Five Months

The kiddos are 5 months old now. Spring is here, even though it's a wet, cool spring. Everything has bloomed late this year, and the tulips and daffodils are still hanging on. I only just now got my annuals planted in pots, which makes me about a month behind. Nora and Milo go out for walks in their stroller all the time now that the weather is nice. The only time we stay in is when it's raining. They both seem to like their walks, and they either gaze around at the scenery peacefully, or they doze. Last weekend Jake took them both out for a walk on his own. This was a big milestone for Jake; it's the first time he's taken them both anywhere on his own. Anyway, for the first time since they were born, I had an hour by myself at the house. 15 minutes of that was wasted by pumping, and then when I was done pumping my brain started going "Aaaaaa! Time to myself! Hurry! Vacuum! Clean the bathroom! Pull weeds! Aaaaaa!"

Milo and Nora are on a pretty predictable schedule now. They wake up at around 7, they eat every 4 hours or so, and they're usually asleep by 7:45 or 8. We feed them once in the middle of the night. That's not to say that they only wake once; two nights ago, for instance, Nora woke about 84 thousand times. Last night, she only woke once to eat, but Milo woke 3 times before it was time to eat. It's almost like they take turns. Man, having one baby would be a piece of cake. Nora and Milo "nap" once in the morning, once in the early afternoon, and once in the late afternoon. By "nap" I mean, they either sleep for an hour to an hour and a half, or else they doze for 20 minutes and then decide to have a party. I never know which it'll be. And to all those baby book authors who swear that the key to getting babies to take long naps and sleep through the night is teaching them to put themselves to sleep, SCREW YOU. They put themselves to sleep just fine. They just don't put themselves back to sleep.

Anyhoo, they've made it to 5 months, and so have we, and we're all still alive! Not only that, but we continue to remain alive despite the fact that my mom is no longer here 24/7 to do our laundry and hold crying babies! We're really making progress here. Also, only getting up once in the night to feed the babies is rocking my world. I'm still tired but it's just normal tired, not "if a bus hit me that'd be more or less okay because at least I could sleep on the way to the hospital" tired.

Milo continues to be the eternally startled baby. Yesterday when I was burping him Milo startled 4 different times in the span of a few minutes. Each time daddy was ripping a velcro tab on Nora's diaper, and that noise caused Milo to jolt upright, open his eyes even wider, if possible, and look around wildly as if to say "what the hell was that?" He'll be way too easy to sneak up on and startle when he gets older. I can just imagine him playing happily in his room and I'll sneak up to the door, say "Milo", and he'll jump through the roof and shriek like an old woman. This is going to be so fun.

The world just sort of constantly surprises Milo. Milo is so wide-eyed that I fear he's inherited my bug-eyed look, the look that causes random doctors at parties to approach me and ask if I've had my thyroid checked. This is the look that I sport while interviewing students, when I'm trying to be all cool and casual and pretend that the crazy thing the student just said wasn't incredibly weird or surprising, and I leave the interview congratulating myself on how I pulled it off and the student had no clue that she'd just uttered a nut-job type of remark, and then I look at the video of the interview and realize that my huge buggy popping eyeballs gave me away. Yeah. That'll be Milo. He's going to suck at poker.

Milo takes it all in, looking around at everything, expressing his opinion with his big eyes. He gets bored and impatient if he has to just sit there and look at the same thing for any length of time, so forget about sitting down while you're holding that baby. That is not acceptable. Milo has to be on the move, he has to look at something different every few nanoseconds. He's highly observant and so even at this young age Milo has figured out that there is a difference between mama and daddy and twin whisperer and people who are not mama and daddy and twin whisperer. And those other people? They should go away immediately and not cause Milo the extreme pain and anguish of having to gaze upon a face that is not of his choosing. Much less be held by one of those offending non-familiar people; that is just too much to ask.

Milo loves playing with his toys, and he easily rolls over onto his side so that he can use both hands to fondle a toy. If he's really interested in that toy, he won't be all that thrilled at my presence; he'll glance at me politely, and then turn back to his toy, as if to say "Yeah, you? You're pretty cool, but you're not going anywhere, and when am I going to get a chance to play with this super-awesome toy again?" Like all babies Milo loves to stick everything he can into his mouth, although his aim isn't always so great and he sometimes end up bashing himself on the head. Milo has recently been practicing his rolling from back to front, and by practicing I mean getting 99% of the way there, but not completely there, and then trying again and again about 40 times in a row. The other day he finally completed the roll, and found himself stuck on his belly and unhappy about it. That's odd because Milo is good at rolling from his belly to his back. Just whisper the words "tummy time" within a mile radius of Milo and BAM, he'll be on his back.

Milo's eating has improved a lot. When he's hungry he can down 8 ounces in 5 minutes or so. He's good at chugging it. He must get that from his dad. Hopefully he won't apply this skill at college fraternity parties, but there won't be much I can do about that so the less I know, the better. Milo is still more or less completely bald and it doesn't look like that's going to change any time soon, so I guess we'd better be careful about keeping him in hats to protect his little baby scalp from the sun. I didn't even think it was possible for Milo to get any cuter but I think he's still cutening up every day. That'll probably last until, what, adolescence? Or is it just girls who become pains in our asses in the pre-teen years? At any rate, he's more and more fun with every passing minute, and I can't wait to see what the next month holds.

Nora is having an easier time with life this month than she was when she was just a young tyke of 4 months. She is on a medication which has improved her reflux a lot, so she no longer screams in agony with every single feeding. She is also back to nursing after a massive strike that lasted so long that I was sure she was done for good. I have no idea what caused her to come back to nursing, maybe it was the medicine, or maybe she just matured a little bit, or maybe the phase of the moon has shifted, who knows, but I'm not complaining.

Nora has discovered how much fun it is to pound her feet down onto the crib, or the ground, and make the world shake. She likes to pound, and wiggle, and smack her arms against her belly in sheer excitement. The other day I turned on the mobile so that she could watch it while I fed Milo. I don't use the mobile much, only in those times when I really have to hold one baby over while I'm feeding the other, so it remains my secret baby-distraction weapon without getting old and stale. Nora still loves that mobile and when it stopped, she started pounding her feet and wiggling, pounding and wiggling, trying to make it start up again. That didn't work so Nora decided she'd turn on the charm and maybe that would make the mobile start up. She cooed at it, smiled at it, and even giggled a few times. I saw her flirting with that mobile and I thought, man, this little kid is already good at manipulating, look how sweet she is with that mobile to get what she wants! She does the exact same thing with us!

Nora can roll from front to back and she can roll from her back to her side. She is even less of a fan of tummy time than Milo is. I keep thinking we need to make her do it even more than we already are so that she can get stronger, rather than just sort of doing a sad little face plant after a minute or so and starting to cry. Nora much prefers small-body movements to large-body movements, generally. She can entertain herself for a long time by handling a small toy or rattle, moving it from hand to hand, and trying to get it to her mouth. Yesterday she sat in the Bumbo seat for a good 15 minutes playing with one small toy. Nora is also pretty happy being held, and she's not particular about who is doing the holding. Mama, daddy, random stranger down the street, it's all pretty much the same to her.

When the babies were first born I avoided the use of pacifiers for a couple of reasons. I don't like the look of older kids running around with pacifiers in their mouths, and I didn't want to become a slave to the pacifier, running to replace it in the middle of the night. Well, one night the babies were screaming, and some pacifiers had made their way into our house, and we popped a pacifier in and...silence. Golden, happy, non-screaming peace. That was it. From then on, we have become pacifier servants for Nora. Milo doesn't care about the pacifier that much anymore but Nora needs it at night, and sometimes she'll wake up without the pacifier and this fact disturbs her a great deal. What causes Nora to wake so much? I don't know if it's her brain activity, or if it's that some gnat 2 miles away flapped its wings too loudly, or what, but Nora wakes, and if the pacifier isn't there, watch out. So we find ourselves running into the bedroom at 3 a.m. replacing her pacifier, cursing ourselves for our boneheaded parenting decisions 3 months ago that have resulted in this situation. I'm trying to help Nora fall asleep more and more these days without her pacifier, which sometimes works, but hey, Nora's a baby, and she likes to suck. Who can blame her? I have a weird feeling that we'll end up with a kindergardener who doesn't want to give up her pacifier.


