And the winner is . . .

No one! GH and I were both totally off on the twins' weights. They weighed in at:

Maddie: 14lbs 7oz
Riley: 14lbs 14oz

More than double their birth weights on both counts. They are getting big, just not as big as we thought.

All went well, even the shots. I'd been pretty nervous about the appointment because GH couldn't go with me and I was worried about consoling two unhappy campers post-shots. But we have a great pediatrician who helped out and got one of the nurses to help, too. It all went off as well as it could have, really. The kids cried while getting the shots (Who can blame them?) but calmed right down with some holding and nursing. The day care didn't call me, so they must not have been too unhappy this afternoon.

I was pleased that my pediatrician did not push starting solids too early and agreed that if Riley sleeps better in his car seat for now, let the man sleep in his car seat. She feels that he will outgrow that need to feel confined, but until then, no reason to torture him or us. Hooray!

I can't wait to go home and see them and GH. Only 15 more minutes at work.

For fun, here's a picture of me and the twins taken just yesterday. I think this is the first time I've posted a picture of myself online. Huh. Here I go, throwing caution to the wind!

Four Months

The twins have their four-month pediatric exam today. Boo, shots! But hooray for finding out just how big these kids really are!

GH and I always place bets on how much Maddie and Riley are going to weigh. So far, he's always won. He was correct to the ounce about their one-month and two-month weights. Here are our guesses this time:

GH
Maddie: 14lbs 14oz.
Riley: 17lbs 4oz.

ME
Maddie: 15lbs even
Riley: 17lbs even

If anything, I think we're both on the high side. But we'll see in just a few hours!

Tuesday 24 October, Better Known As "How Many Carbs Can I Eat in One Day?"

• a slice of pizza
• a pumpkin muffin
• some rice pilaf
• a piece of banana cake
• a goodly amount of peanut-butter filled pretzel nuggets

And it's only 3:24pm!

In Which I Am Not a Total Downer

Yowza, I have not posted in a long time. The good news is that things are slowly getting better and I've been focusing on taking care of myself, which has gotten in the way of posting.

Writing my "Beast Within" post was very cathartic, much more so than I expected. The babies have not been sleeping much better, but I've been much more able to deal with it. I guess I just needed to get all that stuff out.

In other baby news, I have started to give them some formula because I am still not keeping up with pumping. I send six bottles with them to day care, three per baby. Each bottle contains one ounce of formula and the rest is breast milk. I'm surprised at how visceral my reaction has been to having to give them some formula. I know it's OK, that it won't hurt them. And I am completely without judgment of anyone else who feeds his or her baby formula. Why do I judge myself so harshly? I'm getting over it, but it's harder than I would have thought, like almost anything about parenting. To assuage my white, liberal, working-mom, middle-class, overachieving guilt, I am giving them Earth's Best Organic formula. It makes me feel better and I truly believe that it's better for the babies, so that helps.

Sleeping is getting marginally better. Riley is our tough nut to crack. He reliably wakes up every three hours and just can't put himself back to sleep. He's not always hungry, sometimes he's not even fully awake. He just can't get through that sleep cycle and so he cries and cries. This was driving me INSANE for a while, but now I just gather him up, take him into the room with the glider, and rock and rock until he's sound asleep again. He's so warm and sweet and he won't be small forever. In fact, he's already pretty big. We'll find out next Monday at his four-month pediatric exam just how big he really is. In any case, I'm trying to make the best of it and just enjoy the dozy cuddle time.

We spent the day on Sunday out and about in gorgeous fall weather. It did me a world of good. My head felt clear, the babies enjoyed the sun, and it was nice to get out of the house. Must do more of that while the weather is still decent. Fall is so beautiful.

The Long-Overdue Cancer Update

GH had his first new treatment last Wednesday. So far, so good. The main side effect of the new medication is raging diarrhea, either during the infusion or 10-14 days post-infusion. He escaped the "during," but the jury is still out on the "post." He's six days out at this point, and he'll get another treatment on the fifteenth day, so that could be a real doozy.

