diamonds on their hands. Here I thought I'd been doing pretty well because my shirt was clean, but I was clearly outclassed. How do these people do it?

I thought I'd fit in better with the neighborhood ladies once I had babies, but I'm not exactly one of them. I no longer feel like I completely fit in with my work friends who don't have kids, either. Where do I fit exactly? I'm still figuring that out.

Motherhood is a massive identity change. It turns you upside down and kicks the shit out of who you thought you were. Who am I now?

On Space

When I bought my house, it was just me. I didn't buy it for a family of four plus two cats, although I hoped that maybe some day there might be more people than just me living here. It's not a big house, but it felt enormous after years of apartment living. No house is perfect, and mine is no exception: the kitchen is too small and impossible for two people to cook in simultaneously; there is no bathroom on the main level; there is only one real bathroom, period; the house is situated on a corner and therefore doesn't have a real back yard. But those things are minor compared to the wonderful things about our house. It was built in the twenties and retains the charm of that era, with its tall baseboards, oak floors, and built-in bookcase by the fireplace. The bathroom has a heated tile floor, which is great in the winter, and every side of the house has windows on it. The windows provide beautiful views of leafy trees in the summer and snow-capped trees in the winter.

I loved this house as soon as I set foot in it. The other houses I looked at were okay, and I had notes with pros and cons for each house, but I lost that objectivity when I saw this one. My plan had been to create a decision matrix to help me decide which house to buy. I had a list of qualities and had ranked each quality in terms of its importance to me (location to my office, fireplace, front porch, central heat and air, etc). I would then grade each house in terms of each quality and the house that came out with the highest score would be the best house for me. This is more or less how I picked which grad school to attend. If this sounds ridiculously anal retentive, thank my father.

That all went out the window when I found this house. The notes I took while walking through it began with bulleted pros and cons, but eventually just turned into little comments like "I love this house!" I decided to pay attention to how it felt to walk through a house, and whether I could see myself living there. Whether it felt welcoming and cozy. This house did, and so I bought it.

When I began searching, I took a map and made a circle around my office with a 2-mile radius. I didn't want to live any farther than that from work, because walking to work is a big part of my quality of life. I could have bought a house with twice the square footage for just about half the price I paid for this one, if I had been willing to live a few more miles away from downtown. But I knew that the suburbs weren't for me, and driving to work wasn't for me, and living in town, in the old parts of town close to downtown, was the right decision. So I deliberately sacrificed space and money for proximity and community. My house is adjacent to the bike path, which is a pretty tree-lined path that cuts through neighborhoods and drops me off a block from my office. The house faces a park, which is nice to look at. I can walk to two grocery stores, the post office, the pharmacy, Jake's office, four coffee shops, and lots of restaurants and boutiques in 10 minutes or less.

The best thing about living here is the neighborhood and the people. We have a listserve, an annual fourth-of-July parade, an ice rink in the park, monthly happy hours, and lots of other activities all created and maintained by neighbors. Neighbors sign up to hose the ice rink every night, and every day you can look out my bedroom window and see about 20 kids skating. People invite each other over for coffee and dinner and drinks. People watch each others' kids. I didn't even know communities like this still existed before moving here. Neighbors have brought me dinner and shoveled my walk and reached out with advice and support since the babies were born.

So all that stuff is great, but. But. This house just isn't big. The bedrooms are tiny and we have a ton of stuff crammed into a super-tiny room for the babies. The most frustrating part of this space problem is the lack of closet space. People in prior generations must have used wardrobes, or else they didn't have a lot of clothes. The closet in our bedroom is smaller than a modern coat closet. It is literally narrower than any coat closet you'll find in a new house. It holds almost nothing, so I use the closet in the babies' room, and Jake uses the closet in the office. Neither of those are big either, so we never have enough room for anything, and what will happen when the kids need a closet of their own?

It's a big pain to have so little space for things like clothes. This summer I visited a wonderful friend and stayed in my own huge, beautiful guest room with its own bathroom. The guest room closet was enormous, easily three times as big as our biggest closet. I developed closet envy while there. I came home to my tiny cramped closets and thought about moving. Now that the twins are here, we have even less space to accommodate all of the baby stuff, and man, is there a lot of stuff. Way too much stuff. If we just had a bigger house, things wouldn't seem so cramped all the time.

