Twins are demanding.  Unless you lead a life of leisure and can afford staff or the time to both raise your children together all the time, at some point you will be alone and outnumbered.  If you do not have the twin-assist SWAT team on speed dial, devices can be a sanity-saver.  Do you need two of everything?  No.  Just be prepared to have two of the things that work.

We found our boys would often only nap in vibrating bouncy seats when they were infants.  You will go through batteries faster than you would think possible, but the peace is worth the investment.  As they have gotten older, they have both liked having their own jumpers,  exer-saucers, and walkers.  Fortunately, we were given or lent most of these things.

Also, look online for parents of multiples groups in your area.  Many of these groups have sales to unload clothes and toys for very cheap.  The last thing you want to do is have huge infant toys taking up space in your house.

An electric, musical swing comes in handy when you can’t get your twins to sleep.  At least one will be quiet.

You will learn to distinguish a serious cry from an angry or hungry cry.  Your babies will cry.  Don’t go nuts trying to stop it.  No baby ever died from crying.  Be deliberate and take your time.  Rushing around leads to mistakes and frustration.  If you have to, get shooter’s ear plugs to deaden the sound so you can think.

Babyproof your home sooner than you think you have to.  You do not want your first warning that your children can knock over lamps to be a crash.

Stay calm.  Support each other.  Take a break and make some time for yourselves whenever you can.  Good luck.  More to come.

Here’s where we stand now: Danny is able to walk, but he lacks the confidence to do it in front of most people.  We have set up a corral for them in the family room and they seem to love it.  Alex uses the fence to pull himself up and then he dances.  He also headbangs like you wouldn’t believe.

New sounds are coming from them all the time, but the words are slow in coming.  They both can say, “Mama” and “Dada” and we think they mean it.  Also, they seem to be saying, “baba” for their bottle.  Since they never turn down a bottle anyway, it’s hard to tell.

Their personalities are shaping up quickly; Alex is very patient and laid back, whereas Danny is a little more high-maintenance but also a lot more active.  The little day-to-day developments are fascinating.

Photos and video to come soon.

Danny is nearly walking and Alex gets around well in a walker.  They take a constitutional around the house after meals.  They use different words and motions to try to communicate.  Danny dances ( as you will see below).  They like to clap hands.  Clapping looks like the sign language for “more” so we’re working out some confusion.

The boys are on a pretty reliable schedule now: asleep by 10; up by 8.  Sometimes more.  Occasionally less.  Often Alex likes to move from his crib to a swing in the wee hours.  Unfortunately, his next swing is going to have to be patio furniture; he’s getting huge!

Soon, I will put up a list of thoughts and advice for parents of infant twins, but in the meantime, here’s Handsome Dan, the dancing man!

Amy went back to work after three months. The first few weeks were predictably exhausting. Fortunately, the boys adapted rather quickly to sleeping in their cribs and by month 4 they slept through the night more often than not.

We helped that along when we started feeding them rice cereal before bed. My boys can eat! We have worked our way up to two cereal feedings a day. Lunch is rice cereal mixed with a vegetable. Dinner is oatmeal mixed with fruit. Melanie really helped us out by making pureed veggies and fruit for the first couple months. Now our guys are nine months old, wearing 12 month clothes minimum. Alex is most comfortable in 18 months.

As of last Wednesday, Danny was 20 lbs. 3.5 oz. and 28 inches tall. Alex was 22 lbs 8.5 oz and 30 inches tall. According to a height estimating formula, Alex will be 6’1″ and Danny will be 5’10″ when fully grown. The chart was from an article my mother found and when she compared it to my siblings and I, it was dead on.

Anyway, at nine months, the boys are babbling incessantly and are just about to crawl. They have been rolling over to move for about six weeks now. Danny is a terror in his walker. He tears all over the house. Alex is much more laid back and is content to sit or bounce at his own pace. Alex likes to say, “ma-ma-ma-ma” even though he hasn’t made an association with it yet. Danny likes to make inquisitive sounds and scream.

I have been keeping my hand in professionally by maintaining some websites and shooting and editing a video for Amy’s work. It’s hard to juggle all this but Amy’s parents and my parents are always willing to lend a hand. They have all been a great help.

I will get some more photos on here soon to show the evolution of the boys. Thanks for sticking with me!