Hair loss is another side effect. GH is not vain about his hair, but winter is coming and not having hair can make a body chilly. Luckily (I guess) he lost his hair from treatment last winter, too, so he has a stockpile of hats to help keep him toasty.

Emotionally, the cancer situation is tough. The treatment GH is on now is not standard; it's a kind of made-up protocol that his oncologist has crafted because we're at the end of the line on tried-and-true therapies. (For those of you who like the details, the current treatment is Irinotecan plus Avastin on days one and fifteen; Avastin alone on day eight.) It will take a few rounds to know if we're getting results. And if we aren't? Well, I just can't go there.

At least GH is feeling well physically. As always, we just try to take each day as it comes and enjoy what it offers. That's easier on some days than others.

Coping Mechanisms

Clearly, middle of the night waking and feedings are a major source of frustration for me lately. Since I have no idea when these interruptions are going to end, I think the most productive thing for me to do is to try to find a way to make them more palatable. Ideas so far:

• play soothing music while I'm nursing (luckily our radio has a remote, so if I just stash it by the couch, I can turn it on no problem)
• guided meditation while nursing
• comforting snack while nursing

Other ideas?

[For the record, GH talked to our pediatrician and she thinks that if the babies are getting up as much as they are to eat, they probably are not getting enough calories. She also thinks they sound ready to start experimenting with cereal. So we'll see. Today's pumping yield was awful, and we're burning through the frozen stores, so we're going to have to do something different soon.]

I don't mean to dwell on the negative, but check this out:

• GH starts a new treatment on Wednesday. Side effects include hair loss, nausea, diarrhea, fatigue, low blood counts, etc. etc. etc.
• The cat pooped and peed all over our living room yesterday. ALL OVER. Is she sick? Is it behavioral? Do I have time to do anything but clean it up and wonder?
• Up last night with babies at 11, 12, 3, and 4, then off and on until around 6:30.
• We need to get the front stairs of our condo replaced, to the tune of $1,300. Sigh.
• I started clenching my teeth again. Haven't done that for years. Gives me headaches, which I could do without.
• My first pumping session today produced a meager five ounces. This after the day care provider told me today that Maddie needs five ounce bottles instead of four, so I need a total of 27 ounces/day to keep the babies satisfied.
• Our company president resigned yesterday. I think I'm a passenger on a sinking ship.

The Beast Within

[This post was inspired by Emmie's "Mother Rage" post at All This/Better Make It a Double, which was in turn inspired by this post on the same subject at Bub and Pie.]

I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Central Africa for three years in the mid-late 90s. It was the amazing, life-changing experience you imagine Peace Corps to be, so much so that I stayed a an extra year once my initial two-year round was over.

By about halfway through my third year, I knew it was time for me to go home. I knew this because all of the cultural differences and daily adventures that I had previously found funny or entertaining or educational or charming became TOTALLY EFFING ANNOYING. It got to the point where I truly believed that if I physically harmed the woman at the post office that told me they were out of stamps (the post office! out of stamps! what gives?!), I would feel better. The desire to hurt someone else, that deepest form of anger, was something I had never experienced and it scared the living daylights out of me.

So I came home. I went back to normal. I did not want to hurt people. I bought stamps and ate a different kind of breakfast cereal every day. The feelings of rage went away, and I thought they went away for good.

Fast-forward ten years. I become a parent. The first twelve weeks were very hard, harder than I had ever imagined they would be. But they were also magical and life-changing and wonderful. I was full of adrenaline and patience. Nighttime feedings were infused with awe and joy. And besides, everyone said that the sleeping thing got better after twelve weeks, so I could see light at the end of the tunnel when I started to feel impatient or annoyed.

Twelve weeks came and went. Things didn't get better. They actually got worse. The twins started to sleep less rather than more. They got up early, really early. They were harder to put back to sleep after feedings. The sleep deprivation started to catch up with me. When I would hear them stir in the night, I would feel annoyance and anger rather than the desire to nurture, care, and protect. But I would grit my teeth and feed the babies, and as I watched them eat in the dark and quiet of my living room, my anger would usually dissipate. "It's only a phase. It won't last forever."

