Let the holiday season begin!

Jake and Abby had a great first Thanksgiving. We went to the Downs' house and enjoyed our traditional family Jeopardy, our traditional family argument over Jeopardy (Jim vs. Jeff, Jeff won), and "our team" traditional victory. Jeff and I were busy feeding, changing, and tending to babies, so I'm still not sure exactly how he found time to get in an argument over Jeopardy, but it just wouldn't be Thanksgiving without it. As always, all hard feelings ended with the game, and we had amazing meal. We cut our holiday short this year to make it home for the babies' bed time, and they rewarded us with their longest sleep of stretch so far, which was great.

Jeff and I stayed up a little later than usual decorating our Christmas tree for our holiday pictures, which we took the day after Thanksgiving. I know I'm biased...but seriously, our kids are adorable. Here are some samples, also appearing in our holiday cards this year!

 

I wish I could say everyone was sunshine and light during the photo shoot...but they would not smile AT ALL. Jake kept spitting up, and I kept saying, "He never does this!" and as soon as the words were out of my mouth, he would spit up again. Katie still got some amazing shots, and you can view some more of them on her blog here. Once we get the full CD, we will upload them to our Shutterfly site.

Which reminds me...we have a Shutterfly site! We started this so that not only can you see all of the pictures we take (although I'm assuming only the grandparents, and possibly my sister, have the patience to sift through hundreds of pictures of our kids) and also buy pictures directly rather than going through us. You can access the site here, and if you have any questions on how to navigate it or use it just let me know.

Now that the Christmas season is officially here, I can't wait to bust out all the Christmas pajamas and take some more cute pictures! The babies get more and more awesome every day. Last night they went to sleep at 8:00 and didn't wake up until...wait for it...4:30am. It was crazy. I got 7 hours of sleep in a row, and Jeff had enough energy to work out today. It feels great to be shaking off the sleep deprivation! Jeff is going out of town this Thursday night, and although I still hate staying in the house by myself (apparently you can still be afraid of the dark at 31 years old), I definitely have taking care of the babies overnight by myself under control. 

Coming up in just over a week...our four month photo shoot!

Sleep, glorious sleep

In case you can't tell by now, I am obsessed with sleep. I think about sleep more than I think about food. Our sleep, the babies' sleep, even Ollie's sleep because it now drives me crazy when he wakes me up in the middle of the night.

We are still having a great run here of only waking up once overnight for a bottle, and our new normal of going to sleep around 9:30 and waking up around 6:30 with only a one hour wake in between for feeding is leaving me feeling great every day. We also survived the magical "six weeks after due date" this past Wednesday, with a little help from Ang since Jeff was out of town. Of course, not everything that Ang did was helpful...

Jake and Abby were in bed around 7 and I fell asleep around 9:30 with Ang watching TV next to me. Abby woke up to eat at midnight, so I fed her and then Jake and Ang slept through the whole thing - I was pretty proud of myself for that. Then at 4:00am, I woke up suddenly to her whispering my name. Here's how the conversation went:

Ang: (Whispering) Dre. Dre.
Me: (Wakes up startled) What? What?
Ang: It's 4:00 and the babies are still sleeping.
Me: So?
Ang: So shouldn't they be awake by now?
Me: They woke up to eat at midnight. You slept through it.
Ang: Oh. Do you think you should check on them?
Me: (Looks at video monitor, everyone is asleep) They're asleep. Did you even look at the video monitor?
Ang: Yes! They weren't moving!
Me: Because they were asleep! And now you have jinxed me and they're going to wake up in 5 minutes.
Ang: But Abby made a noise! I heard it!
Me: I'm going back to sleep.
Ang: (Long pause) Well now I can't go back to sleep. Do you want to talk?
Me: NO. Go back to sleep.

To answer your question Ang, no, Hallmark does not make a "Sorry I woke you up needlessly at 4:00am, new mom of twins" card. But they should. The punishment fit the crime - Ang fed Abby when she woke up at 5:30am while I fed Jake, and then she had to watch me go back to sleep for another 3 hours while she got ready to go to work. (FYI, she did try to hang out with me while she was getting ready, but I was having none of it).

