twinutero

On hearing that we have a toddler and infant twins, many people have asked, “How do you do it?” Some days are better than others, but here is an example of “how we did it” one day last week.

The day never really begins or ends because we’re still up around the clock, but I’ll start at 5:30 am, the time I got out of bed with no hope of returning until nightfall. My husband had the twins, Alex and Jon, the previous night in the third floor bedroom. I was on the second floor and woke to the sound of our oldest son, Thomas, crawling out of his bed, collecting the cars and trains that he insists on sleeping with and stumbling to the safety gate at his bedroom door. “Mommie…. I wake up.”

He’s not the only one who “wake up”. I can hear the twins bouncing in their cribs. I take Thomas to the living room, postponing once again our toilet training efforts. I settle him on the couch, get him some milk, and calm his protests when I tell him that I am going back upstairs to collect his brothers. Alex and Jon are excited to see me and seem to compete for my attention. I pick up Alex. Jon cries louder and jumps higher. I calm his protests as I take Alex downstairs. Back to the third floor to get Jon. All the boys have soaked their pajamas. I need coffee.

Since my husband was on night duty, I have the early morning shift. I start the diapering assembly line. All the kids “resist diaper changes”, as the books say. Resist is really too mild a term. They struggle and cry and twist onto their stomachs. If I have the energy, I can sing, make funny noises or even play the harmonica to quell the conflict. I don’t have this energy at 5:30 in the morning. As a result, diapering usually happens in stages. First the removal, then the struggle for freedom and the bare-bum wandering, then the inevitable pee on the floor, and finally a resumption of the struggle until the diapers are on. A similar routine happens many many times a day, partly because we are using cloth diapers. More on this seemingly insane decision in a future post.

I plug in the kettle for coffee and start to make breakfast. The twins play well together now, and seem more comfortable as a twosome than they do alone. Of course, they regularly bite each other, steal toys and hit one another on the head – outbursts of crying occur about every five minutes. Thomas, being two, has a more frustrating time keeping his Lego constructions and train tracks safe from his curious brothers. In general though, life is getting easier, if more chaotic, has they get older. I have time to clean up (a bit), get breakfast for the kids, intervene in skirmishes and get lots of hugs and soggy kisses. I finish making coffee by about 7:00 and get breakfast for myself by about 9:30.

It’s pouring rain. My husband usually takes Thomas to home-care on his bike. Today he uses the car. I settle the twins for their naps, and think about how to get out of the house today. Morning naps last about half an hour these days, long enough for me to have a shower and finish washing our bevy of bottles. I decide that we’ll take an exciting trip to the pharmacy across the road to renew Jon’s prescription for diaper rash cream. Not exactly an mind-expanding outing for the twins, or a refreshing break for me, but with the driving rain, no car and a relatively unwieldy double stroller, options are limited. The prescription takes a while to be filled, so I take the kids to the doctor’s clinic next door and let them play with the toys in the waiting room. For them, it’s as good as play group. They watch the cars outside from the floor-to-ceiling window and, despite my efforts, chew all available toys. No doubt, I have just infected them with the latest strain of cold virus.

Home in time for lunch which is a messy, messy affair. They’re old enough to want the spoon, but too young to actually get it into their mouth. They sit at opposite ends of the table and I feed them simultaneously. Lunch and clean up take about half an hour.

The details of this particular day are now sketchy. It’s at least ten days after I started this post and after the day happened. That’s an indication of how much time I have to write. My account of the rest of the day is therefore a composite – a blend of the best and worst.

Afternoon naps are regular in that they always happen. They don’t, however, always happen at the same time. In fact, consecutive sleeping is probably the most exasperating part of raising twins. As my husband constantly and rightly reminds me, much hinges on expectations. I’m usually bound for frustration if I envision two sleeping babies and a napping mother. Nonetheless, I try. I put Alex in the crib in one room, give him a bottle and tell him it’s nap time. I do the same for Jon in the next room. When they start to protest, I go back and forth between the two, calming, reassuring, and returning them to the crib, until either they are asleep or I give up. Our complex relationship with sleep is the subject of yet another future post.

Thomas arrives home with my husband at about 5:30. I try to have something lined up for dinner before they arrive – not out of a honey-I’m-home wifely duty but because (1) I miss them both during the day and would rather not spend the evening cooking, (2) I want the kids to eat well and (3) if my husband cooks after work, we don’t eat until 7 or 8 which is too late for the kids. Why do I feel the need to rationalize making dinner?

The evenings are a blur. We try to keep Thomas at the table for something resembling a family meal. Sometimes we even get the twins to the table as well. Usually though, one of us eats while the other races around calming crying, getting bottles, wiping up spills. There is surely an easier way.

Alex and Jon go to bed around 7. My husband rocks one to sleep, then the other while I start Thomas’ more lengthy bedtime routine. He gets a bath (most nights), teeth brushed (most nights) and several stories (every night). This routine is long partly because he’s a toddler and likes to take his time, and partly because this is often the only one-on-one time I have with him during the day. By 8:30, all the kids are in bed and we have time to wash dishes, clean up toys, talk to each other…. But the relative calm doesn’t last long. The twins start getting restless around 9:30 and both still wake up regularly throughout the night. We therefore turn in early in the hope of getting enough sleep to sanely get through the next day.

…

My great-grandfather was a twin. I have a tintype of him with his brother when they were about eight years old. According to family history, their mother not only sewed their matching wool jackets and pants, but sheered the sheep and spun the wool to do so. No doubt she also grew most of their food, made all their meals from scratch (there was nothing else), maintained the house, and who knows what else. How did she do it?

How do parents of higher-order multiples, or children with special needs do it? How on earth do parents living in war and poverty do it?

Our life is busy – and at times exhausting, frustrating, chaotic, and mundane. But it’s also loving, rewarding and very often comical, fascinating and entertaining. We have the fortune of three healthy boys, and the luxury of never worrying about hunger and rarely about safety. I try to remember and relate this when I’m asked “How do you do it?”