We're at sixteen weeks now. As the sleeping gets no better and maybe worse, the anger gets more intense. Not too long ago, I yelled at Maddie when she wouldn't stop crying. Gone are the days of whispered "I love yous" while I change them or swaddle them in the night. It's a silent operation now, during which I count the seconds until I can be back in bed. My body is tense, hunched as I nurse. I've started to clench my teeth again and get migraines. I lash out at my husband knowing that even though it's inappropriate, at least he's an adult, not a baby.

I cry as I feed them, angry tears that come from being frustrated and unsure that I can keep doing this. I dread bedtime, dread the thought of being awakened by crying, dread the feelings of anger that flood me when I hear the babies stir. I feel defeated, defeated by my anger and by lack of sleep. I haven't slept more than two hours in a row in at least two weeks.

I hate being controlled by rage. I hate feeling angry at my children for doing no more than being babies. I hate that all of this makes me petty and small. I hate that I feel jealous when my husband can trundle back to bed as I finish feeding the babies. He has cancer, for crying out loud! Can't I be more charitable? Especially given all the things he does for me. All of this anger makes me feel like a bad parent, an inferior mother, like I've made all the wrong choices along the way.

It's comforting to know that, as scary as they are, I'm not alone in these feelings. I wish none of us had to go through this. I wish that my "This, too, shall pass" mantra wasn't sounding so trite, wearing so thin. I'm ready for this to pass. Every night I think this will be my night. I have to be right someday, don't I?

A Problem of Economics

[DISCLAIMER: I owe a post about GH and his meeting with his oncologist. It's coming. Condensed version: new treatment starting next week. We're not out of options yet.]

I'm having an economic problem that's going nothing to do with money. No, no, this problem has to do with the good ol' principle behind modern capitalism: supply and demand.

The issue at hand is that my babies' demand for breastmilk has outstripped my supply since they started daycare. Here's how the numbers work out:

• I send 24oz. of milk with them to daycare each day, divided into six bottles of four ounces each.
• They eat three times at daycare (at intervals of three hours, roughly 10:00, 1:00, 4:00). In theory, each baby takes a four-ouncer at each feeding.
• I pump around 20 ounces total over three pumping sessions at work.

TOTAL: net loss of four ounces/day, if things go according to plan

But it's worse than that because things aren't going according to plan. To wit:

• Maddie eats more than 12 ounces/day, and Riley slightly less. But Riley is getting accustomed to the bottle and is catching up. Soon each will need more than 12 ounces/day.
• Maddie had been getting a four ounce bottle at night before bed because if I just breastfeed her she and Riley both wake up STARVING just a couple of hours after I put them down for the night. So before bed, GH now gives Maddie a bottle and I feed Riley off both breasts. This holds them for about five hours.

RECALCULATED TOTAL: net loss of eight ounces/day, with loss growing.

We are burning through our frozen milk supply. I think the babies are having a growth spurt--they used to sleep much longer, and when they are waking now it's clearly to eat, not just for sport. Also, they have real trouble going three hours between feedings during the day whereas they used to make it for three-four hours easily. But maybe it's not a growth spurt and I'm just not making enough food for them?

I'm doing everything I can to up my supply. I'm taking fenugreek supplements and drinking fenugreek tea (which might make me and the babies smell like maple syrup! Yum! Maple babies!) and I'm either pumping or letting the babies eat basically all the time to signal my body to up the supply.

I feel like my body is failing me. I feel like I'm starving our children. While I acknowledge formula supplements as a totally legitimate choice, I still feel like I'm failing for not being able to do this.

I'm going to call our pediatrician on Monday and see what she says. For now, do any of you moms out there have tips for increasing supply?

The Babyphone

So I pump three times a day at work to generate the requisite amount of milk the babies need each day at daycare. I do my pumping in a glorified closet since I work in a cube and that would just not be OK. The closet is OK, actually. I set up a cardboard box to use as a table and I use the time away from my desk to relax and recharge. I bring a book with me and chill out.

