Week 5 in Review

Since it seems that having two newborns around takes up 99% of your time, my new goal is to update the blog once per week to review the last week. Since we are coming up on 5 weeks tomorrow, it's time for an update! It's funny to look at my last post and see how much has changed just in a week.

I'll give this post the theme of "good, bad and ugly" and categorize the updates that way:

THE GOOD

--Nathan, Nathan, Nathan! In the past week we have gotten him settled into Enfamil Gentelease and he is doing GREAT with it! I'm so relieved that he is no longer having such terrible gas pains. It was hard to watch him deal with it, and it was hard for us to deal with the long crying bouts. He is back to a "regular" baby now.

--Both babies have really come into their own with personalities. Nathan cracks me up because he just grunts, grunts, grunts when he is ready for food and is SO excited about it. He gets this concentrated look on his face and shakes his head back and forth in search of the bottle. He loves sleeping and eating and is awake far less than Kenna. When he is awake, he is very rested and alert and just looks around in wonder at everything. It's so cute. Kenna has gotten herself into the goal pattern of eat-activity-sleep naturally; she wakes up for just about every feeding and spends some time awake (sometimes extended periods) before going back to sleep. It's a lot of fun because I get to "play" with her more than Nathan since he sleeps so much. She is very intrigued by my face and spends a lot of her time searching it. Nathan seems much less interested and doesn't hold eye contact in the same way she does at all. I read that that is common for boys vs. girls at this age and it's definitely true for them. Nathan is basically happy as a clam when his basic needs are met; Kenna seems to be more interested in the world and people. She is more sensitive than he is and startles easily. Everything she does is just daintier. :) It's really neat to see they really are two little individuals.

--Nathan is VERY strong. On his fourth day of life (being a month early) he was able to lift his head and turn it over. Now, at a month old, he can lift his head all the way up when on his tummy, hold it for a bit, and yesterday he TURNED OVER! LOL I couldn't believe it. Of course at this age it isn't something they can replicate intentionally but it was pretty impressive nonetheless! Kenna rarely tries to lift her head on tummy time, but when she does it doesn't go very far. I've noticed it's getting a little stronger but she is nowhere near him in this area - by desire or ability.

--Less poopy diapers. Need I say more? It used to be a poopy diaper with every change, now it's like twice a day. One of my books says that happens around a month, and it was like clockwork - both of them started the two per day poopies the exact same day. Awesome.

--The routine. Every three hours is working so great at this point I couldn't be happier about it. At night we let them wake up naturally after the 11 pm feed so we can slowly get them toward sleeping a 6 hour stretch (basically skipping one feed - 2am) and multiple nights they have slept 4+ hours already. It is hard after that to get them back onto schedule to start the day again at 8, that's the only hard part. For example, they pretty regularly go from 11 to 3 am (one hour longer than schedule). Then they go back to sleep and fairly regularly will go until 7. Then there is the delimma - do you try to occupy them until 8 for the sake of the schedule or do you go to 7:30 to get them closer, or do you feed right then and try to go 4 more hours until 11 to get onto schedule then? If they wake up at 6, I definitely feed them and then feed again at 8 since it's long enough for them to be hungry. But 7 is a killer. Last night they went to 3:30 (inching closer!) and then again until 8. HOORAY! I had lost hope last week when I posted, saying that everyone says you can't train them at this age, but I kept trying this week anyway and I have to say it's been working quite well. I don't expect the same fast success as if they were 3 months old, but I'm impressed with where we have gotten. :)

--General cuteness. LOL Isn't that a good thing? They are just soooo cute. We went for their first photo shoot yesterday and the pictures are incredibly precious. We got one of them naked, stacked on top of each other, that is just amazing! They both peed as soon as the diapers were off, but it was well worth it. :) I can't wait to post the pics when they are ready (5-10 business days). I'm still taking hundreds of my own and some videos too. I can't stop myself. I will do a separate post with pictures and video!

--Breaks, thanks to B's parents. No matter how much you love your kids, no matter how cute they are, no matter how much chaos you went through to have them...you need a break. B's parents babysat last Saturday and this Saturday and it was such a treat to get out on a date. We used to go out to eat a lot, which I really miss right now. It's nice to go out to eat, see a movie, etc. It really does feel like the proverbial gerbil mill most of the time with the 3 hour feeding routine, so breaks are very welcome!