In general, though, as long as it's not sleep time Nora is a pretty mellow, happy baby. She likes to go in the car, she likes to go in the stroller, she likes to go in the sling, she likes to be held, she likes to sit in the bouncy chair or the Bumbo seat, she likes to take a bath, she likes to play in the crib or under her activity gym -- it's all fun for Nora. When we eat dinner these days, which by the way happens at the ridiculously early hour of 5:30 (I feel like I should be at my grandparents' house, eating at that hour, pass the apple fritters please) Milo is usually taking his last nap of the day and Nora is usually up refusing to nap. So I eat dinner with her sitting on my lap, and she's generally happy just to talk to me and watch me eat. She'll sit in my lap and stare at the fork as it makes its way from the plate to my mouth and back to the plate again. Every couple of minutes she'll glance up at me and smile, as if to say "Here I am, look how cute I am, don't forget about the cuteness, give me a kiss!" She's even remarkably tolerant when I do things like, uh, drop a piece of baked potato onto her face, not that I'm copping to having done that or anything.

That's the beauty of having a couple of babies. You can drop baked potato on them and they don't even sigh and roll their eyes at what a clumsy idiot you are. Happy 5 months, kids.

Weird sleeping

Our cat has decided that he likes to nap in the tub. Our daughter fell asleep in the carseat in the midst of doing the wave. Or maybe she had a big stretch and fell asleep before she finished.

Laughing

This entry features a video of the babies (well, mostly Milo) laughing at daddy. They both like to laugh now; Milo likes those little peek-a-boo games, and Nora thinks it's hilarious when you kiss her belly. She also breaks out the laughs right at bedtime, turning on the charm until the next thing we know it's 5 or 10 minutes later than we'd intended to put her down.

Today was Mother's Day. One thing I've learned about Jake (and about most relationships generally) is that if I want him to do something for me, I've got to ask for it. Specifically. Hoping that he'll read my mind pretty much never works. I'm a hard person to surprise because I'm always concocting elaborate fantasies about some grand gesture that Jake will do on my behalf for a birthday, or Valentine's day, or whatever. I'm on the lookout for those grand gestures -- or I used to be -- and I'm always thinking things like "he's just pretending that he hasn't done anything for this holiday, so that I'll be extra surprised this evening when he pulls out the fancy cake that he somehow managed to secretly bake and then, uh, hide somewhere in the fridge so I wouldn't find it. Hmm. That seems unlikely. I know! He's been hiding the cake in a friend's fridge, that's why there's no cake in our fridge!" And so on.

Asking directly makes a lot of sense because Jake typically wants to make me happy. It's a lot smarter than waiting around for him to get a clue, and then finding that he never did get that clue, and then getting resentful over it. So anyway I decided that I would ask Jake to get up with the babies when they woke this morning. The way we do it now is that they wake up to eat at around 2 or 3, and we both get up and feed them. Then they wake at around 7, and I get up with them while Jake sleeps for another couple of hours. That's actually the best-case scenario. Lately Nora especially has been waking an extra 4 or 5 times in addition to the night feeding. But anyway, I decided that it'd be nice to sleep in a little bit, so I asked Jake to get up with the babies. He agreed, and I was able to sleep until 8, so that extra hour was pretty nice. It made for a nice Mother's Day gift because at 6:50 a.m. when Milo started crying, I was able to just turn over and go back to sleep. How delicious!

So that was my Mother's Day gift, and I enjoyed it. Next I plan to convince Jake to get up with the babies 2 or 3 times a week, so we can trade off and I can be the one who sleeps late every now and then. Moo hah hah ha ha....

On the Eve of Mother's Day...

Happy Mother's Day to new mothers, to veteran mothers, to single mothers, to mothers who work outside of the home, to mothers who stay at home, to mothers who have lost their children, to mothers who are still waiting for their children to come to them. And happy Mother's Day to Dr. P, who has helped so many women become mothers.

Dr. P and her partner Dr. O were responsible for helping us get Nora and Milo. Today they held a party for all of the mothers and children they've helped create at their new clinic, which has been open for a little over a year now. Jake and I were the very first IVF at that new clinic, and we received extra-special treatment for being the first. Today when we introduced Nora and Milo to Dr. P and Dr. O, they said "Here is the reason we finished the lab on time! All of the construction workers know their names!" They were so happy to see the babies that were the result of all of that hard work.

The party included pizza, cake, a bouncy castle, photo keychains, and onesies that read "My parents spent over 30K in medical bills just to have me, and all I got was this lousy onesie". Nora and Milo weren't the only twins in attendance, and today we even met a lovely couple and their quadruplets. Quadruplets. Four babies. The mom was holding two of them, the dad was holding a third, and the 4th was in the stroller crying. I'm never going to complain about juggling two again.

Dr. P gave a little speech about how happy she was to be here with all of us, and how much it meant to her, and how gratifying it was to see everybody in happiness after having been through the hard parts of the journey with us. She started crying as she was saying that, and I think every single mother in attendance started crying right along with her. She was right. She really was there through all of the hard parts.

Dr. P isn't like any other doctor I've ever had, because she really seemed to care about me as a person. Beyond just my health. A victim of infertility herself, a veteran of IVF herself, she knew exactly what I was going through. She reassured me when I was beginning the treatment journey, encouraging me every step of the way by telling me how great everything looked with my health and how sure she was that I was going to get pregnant. After the first IUI failed, she held my hands while I cried in the examining room. After the second IUI failed, she cried right along with me. When I was scared, when I was in pain, when I was enduring endless shots and side effects, she called me up to see how I was doing, she told me at every exam how excited she was for me because she was sure the IVF would work, and she asked me if I had baby names picked out. When the day of retrieval came, she ran out to greet me in the waiting room and hugged me, so excited that the day had finally arrived. She and Dr. O were both with me in the operating room, along with Jake, and she never left my side. The night of the retrieval she called me at home to check up on how I was doing, and ordered pain relievers for Jake to pick up immediately so that I didn't have to wait until the next day.

Dr. P had cried right along with me through the failures and the dashed hopes, and she cried again the day I had my positive blood test. She was just so happy for me, and undoubtedly for the success they had experienced with their first IVF. When I was almost 6 weeks pregnant I visited her for the last time to do an ultrasound to see if we could detect a heartbeat. Dr. P had predicted all along that I would have twins. I was a nervous wreck before that ultrasound, because I was sure that we wouldn't find a heartbeat. I was sure that we would see an empty sac and nothing else. She stood next to me while Dr. O did the ultrasound and found not one, but two gestational sacs. He then found not one, but two beating hearts, and Dr. P held my hand while I started sobbing in relief.

What a tough job she must have. She has to go to work every day and face so many people's pain. She has to give bad news again and again, and the bad news will come far more often than the good news. So the good news must mean so much to her, and I understood why she got choked up at the party in the face of all of the happy, healthy babies all around her. Dr. P is a mother herself now to two little girls from Haiti, but even if she weren't, nobody deserves a happy Mother's Day more than she does.

Out to be Adored

Yesterday Nora and Milo weren't really into napping. 35 minutes in the morning, and 25 minutes for their mid-day nap, which was just depressing. So when they both woke up and were determined to stay up, I packed them in the car and took them to work so that everybody who had been bugging me to bring them in for the last 4 months could get their hands on them.

Nora ate it up. She was as happy as a clam to be passed from person to person; she didn't care who held her. Milo, on the other hand, was a little more reserved. Some people were able to keep him relatively happy, but others seemed to scare him a little and one person in particular made him cry every time she looked at him! Milo spent the whole time just trying to keep it together, making sure I was nearby. He kept sticking out his lower lip in a trembling, I'm-about-to-cry pout. It was ridiculously cute. I'd get a picture of it if I could, but that seems a little cruel because the trembling pout means that tears are on their way if I don't intervene immediately. Above is a general unhappy Milo picture, along with a content Nora picture.