I also bring my cell phone and use the time to get caught up on calls. But I hate using my anytime minutes. Today, when I first got to work, I went to see our Business Systems Manager and asked him if there was a phone jack in the closet. Sure enough, there is. He agreed to set me up.

I just got a call from the Babyphone. Hooray! Let the pumptime socializing begin!

Petty, Small

I applied for a new job a couple of weeks ago. Can't remember if I blogged about that or not. In any case, it sounded great. A manageable step up in responsibility, small company, easy commute, a slightly different and more interesting focus than my current position. I was not a perfect candidate, but I felt like I was a strong contender.

I didn't get the job. That, in an of itself, was not so hard to take. I don't expect to apply for one job and have that turn out to be the one I get.

What smarts is that the job went to a current coworker of mine who is less qualified. Her degree is slightly more relevant, but in terms of time spent in the trenches and directly applicable skills, she's a few years behind me. Sigh.

I'm still smarting for getting passed over for an obvious promotion right before I went on leave. And now I have to put on the happy, cheery face for my coworker when really I'm feeling somewhat petty and small.

Welcome back to office politics, right?

Roundup

TWINS
Things are good in Twinville. Riley is slowly but surely getting the hang of bottle feeding. They are sleeping OK at night, not great, but this is the transition-to-daycare week, so I expect some bumps along the road.

ME
I really like being back at work. I am more patient with the babies when I get a break from them and I love doing something that I know how to do all day. My actual job is lame; my company is in flux, I harbor some residual bitterness about not getting the promotion I applied for before I left, and the projects I have to work on are lackluster. But despite all that, I like rediscovering my professional identity. Plus I can show off pictures of the twins to all of my coworkers!

GH
Feels good. Looks great. Has appointment with oncologist to talk about the fact that despite feeling and looking good, his numbers are all headed in the wrong direction. We anticipate a treatment change. We fear that we're out of treatment options. We'll find out more in just a couple of hours.

Thanks to everyone who celebrated my Blogiversary with me. I was really touched by all the comments. As time permits, I look forward to discovering some of the blogs of the lurkers. A new blog is always a fun way to take a break from a boring project at work!

I'll post more about GH once I've got the news and have time to process. Hopefully I'll have something positive to say.

Happy Blogiversary to Me!

I guess it was fate that this evening made me notice that October was my anniversary month. I decided to click on through and see what the actual day was. Lo and behold, it was 8 October of last year that I began blogging.

So much has changed:

I have twins.
I still have my husband.
I have gotten support that I never imagined from a group of people I can't even see who live inside my computer.
I am older.
I am wiser.
I am more humble.
I am both happier and sadder.
I am way, way more tired.

This seems the perfect time to say thank you to those of you who read my blog. I'm constantly amazed by the fact that I have regular readers. Are y'all gluttons for punishment? For the most part (twin pictures excluded), I'm not exactly a ray of sunshine in your day. But I don't want to deter you because your comments and your presence in my life mean a lot to me. I've been lucky enough to meet a few of you in person, and you've been even more amazing in real life than in blogville.

In any case, thank you. Thank you. And an invitation to any lurkers out there: take this opportunity to say hello if you'd like.

Here's to many more years of this.

All-Time Lows

Madeleine got up at 4:45 this morning. She would not go back to sleep. I tried every trick in my book. Bouncing on the ball, swinging, swaying, going outside (in a t-shirt and my underwear! in 50° weather!), more bouncing, singing, you name it. And guess what I discovered after 45 minutes of doing this?

Yelling doesn't work, either!

Yes, it's true. I yelled at her. "Madeleine," I shouted, "You have got to go to sleep! I am too stressed out to deal with you!"

It was an all-time low. Of course yelling doesn't work. I felt like the world's worst parent.

I started to cry. I heard Riley in the bedroom crying, too. GH was trying to console him. It's too early for the twins to eat. I've been up since 4:00 (Riley woke up briefly and needed comforting then, and I never got back to sleep before Maddie got up.) GH is consoling Maddie. Riley is hanging out in the swing.