THE BAD

--This isn't really "bad", but Kenna has definitely found her voice this week. She is awake much more (after almost every feeding) and no longer goes to sleep easily on her own like she was before. She requires much more soothing. Nathan actually goes to sleep much more easily now! He cries for a short time then falls asleep without me now usually (who says babies can't learn that at this age?!). She is a bit more iffy. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

--I miss time with B. Remember, we were happily married 9 years before having kids, so we are very used to our quality time together. Now we are on a mutual train schedule and often pass like trains in the night (literally when we are changing shifts). There is very little time together now. That's why I was so grateful that B's parents were able to come two weeks in a row like that so we could get out. Our two dates have been soooo nice. I'm really lucky that I am married to my best friend in the world, but that leads to me missing our quality time together. I know it's going to be awesome when we have quality family time when Nathan and Kenna get a little older and things are less chaotic.

--I'm having some guilt that I didn't induce lactation. I still have no desire to breastfeed, but like I mentioned before, I would have given induction more consideration if I knew you could just pump exclusively. J is not going to be pumping any longer because it was more difficult/time consuming than she expected and is ready to move on, understandably. I'm really glad they had about 5 weeks of breastmilk, but keep thinking it could have been more if I had induced lactation. I guess it's hard to beat myself up for something I didn't know about, but I am annoyed at myself for being so opposed to the actual act of breastfeeding that I didn't explore alternatives more to find out of the pumping possibilities. (I'm not opposed to the act of breastfeeding for anyone else, it's just not something I would have ever felt comfortable doing myself.)

THE UGLY

Yes, there is one ugly. One big ugly. It was Friday. The whole day of Friday. It was a mini-disaster and led to my first mommy meltdown. I was completely sobbing by the end of the day.

I decided to take the babies out by myself in the morning for the first time. We went to Babies R Us to get some needed items and a couple of baby shower gifts for friends. The babies were sleeping and I didn't have a watch on and got carried away with the time. I didn't realize that by the time I headed for the check out line, we were half an hour over feeding time. Kenna started screaming. And screaming. And screaming. The pacifier didn't work. I was so embarrassed while in line. Fortunately, pretty much everyone in line behind me had already stopped to talk to me about the twins at some place in the store so they didn't seem to mind at all. (I couldn't believe that two babies would be such a novelty at a baby store, but it was all I could do to get through the store without people wanting to ask about them! I enjoyed it at first but it started stressing me out time wise after a bit.) By the time we got home they were both screaming in hunger. So I had to feed them at the same time. This is deadly because it is hard to do and once you do it, they will want to eat at the same time at every other feeding (normally they stagger half an hour apart). The rest of the day we were off schedule, they were fussy because of it, and they kept needing to feed at the same time (which I do on boppy pillows when necessary).

Now, I should say that this was my first week as a full time mom with B back at work. I was quite fried regardless of the schedule issues Friday so combined, I was really on edge. B is almost always at home because he works here, but he was gone late Friday afternoon/early evening. I was just watching the clock waiting for him because I was lonely, fried, stressed, and on huge edge after dealing with crying babies all day. I decided to relax with a nice glass of red wine. That should help, right? (hold on to that thought for a minute)

As I'm feeding Nathan soon after, our house alarm gets set off. I guess it's hard to explain, but suffice it to say that I have been CRAZY paranoid my whole life of someone breaking in my house while I'm home. I slept on my parent's bedroom floor until I was 12 because I was so scared (I have no idea where this fear comes from). So I always have the alarm on when I'm at home. Our alarm has indiscriminately gone off before when we were home and it is terrifying. Our censors just come lose sometimes. But B has always been home before and can calm me down (I'm usually shaking it is so unrattling). This time: No B, just me and two babies. I completely freaked. I jumped up with Nathan in my arms and ran down to the alarm pad to see what zone was open, not fully convinced this wasn't going to be the night I have always feared when some person is standing in my house. I see it is the zone where I was sitting, so I knew it wasn't a break in (logically I knew, but emotionally I was a total mess at this point). I turned it off and paced back and forth looking around the house to make sure. I get back to the living room where I was and see that in my franticness to turn off the alarm I had knocked over my red wine all over our beige carpet and B's computer (fortunately it was closed). There I stood: frazzled from the off schedule of the day and incessant dual baby crying that had resulted, extra frazzled that it fell at the end of my first full time week with the kids alone, trippled frazzled that the alarm went off (which was playing with my head), two screaming babies due to the scary alarm, and red wine all over my nice carpet. As if it couldn't get worse, not 5 minutes later someone rang the doorbell...I HATE when people come to the door at night that I am not expecting. I left both babies screaming and ran to the door to see if it was someone who set off the alarm. I see a man I've never seen before standing looking at my door and talking to himself. We live in a very nice, safe neighborhood, so this is really out of the ordinary. I started crying at that point and was incredibly stressed out. When B got home about 10 minutes later I just turned hysterical. I was reduced to sobbing tears and shut myself in the bedroom.

That was ugly. :)

So that is week 5. I will probably post again before week 6 because I have a post in mind I need to "get out" about my career questions at this point. For now, I will leave you with this picture, which I just love (there is a video to go with it that I will post separately):