Part II
One of the most
common (and least helpful) things expectant parents hear is, “Boy, your life is
really going to change!” As parents of twins, this became a daily
occurrence. Family members, friends, and strangers at the store all seemed
linked by a common need to let us know that when our babies arrived, “things are sure going to be
different!”
Thankfully, we were
already on top of it and had vowed we’d be ready for this new and different
lifestyle. My wife had scoured the library and local bookstores for materials
on parenthood. We interviewed friends who already had children for hints, tips,
and lessons learned from their experiences. We enrolled in hours of classes to
help us prepare for the twins. We spent a weekend with a group of expectant
parents studying Childbirth Education, took eight hours of night classes on
nursing, and finished off the trifecta with a two-hour course titled “Mommy and
Me,” a riveting yet touching experience where I learned the practical
application of rectal thermometry.
Well-studied on
parenting stories and with these classes under our belts, I felt we had a
handle on how much change we were in for, thought we’d settle in fairly quickly
once we got past the Great Unknown of the actual delivery. As an example,
here’s a conversation between my wife and I during our first day in the
hospital:
Me: “The nurses are going to ask
whether we want the babies to sleep in the nursery tonight. I think we should
say no—I mean, we’re going to be going home in the next few days and we won’t
be able to pass them off to a nurse or a nursery then, so we might as well get
started having them around tonight, right?”
Kate: “Makes sense, OK, let’s do it.”
This noble plan
lasted until 9:00 p.m. By 9:30, after a frantic call to our nurse, the babies
were resting peacefully (presumably) in the nursery. Kate and I were fast asleep (definitively) in our
room…until midnight, that is, when the nurses brought Nolan and Nora in for their 12:00
feeding. And thus, we were introduced to The Feeding Schedule.
Ah, The Feeding
Schedule: the one common thread initiating all new mothers and fathers into the
collective kick-in-the-groin that is new parenthood. Mention The Feeding Schedule
to any new parent you meet and I promise you that eight in ten will either
cross themselves, shuddering, or break into tears. I firmly believe that
whatever diabolical super genius devised The Feeding Schedule is also responsible
for constructing Dick Cheney and unleashing Him upon this unsuspecting world.
Anyway...The
Feeding Schedule. We were instructed to feed our newborns every three hours.
Because of their low birth weights (5 lbs., 4 oz. for Nolan; 6 lbs. for Nora),
we also had to supplement these feedings with small bottles. Our schedule
consisted of round-the-clock feedings beginning at 12:00 a.m. and continuing
through to midnight, when the schedule would begin again. In the early days, a
typical feeding session went something like this: wake up 10 minutes prior to
feeding time to get things prepared; wake up the babies with a diaper change;
settle on the couch for feeding; wake up babies again (in those days, we
actually worked to keep them awake--hilarious, I know); 20-30 minutes of
intermittent nursing, followed by another 20-30 minutes of bottles; put twins
back in the crib; clean up; back to sleep. A typical feeding session lasted
anywhere from 60-90 minutes, which put us back in bed about an hour and a half
before we had to get up for the next round. Rinse. Repeat. For 10 weeks.
That’s right—10
weeks. As we got into these routines and the babies got a little older, things
became slightly more efficient--like a NASCAR pit crew we were frantically
exploring ways to shave off precious minutes here and eliminate wasted seconds
there, all in the quest for two full, unbroken hours of sleep between feedings.
The first time we pulled it off in under 50 minutes we celebrated with a
euphoria that bordered on the hysteric, and I place it fondly among our first
parenting “success” stories. But even achieving these efficiencies, those first
three months were brutal. I can count on one hand the number of nights where we
had more than 4 hours of unbroken sleep, and those first weeks passed in a blur
of coffee refills, missed meals, bad movies on FX, and marathons of Teen Mom
and Jersey Shore. Thanks to 24-hour play loops, night and day held no real
significance; I remember sitting on my couch one night watching Armageddon,
holding babies in each arm, only to find myself in the same position the next
day watching the exact same scene. Like that Bill Murray movie, Groundhog Day,
only no one was laughing.
And
so it went, all through January and into February. Finally Nora cracked the 10-pound
barrier, and almost immediately she began sleeping through the night. Nolan
soon followed. The shift was so abrupt and unexpected I didn’t believe it at
first, sure it was some kind of trap. The first night I woke nearly every hour
to check the monitor, certain something was wrong. The second night was every
other hour; by the third night, I started to believe that maybe, just maybe, we’d
reached that mythical Promised Land at which our parents and friends had
hinted, that time when “it gets better.” I woke on the morning of the fourth
day, seven (nearly) uninterrupted hours of sleep later, surprised to see the
calendar read March.