As for me, I want to break every plate in my house. What I really want to do is go out running, but no sports bra on earth is going to contain the wrath that is my milk-laden breasts, so forget that.

The problem is not so much that the kids got up early. They are babies. They are not doing it on purpose. They just woke up. It happens.

The problem is that I can't explain to them that they need to cut me some slack because their dad's platelets were too low for chemo yesterday. And his tumor marker numbers are rising. So are his liver functions. Last week's CT scan shows that while the tumor in the pancreas is stable, the mets in the lungs and liver are larger and/or more numerous. Clearly the current treatment is no longer working.

We'll meet with the oncologist next week to discuss next steps. GH's oncologist is a miracle worker, but I know we're running out of options.

What if this is the beginning of the end? Now that would be an all-time low.

Sniglar, My Bitch

GH and I went to IKEA on Monday to buy some stuff for the twins' room. One thing we got is a changing table.

You know how IKEA furniture has funny Scandinavian names? Our changing table is called "Sniglar."

I laughed when I read that on the box. I stopped laughing when I tried to put Sniglar together. I had not bought anything from IKEA for a while and I had forgotten how frustrating their pictographic directions can be.

It took me a while to show Sniglar who's boss. Upon tightening the last screw, I looked up at GH and proclaimed triumphantly, "Yo, Sniglar, you're my bitch!"

Then I started laughing again.

(Maybe you had to be there.)

(The Neverending Transitions)

Foolish me! I thought we had turned the corner on the sleeping in the co-sleeper thing when the night after my last post, the babies slept from 8:00 to 3:30 then 3:30 to 6:00. It was awesome. I figured that while it might not go that great every night from there on out, the worse was over.

HA HA HA! Joke's on me!

Last night was rough. Both babies up at 11:30, back to sleep by midnight, up again at 3:30 to eat. Not so bad, right? Well, Maddie never really went back to sleep. She was up and down, up and down, up and down until finally she was just up at 5:30. Yuck, yuck. (Riley slept 'til 6:45 after the 3:30 feeding.) I was ready to send Maddie back where she came from and I'm not even the one who spent most of the night trying to get her back to sleep (Thanks, GH.) My other thought was to just put her in her own room and go ahead and give the ol' "cry it out" method a try. I am theoretically philosphically opposed to CIO, but I'm starting to come around.* Feh.

We'll see how they do tonight. They spent all day today at daycare, a trial run for my return to work next week. As predicted, Maddie was a trooper. She napped well (so they say), and ate three four-ounce bottles at the scheduled times. Riley, well, there's another story. He refused his first bottle outright. At the next feeding, he choked down the four ounces under duress. At the next feeding, he ate a whole ounce. Wowie! Surprisingly, he was not too starved when we got home. I gave him a solo feeding when we got home since Maddie had just eaten and daycare. He ate a normal amount of time, then took a short nap. I'm worried that he'll be up all night wanting to eat, but he and Maddie both seemed pretty exhausted all evening, and tired. I think it was quite a long day for them.

As for my day, once GH (who played hookey from work) and I dropped the twins off I burst into inconsolable tears and spent all day calling to check on them. Wait, no that's not exactly what happened. In truth, I turned up the music, rolled down my windows, and drove away in a cloud of glee. I feel like a bad mother for admitting that, but boy, did I need a break. GH and I went out for breakfast, did some errands, watched three episodes of House MD, lounged around, ate, and generally relaxed. It was great. It gave me hope that while I'm not excited about going back to my job, it will be something different than running ragged with twins, and I could use a change of scene.

I was happy to pick the babies up, although I was hoping they would give me smiles when they saw me and instead they just bobbled their heads around and looked confused. At least they weren't screaming their heads off or anything like that. I guess, selfish me, I just wanted some recognition from them that I'm the one (along with GH, of course) who has been taking care of them for fourteen weeks and that they like me better than daycare providers, dammit. I didn't necessarily get that sense. But I did get a day off, and that was good.

