Wonderful, but not easy...

Generally speaking, our days run like a well oiled machine. The boys wake up sometime between 6 and 8 to breast feed (depending on if they woke in the night to eat) and after being nursed and changed they get swaddled back up and back into bed until sometime between 9 and 11. After that we are on a 3 to 4 hour rotation all.day.long. It is a delicate dance of nurse, bottle, diaper, play, nap... over and over. Once per day play is replaced by solid food-- which is a complete joke at this point and is really just learning to sit in a highchair and open their mouths for the spoon. On most days the boys are up for the day by 10ish in the morning and are in our bedroom for their final feeding of the night at 10pm.

It sounds easy enough, and in reality it is easy enough- unless someone throws a wrench in it. Things like doctor appointments, fussy babies, company or occasionally something as simple as the TV being on while I'm nursing. Generally we're quick to recover, but other times it can be an hour before everyone is calmed down and ready to move on to the next step of the dance. Take today for instance- H woke up from his nap a bit early and instead of having to keep in quiet until it was actually time to nurse I just sat down with  him and started nursing. On any other day, this would have been EXACTLY what he wanted... today, not so much. He proceeded to scream and then suck and whimper, then scream and arch his back, then suck for a few minutes. I had his bottle already prepared so I fixed my shirt and tried just giving him the bottle- also, not a winner. I tried changing his diaper- no dice. I even went to my typical last resort for these types of things- I turned Micky Mouse Clubhouse on... Still screaming. By now it was time to feed A, so I had to just allow H to scream and cry while I fed A.

(As a sidenote, I think this is one aspect of twin parenting that singleton parents really don't seem to understand. Imagine your absolute most frustrating moment with your infant and then keep in mind a twin parent likely has another baby to take care of at the same time. Sometimes that means remaining in the same room as one sleeping baby with your screaming second baby. Sometimes the sleeping baby doesn't wake-- other times he/she does and then guess what? you have TWO screaming babies who cannot be reasoned with. Cue a third crier.... Mama. )

I cannot say this is the norm at our house, but to say that everyday is a piece of cake, is just not being truthful. Days are trying and hard and exhausting AND wonderful. I say all of this to illustrate the point:  while  being a mama to twins is perfectly wonderful, it is far from perfectly easy!