At the hospital we had a stack of papers to sign and a last-minute briefing on infant care. We loaded the boys up and headed for home but we had to turn back to sign some papers that got lost in the shuffle. When we finally got home, both sets of parents came over to welcome Alex and Danny home.

After a feast we took some family time.  We have two borrowed bassinets in out bedroom.  We naively expected the boys to sleep like they did in the NICU.  That did not happen.  They tag-teamed us.  We didn’t think to use bibs, so we had to change them after every feeding.  We didn’t burp Danny well enough so he was upset from about 2:30 AM until we gave up.  Amy called her mother first thing.  Amy took pity on me and let me nap for a few hours.  I returned the favor.  It was obvious that the bassinet plan was not going to work.

Our solution: sleep in shifts with the help of Mom-mom.  I stay up until 3 AM.  Amy takes over from 3 – 7.  Mom-mom gets the morning shift.  We have a dual bassinet pack and play in the family room, which we now call, “the Baby Cave.”  Someone is on our couch 24 hours a day.  Time means nothing anymore.  Thankfully, we average 6 – 7 hours of sleep a day and the boys are doing very well.  Alex is over 8 pounds and Danny is over 7.  They have begun to notice the world around them.  We take them for walks through the neighborhood in the nice weather.

Perhaps, once the boys start sleeping on a schedule, I will be able to update more often.  In the meantime, here are some photos:

The twins in their bouncy chairs

Nap-fternoon

"No, Mr. Bond. I expect you to die!" - Danny Goldfinger

Ying-Yang Twins

Danny, dressed to chill

Alex loves his Grandpas

"Are you gonna lift my head or am I gonna bust yours?"

A little roomier than the womb

Alex on a ventilator

That sight made us feel helpless, sad and worried.  We tried to comfort Alex, but stroking his legs was just getting him more worked up.  Thankfully, the amazing staff at the NICU gave me the first of many helpful tips.  Once I squeezed Alex’s hips and gently rocked him, he calmed right down.  Newborn babies want to feel the familiar security and tightness of the womb.

The NICU has a lot of equipment and machines that go *ping*, but the doctors and nurses take the time to calm the parents and explain what is going on and what each device does.  Otherwise, a parent might start to panic when a bell goes off and one’s baby is in something like this:

Danny under Bili lights in an isolette

or this:

Alex on a c-pap

These are all pretty standard.  The blue lights fight jaundice – an elevated bilireuben (red blood cell count) that causes the baby to turn yellow.  The c-pap is used to create a positive lung pressure so baby can breathe easier.  Alex really did not like the c-pap.  The isolette helps control temperature and exposure to infection.  They also have warming beds which are open cribs with a heating element above blowing warm air down on baby.  It’s the same concept as the french fry warmer at McDonald’s.

The babies’ respiration, heart rate and blood oxygen levels are constantly monitored and the kids have leads attached to their chests, back and feet.  Sometimes they have an IV.  Sometimes a nasal cannula for oxygen flow.  Usually a NG tube up their nose for feeding.  Often baby pulls out one or all of these.  Alex went through five or six IVs.

In our case, the NICU is harder on the parents than the children.  The boys are improving all the time.  Amy and I are learning how to care for them, feed them, bathe them, etc, in a relatively consequence-free environment.

We cannot possibly convey the extent of our gratitude to all the nurses and doctors in the NICU who made this situation as comfortable as possible for the boys and us.  Thanks for letting us spend so much time underfoot and for teaching us so much.  Thank you most of all for the wonderful care you gave our boys.

Alex (left) & Danny

After admission, the wonderful doctor on call gave Amy some Cervidil to get the cervix dilating.  Cervidil looks like a limp piece of electrical tape.  It gets balled up and placed in the cervix.  We were then told to get some sleep.

The next morning, bright and early, Amy’s OB showed up to get things started.  He took out the Cervidil and broke the water on twin A.  Voila!  Labor begins.  Throughout the day our excellent nurse, Ginny, was in to check on us and keep Amy happy.  She made Amy very happy when she got the anesthesiologist in to give the epidural.

By 1:00 PM Amy was fully effaced and 10 cm dilated.  It was go time.

With the delivery of twins every precaution is taken.  It is hospital policy to deliver in the OR, just in case an emergency pops up.  I got scrubbed up, put on a gown and hat and my game face, and got ready to coach.