Yesterday afternoon and evening Milo kept spitting up and Jake thought that he had a stomach ache, brought on by the stress of having to be around so many new people. (Being around a lot of new people gives Jake a stomach ache). I hope that's not the case, as we're taking the babies out for a couple of social outings tomorrow, and I don't want it to be painful for Milo. I read a book about the development of babies' brains and the research the authors cited suggests that an inhibited temperment is highly determined by genes. Milo's dad has an inhibited temperment, so maybe he'll be the same way. Or maybe he's just not so sure about strange-looking women who talk bizarre baby talk at him!

Throughout Jake's childhood, starting when he was very small, his mother made him say hello to 5 new people a day. This was in an attempt to make him more outgoing and less afraid of new situations and strangers. Jake still dislikes new situations but he is pretty personable now, and people who don't know him well would probably describe him as fairly outgoing, social, and easy to talk to. So maybe the whole "say hello to 5 new people" strategy worked. It's hard for me to imagine trying to force something like that on Milo, though. I have a weird feeling that I am going to end up being way more of a softie parent than I'd ever imagined. I thought I'd be this hard-core disciplinarian, following the way that I was raised, but now that Nora and Milo are here I feel kind of different about the whole thing. Maybe Jake will end up being more firm and I'll be the big old pushover.

(I can just imagine Milo and Nora reading this years and years down the road and laughing at the very thought of me being anything close to a pushover).

More on Stuff

One thing I was kind of dreading about having kids was the inevitable pile-up of ugly crap in the house. And yep, we're there. Baby stuff just isn't attractive, and it takes up a lot of room. What I didn't realize before I got pregnant was that not all baby stuff is ugly. Take, for instance, this bouncy seat:

The coco rocker. Retails for $199, on sale from $375. There's no way we're paying $400 for two baby rockers, so instead we have something that looks like this:
Ugly, huh. We got it for $35. We actually have 4 bouncers, one was a hand-me-down, one we bought for $35, and two we bought used for $8 each. And with twins all 4 come in handy. It's nice to have one in the bathroom, for instance, for stashing a kid while I take a shower.

Then there are some beautiful bassinets. For instance, this one:
Isn't that lovely? How nice to see a bassinet that doesn't look like a wedding dress from the 80's. But for $395, it's not exactly practical. So instead, we went with this:Ugly as sin, but it was $60 and had the added bonus of being able to fit two babies.

Recently I was thinking about high chairs. Here, too, designers have made their mark:

Boy does that look cool. A noticeable departure from the white plastic / blue plaid highchair of yesterday. But at $500 a pop, I don't think we'll be getting two of them. $1000 for something so temporary just doesn't make sense, and we probably don't have room for them anyway.

It's the same story in every category. Cribs, dressers, gliders, strollers, anything you can think of -- there are affordable yet hideous options, and there are attractive options with ridiculous prices. In the non-baby world, cheaper design knock-offs have become mainstream: we've got Room and Board, CB2, West Elm, even IKEA for the very cheap yet sort of hip option. There's an analogous market in baby stuff just begging to be created.

I don't Know What to Do About Work

Work exerts its own pull that fights against the pull of Nora and Milo. If I think too much about them when I'm at work, I start to wonder why I am at work. It seems so pointless. They're only going to be this small once, and nobody else can take care of them as well as I can, so why am I at work?

Oh right. The mortgage. And the health insurance. And the heating bills. And the groceries. And...

Okay, so I have to work. But when I'm at work and get pulled in, I remember that it's not just about the mortgage and the health insurance. I love what I do, and it's driving me crazy that I can't do it full time right now. I have about 60 hours' worth of work that needs to get done every week, but I sure don't have 60 free hours to do it. So I never get done what I need to, and I'm always about 3 steps behind, feeling like a giant ass because I haven't responded to that student's draft yet, or I haven't read through the reviews of this grant application very thoroughly, or I'm secretly contemplating skipping out on this week's useless meeting so that I don't have to saddle Jake with yet another morning of baby wrangling on his own.

I kinda thought I'd have more time to get work done with the babies in my life. I don't know what I was thinking. I thought it'd be no big deal for one of us to be home alone with them all the time, making room for the other to get work done. None of this would be all that big a deal if it weren't for tenure staring down at me. But tenure does loom, even if it's a few years away, and every month that goes by without me producing a new piece of research weighs on me. It keeps me up at night. I don't want to lose my job. And if I'm honest, I haven't produced anything really substantial ever since I got pregnant. When am I going to find time to change that? That's the piece of the puzzle I can't quite figure out.

My annual review went very well this year, in fact this year was the best review I've ever had. That's a bit of a mystery to me, but it might just be due to the fact that a lot of things that I'd produced over the past few years all happened to finally come out in publication last spring and summer. Everybody who read my file assures me that everything is fine. Famous Old Scholar even stopped by my office this week to let me know that he thought I was doing well, and if I kept it up, I should be a shoe-in for tenure.

It's the "keep it up" part that is tricky, because I'm not keeping it up. I get a year off my tenure clock for having these babies. The babies are only 4 and a half months old, but it's May now, and I consider my year up. This time last year was when I started getting sick, and when I started getting sick my productivity went down the drain. So, it's been about a year already. I somehow have to get back on track now, and I have to do it within the constraints of only having full-time child care two days a week. The pieces of this puzzle don't add up.

The director of the Institute of Health and Social Policy at McGill University, Dr. Jody Heymann, surveyed 176 countries on their parental leave policies. 172 of the 176 countries she surveyed this year offer guaranteed paid leave to women who have just had babies. The four that do not? Liberia, Papua New Guinea, Swaziland and the United States.

So where does that leave me and others like me? Instead of taking a year or even just a semester off, I'm trying to cobble together times to get work done in between taking care of babies, cooking, keeping the house in just a semi-disasterous state instead of a fully disasterous state, getting the groceries, driving to doctor's appointments, and doing the other million things that need to get done every week. I'm making decisions between work and sleep every night, knowing that one or the other has to suffer -- well, sleep always suffers, but sometimes it suffers more than other times. And of course I'm one of the lucky ones because I can afford part-time child care, and because I do have a husband who is doing 50% of the parenting work, and because I have an extremely flexible job that does allow me to work in bits and spurts between, say 8 p.m. and midnight if necessary. What about the women without those things? What about the women who have to be on the job site from 9 to 5 every day? What about the women parenting on their own? What about the women who can't afford any childcare, but also can't afford to give up their jobs? What about the women who will get fired if they miss just one more day to take care of a sick child? What do they do?

The ability to have a family should not be something that only the middle and upper classes can afford to do.

Never in the Present

It seems like we always want to be sometime else.

When I didn't have kids, I couldn't wait to have kids. When we were trying to have a baby, I couldn't wait to get pregnant. When I was pregnant, I couldn't wait to be done being pregnant. Now that they are here, I sometimes miss the days before they came, the days when I slept. I fantasize about sleep. I fantasize about sleeping enough during the night so that when I get out of bed in the morning, it's because I am ready to, not because the babies wrench me out of a deep, exhausted sleep. I fantasize about taking an actual nap, a nap that lasts as long as I want it to, instead of one that lasts for 20 minutes and ends with being jolted awake by a baby's cries. I fantasize about one day waking up, on my own, stretching, taking 5 minutes to just lie in bed because I can, and getting up because I feel like it.

I look forward, too, as well as backwards. I look forward to the day when they can talk to us, when they go off to school and come home and I can ask them how school went. I look forward to art projects and dress up and learning how to ride a bike. I look forward to learning what kind of kids Nora and Milo are going to become, and what kind of teenagers they'll be. I've always enjoyed pre-teens and teenagers, and in fact seventh-graders were probably my favorite group of kids to teach. They have hilarious senses of humors, and they get sarcasm, and yet they're still young enough to not be overly self conscious. I think about how different it'll be then. How I'll be able to talk to them and play with them and get something back, and learn how they think about the world. I think, it's got to get easier, because by then, they'll at least sleep at night. At least I will sleep. Someday.

