Monthly Archive for February, 2007

The House

Published
by
twinutero
on February 22, 2007
in Books, Coping and Fair & green
. 3 Comments

I don’t consider myself a clean-freak… or a neatnik… or even particularly tidy, although I do have the occasional manic organizing binge. I’ve lived in small, rented, student-style apartments for too much of my adult life to have developed a robust housekeeping ethic.

Now that I co-own a house and have three toddlers, however, I feel more motivation and more responsibility to keep our home decent, if not sparkling.

It will never be sparkling. Here’s why:

  • The kids are perfecting their demolition skills, and the wreckage can be startling at times. “Looks like a grenade went off,” one visitor remarked. It’s challenging enough just to keep up. Thomas is learning to put his toys away and with prompting and supervision and more prompting, he will do it. The twins see order as opportunity.
  • We live in a hundred-year-old house that we bought in unlivable condition six months before our first son was born. Clever entrepreneurship or complete naivety, we’re not sure. In any case, we’re still renovating.
  • Renovations aside, there’s always an easy distraction from housekeeping. When the kids are awake, I’d rather spend time with them than scrubbing the toilet. When the kids are asleep, I’d rather spend time with my husband, or write, read, sleep. Just about anything but clean. And besides, as my cousin once said, “Who wants to be remembered for having a clean toilet?”

Consequently, we sort of muddle through the housekeeping. There is no routine or schedule. Things generally get done when impulse, chance and a fair amount of debris coincide. It’s easier now that one of us can comfortably (well, reasonably) look after all three kids. That frees either me or my husband to do chores. When I am on my own with the kids and have a break, I sometimes set the stove timer. Twenty minutes for chores; the rest of the time for me. Really, this daily balancing act can make you crazy….

I recently found some advice, inspiration even, in a book by Ellen Sandbeck called Organic Housekeeping. While it’s probably unhealthy to get too excited over a book on housekeeping, it’s definitely unhealthy to sterilize and perfume your house with toxic cleansers, especially if you have young children. Sandbeck devotes a chapter to the kitchen, bath and bedroom, as well as laundry, car, garden, and pet care, and a small section on baby-proofing. She meticulously describes how to clean using natural products, and organize your house so that you spend less time cleaning. Not a page-turner, perhaps, but entirely useful when time is limited and safety is a priority.

Nursing twins

Published
by
twinutero
on February 14, 2007
in Feeding and Guilt
. 1 Comment

I was asked many questions during the waddling stage of my twin pregnancy. Among the most frequent was “Are you planning to nurse them?” The question was posed with some combination of curiosity, admiration and incredulity, usually depending on the speaker’s own experience with breastfeeding.

I did plan to nurse my twins. In fact, I took a prenatal class on the topic. From this class I learned that it was possible, either in succession or in tandem, and that many mothers have nursed multiples for months or even years. I was also encouraged by my experience with our first son: Nursing came easily to both of us. I was confident that I could and would nurse the twins as well.

And I did, exclusively, for their first four days. Both Jon and Alex were voracious and gained weight before leaving the hospital, something the nurses said was unusual for twins. Except for the fact that I rarely slept, things were going pretty well.

Enter the unexpected. After one day at home, I was rushed back to the hospital with indescribable pain. My parents rushed to the store for bottles and formula. I was in and out of the hospital for the next ten days but was determined not to give up breastfeeding. I pumped… and pumped… every few hours when I was alone in the hospital and when I was in too much pain to hold my sons. We had two beautiful babies, but it was otherwise a pretty rough time.

I can’t remember making a deliberate decision, but we soon developed a routine of breastfeeding one twin while formula-feeding the other. We’d switch their places at each feeding. It was a good compromise - easier physically for me, and the babies were still breastfed about four times a day.

When I was stronger (a month or so after delivery), I again tried exclusive breastfeeding. As with everything in parenting, there’s the ideal and the reality. Ideally, twins would eat and sleep at the same time, thereby making life easier for their parents. In reality, twins are individuals who likely have different eating and sleeping patterns. Alex likes to do everything quickly, except eat. He would nurse and drink his bottle at leisure, sometimes taking a break to digest. Jon likes to do everything slowly – except eat. He would gulp milk so fast that he would choke, and cry, and get even more hungry, and even drink faster, and choke again. Try tandem nursing that!

Successive nursing might have worked, had I been healthier mentally and physically, and had we full-time help. But I wasn’t and we didn’t. My husband was back to a demanding job, my parents were coping with another family emergency a thousand miles away, and we had a 15-month-old son who was no doubt wondering what all the fuss was about. We therefore settled into a schedule of nursing and supplementing at each feeding, and continued this way for six months.

I stopped when Alex stopped. Alex has a rather fiery temperament. When he’s good, he’s very very good. When he’s bad, well, suffice to say he was unequivocal in his preference for the bottle. Jon would probably have continued but I was, frankly, in need of a rest. I had been pregnant and/or breastfeeding for two and a half years, I was well below my pre-pregnancy weight, and I was exhausted, thoroughly exhausted.