But you know...we're not going to move. Families have lived in this house for generations, and we can do it too. Do we need more than one bathroom? No. Do we need bigger closets? No. Those things would be nice, but then we'd be living in some big house, wasting space and wasting energy. So what's the solution, if I'm going to remain so high and mighty in my smaller house? Well, we need to bite the bullet and get rid of some of our stuff. And buy less stuff. Generally, we don't need so much stuff anyway.

So it's time to get serious. It's time to get rid of the t-shirts that date back to the Reagan era. I need less stuff in my life.

Six Weeks!

Today Milo and Nora turned 6 weeks old. It was a weird deja-vu day because I had to take Milo to the hospital to have a hip ultrasound (he's fine, and it was normal). So we took him in to the hospital and checked him in to patient registration, which is exactly where I'd been 6 weeks earlier except hugely pregnant and about to go have my c-section. I'm glad it's now and not then. That day, after registering I went up to my room, put on my hospital gown, and had an IV inserted and then re-inserted twice because it wasn't placed well. After a whole bunch of waiting, during which I was extremely thirsty, we finally went down to the operating room. Jake put on all of his scrubs while I had a spinal. After the spinal, they placed me onto the table and put up a big curtain between my face and the rest of me. Then they started cutting and although I could feel lots of pulling and things moving around and pressure, I didn't feel any pain. When Milo was born my first sensation was that of an enormous lightening. His cry was loud and vigorous. When Nora was born, I was upset about how little she was, but happy to hear her crying loudly and strongly as well.

Jake held both of the babies near me as they did the post-op stitching up stuff. You know, I'd like to say I was moved by their beauty and all that, but frankly it's hard to really take a look at somebody sideways. I was stuck flat on my back looking to my side, and you can't really get a good look at a person that way. They both had very soft, beautiful cheeks though.

I was sick to my stomach for a while, but it wasn't too bad and overall the c-section was a lot less hard than I thought it would be. It was extremely weird but the operation itself wasn't too bad. Then we went to the post-op room and I got to hold both babies and try to have them nurse a little bit. I got some medication to stop shaking and then we all went up to the hospital room. The rest of that day is a complete blur. I was so sleepy that I kept falling asleep in mid-sentence. I know we fed them every three hours, and I remember at one point a nurse bathed the babies in front of me and tried to teach me how to do it, but I was having a really hard time keeping my eyes open and staying awake. I remember feeling bad about that because I was interested in her bathing the babies, but I just couldn't stay awake. I guess it's tiring to have two babies pulled out the sunroof.

So we registered Milo today and then took him up to medical imaging for a hip ultrasound. It went pretty well; for most of it, he slept or remained calm. When the doctor came in and stressed his hip in various positions he got pretty upset and cried hard, but he calmed down when I nursed him afterward. Towards the end of the ultrasound Milo peed all over the doctor (and my hand). Hah!

In honor of his big outing we dressed him up in real clothes for the first time. (Until now, they've both just been wearing sleepers all the time). Check out this super cute outfit from cousin Kate & Jon. It was great, Milo had never worn actual pants before and he looked like an old man, the kind who wears his pants all the way up to his chest and then they bunch up a lot and pooch out because they're way too big.
Pardon the terrible hair (on me. He has no hair). That's hat hair because it was ridiculously cold today. It was -5 degrees out this morning, so we had to bundle him up warmly:

The other day, I took Nora out for a walk when it was much warmer, about 30 or 40 degrees. I dressed her warmly for that too:

The babies are starting to smile a little bit. There are a couple of times when I think Nora has maybe smiled at me, and the other day she definitely gave a big smile to my boob. That's a start, I guess. Then today after eating, I said "Hi Milo, Hi there Milo" and he gave me a big smile. Granted, he sort of fell asleep right afterwards so it might have been a sleep smile, but I'm going to count it anyway.