Today I was in the grocery store and I saw a glimpse of the future from a different perspective. A mom was there with her teenage daughter, they were ahead of me in the check-out line. The mom kept chatting with her daughter, leaning in confidentially to share little jokes and remarks. The daughter was barely tolerating her mother. I mean barely. The contempt was just oozing off of her. It reminded me that in 12 or 13 years Nora will be telling me "just get off my back, mother, God."

I'm sure that when that time comes, I'll think back fondly on these times. I'll think back to when Nora wasn't even 5 months old yet, and the pain, exhaustion, and frustration of never ever getting enough sleep will be something I won't really remember. Not entirely. I'll gloss over the part where it's almost impossible to drag myself up, up, up from the deep slumber of 2 a.m., my body like a lead weight, arms and legs feeling like bags of bricks, trying to will myself to move before the crying gets any louder. I'll forget what that felt like, and instead I'll focus on what it felt like to hold that little body against mine in the middle of the night, my little girl snuggled up to me, burying her head against my chest. I'll miss the times when her problems were ones I could solve, when I was her entire world, when she loved nothing more than seeing my face and trading smiles. I'll wish that I could spend just one sleepless night with her again, to hold her perfect little baby self one more time, to rub my face against the fuzzy top of her head. I'll long for the exact thing I have right this very minute.

And the Heavens Did Sing

Today Nora took a nap that lasted 2 hours and 15 minutes. I was away at a baby shower for much of it, so I can't take any credit. It was all her dad's doing. I'm not asking too many questions.

On Gender, Part 1

Some people might remember the Larry Summers (then president of Harvard) speech from 2005: the transcript can be found here. That speech offended me (and everybody else) as a feminist, but it also offended me as a scholar. He discussed issues of women in science and math fields, hypothesizing reasons for the underrepresentation of women in those fields, while ignoring the three decades or so of solid research documenting the differential treatment women and young girls receive in science and math classrooms. It's irritating when somebody in a position of power ignores empirical evidence related to a topic on which he feels justified to speak.

But I'm not going to discuss that here, instead I'd like to highlight one small portion of his remarks from that famous speech:

"There is reasonably strong evidence of taste differences between little girls and little boys that are not easy to attribute to socialization...So, I think, while I would prefer to believe otherwise, I guess my experience with my two and a half year old twin daughters who were not given dolls and who were given trucks, and found themselves saying to each other, look, daddy truck is carrying the baby truck, tells me something. And I think it's just something that you probably have to recognize."

Although Summers never specified what he meant by the vague "something", he implies that girls prefer to play at caretaking and boys prefer to play at bridge building.

I think about these things a lot given that I have one girl child and one boy child. Summers' reference to his twin girls was silly, as any good researcher knows that anecdotes don't make data. The implication in his remarks, moreover, is that his girls were treated just like boys, which ignores the overwhelming influence socialization likely played from the moment those girls were born. Even if Summers and his wife were so forward-thinking about gender (which, by the way, is unlikely given the content of his speech) as to shield their children from all media, from all other children displaying typical gender norms, and from well-meaning friends and relatives bearing gender-stereotypical gifts, they still would have had to negotiate the subtle and ingrained gender-based behavior we adults display towards babies and small children. Parents describe newborn boy and girl babies differently, and they interact and play with babies differently. Research on child-parent interactions has shown that parents talk to girls more, encourage autonomy in boys more, challenge boys more, and help girls more. Studies in the 70s and 80s showed evidence of these types of gender-based behaviors towards babies regardless of the actual sex of the baby: adults who thought a baby was a girl treated her like a girl, and adults who thought the baby was a boy treated him like a boy.

Even the color we paint our nursery and the clothes we pick out for coming home from the hospital are influenced by our knowledge of the baby's sex, if we have it. The overwhelming influence of early gender-based socialization of babies and children makes it remarkably difficult to tease apart what is nature and what is nurture. Some differences in brain structure have been found in girl and boy newborns, but how these differences would manifest themselves in behavior (much less toy preference) in a gender neutral world is not so easy to figure out.

Parents don't treat boys and girls differently because they're necessarily biased or sexist. We all do it unintentionally. We've been socialized to do it. Back when I taught school, I started to read articles about how teachers called on boys in math classrooms far more often than they called on girls. I was intrigued by this, and pretty sure that I didn't run my classroom that way. After all, I cared a great deal about girls' participation and success in math. I started audiotaping my own classroom and those of the other teachers, and found that each and every one of us called on boys 2-3 times as often as we called on girls. I never would have guessed this to be the case based on my own assessment and memory of how I taught. It's difficult to escape our own socialization about gender, no matter how well meaning we are or how hard we might try to pay attention to these things. If a well-meaning feminist ends up calling on boys more often in a math classroom, then how many other millions of little interactions subtly influence how girls and boys are taught to behave in the world? How difficult is it going to be to constantly watch how we behave as parents with our children?

That's why I don't believe that Summers' little anecdote about his twin girls means much at all. 2 and a half years old is certainly old enough to have learned a great deal about how to behave as a girl, even if their parents gave them nothing but trucks to play with. I also wonder what all of this means for Nora and Milo. They have many gorgeous, adorable outfits that are pink for Nora and blue for Milo. Before they were even a few weeks old we were dressing them according to gender. Just the other day I was remarking how much Nora sounds like a little girl with her high-pitched squeals, and how much Milo sounds like a little boy with his husky baby voice. We dress them according to gender, we noticed gendered traits, and we probably describe them in gendered terms as well.

I'm never going to stop wondering whether I am treating them fairly. Do I talk to Nora more? Do I cuddle her more? Does Milo happen to be better at tummy time and rolling because I subconsciously push him a little more than I push Nora? Is it just a coincidence that many days when I come home from work, the Twin Whisperer(tm) happens to be holding Milo while Nora patiently plays on her own? I notice that we often remark how strong Milo is. When is the last time I described Nora as strong? I can't remember doing so. I call both of them beautiful, and I think both of them are smart, but how often do I describe Milo as social, even though he is just as likely to light up with a smile as Nora is? The words we use to describe the babies shape how we think about them, how we interact with them, and ultimately influence how they behave. Are we doing everything we can to make sure that Nora knows she is a strong person, and Milo knows that he is a social person?

I want Nora to have plenty of blocks and trucks to play with, and I want Milo to know that dolls are fine for him to play with. I want Nora to know that it's okay to yell and run around and bang things and get dirty. I want Milo to know that it's okay to cuddle and talk and take care of people. I know that they have to live in a gender-stereotyped world, one that probably influences them even now, and will do so in bigger ways as they get older, make friends, receive particular types of toys as presents, and observe how adult men and women act and interact. I hope that Jake and I can do a semi-decent job of helping them negotiate those influences and grow into people who embrace both feminine and masculine ways of being.

Video Cuteness

Relief

I'm writing this at 5 a.m. because it's just easier to stay up right now than go back to sleep for what might be 10 or 15 minutes. The babies have been up, oh, about ten thousand times tonight, but I can't blame them because they just had their 4-month shots and they're feeling like crap. Milo had a temperature of 101.9 earlier tonight but now it seems to have broken.

The weather is currently taking a shift from spring back to winter. I'm watching the temperature drop right this very minute, and I can feel the change happening as the cold wind blows in through the closed (crappy, ancient) window next to my computer. The job candidate we made an offer to decided not to accept the offer, so months of hard work and wining and dining has just gone down the drain. But I don't mind any of this too much because I am so relieved about Milo and his head. Today we saw a specialist to find out whether he had craniosynostosis, which is a condition in which some of the sutures in the skull fuse too early. The treatment for this is surgery, surgery on the skull, in other words cutting my baby's scalp open and conducting surgery on his innocent little baby skull. This was really intolerable to contemplate, so my relief that it doesn't have to happen is enormous.