In non-sleep related news, I got my first smiles this week! So now I can breathe easy, both babies' intentional first smiles were directed at me. They have developed a new love for their bouncy seats that have a little bunny rabbit hanging at eye level in front of them, and it's so cute to watch them grin and swat at it. I have some pictures to prove it too!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What a difference a week makes!

A week ago we were desperate for sleep. Last night, the babies reached a major sleep milestone. After the madness of their gestation and arrival in this world, it was the closest thing to a miracle I have ever witnessed.


They slept close to six hours. IN A ROW.


They ate around 7 and then went to bed easily, and Jeff and I fell asleep around 9:30. The last thing I remember is talking to him about how much it was going to suck when we woke up for the next feeding around 11. All of the sudden I woke up - to silence. I checked the time, which is the very first thing I do every time I wake up now, and it was 12:45am. What?! I checked the monitor - still asleep! At this point I thought I was dreaming, so I went back to sleep hoping it would continue. I woke up again, this time because I heard Abby, and it was 1:45am! I was in shock. So much in shock - and also so rested that I felt like I could run a marathon - that I couldn't wait to tell Jeff about it when he fed Jake. Jeff, being a normal person, was still exhausted and not quite as psyched as I was to have gotten four hours of uninterrupted sleep, but was excited nonetheless. They also went back to sleep easily, which was the amazing icing on the delicious sleep cake.


Was I thrilled that they woke up again a short 3 hours later? Not so much. But I fed both of them so that Jeff could sleep until his alarm went off, and they ate quickly so I was able to fall back asleep as Jeff was leaving for work...at least for an hour until Abby decided the only place she wanted to finish her nap was in bed with me. Then Jake woke up ready to eat again at 8:15 and start our day. Still, this means that from 9:30pm to 8:15am I got almost EIGHT HOURS OF SLEEP. All day today I felt like I drank 5 Red Bulls and ate a box of Pixie Stix. I did 3 huge loads of laundry, and the first floor of our house is the cleanest it's been since the 15 minutes of my pregnancy between morning sickness and bed rest.


There is no possible way this will last forever, and no way to predict why it happened. Was it the perfect combination of footie pajamas and swaddle blankets? The exact temperature of the room? The new sheet savers that supposedly dry fast, thus keeping them from sleeping in their own drool all night like the sheets do? We can't possibly know. But now the hope of it happening again is there, and that hope can keep me going for quite awhile.

Progress!

So clearly, we were struggling with sleep. All of us. Well maybe not Abby so much, but definitely the rest of us. Since the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result, and we were definitely insane, we decided to change things up and try to make the transition from the babies sleeping in portable rocking cribs in our room to sleeping in their "big baby" cribs in their room. Lo and behold - it appears to have worked.

As I've said before, Jake is a sensitive baby, so it seems like putting him in a dark room, with loud white noise, swaddled so he can't move, is exactly the sensory deprivation that he needs to fall asleep. We also started dressing him more warmly under his swaddle, because for some reason it seems like he needs more layers than Abby does to stay warm. Abby, already a good sleeper, usually passes out in the crib right away. Right now we have them sharing a crib at the recommendation of our pediatrician, and they seem to like it, except for the fact that Abby is a big spitter so we need to rotate their positions through the night so no one is sleeping in a pool of dribble.

The past three nights have been like the good old days! They usually go right to sleep, wake up at a reasonable interval for their bottles, and go back to sleep after their bottles are finished. They have been napping in their cribs a lot during the day too, because I've read that sleep begets sleep which certainly seems to be true in their case, and they are both a bit better nappers in the crib than in the Pack N Play and swing we had them in during the days all the time before. We have also changed our approach from each of us trying to manage one overnight feeding alone to both of us doing all of the overnight feedings, because it seems to prevent anyone from melting down and make both of them easier to get back to sleep. Since we have basically doubled the amount of sleep we're getting in a night, even though it's fragmented, we'll take it!

I must admit, I'm feeling pretty proud of us for getting back on track with the sleeping thing. Of course, Jake could have just heard that I was trashing his sleep habits all over the Internet and decided to get back at me by proving me wrong, but whatever, we are getting more sleep which makes the days much easier to manage! I'm sure it won't last forever, so we'll try to enjoy it while it does.