Milo has started cooing and making noises with his voice other than the newborn "eh, eh". Nora just started doing that as well, maybe yesterday or today. Unfortunately, the babies are also pretty soundly in their fussy period. The afternoons and evenings and sometimes nights can be very hard. Milo has a little more trouble than Nora, but she has her moments too. It is supposed to peak at 6 weeks, but for babies born early it peaks at 6 weeks after the due date, which is 2.5 weeks from now. Boo. It's scary to think of their fussiness perhaps getting worse.

The babies still aren't sleeping in very long stretches. The longest they've gone between two feedings is 4.5 hours, which means maybe 3 hours of sleep in between. But actually I think that one time they cried for a long time after eating, so they probably only slept for about 2 hours. So, needless to say, I'm not sleeping a whole lot.

One thing I've learned is that not sleeping isn't that big of a deal for me. It's hard, and the nights are the worst because there's nothing more lousy than getting into a deep sleep only to have to wake up and get up a mere hour later. But you'd think I would feel terrible during the days, and for the most part I don't. I feel generally okay most days in terms of physical exhaustion. So I need to remember this during the night and let go of my anxiety about not sleeping. I'll be a lot happier if I can be more relaxed during night feedings without worrying about when I'm going to get back to sleep.

I am scared about what is going to happen when my mother and then Jake's mother leaves. We will then have to combine part-time child care with tag-teaming taking care of the babies ourselves. We've thought about having child care two days a week and then each of us takes care of them on our own one day a week, and then both taking care of them the remaining three days. That one day of taking care of them alone is what scares me. During the middle of the night, when I'm feeding one, I hope and pray that the other won't wake up too soon because there is nothing worse than two hungry, crying babies and the ability to feed only one at a time. Or hold one at a time, or burp one at a time, or change one at a time. Sometimes they both need me at the same time. It is terribly sad that a tiny newborn should have to wait to get picked up because I can't put the other one down immediately -- they're too young to have to learn that lesson, but that's the reality of twins sometimes. Right now I only have to do it once during the night; for the other feedings, Jake or my mom is there. It's hard to imagine doing it all day long.

But that's borrowing trouble. For now, they're 6 weeks old, and we have many many weeks ahead of us with grandmas around to help out. They're 6 weeks old and I look at them and think "You're here. After so much waiting and wondering, here you are. Two actual little babies who are so different than I imagined, and so much better." Much, much better.

Crazy

I've never been a superstitious person until infertility struck. Then, I found myself starting to adopt weird behaviors that didn't make a lot of sense. This probably had to do with trying to control something I didn't have any control over, which I suspect is behind a lot of superstitious behavior in general. As the months went by and one year of trying turned into another, as we pursued expensive and heartbreaking treatments, I began thinking things like this: "I don't really want to donate to the police force ball this year, but wait -- I need to donate, because if I don't I won't be a worthy enough person to have children." Or this: "If I see two more rabbits on my run today, that means that this cycle worked and I am pregnant."

None of that ever worked, of course. That didn't stop me from doing it, even though as I did it I knew it didn't make any sense. If I could shut off the car before the song ended, that meant this cycle would work. If I could get out of the shower before the next station break on the radio, that meant the cycle worked. I did that stuff all the time, and the cycle never worked.

Until it did. Then my superstitious behavior continued. Infertile people don't get to be pregnant like other people. The fear of miscarriage or no heartbeat on the ultrasound is never far away. I spent a lot of time terrified that my babies had died, even though they were fine. Last year I got a holiday letter from a friend and I just couldn't bring myself to open it, because I had a feeling that it would contain a pregnancy announcement. I could not handle yet another pregnancy announcement from yet another friend while I was feeling sad at Christmas about what a crummy year I'd just had. So I told myself that I would open the letter once I was pregnant. But once I got pregnant, I still couldn't open the letter. I felt like it would jinx things, and if I opened the letter, everything might go to hell and I'd show up at the next ultrasound and they wouldn't be able to find any heartbeats. So I told myself, once I passed the first trimester, then I would open the letter. At that point, I still couldn't do it, so I told myself, once we have the 20-week ultrasound, then I'll open the letter. I still couldn't do it. I told myself, once the babies are born, and home safe with us, then I can open the letter. In the end I waited until this year's holiday letter arrived, and then I opened both together. Last year's letter did indeed contain a pregnancy announcement, and I'm finally in a place where I can be happy for them without feeling sad for myself.