Milo's flat spot is just positional, and in fact it's mild enough that he won't even need a helmet, so now that I know he's going to be okay I can start making light of the whole thing, which is my God-given right as a parent. But I guess I'll hold off for a few days, anyway, before I start calling him "denty" and other things, seeing as how he's not feeling so well from the shots. I'm sensitive like that.

We Called That One The Little Red Haired Girl

My college roommate and I used to make up a lot of nicknames for people. This probably happened because we would talk about people we only knew tangentially, and often we weren't sure what their names were. So we made up names for them. One freshman reminded us of the little red-haired girl who was the object of Charlie Brown's affections, so that became her nickname. Another guy in our physics class, or maybe it was our math class, became "pole" after a particular relativity word problem we had worked on. Reasons for that are lost to me now, but we named his girlfriend "barn" after that same problem.

And then there was Zero. One night, my roommate and I decided to start ranking people on an attractiveness scale of 0 to 100. This seems like a good idea when you're, like, 19. We realized that the scale would be meaningless without defining what would count as 100 and what would count as 0. When it came time to identify somebody who would rank as 0, I said "you know that guy in our linear algebra class? The one who always puts the date in the upper right hand corner of his paper when he takes notes, and then makes a 3-d box around the date?" She knew exactly who I was talking about. This guy always wore highwater slacks that were a size too small. He would pair them with outdated short-sleeved shirts, which he would tuck in and then tie the whole ensemble together with a striped cloth belt, the kind with a buckle that looks like an airplane seatbelt buckle. Those pants rested somewhere right below his ribcage. He would wear white gym socks and old tennis shoes, and he had enormous glasses, and I could never figure out if he was wearing a beard, or if he just hadn't shaved in a couple of weeks. "That guy," I said. "He would be the zero."

The unfortunate nickname stuck. For a couple of years we referred to him as zero, never figuring out his actual name. We saw him in various math lectures here and there, but never really intersected with him. Then, when I was a senior, a bunch of friends of mine were housed in a suite on campus, and one of the suitemembers was that guy! Zero! As I got to know him, I found out that he was a really nice guy. He was exceptionally smart, had a great sense of humor, and was fun to be around. He loved to play games, as did all of my nerdy male math friends, and we would sit around for hours playing cards. Of course as I got to know him as an actual person, he ceased to be "zero". He was no longer funny looking, he was just a nice guy who was fun to have around. We stayed in touch for years after college, he came to my wedding, and I still get Christmas cards from him.

This whole story reminds me of Milo a little bit. The thing is, when I was pregnant, I worried a little bit that we would end up having funny-looking babies. Even worse, what if we had funny-looking babies and we were too smitten to realize that they were funny looking?

When Milo and Nora were born, I didn't exactly think they were beautiful. I thought they looked like most newborns, sort of wrinkly and angry looking. But Milo especially seemed kind of funny looking. He had these huge eyes, and he reminded me of E.T. His forehead was constantly wrinkled, in fact his whole face was wrinkled, and red, and he looked like an old man. He would make these bizarre faces and only open one eye. I thought, "well, I guess we did produce a pretty funny-looking baby." I didn't seem to have any of those smitten blinders on at all.

Now 4 months later I think he's strikingly beautiful. I know that most of that is probably because I have gotten to know Milo, and I like who he is. He's a neat little baby with a great personality, and his face just lights up when he smiles. He and Nora look so different, but I think that they're both really cute in their own ways. And a big part of me realizes that I've lost all objectivity about them. Maybe Milo is more like Zero, maybe he is funny looking, but I just don't see it anymore because I like him so much. Or maybe he's not, and he's just grown into his natural cute babyness, and it simply took a while. I don't care either way, of course. But if you're secretly thinking that Milo and Nora are funny looking, that's okay. Don't tell me, because I won't believe you, and I'll just wait until you get to know them better, at which point you'll think they are beautiful too.

(I do, however, look forward to the day when they are no longer super bald).

Beginning and End

At the start of tummy time:


At the end of tummy time:


I should have waited another minute or two, and then I'd have a picture of both of them screaming their heads off!

Maybe I Should Burn the Books

Having twins takes a lot of the ego out of parenting. I think that if we just had one, we'd be attributing a lot of what works or doesn't work to our own parenting abilities. But when you do the same thing with two babies, and they react differently, you realize just how little control you actually have over the whole thing.

Take sleeping. The babies still both don't like to nap much; their naps, which (according to the baby whispering, sleep solutions, happiest baby on the block healthy habits books) are supposed to last about an hour and a half to two hours, often last only 25 minutes or so. After 25 minutes, boom! They awake and don't want to be asleep anymore. Theoretically the babies are supposed to be consolidating their awake times and their nap times, staying awake for longer periods and then napping two to three decent-length naps.

Nora and Milo prefer to do these short little catnaps, which is just killing us. In addition, they still like to get up and eat 2-3 times a night, which also shouldn't be happening according to these mythical textbook babies the books write about.

So we're trying to help them sleep better. We're not at the point where we feel comfortable letting them cry, and we might never reach that point, I don't know. I say "might" because the only thing I've learned so far is never say never, and even though I don't think that I could do it now, I might be so desperate in a month or two that perhaps it would start to seem like a good idea. So anyway, we're trying a different method that basically involves going in to them when they make noise, patting them or soothing them, and telling them to go back to sleep. If they're really upset we're supposed to pick them up just long enough for them to settle back down, and then put them back down before they fall asleep. In other words, we're not supposed to rock them to sleep, because apparently that means we become sleep props and the babies need to learn how to put themselves to sleep.

They're actually pretty decent about putting themselves to sleep. Milo is great at it; I can sense when he's getting cranky, put him in a sleep sack, put him in the crib, and he'll go to sleep. Nora's a little less consistent at this but she's able to put herself to sleep sometimes. All of those books (whose babies fit with those books, anyway?) say that the key to keeping babies asleep is teaching them to put themselves to sleep. Then when they wake up, they'll put themselves back to sleep. Not Nora & Milo. When they wake up, they don't like to put themselves back to sleep, they'd rather have us there, thank you very much.

So we're using this patting/soothing/pick-up/put-down method of trying to help them extend their naps, and you know what, it's working like a charm with Milo. If I pat him and tell him to go back to sleep, or give him a pacifier, he'll basically go back to sleep. He stays asleep longer and longer and often only wakes because Nora wakes him up.

If Milo were my only baby, I'd probably be congratulating myself on my disciplined yet kind approach to helping him back to sleep. I'd probably think that those other parents whose babies don't sleep just aren't doing it right, or aren't being consistent enough or something. I'd probably be all smug and know-it-all about the whole sleep thing.

But...there's Nora. Nora's not having any of this lame patting / pick-up stuff. She doesn't want to go back to sleep, darn it. I'll pat her or pick her up and she's all smiles, happy to see me. She doesn't want to sleep, she wants to play! "25 minutes was plenty, mama!", she says. When I remove myself from her sight, she cries. I can repeat this 10, 20, 30 times in a row. Nora does not go back to sleep. She can put herself to sleep the first time, like the books say. The books then tell me to consistently do this pat and soothe thing, and she'll learn to extend her naps and eventually stop waking up and crying. Well, screw you, books. Apparently you haven't met Nora.

If Nora were my only baby, I'd probably be feeling like a miserable failure right about now. I'd be wondering why the solutions offered in those books I read don't work on her. I'd be convinced I was doing something wrong and I'd be constantly comparing her to other babies her age, wondering why she sleeps so much less than she's supposed to.

Well, lucky for me I've got both Milo and Nora. This has taught me that a lot of babies' behaviors have to do with babies' personalities. Maybe just as much as my own parenting techniques. Maybe more than my parenting techniques. So if one baby is really great at something, or if one baby is really struggling with something, I'm not attributing it to my parenting as much as I would if I just had one baby. It's just not as much about me as I thought it would be before I had children. Not that this is an excuse to remove my own behavior from the equation, or anything -- I think that how Jake and I treat the babies generally has a lot to do with their health and happiness. But our parenting behaviors certainly don't wholly determine the babies' behaviors, that's for sure. I guess they're their own little people or something, with their own minds.