Husbands, fathers, coaches, partners, boyfriends, and girlfriends: if you are in that room for delivery it is your job to be supportive and stoic.  No matter what you see, do not let on if it bothers you at all.  Be there for your woman.  Be whatever she needs.

I didn’t coach so much as echo Ginny’s encouragements and instructions.  Also, I held the bottom of Amy’s left foot and the back of her head and tried to push them together.  Amy did great!  She bore down.  She didn’t cry – didn’t scream – just pushed.

At 3:09 PM on Tuesday, February 23, Alex came into the world.  He was purple and struggling.  The nurses showed him to us then promptly went to work on him.  He wasn’t breathing and he had to be intubated.

Meanwhile, Amy still had to push out another baby.  Ten minutes later, Danny came out with much less problem.  Big brother Alex (6 lbs. 7 oz.) had done the hard work.  Little Danny (4 lbs. 15 oz.) just slid on out.

We went back to recovery and began to pull ourselves together.  Both sets of our parents were there, as well as Amy’s brother, John.  Unfortunately, the twins had to go directly to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit – NICU.  I’ll tell you about that in the next post.

We really want to thank Ginny, Dr. Dershaw and all the wonder labor and delivery staff at the hospital.  You all made us feel safe, secure and confident plus you took excellent care of all of us.  Thank you from the bottom of our hearts.

Here is our first family portrait:

Taken around 5:30 AM this morning

It seems kind of crazy that I am sitting on the here on the couch watching TV writing this, and tomorrow I will be a mom to twin boys. Maybe it is because this is the last day of my pregnancy, but I cannot help but think about how lucky I am. I decided to get pregnant and I did, which in and of itself is not always easy. I also know there was a greater power involved that gave us two. As most of my friends and family know, Greg and I did not jump into parenthood lightly. This is something that we were back and forth about for years. I never really fawned over my friends children, and I certainly didn’t ever envy their lack of sleep or the three to four weeks advance notice that a night out would require in order to secure babysitting, etc. I really despised pregnancy discussions, and felt like that often solidified my “decision” to not have children. Just because I was closing in on 30, I still didn’t feel like I needed to follow anyone else’s timetable but my own. I am not saying that I didn’t feel the societal pressure, but I felt good when one friend said she respected me for not just doing what was expected after getting married…and I could tell she meant it. I wasn’t going to rush into having children for anyone. It was not a priority.

Greg and I have a lot of love and respect for each other, and for a long time, we felt like we had it made. We had two decent incomes, a nice house that left us with plenty of expendable funds for trips and wherever we felt like going or whatever we felt like doing, and I am especially grateful for all we have done together – just the two of us. Our love of crazy adventures is one of the things that has drawn us together; for example, celebrating the 25th anniversary of Elvis’s death in Memphis, the Rockabilly Weekenders in Las Vegas; and spending Thanksgiving at the top of the Guinness Factory in Dublin, just to name a few. We had no one to answer to, no real reason to not sleep in on the weekends, and our band could take as many gigs as we wanted. To my surprise, it eventually was not enough.

We have been together nine wonderful years and will be married for six in July. To watch him over the past year or two with his niece, Sonali, and with our friend’s children, I knew I would be missing a huge opportunity by not expanding our family. Basically, I felt the pang of emptiness that people sometimes describe.

I am not going to tell you that I loved every minute of this pregnancy, but I am going to tell you that I wouldn’t change a thing. I had an extremely healthy pregnancy for having twins. The beginning was rough, and the end has not been a bed of roses, but the middle was pretty cool. I have a very supportive people around me, especially Greg, my parents, and my best friends. I was able to work right up until the end, which gives me the next three months to concentrate on my sons and learning how to be a mother.

Having two children simultaneously prompted us to quickly put our little house on the market, purchase a larger more expensive one, and forced us to make some hard decisions. We will be going down to one income, at least for the first year, and we won’t be taking romantic trips to Jamaica or the Bahamas for quite some time. But what we will have is two little boys that will depend on us for everything. Two gifts that we were given that will look like us, learn from us, love us, and love each other. I want to teach them to play the guitar and drums, and take them to Disneyworld when they are five. I want to have big birthday parties for them, and cut up oranges for their soccer games. I want them to find their passion in life and support them whole-heartedly. I can’t believe I get to start all this tomorrow. I better go take a nap.