Am I rationalizing? Probably. Do I feel guilty about not nursing more and for longer? Yes – and no. We all know “breast is best”. How could it be otherwise? I would advise all mothers to try breastfeeding. If it’s your first time, be persistent. If you have multiples, be even more persistent. It is something that must be taught to, and learned by both mother and baby. And it’s beautiful when it happens.

It is easy, however, to underestimate the tremendous energy needed to breastfeed, especially if you’re feeding two (or more!) babies. You have to eat often and well, and you have to be rested. You have to have help. You have to find what works for your babies and for you.

A few asides:

  1. We use Medela bottles, nothing else. They are made from polypropylene, whereas most baby bottles are made from polycarbonate. There is evidence that bisphenol-A, a chemical used in making polycarbonate, mimics estrogen and causes developmental disorders. Why take a chance?Some useful sites:
    Wikipedia entry on Bisphenol-A
    Environment California’s Guide to Bisphenol-A in Baby Bottles
  2. On a different note, chances of conceiving twins are apparently nine times higher while breastfeeding. Just so you know….

All together now

Published
by
twinutero
on February 5, 2007
in Learning & play, Siblings and Sleep
. 0 Comments

Today is a good day for writing about sibling cooperation. Having just negotiated one of the most chaotic, whirling-tantrum, brother-bites-brother mornings on record, I can now, as the kids nap, reflect on how they sometimes do, and often don’t play nicely together.

Our parenting books claim that children do not play collaboratively until age two. Younger kids may play alongside each other, but do not engage one another. They also say that children under three cannot recognize or respond to feelings in others. Perhaps these are standard opinions in child psychology, but we’ve all heard stories of twins who display an innate understanding and inseparable bond, who play in their own little world of two, and who create an early and exclusive language.

Based on the limited sample of my three kids, I’d say both views are true.

From birth, Alex and Jon slept together, first in the same bassinet and later in the same crib. This seemed to comfort them, which is understandable given how they had spent the previous nine months. Thomas, who was was fifteen months old when the twins were born, showed immediate curiosity and affection. He would routinely peer over the side of the bassinet and occasionally try to climb into it. He seemed always aware of his new brothers, but rarely jealous. When he returned from home-care in the evening, he would kiss them both before racing to his toys.

I wish I could say this peaceful brotherly love is all we have known. But no. Thomas has since entered the “terrible twos” and has learned to express himself both verbally and (in classic two-year-old fashion) non-verbally. He still shows beautiful love and caring for his brothers: He has comforted their crying; retrieved fallen bottles and soothers; read to them from books he has memorized; become amazingly adept at feeding them; and on occasion even shared his most precious cars. He is two, however, so he has also hit his little brothers, bitten them, pushed them, told them to stay home, refused to share toys, and most frequently, ordered me to put his brothers down so my arms would be free for him. I suppose none of this is unusual.

Interaction between Alex and Jon was less predictable, at least for me. They are dizygotic twins – no more alike genetically than any two siblings. In fact, Alex and Jon are polar opposites. (More on individuality in a future post.) They do, nonetheless, have a close and quite fascinating relationship.

At about four months old, the twins began to show more than a simple awareness of one another. They began to show an awareness of one another’s soother. Side-by-side in the stroller, Alex would quite earnestly pull the soother from Jon’s mouth and put it in his own. Jon would retaliate. This kind of interaction quickly progressed from soothers, to bottles, to toys. Like all young toddlers, they want what the other has, and they will steal, bite, hit and cry to get it.

But I have also seen interaction between Alex and Jon that I think is less typical for one-year-olds. They clearly play together. One will initiate a chase, the other will laugh infectiously, and they’re both off, up and down the hallway, back and forth from kitchen to living room, keeping tabs on each other and laughing all the way. The same kind of laughter erupts when together they discover something new: a pile of diaper wraps; a big box of Lego; a tunnel of chairs beneath the table.

Now fourteen months old, the twins are starting to utter their first words. Jon appears to have been born an engineer and is fascinated by all things electrical. His first word was “light” which he says with eureka-like enthusiasm while pointing to the nearest or newest light source. Not to be outdone, Alex began the same sort of light-identification about a week after Jon. They have learned several words from each other in this way.

Even when their words are not comprehensible, the twins appear to communicate with each other. This is most obvious when they are sitting at the dinner table. The conversation goes something like this:

Jon: “Abith.”
Alex: “Booda.”
Jon: “Oog.”
Alex: “Abeet abeeda.”

And so on. Who knows if they are talking, but they are clearly taking turns. And when they aren’t fighting over them, I have also seen them take turns with their toys. Just last weekend, I watched Alex hand a Tupperware lid to Jon, who put it to his face as if to kiss it. Jon then handed a different lid to Alex who also gave it a kiss. Back and forth went the lids and kisses.

The downside of this mutual awareness is mutual awakenings. We moved the twins to different beds when they were about two months old. A short while later, we moved them to different rooms in an attempt to stop them from waking each other. Once comforted by being in the same bassinet, they now sleep better alone and in silence. Perhaps separating them was a mistake. I am digressing. One day, when I am feeling strong and optimistic, I will write about our many and varied nighttime adventures….

(And no, I did not write this entire post during a single nap!)