Thank goodness I have two instead of one, or I'd probably be insufferably opinionated about this whole thing!

4 Months Old

Today Milo and Nora are 4 months old!

I remember when we took them in for their 2-month check-up, we were still struggling a lot. My mom had just left and I felt down about that, and the weather was horrible. I told the babies that the next time they went to the doctor, they'd be twice as old. Maybe the weather would be nice! Maybe it would be sunny, maybe the crocuses would be blooming, maybe we'd see daffodils and tulips. Spring seemed so far away but I was trying to find something to look forward to.

Well, we've had a lousy, late spring and the daffodils and tulips aren't up yet, but the crocuses are indeed blooming. It's supposed to climb into the sixties tomorrow and by golly I'll take it. Most importantly, the babies are 4 months old now and 4 months is a much nicer place to be than 2 months!

Nora is doing many new delightful things these days. She's holding her head up pretty well and sometimes even enjoys her tummy time on the surfboard mat that she got from Grandmom. Nora is still pretty easygoing about people and is happy to let anybody and everybody hold her. She also enjoys cooing at people, and she starts the day with a smile. Sometimes, I'll wake up in the mornings and just hear tiny sounds, enough to know that the babies are awake. I'll go into their room and find them awake, alert, and happy. They both burst out with huge smiles every morning as soon as I walk in there.

Nora is nice and chubby now, which gives me great pleasure. She's still not a fan of nursing, or of eating in general really, but we're hoping a doctor's visit will help her with some of her eating troubles. She's certainly the most prolific spitter upper I've ever met. Nora can really shoot it out, and then smile a moment later. She and Milo both take medicine for reflux and the medicine has a very tart taste. When I put the dropper in Nora's mouth, she'll grimace with her entire face, making the most sour face possible, and then try to smile at the same time while swallowing. Nora also likes to smile at people from across the room now. When I'm sitting her on my knee and burping her, she'll start smiling and flirting with dad all the way across the room.

Nora can pull on her toys to make them play music now, and she can amuse herself well with the toys in her bouncy seats. She also enjoys looking at herself in the mirror. She'll smile at her reflection, and then look at my reflection for approval. Her hair, what little there is, has grown somewhat longer and right after a bath it sticks straight up off her head. Nora has outgrown her 0-3 month clothes and is now ready to switch to 3-6 month clothes. One of her favorite tricks is to rub her feet together really hard so that her socks come off. We call her our little cricket. She's a cute, chubby, happy little baby who isn't a huge fan of eating or sleeping, but loves being held and carted around.

The other day I had a meeting at a coffee shop and I took Nora in the sling. She's so cute that strangers stop me all the time to exclaim over her. "What a little doll", an old lady said that day. She's as happy as a clam in the sling, content to look at the world around her while still cuddled up to mama.

Milo has also changed a lot in the last two months. He has just started to get a little bit of stranger anxiety, which makes him precocious according to our twin whisperer. He's not so sure about being held by new people, and he often looks for me or Jake for reassurance. Milo loves having his parents around. Every time I enter the room he rewards me with the biggest, goofiest grin. Milo likes to sort of stick his tongue out when he smiles, which makes it all the more silly and endearing. Milo also loves to talk, all the time. He'll talk on the changing table, he'll talk to us as we hold him, and he'll talk to his toys when he's playing in the crib. He makes lots of consonant sounds and his little voice sounds so very much like a boy's voice. I never would have guessed that this early in life Nora would sound so much like a little girl and Milo would sound so much like a little boy.

Milo eats very well. He's just started eating 7 ounces when he takes a bottle! I have no idea how much he eats when he nurses, of course, but he is a good nurser. The only exception to that is early in the morning because Milo can become distracted by his desire to be social. So he'll take a sip, then turn his head and look at me and grin. Repeat endless times. He loves that game, and sometimes the only way I can get him to concentrate on nursing is to cover him up so that he can't make eye contact with me. Milo spits up too and sometimes has trouble after eating, but it's much better than it was two months ago. Both Milo and Nora love being changed. They love being on the changing table, getting naked, and having baths.

Milo seems a little shy based on the way he likes to smile and then quickly turn his head away. He has an incredibly sweet demeanor. Milo loves the toys in his crib, and he seems to enjoy playing there more than the bouncy seat, more than the swing, more than the activity mat. Sometimes he'll roll from his back to his side so that he can play with a toy with both hands. The other day I saw him fall asleep with his hand wrapped around part of the toy, and he took his nap that way.

Milo is still incredibly bald, and that doesn't seem to be changing any time soon. I figure we'll just put lots of hats on him. His baldness emphasizes his enormous, bright eyes. Milo has also outgrown his 0-3 month clothes. He enjoys novelty, and is very happy being carried around the house so that he can look at different things and look out the windows. He could do that all day. He also loves it when his dad holds him up high in the air. Last week, Jake had Milo on the changing table and was tickling him under the chin. Milo started laughing, and that was the first time I'd heard his laugh. Jake then tried for about 10 minutes to make it happen again, but without any luck.

This is such a delightful age because Milo and Nora are doing so many new things all the time. It's also a frustrating age because eating can be difficult at times, and they're having some regression with their sleep, and they still don't sleep anywhere close to through the night -- far from it. I've heard that these kinds of regressions aren't uncommon at 4 months of age. So sometimes Jake and I get frustrated with all of the hard work, but other times I'm good at reminding myself that this is the only time they will be 4 months old. They'll never again be this small, and we should enjoy it. Yes, they wake, and they cry, but when again in my life will I be able to hold them like this, sniff their sweet little heads, and feel them cuddle up to me, so small and compact? It's going to disappear so quickly, so I'm enjoying it while it lasts.

Hooray for Jake

I knew that Mastitis was an infection, but I didn't realize it'd make you feel like you wanted to die. I've been so sick today, it's ridiculous. When you have two babies you don't get any time off, and how do you take care of two busy little ones when you can barely sit up? That's where I'm super lucky. Jake took care of them all day today, letting me sleep most of the day and only getting up for feedings. I don't know how single parents do it, I'm definitely lucky to have Jake.

One Year Ago Today

April 10 was the day of retrieval and fertilization -- Nora and Milo came into existence one year ago today, or more accurately a year ago tonight.

My life seems split in half now. There is the "before babies" half, or the bb half, and the "after babies" half, the ab half. Everything about bb life seemed to disappear once the babies arrived. Now I'm getting some of those things back, like walking to work or meeting somebody for coffee, so I guess over time the bb/ab split will seem less dramatic. Or maybe it won't, because the biggest difference is that Milo and Nora are here now, and we are a family of four now, and things will never be the same.

The bb/ab split was so earth shattering that it has almost caused me to forget the earlier split: life before infertility, and life after infertility. Before infertility I went from day to day, mostly living in the present, sometimes dreaming about the future, working towards my goals, having fun in my time off, just existing. After infertility, the rhythm of my life was chopped into 28-day cycles. I was either anxious about timing everything correctly, hopeful that it had worked, despairing that it hadn't worked, or recovering from the disappointment and grief of yet another failed cycle. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Over and over and over again.

Infertility causes stress levels in patients that are similar to those who face a fatal illness or a death of a family member. At first glance this might not seem to make any sense, because infertility is so much better to deal with than, say, cancer. It is, of course, but the cyclical nature of infertility is what makes it particularly hard to negotiate. There is no one primary painful moment that a person faces, deals with, grieves over, and then moves on from. Instead the grief keeps happening every month. Each cycle that fails brings a fresh wave of grief that has to be dealt with all over again, and it gets harder with every passing month rather than easier. I used to feel like I could never escape from infertility, not even for a little while, not even when I wanted to, because I couldn't get out of my own body. Even if the cause of infertility is a male factor, it is the woman who experiences the expectations, hopes, and failures of each cycle in the symptoms (or lack thereof) she experiences.