Now that we have Nora and Milo, all of that infertility craziness should be behind me. I've been too busy trying to deal with taking care of two babies to indulge in weird superstitious fantasies anymore. Until the other day. The babies didn't sleep at all that day. One feeding just kept morphing into another and we could not get them to sleep. It was maddening. I don't know if it was the fact that we finally changed over to cloth diapers and they can't adjust to the bulky uncomfortable wetness, or if it's the new medication I'm taking to try to increase my milk supply, or if it's some weird alignment of the stars, but they weren't happy babies. At one point I was finishing up the dishes and I pulled out a new paper towel to line the basket we use to bring bottles up to the nursery. The paper towel tore and I thought, "I should get a new one that won't tear. If I line the basket with a pristine, non-torn paper towel, then this time the babies will go to sleep."

Oh wait. No they won't. BECAUSE THAT IS CRAZY.

I forced myself to use the torn paper towel.

(Above, Jake with Milo, who looks asleep, but oh, no, no, no.)

Lucky, Part II

Today we had a big snow storm, and I emerged from the house to find that some kind neighbor had shoveled our entire walk for us. I don't even know who did it.

Lucky

I didn't have a clue what new parents would want or need before having Milo and Nora. So to all of you friends and family to whom I gave lame gifts, or unhelpful gifts, or didn't visit you and your baby soon enough, or visited and stayed way too long, I'm sorry. I just didn't know.

We have been so supported by our friends and family, it blows me away. People have given us wonderful gifts, all kinds of people, people I wouldn't even expect to know or care about the babies' birth. We have received extremely generous gifts from family in preparation for the babies, and we have also received things that I didn't even know ahead of time that we needed. But we do. A perfect example is the giant pile of waterproof lap cloths that my sister sent us. I wasn't quite sure what they were for when I got them, but it turns out they are perfect for protecting things from pee and poop and spit up. They have saved us from having to change the entire changing pad area at least once a day, and to think that I didn't even know that these little things existed before having the twins!

I have friends who have made wonderful things for the babies, outfits and blankets and toys -- made all by themselves! I couldn't make an outfit to save my life.

I have not bought a single article of clothing for the babies. Our dresser is full to overflowing with a ton of beautiful baby clothes, all gifts from people.

We are getting over a month's worth of dinners from friends and colleagues here in Madison, and even from people beyond Madison. I had no idea this would happen. A coworker of mine organized the whole thing and then dinners just started showing up! It has been so amazingly wonderful to get a hot meal most nights, all of them delicious, without having to worry about cooking or cleaning up. An added bonus is that we have had lots of nice visits from all kinds of people as they dropped off meals.

Our family is giving us the amazing gift of time on top of everything else. My mother being here for two months is really keeping us sane, and I honestly don't know what we would be doing without her here. It gives me the shivers just to think about it. Jake's mother then comes for almost that long after my mother leaves, which is keeping me from panicking. Once she's gone and we are finally on our own, the babies will be 3 and a half months old, and hopefully we'll have a clue by then. How many people are lucky enough to be able to have family come and stay for that long? Probably not many, and I am so grateful.

My colleagues have also been very helpful and supportive. Just a week or two after the babies were born, the grants office at work needed my signature on some forms. My coworker went to campus to pick up the forms and then drove them over to my house so that I could come to the door and sign them without having to go to campus myself. He then drove them back to campus for me, so all that was required was about 5 minutes of my time. He volunteered to do this out of the blue, in a snow storm no less, and it really helped me as I wasn't even ready to leave the house at all at that point.

I have friends who have had babies who have been kind enough to listen to me cry and read my panicked, depressed messages. Then they have all shared their own experiences, told me that it will get better, and basically let me know that what I've been going through is pretty normal. That has saved me. I'm honestly not sure what I would have done over the past month without these connections, without a place to share my feelings and without a shoulder to cry on.

I'm sure that we would have been able to survive with newborn twins without all of this help, support, and generosity, but it wouldn't have been easy. Because of the network of support we're lucky enough to have, we're doing well and getting better every day. This experience has made me see how incredibly lucky I am to have such an amazing group of friends and family members.

