inspired adventurer: Limping Through Month Three

Three months exactly in this photo

There appears to be a wave frequency to this twin thing. One month good, one month not so good. Month three was the month of every 1-2 hour feedings all night. Tired days and tired nights. Wondering when they would go back to the 3-6 hour sleep stretches. Which finally returned about one week ago. Then we all got sick this week.

Breastfeeding marches on, with my persistence leading the way. I can't say this has been easy either, other than I have excellent supply and babies have been good nursers. I experienced the plugged milk duct last month (severely painful, so that you're crying when breastfeeding), and have had sore nipples and a fissure on my left side, which I'm still working to heal. It's been about two months of problems with the left side. I'm ready to be done with the problems. But I'm not hopeful that it's going to be easy. I've been working with the lactation consultants and trying everything to get the fissure healed, but so far no luck.

What twins do to your body: they split your abdominal muscles (called diastasis). I thought maybe I'd gotten away without diastasis. But I went in for a check last week and have a three and a half finger separation between the sides of my ab muscles. Which means I have to be very careful not to worsen it, and I need to do exercises to encourage them to return to their previous position. Otherwise your stomach pooches out by the end of the day, hence the "are you expecting?" questions. I have a 40 minute DVD routine to do but it's almost impossible to find time to do it. So I'm seeing a PT for some exercises next month, hopefully that I can slip in here and there.

The babies. They are pretty darn good. The mild evening fussiness like most infants. Still pretty easy to soothe. Some quite desperate reliance on walks most afternoons- although the last week at least 2/4 of us have been sick at any given time, so we have been practicing naps at home, and they are going pretty good. I can get a lot more done at home than on a walk.

These two are overall good little buggers. They're smiling and really into the world around them. They love being talked to and carried around. We can make funny faces at them and they're amused. We're all still learning how to be with each other. They've started enjoying the swing. They can grab and bat at things with their hands. Keith laughs a lot.

We're in the process of hiring a nanny as well, and that's a big job- trying to decide who to entrust with your children's care. I'd thought about doing a daycare but it seems like it would be so much work to get them ready to go every day that I'm going to work (we were going to put them by my work so I could nurse at lunch.) They might end up in daycare after a while but hopefully we can keep them out of it for the first year.

Oh, and this week Keith has started rejecting the bottle. I am hoping that we can get this turned around, as the timing is rather inopportune with me headed back to work in a month.

Twins. Twins. Twins. I think that everyone experiences what I'm experiencing but I think it's on a larger scale with two infants. Somedays I think I cannot make it through. And then it will get better and I'll think, "I'm getting the hang of it." I guess that's how it goes. One foot in front of the other.

The thing is that all of this is worth it. What I love best about having my kids is how my focus is redirected from me and my world, to them and their world. My whole purpose for living is different now. The small thing of getting up in the morning and the two of them smiling in unison on the bed while I talk to them and laughing while I make funny faces. When they fall asleep after breastfeeding. Figuring out what was making them cry and seeing their relief when it's fixed. Playing on the changing table. The simple things that make up life with infants.

The happiest discovery is that I run a bath and take one kid in at a time. Keith loves to "swim" in the water, kicking with a determined look on his face, smiling and laughing. Lauren lounges on my tummy, feet and hands dangling. The first time we did this, she kept turning her head sideways, trying to drink the water, with her eyes open as she did this (didn't seem to care that her open eye was in the water). They both love to stare up at the shower head and the black and white walls of the tub. I'd guess the bathtub is like the womb for them, and they seem to love it now. I cherish that time with them. It's so sweet. And will be gone before I know it, like so many things that have already passed.