If any of you have friends or family members who struggle with infertility, here are a few helpful tips about what to say and what not to say:

Don't Say: Just relax!
I often felt that if I had to hear one more person to tell me to relax, I was going to smack them upside the head. Infertility is a medical problem, not a personality disorder. If you found out that I had hepatitis or a broken leg, would you tell me to fix it by just relaxing? Also, to everybody who ever told me to relax, I wanted to say "have you met me?" I don't "relax". Feeling like I had to relax just added an extra layer of stress onto an already difficult situation. Not only was I failing at the most fundamental aspect of womanhood (or so I felt), but I was making it worse by being all stressed out about it (or so it seemed).

Don't Say: I had a friend/cousin/aunt/colleague who couldn't get pregnant, but then she took a cruise / went on vacation / traveled to Hawaii, and blammo! Pregnant.
Goody for them. Those people were not infertile. Those little tricks work for normal people, not for infertile couples. Why not tell me to revert back to age 17, drink a six-pack of Pabst Blue Ribbon, and hop into the back seat of a Chevy? That worked for a lot of people I know.

Don't Say: You can have mine!
That's just tacky.

Don't Say (when I'm not drinking in order to improve our chances): Oh, well I was drunk when I conceived little Johnny.
Bite me.

Don't Say: It was meant to be (or some other version of "maybe God didn't want you to be parents").
Are you kidding me? I'm not meant to be a parent and the couple in the news who had crack-addicted babies and then neglected them and let them wander out into the -5 degree weather by themselves without any shoes on were supposed to be parents? What kind of crazy reasoning is that? What about all of the people out there who become pregnant unintentionally and cannot, for whatever reason, have a baby at that point in their lives? They were supposed to get pregnant and I wasn't? And by the way, are you seriously suggesting that there's something about me or my personality that means I shouldn't be a parent?

Don't Say: I knew this one couple who couldn't have children, so they adopted and then, surprise, she got pregnant!
Infertile couples who adopt experience spontaneous pregnancies at the same rate as the rest of the infertile population: it happens about 5% of the time. There is nothing about adoption that causes it to happen, or we would see it occur in higher rates with adopting couples. Not to mention, isn't that remark kind of insulting to adoptive families? It suggests that adoption is a second-best choice and conceiving is the brass ring of family building.

I received all of those comments, and more. I heard them all many times. Fortunately, I also had a lot of wonderful, supportive, understanding friends and family members who said all of the right things, all the time. They listened to me complain and cry for what now seems like an eternity, but actually was only a couple of years. The support I received helped me enormously, and here are some of the things they said:

• I'm here if you want to talk.
• I'm sorry this is happening to you.
• Let me know if you want to vent about it, I'm here for you.
• Let's go get a drink and let off some steam.
• Even though I don't know the route you'll take, I know you will be a parent.
• I'm thinking of you/pulling for you/crossing my fingers.
  

A year ago today everything changed. Nora and Milo came to be, and a couple of weeks later we discovered that they had actually survived and seemed to be digging in for a long ride. The cyclical nature of my life was about to end. Everything changed forever. I'm glad it's now and not then, because as wonderful as it was to find out that we had a real chance at having a baby, it was nothing compared to living with them every day, knowing them, loving them.

Action Shots

Nora's nursing strike is getting worse instead of better, and I'm trying everything. Now Milo seems to be joining her. I'm worried about Nora's eating in general. She just doesn't seem to want to eat, even from a bottle. Could it be reflux that we haven't fixed with the medicine? A milk allergy? Something else? We've consulted with the lactation specialist and she's stumped, and now we're consulting with the doctor. It seems like it's always something. If she actually weans, which would be really weird at 4 months, should I just nurse Milo? That means I'd be the one feeding him all the time, and Jake would be the one feeding her all the time. The asymmetry of that bothers me. Feeding is such a bonding experience that I hate the thought that each of us is only bonding in that way with one baby. Should I just give up all of this nursing/pumping nightmare all together?

When I think of all the hours I've spent pumping, struggling to nurse with a baby who is protesting, and worrying about milk supply instead of just holding and enjoying our babies, I think that it's not worth the emotional and bonding cost, and I should just give it up. But then when I think about all of the health risks they incur from not getting breastmilk, it breaks my heart to think about giving it up. So, I don't know what we'll do.

In the meantime, here are some action shots. I think that on this day, Nora rolled from her back to her side, and Jake then helped her onto her stomach.

A Conversation With Nora

Nora: Blech! Get that thing out of my mouth! Aaaaaa! Aaaaaa! Aaaaaa!

Me: Dude, you have to nurse. It's time to eat now, so please nurse.

Nora: What, do you take me for a chump? I'm not going anywhere near that thing! Aaaaa, stop trying to make me, or I'll just scream!

Me: Look, I know you're hungry. I can tell by the way you're acting. Let's just be logical about this. If you nurse, then you'll stop being hungry. You'll feel a lot better, I promise.

Nora: Forget it! Where's that bottle?

Me: Uh...hey look! Nice pretty boob! Don't you want to nurse?

Nora: You think you can distract me away from the fact that I want a bottle, not you? Who do you think you're dealing with here?

Me: But you have to nurse. You need milk, not powdered evil. Don't you know that if I give you formula, that's akin to riding a mechanical bull while pregnant? Haven't you seen those public service announcements?

Nora: You don't let me watch tv, remember? Anyway, I'm only a baby and even I know how dumb that is.

Me: Well anyway, trust me when I tell you that it's important for your health that you nurse. Preferably sooner rather than later. Let's try again.

Nora: Forget it! Aaaaa! Aaaaaa! Aaaaaa!

Me: Oh my God Nora, please just nurse. I'm not going to give you a bottle. Don't you realize that if you stop nursing, you'll never get fed by mama? Do you really want daddy to feed you every single time? I mean, just between us, we know who you love best. Right?

Nora: ...

Me: Right?

Nora: I'm hungry! Where's that bottle? Stop trying to shove that thing in my mouth! No, don't even put it anywhere near my face, don't even make me look at it! Aaaaaa!

Me: Look. I'm the parent, and you're the child. So what I say, goes. And I say you must nurse, so you had better comply.

Nora: HAH HA HA HA HA HA.

Me: Let's just try one more time...

Nora: Aaaaaa! Stop it! Aaaaaa! Aaaaaa! Aaaaaaa!

Me: I can't make you do this, can I. Or anything, actually. Oh crap, I'm so screwed...

Nora: Welcome to parenthood, sucker.

And then they'll end up at Middle Kentucky Tech

An important benefit of having twins in the expanded opportunity for a father to be involved with his children when they're babies. A father's participation in early child care always enriches a child's life, but with twins it's a necessity...Nevertheless, there are issues that crop up between fathers and mothers of twins in the babyhood years...
(J.A. Friedman, from Emotionally Healthy Twins)

I should say right off the bat that Jake is a great father. He has a load of patience. He approaches most things with a sense of humor, including the babies' more frustrating behaviors. He is gentle. He hauls himself out of bed in the middle of the night every night to feed the babies. He does things that most fathers of infants don't ever have to do, or don't do on a daily basis.

But. But, he's not me. He's not the mom. And sometimes it seems like Nora and Milo need me, not him. They need to be soothed the way I soothe them, and only I will do. This is the hard part.

Imagine you have a baby and your husband is trying to get her to stop crying. She won't stop, and you sit there and watch him try and try and try, and nothing is working, and you know without a doubt that if you just took that baby and held her for about 10 seconds, she would stop crying. You know it. So what do you do? How long do you let your husband continue to try to get her to stop crying, how long do you listen to her scream? Do you listen to her scream for 5 minutes? For 10 minutes? For 15 minutes? Do you watch your husband suffer and listen to your baby scream and scream and do nothing to fix it? Do you wait until she gets to the stage where she's hiccuping and her face is all red and blotchy, and the screams continue with heartbreaking intensity? Do you just sit there and let all of that happen right in front of you, without doing anything about it?