Video!

Grandma took this first video of Milo playing.

Can I Be the Dad?

I really hope that the babies aren't silently judging me from their cribs for what a crummy mother I am. They're not very old yet, and their brains have a long way to go. They don't even have object permanence at this point, so it's not like they're tiny geniuses or anything -- they're probably only a step or two above our current president in terms of cognitive abilities -- yet they still have the ability to outsmart me on a daily basis. Nora, for instance, is notorious for peeing as soon as the diaper comes off. She does this at least once a day. She loves to let loose when the air hits her. Given the predictability of this, you'd think I'd be prepared. Jake does a pretty good job of opening her diaper, faking her out, and then quickly putting the diaper back over her when she starts to pee. Whereas I sort of flail about, surprised every time, saying "oh no! oh no!" as she soaks her clothes, my hand, the changing pad, and so forth.

Nora and Milo are definitely the most vocal babies I've ever known at this age, and they're the most talkative sleepers I've ever encountered. They both like to grunt a lot. It's hard to tell sleep grunting from I'm-about-to-get-really-upset-and-wake-up-and-cry grunting. As far as I can tell, they sound exactly alike. So this means that when they're in our room at night, grunting away, I wake up approximately every millisecond to look at them to see whether they're waking up. Sometimes I'll hear a cry, or a big series of grunts and groans, and look to see who is awake, and mysteriously they are both sound asleep as soon as I look at them. Silent. Motionless. Still. But then when I lie back down, the grunting immediately starts up again. How do they do this?

Jake, as the dad, is better at being relaxed and non-paranoid about the babies. He doesn't wake up very much when they grunt and groan in their sleep. He doesn't seem to worry too much about the crazy things I worry about, like: what if I'm cussing too much in front of the babies? I try to control it, but when the poop hits the wall, literally, it's hard not to say "fuck". Or, what if the cat gets into the nursery when we're not looking, decides to cuddle up with the babies in their crib, and then smothers one of them? Or, what if the babies get flat heads? Or, what if I'm not talking to them enough, and therefore they'll have delayed language development? I'm pretty sure I'm the only one worrying about these things.

There are many other reasons I'd rather be the dad, which merit a lot of posts beyond this one. But here is one: a lot of people have told me how lucky I am that Jake can take time off work and do work from home in order to "help out" with the babies. I really don't like the phrase "help out". When I am taking care of the babies, nobody calls it "helping". I'm just doing the job of being a parent. Who is Jake helping, me? So that makes me the primary baby-care provider, and Jake is the helper? Meanwhile, nobody has told Jake that he is lucky that I am able to take time off work and do work from home. That part's expected. Anyway, I'm probably better suited to the dad role than the mom role. That way I'd get praised for taking some time off instead of judged for not quitting my career entirely.

On the other hand, I do get some advantages that Jake doesn't. People are cutting me a lot of slack because I just had twins, so folks are pretty understanding so far about my limited time options for making it to campus. Jake's colleagues, on the other hand, don't really cut him any slack for being the parent of newborn twins. They still expect him to do things that are kind of unnecessary and not always feasible given that we have to both devote a lot of time to keeping these babies alive and happy. One other advantage is that, as the person whose boobs are (mostly) feeding the babies, I get to eat more and have a milkshake every day with whole milk. On really exciting days, I have a malt.

Mostly, though, dads are allowed and even expected to be clueless. Moms are supposed to know stuff. I don't know jack squat. I should probably be the dad and not the mom.

Above, Caspian with Nora and Sam watching over Milo being bathed. The other day Jake needed to warm a bottle for Milo while I was feeding Nora, so he had to set Milo down in the moses basket for a minute. Milo got really mad and started crying hard, and Sam woke up from her nap and trotted over to the moses basket, and sat right next to it watching Milo until Jake came back. I think she's very maternal.

3 Weeks

Today Nora and Milo are 3 weeks old. I thought I'd be writing more about them, but it turns out it's hard to find time when some days I have to make a decision between getting a glass of water and going to the bathroom, because I don't have time to do both.