I asked Jeff once what he would do differently if our roles were reversed. His response was that the house wouldn't be as clean, and that he would try to sleep every single second that he could during the day. While I can't give up on the house - I spend enough time here that I know I'm much happier when it looks nice - I am going to put more of a priority on napping during the day, at least during the week when I'm going solo with both babies.

Speaking of role reversal - took the "day off" yesterday and went shopping while Jeff stayed home with the babies. I was going to get my nails done but instead chose to drink wine at Ang's house, a wise decision and just the relaxation I need to get through this week, "the peak of nighttime fussiness". I would say wish us luck, but I have a feeling we'll be just fine.

A hard day's night

According to the many sleep books that have been recommended to me, we are at the peak time for "nighttime fussiness", which seems a mild way to describe the total madness that descends upon our house from 10pm to 6am. Last night was no exception, so I thought I would document it so that A) when we are a little bit better rested we can laugh about it - because it is pretty funny; B) when the babies start sleeping through the night we can appreciate how far we have come; and C) we can re-read this should we ever have the desire to have another baby, in case the thought of paying for college for three children isn't enough to deter us.

I was exhausted last night so Jeff took over when he came home, allowing me to crawl in to bed at 7:30pm. Did I sleep? No. But if it is dark outside and no one is screaming, it is at least 60% as satisfying as being asleep, so it wasn't all bad. Abby ate at 9, Jake ate at 9:30, and Jeff fed them both and was committed to getting them to sleep, then going to sleep himself. And so the night begins.

Jake, normally our "sensitive baby" (read: nighttime shrieker) went to sleep right away. Abby cried, which was very unusual. Jeff rocked her, gave her a pacifier, cuddled her, tried everything he could and finally she fell asleep...just long enough for Jeff to fall asleep. She kept waking up, and I kept trying to get her to sleep, and finally I was able to do it by putting her in bed next to me and using my chin to hold her pacifier in until she passed out. At around midnight, I moved her to her bed next to my side of the bed and went to sleep myself. At 1:15am, Jake woke up to eat. After a bottle, a diaper blowout, and a wardrobe change, I tried unsuccessfully to get him back to sleep. Jeff finally got him to sleep on top of him, so I kept an eye on them and, since Abby hadn't woken up yet, basically shoved a bottle in her sleeping mouth and prayed she would eat so that I wouldn't have to get up again in an hour. She ate, Jake slept, I had high hopes for sleep myself. Attempted to move Jake off of Jeff in to his swing...not happening. At 3am having slept only an hour so far myself, I gave up, and Jeff took Jake to the family room for our tried and true method of Jake sleeping on him while he sits in a chair watching ESPN, which usually lets Jeff fall asleep too. Only this time, Jake didn't fall asleep. Like, at all. I woke up two hours later at 5:15am to Abby screaming, and as I was trying to get her back to sleep Jeff walked in our room with Jake, still awake. I left Abby with Jeff, hoping she would go back to sleep for half an hour so that Jeff could get some sleep before leaving for work, and packed up Jake in his car seat to go for a drive since we've heard this sometimes works. It did...for about 20 minutes. Surprisingly, Jake's screams are not as painful in the car when you are drinking delicious Starbucks and singing to the radio, so I was okay with this. It recharged me enough to come back home, feed Jake (now starving, even though he had completely refused a bottle for Jeff a mere half hour earlier), then feed Abby (still awake and now starving). Jeff took a shower, laughed, kissed me, wished me luck, and left for work. That we are actually able to laugh and kiss after nights like this is nothing short of a miracle.

To recap:

• One baby was awake - and crying loudly - at all times last night
• One parent was awake at all times last night
• Jeff and I got a combined 6 hours of sleep last night, and neither of us slept longer than a 2 hour stretch
• I got a total of 3 hours of sleep last night
• Jeff got up for the day - a day in which he has approximately 7 hours of meetings - at 3am

Within half an hour of Jeff leaving for work, Jake and Abby both fell asleep, and now they are sleeping SO HARD neither of them have moved in hours. Am I asleep? No. Because I am reading every single sleep book recommended to me - again - in a desperate attempt to find some miracle cure on some hidden page that I may have skipped the first 10 times I read these books.