*As an aside, I don't want to start a CIO debate. (Do I have enough readers for a debate?) (Have I used enough parenthetical references in this post?) I don't think CIO is child abuse, like some people do. I also don't think that for me, for the twins, and for GH it's the right choice. But ask me again in a month when I'm even more sleep-deprived.

Milestones

The babies are doing so much lately: laughing up a storm, grabbing for things (with some amount of success), pushing themselves up during tummy time, trying out the doorway jumper, babbling, and generally just being cute as can be. Here are some pictures: a closeup of Smiley Riley, the two if them sitting on our bed, getting ready to interview their next guest on TwinTalk, and a closeup of Maddie.

Transitions (or, Sleepless in Boston)

My mom came to visit for a week. It was awesome, but I was so busy taking care of the babies and having fun with her that I didn't post.

I'm back!

I was also busy NOT SLEEPING while my mom was here. GH and I decided to use her week-long visit as the time to transition the twins from sleeping in their car seats all night to sleeping in their bed. We'd been putting their car seats right into the co-sleeper next to our bed and had gotten to a point where they were up once a night, usually around 3:00, then sleeping until 6:00 or so. Pretty good. We knew the transition to sleeping in the co-sleeper on their backs would be hard and wanted to do it a) before I went back to work and b) at a time when someone else could help me and GH could sleep in the spare room since we anticipated a difficult time.

Boy, "difficult" doesn't even come close.

The first night, the kids were up every two hours or so. And by "up" I mean "wide awake and screaming." It sucked. I was determined not to feed them more than twice a night, so my mom and I did a lot of bouncing, rocking, etc. to get them back to sleep. Gar. Needless to say, I was a little bleary-eyed and ready to throw in the towel.

But we persevered, with changes along the way. We elevated the crib so that the babies were sleeping at an angle, more like the car seats. We have them in "sleep positioners," foam wedges that surround them and give them an enclosed feeling. We unplugged the nightlight in our room to encourage them to sleep longer/deeper/better. I would love to say that every night things have improved, but they just haven't. We're making sloooooooow progress, but it's frustrating. Last night was the best night so far; I only fed them once, but Maddie had to be rocked to sleep once and at 4:30 we gave in and put them in their car seats until 6:30. But we're getting there. I will be so glad when this transition is over.

We're encouraging them to take naps in their bed, too, just to get them more and more used to sleeping in a bed. And I let Riley sleep half of last night on his side, which our pediatrician says is OK. I think that helped. Like I said, we're getting there, but I must say again:

GOD DAMN THIS PARENTING STUFF IS HARD!

I've been thinking a lot about babies and sleep (surprise, surprise). The more I think about it, the more I realize how much we're asking of them. We want them to sleep 10-12 hours in a row; most adults can't sleep an adult 6-8 hours at a stretch without getting up for some reason. Babies can't adjust the covers, change position (mostly), change the amount of light in the room. But we expect them to just sleep the night away. It's a lot to ask. I try to remember that when I'm bouncing someone on the yoga ball at some ungodly hour. Sigh.

I've also been thinking a lot about resentment and anger. I was prepared for the sacrifices of parenting. I really was. I miss reading, going to the movies, eating out at fancy restaurants, sleeping in, running into the coffee shop on my way to a friend's house (not worth getting the babies out of the car seats . . .), taking my time browsing in stores. But I knew I was going to give that all up for a while. I'll get that stuff back and I'm totally OK with not having it right now. What's blindsided me about being a parent is the anger I can feel towards the babies. I am never without a feeling of deep, deep love for them and I've certainly never felt like harming them. But sometimes they make me so damn mad for things they can't control. I was furious with Maddie for being awake last night at 11:30. Furious! As I bounced her back to sleep, I was loaded with tension that I'm sure she could sense. And with that anger sometimes comes resentment about having to give so much, having to give up so much. Things are just so hard in the middle of the night when I'm tired. I take deep breaths and remind myself of how much I love them, how small a slice of my life this middle-of-the-night stuff is.

I think the transitions--car seat to bed, home to daycare (two trial days this upcoming week), back to work--make it harder. Transitions, change, are hard for anyone and that certainly includes babies.