The babies have grown and changed so much in 3 weeks. We have been released from the every-three-hours schedule, because Nora is a whopping 5 lbs 11 oz already, and is plenty big enough to wake herself up and demand to be fed. Vigorously. Every hour, if necessary. Last night they decided that sleep wasn't so much fun after all, and there were only 18 minutes when both of them were asleep at the same time. All night long. 18 minutes. That was a good 18 minutes. I slept through it myself. I have found out that it is worth it to grab 10 minutes of sleep, but it is not worth it to grab 2 minutes of sleep. At 4 in the morning, there can be a big difference between 10 minutes and 2 minutes. The problem is that when you begin sleeping, you don't know if it'll be for 2 minutes, or for 10 minutes, or for 18 minutes, or for (heaven) 2 hours.

Milo has grown a lot too, and he has learned a real baby cry. None of this wimpy "eh, eh" newborn stuff, he's graduated into the full-out scream when he's really upset. But so far, that doesn't happen too often. Sometimes we subject him to horrible indignities (eye ointment, or nasal spray) and we get to hear the full-on scream version of his cry. Other times, he tolerates those things remarkably well. Milo is comforted by close cuddling and he produces a worried look less often than he used to a couple of weeks ago. He used to wrinkle up his forehead all the time like he had big problems to solve. That's happening less now, but maybe it's just because his face is getting fatter.

Both of the babies seem to be rejecting their bassinet in our bedroom, or at least they were last night. They fall asleep soundly in their crib and then when I transfer them to our bedroom, it's like they're being placed in the bassinet of fire and pain.

Nora has become a hungry little girl. When she's ready to eat she'll shake her head back and forth like a crazed chihuahua and kind of grunt as she latches on. She likes to talk a lot, all the time. She talks when she's eating, when she's being burped, and when she's in a light sleep. The only time I've really seen her scream so far is when she's ready to eat and the food is not produced pronto. Well, that and bath time.

Okay. It's hard to write about babies without it being boring. I am amazed by how different Nora and Milo are, and how their personalities are already making themselves known. At the same time, feeding, burping, and soothing babies is, frankly, kind of boring. It's not rocket science. Okay, sometimes the soothing part is pretty tricky. But it's not like we're solving intellectual puzzles here in babyland.

Things are better at 3 weeks than they were at 3 days, so that's something. I wonder what things will be like in another 3 weeks.

Above, Nora being calm and contemplative, and Milo's crazy-eyed look of worry.

Compromises

We have a great cloth diaper package all set up and ready to go. I researched everything, bought what we needed, pre-washed our diapers, got the wipes and wraps ready to go, and then we brought home the babies:

The newborn size wraps are still way, way too big for them, so it's disposables for now.

Just the first -- or maybe 3rd or 4th, I don't know -- of many compromises we're already making. Yesterday I ventured out of the house for the first time by myself, for the first time that was somewhere other than the doctor's office. I went to Target. I bought about a hundred diapers and rushed to get home in time for their next feeding. But I had that hour to myself in the car and the store, and that hour kept me human for a day.

Nora and Milo's first Christmas:


Here is another cute picture in lieu of content. We took this last night after noticing that the babies had somehow migrated towards each other in their crib and Nora's head was resting on Milo's arm:


I hope they'll always be close.

Wow

So this having babies stuff can kick your ass.

9 days in and things are getting a lot better. I knew that having a c-section would be hard, but I didn't really understand in what way it'd be hard. I was warned over and over again about healing up in the belly, not carrying things, not going up and down stairs too much, but nobody told me about the massive swelling post surgery and, in my case, the out-of-control rash that took over my entire body.

Think Austin Powers, and the character of Fat Bastard. Now think Fat Bastard with leprosy. That was me.

Add in a cold and a healthy dose of crying for no good reason, and we've got one scary mama. What we've been doing is feeding them every 3 hours, although especially in the beginning they were both too sleepy to want to eat anywhere near that often or as much as they were supposed to eat. So we spent most of every day trying to wake the babies up enough to feed them, then feed them, then put them down for maybe an hour before starting the whole process all over again. So basically it goes like this: wake the babies, try to nurse (they were born small enough that nursing was hard for them -- basically they fell asleep on the breast immediately), supplement, pump, cry, maybe sleep for a while, then do it all over again.