It sounds insane to do that. But that's what I had to do last night, because the OTHER baby was nursing at the time. I cannot pick up and soothe Nora when Milo is attached at the breast. There is only one of me, but there are two of them, and sometimes they both need me at the same time, and it drives me crazy to not be able to take care of them when they need it. Ultimately it got to the point where I cut Milo off once he was mostly done so that I could attend to Nora. And then, of course, Milo started crying.

I know that these babies cry more than they would if they had been born one at a time. A lot more. Fewer of their needs get met because I am usually busy with one baby when the other one needs something. They get to have a very close relationship with their father, and I wouldn't trade that for anything, but sometimes only I will do, and I cannot be there for them. I hope we aren't damaging them for life because of this. If we have to damage them for life, and I'm sure we will, as that's our job as parents, I'd rather it be for a better reason. Something like, "oh, sorry we spent all of your tuition money on our new boat", not "sorry for that whole 'not picking you up enough' thing when you were babies."

Today I was holding Nora on the couch downstairs and I could hear Jake upstairs with Milo. He was awake and making noises, not quite fussing yet, but starting to get a little agitated. I knew he needed interaction. I could hear Jake in there, sitting near him but not talking to him, not playing with him. Jake is a quiet person who tends not to talk just for the sake of talking. I think he finds it hard to talk to the babies, and who can blame him, I find it weird and awkward myself sometimes. I have to force myself to talk to them, and I say inane things like "And now we're going to put your diaper in your wrap. Here we go, folding it into thirds! And now it goes into the wrap, and let's put it on, okay, here's one velcro tabby, and there's the other tabby! All done!" On and on and on, endless inanity. But I do it, because I know they need to be talked to, and they love it. They smile and wiggle and kick their legs. And I have to say that Jake talks to them more and more every day, and he's great at playing with them, so this was just one weird day.

But I knew Milo needed to be talked to, played with, and I couldn't do it because there I was, holding a sleeping Nora , who I didn't want to disturb. So I have to sit there with the knowledge that my baby isn't getting what he needs, and half the time that's just the way it is. They're not going to get talked to as much as they should. And again, this drives me crazy. I find it really hard to truly enjoy and be present with whichever baby I have when I am worrying about what the other baby isn't getting.

All of this makes me irrationally angry. Maybe it's just being overwhelmed by having twins in general, but whatever it is, I get a lot more angry than is called for. I find myself doing things like yelling at poor Jake, or yelling when I drop things, or trying to control the urge to just kick something across the room like a child because I'm so mad. Just typing that makes me realize that a major attitude adjustment is necessary on my part. I know the logical thing to do is just lighten the hell up about it all. It's not going to be the end of the world if the babies aren't talked to 24 hours a day. It's not like they're going to then have delayed language development, and therefore experience cognitive deficits that affect how they do in school, which will ultimately affect their attitude towards learning in general, which will prevent them from realizing their true potential and gaining complete happiness as they stagnate at some regional state college instead of going to Harvard on a full scholarship which they would have done if only we'd talked to them more as infants.

Yeah. Okay. So maybe I need to lighten up.

A Different First

Today was my first full day back at work! A full 8 hours scheduled to be out of the house entirely! Yes, it is now April, and we now have partial child care in place, and I can theoretically work 8 hours out of the house twice a week. Up until now I've been grabbing minutes here and there, sneaking away for meetings, working at odd times while I pump or after the babies are asleep, but never in truly long chunks.

What a day. 3 a.m., up for a feeding. It was going to be Jake's solo feeding but Nora was hungry at the same time that Milo was hungry, and rather than making her wait I got up and nursed her. Then she spit up a few times, and had an outfit change, and a diaper change, and finally they both went back to sleep. Then they slept all the way until 7 a.m.! Hooray! I got up, nursed Milo while Nora played in the crib, and was about to start nursing Nora when Milo had a huge, giant blowout. Okay, so Milo had to have a bath. Nora patiently waited while I brought Milo into the bathroom. I set him (without a diaper) onto the bouncy seat while I ran the bath. Once the bathtub was full I turned back and thought, hmm, why is Milo's leg wet? Did I dribble water on him? Wait, why is the cloth he's sitting on wet...why is the floor wet? Ooooohhhh. Cue me cleaning urine off the floor, discarding the cloth, and then bathing Milo.

Back to the nursery. Milo is happy, now feed Nora. Both are fed and changed, time to pump. I eat a bowl of cereal while pumping, killing two birds with one stone. It's now 8:15, so I'm behind schedule. Wash the bottles. At 8:30 our nanny arrives, aka the Twin Whisperer. I update her on all things baby, and then at 9 hop in the shower to get ready to go. I'm finally out and ready to leave at 9:30, just an hour later than I'd originally planned.

I walk to work. It's only a mile and a half. But I didn't think about what it would take to walk to work with my backpack, my computer, and my breastpump which comes complete with its own bag, parts, and bottles. Turns out that a half-hour walk carrying all of that is way too long. I don't want to give up walking, though, and yet I need to carry all of that stuff. So I'm still trying to figure out a solution for that.

Get to work a little after 10. Pump immediately. Answer emails while pumping. Disconnect the pump and then lean over while the pump parts are still attached to me, thereby spilling a bunch of milk all over my pants. Oh well. I have actually cried over spilled milk in the past, but not today. Time to move on. Store the milk, clean up my office, and proceed to the major non-administrative task at hand, which is crafting my research narrative for my annual review, which is due in a week or so. Work on that for an hour, then get a phone call from my former student. He needs help with his teaching, and he wants to collaborate on a grant, and he wants to talk about the recent report put out by the math advisory panel. Hang up with him, and it's time for lunch. Wolf down lunch, and then meet with a person I'm interviewing for a transcribing job. I need him to transcribe about 42 hours of video data, and the interview is promising. It looks like he'll be competent and able to do the job.

Pump again. It goes a little better this time, no spilling. Worry over the lousy amount that I'm pumping and wonder if this means that the babies aren't getting enough to eat when they nurse. Make a conscious decision to not worry about that for the next two weeks, at which point they'll visit the doctor and get weighed again anyway. Now I have two full hours to work on my narrative. Two hours! Of uninterrupted time in a row! What a luxury. Get working on my narrative. Get interrupted by another professor wanting to discuss an upcoming agenda item for a meeting I have to attend. Back to the narrative. Get interrupted again by a student who is having trouble with his field placement.

Okay. There's still time. Continue working on my narrative, when, whoops, it's time for my next appointment. I meet with one of my graduate students about her thesis. I cut her off after an hour. Pump again. I've been sore and semi-engorged all day, and I realize that the pump just can't compare to a baby. Tell myself, for the thousandth time in a row, that I only have 8.5 months left of breastfeeding. Then I can stop without feeling too guilty. Back to the narrative -- oh no! It's 4:55 p.m. and I have to leave in 5 minutes! Pack everything up, haul all of my gear onto my back, and make the 30-minute trek home.

Come home to find out that Nora had basically refused to eat for the last two feedings. She's been a little off lately. Otherwise, however, marvel at all of the wonderful things our Twin Whisperer did, including playing with the babies, giving them tummy time, feeding them, bathing Nora, and somehow also getting a load of laundry washed and dried and folded, and sweeping the floors. Hooray for the Twin Whisperer. I feed Nora immediately, and fortunately she does nurse. Put Nora to bed. Make dinner hurriedly while Jake walks around with an awake Milo in the sling. Milo is supposed to be sleeping, but he's not. Eat half of my dinner when Nora wakes up screaming. Soothe Nora back to sleep. Eat the rest of my (cold) dinner. Wash the dishes. Jake is still dealing with an awake and now fussy Milo. Wash all of the bottles and pump parts. Get the mail. Milo is still awake, and whoops, it's time to feed the babies again.

Feed the babies. Soothe them to sleep. Pump. Answer emails from prospective students while pumping. Finish pumping. Wash bottles and pump parts. Do some more work, finally finishing a draft of the narrative. Change into pajamas, get ready for bed. Write this post. The end.

All in all, I'd say my first day back was more or less a success.