Thank goodness my mother is here, or I don't know what would have happened to us. Without her we'd probably be wandering around like crazed zombies, but we're spared that because she helps to feed/change them, she shops, cooks, washes bottles, does laundry, and takes care of all of the millions of little things that I am nowhere near capable of doing right now.

The other thing I have to say is thank goodness for their daddy. He is amazing with the babies, very comfortable and relaxed. He does everything that I do, except breastfeed and pump, and he probably does it better than I do. I can't imagine what any of this would be like without him here doing half of everything, but more importantly without him here just...being who he is. Making me happy, being sweet with his children, singing his songs as he wanders around the house, just being him. God, I'm lucky.

The babies are getting stronger every day. Although they were small, they are healthy and didn't need any special care or time in the NICU. They're already getting more vigorous and alert, and they eat more easily now. Milo can nurse for half an hour sometimes before he conks out, and Nora can nurse for 15 minutes on a good day. I know it's going to get easier.

It's going to get easier.

Welcome to the World

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Promises

I promise I'll never make either of our babies wear those weird scratchy head bows. Okay, that'd be a really strange thing to put on a boy, but I'll spare our daughter from that as well, even if she's totally bald.

I promise that I'll never create a cheesy Christmas letter in which I outline a bulleted list of baby accomplishments that includes things like "first inconsolable crying jag". Instead, I'll just create a self-indulgent blog about it.

I promise that I won't buy a minivan. No, really. No. Really. I know everybody who owns a minivan probably once said that, but...really. Instead I'll buy a station wagon, which is WAY cooler and hipper. Yeah.

I can't promise that I'll make Halloween costumes. Every time I try to be crafty, somebody ends up getting hurt and something in the house ends up destroyed. These kids might end up being stuck with the crummy store-bought mask with the eye holes that never line up right and the too-tight rubber string with the staples that always break 10 minutes into the trick-or-treating extravaganza. However, I promise I'll make chocolate chip cookies, the good kind from their great-grandmother's recipe.

I promise that I won't start totally neglecting our animals just because we have babies in the house. (Am I being naive?)

I promise that I'll still love our kids even if they become Nascar fans and join the Young Republican's club.

I promise that I'll never, ever forget how hard we tried, how long we waited, and how much we wanted these babies.

Getting Ready

For some reason I found it extremely important to make my mother and my husband to go out this past weekend and procure the world's largest cat toy:

The cats, of course, think this was designed for their entertainment.
Why was it so important to get a Christmas tree? I don't know. I need to have everything in place before the babies come. We must have a tree for Babies' First Christmas (tm). Not that they're going to care, or notice, whether or not we have some giant glowy thing in the corner of the room. Is this really going to make it into their consciousness? Will it have any effect on the general white noise buzzing that will be going on in their brains? Maybe they'll like the lights. I'm sure the presence of stockings will matter a great deal to newborns. Not to mention presents and Christmas cookies and gingerbread and candy canes. Obviously the babies aren't going to care, but for some crazy reason I want everything to be just right for the Babies' First Christmas (tm).

If this is what nesting means, it certainly isn't very practical!

Every time I go into work now, the women say "I can't believe you're still here!". The men try to schedule additional meetings with me and ask me to squeeze in extra service tasks before I give birth. My students are sending me emails asking me to comment on their thesis ideas or the latest theoretical construct they've encountered. I really suck at saying no to stuff. I don't want to say no because I don't want to end up pigeonholed as a non-serious scholar because I am having babies. I guess that's why I dragged my enormous self through the ice and snow today to a meeting, so that everybody could see that I'm still showing up, and I'm serious, damn it.

A final ultrasound today, in which the babies were measuring at 6 lbs 4 oz and 6 lbs 2 oz. There is a half-pound error of margin, though. But even so, if I'm carrying 12 pounds of babies right now, then hey, I'm pretty bad-ass.

I Love My Job

36 weeks today. In the midst of all of my discomfort it is important to remember how great it is that we have reached 36 weeks with babies still inside. I have been worried for the entire pregnancy about the pre-term labor that is so common with twins. Well, that is, once I got over worrying that they were dead. Given my size, and my age, and my troubles in the beginning, and my failure to gain the kind of weight I was supposed to gain (BAD pregnant lady), and all of the contractions, the possibility of early labor has been in the back of everybody's mind for months. But now I've reached 36 weeks, which is a good outcome for twins, and hopefully we will be able to keep going for a while longer. Every extra day is great and I'm finally starting to believe that we might actually bring home real live babies -- although I feel like I'm tempting fate just by saying that.

Not only that, but I was able to find the one medical practice in town that doesn't routinely prescribe bedrest for twins as a CYA measure, so I've been able to continue moving around and working and going through my daily life. 36 weeks AND no bedrest -- I couldn't have asked for more!

My ability to keep working is a real bonus considering everything that needs to be done by the end of the semester. Teaching is just a small part of that, and a tiny part of what I do overall. What I really need to get done involves finishing up two grant proposals, making final changes to a joint journal article, finishing up revisions for a practitioner-oriented book manuscript before the editor's head explodes, making sure the last round of data collection ends smoothly, completing a new-course-series proposal to present to a group meeting, and attending the roughly fifty thousand (or at least 10) meetings scheduled with various grad students and faculty members to discuss everything from dissertations to student projects to program adjustments. Ideally, all of this is supposed to happen before the babies arrive, so I should probably get cracking instead of pontificating about it all here.

But despite the pressure, I really do love my job. It is a dream-come-true job. There are lots of times when I am on campus, or walking to and from work, when I stop and marvel at the fact that I even have this job. Holy crap, I'm a freakin' professor! Being a professor is an incredible career, especially for somebody like me who likes to sleep in. In all seriousness the flexibility of a job like this is a wonderful privilege. I am responsible for getting a lot of work done, much of that self-imposed if I want to get tenure, but I have a lot of freedom in deciding when, where, and how I accomplish what I need to accomplish. I can work from home a great deal, and I do because I am much more productive at home. The students in my program are amazing, and spending time with them is one of my favorite parts of the job. I love teaching them and mentoring them and just being around them. I also have the rare advantage of being housed in a department that is actually supportive and helpful. I am at a high-pressure R1 university, but one of the advantages of this environment is that more senior colleagues really do take their mentoring roles seriously. I like all of my colleagues and feel fortunate to work in my department.

I don't know how all of this is going to change with having twins. There are some positive signs and some concerns. It's no secret that having a baby while on the tenure track tends to kill women's chances for tenure, while men's rates of tenure go up when they have kids. One woman in my department had two kids pre-tenure. When she was pregnant with her second, another professor in the department gestured to her belly and told her "so much for tenure, huh?" Although that is a disturbing story, she did get tenure -- starting a new trend as she was the first person to accomplish this ever. Our good friends in the department just had a baby recently, and they are both pre-tenure, so the trend continues. I'm the third one to get pregnant pre-tenure. So far the department seems pretty supportive, at least in the abstract.

This is helpful within the context of a university that generally does not support people having families. There are no tuition benefits for kids of professors, the university-based daycare is fine but not specifically for faculty and would cost 30K a year for two kids, and my institution does not have any family leave policy. So I can rely on the FMLA, and that's it. This means I can have 6 weeks of paid leave. 6 weeks leave doesn't do a whole lot. I'm pro-rating my 6 weeks leave to count for a course release in the spring, which basically means I won't have to teach but I'll still have to do all of the advising, meetings, service, and research tasks that make up the bulk of my job. I'm not sure how this is going to work out with two small babies. I am in the rare position of having a husband who is committed to equitably sharing childcare, which is a topic for a whole other post, and we'll have lots of family help for the first few months, which will make a big difference. I imagine we'll just find a way to make it work.

It'd be nice to take a full semester off, or in some Utopian world (i.e. Europe) even longer, but aside from the need to put food on the table and pay the mortgage, you can't exactly drop out of the work force for any length of time in academia. Plus, maybe I wouldn't really want to do that anyway. I do love my job. I'm just terrified that the decision to have kids will ultimately prevent me from keeping this job for life. Or, even worse, that having this job is going to make me a craptastic mom.