The good news is, again, according to everything I have read we are in the thick of the worst of it now, and starting next week things should get progressively better. The bad news is, the worst of it is supposed to be six weeks after their due date. Which is next Wednesday. When Jeff will be out of town. Oh dear.

Three month appointment

Because Jake and Abby were born before 32 weeks gestation, they qualify to receive monthly shots this fall/winter to protect them against RSV, or Respiratory Syncytial Virus. You can read more about RSV, which is similar to a cold virus, here. RSV is the #1 cause of re-hospitalization in preemies, so we are doing everything we can to avoid it and not spend any more nights at CDH! This is the main reason we are super cautious about where we take the babies, the health of the people around them, hand sanitizing before you hold them, etc. The shots that they receive, called Synagis, can't prevent them from contracting RSV, but they can lessen the impact so if they do get it hopefully it's not as severe. It's no fun having to worry about germs all the time, but I am determined that we will make it to spring with no illnesses, so we're doing whatever we have to do to get there.

We went to the pediatrician this morning for the second of their Synagis shots, and they were pronounced in excellent health. Jake is up from his birth weight of 3lb 11oz to a CRAZY big 10lb 12oz! He moved up on the growth curve for his actual age of 3 months from the 2nd percentile to between the 5th and 6th percentile, which we were really excited about. Abby is up from her birth weight of 3lb 5oz to a petite but still growing-at-a-great-rate 8lb 2oz, and is also on the growth curve, albeit under the 1st percentile. The pediatrician was really happy about both of their gains. He even joked, "Not to be stereotypical, but if one is going to be small and one is going to be big, you probably want her to be the smaller one." Point taken! Remember how I said there is very little specific feedback in parenting? Thankfully, you get some from the pediatrician, and he said we're doing "an excellent job" and to "keep doing what we're doing". He has twins himself, so he knows what our lives our like right now, and he joked that he was very impressed to see us smiling and laughing. I was impressed with us too, given that I'm pretty sure last night was the first night that one of us was up AT ALL TIMES. Even so, I got one stretch of sleep that was close to three hours, and a venti Starbucks after our doctor's appointment, so I'm feeling pretty good today.

The funniest part of the day so far was when we ran in to my friend Allie on her way out of the pediatrician, and she literally caught me with my pants down. The baby weight is officially gone, and then some, so I need to start buying belts or smaller jeans, because even my pre-baby jeans are falling off me these days. Who knew that having twins was the most effective diet in the world?!

I have no idea where the time goes.

Did October even happen? It is amazing how fast the days go by! It's been over a month since my last update because...well, taking care of two babies is pretty time consuming. I have now survived a total of 4 nights with both babies while Jeff was out of town - two by myself, and then two looooong nights in a row where thankfully Ang came over to help out. Even just having someone to laugh with at 2am while both babies are squawking makes a huge difference! Solo nights aside, we're getting pretty good at our typical routine. Days for me are pretty easy now, and nights are tougher but we keep reminding ourselves that they won't be like this forever, and millions of parents have survived the sleep deprivation so we probably will too.

A typical day goes something like this:

• Jeff leaves for work in the morning, and hopefully Ollie doesn't start barking because A) it wakes me up; B) it wakes one or both babies up; or C) it wakes us all up. Sometimes Jeff has time to squeeze in breakfast bottles for the babies before he leaves, and sometimes it's my job. We still have them on a roughly four hour schedule, but the four hours are different every day - so a 6am bottle today may mean a 7:30am bottle tomorrow.
• Depending how much sleep I got the night before and how early the morning bottle is, I either try to catch a few more hours of sleep after they eat, or start the day in a seemingly never ending cycle of washing bottles and doing laundry. I couldn't figure out why there was so much of it until I realized that I now change clothes about 3 times a day, purely out of necessity. I'll let you draw your own conclusions about that one! Babies are messy. Although I'm still not a fan of laundry, I don't mind washing bottles...which is good, because we use roughly 16 bottles a day.
• If it has been a particularly rough night, my magic cure for not sleeping is as follows: giant chocolate chip cookie, chug a can of Coke (I know, this is a terrible breakfast), and then dress the babies in something adorable and take pictures of them. This is successful approximately 90% of the time in making me feel like a human being again.
• The second bottle of the day includes some vitamin drops with iron, which smell gross and taste yucky so I consider it a success if we make it through these without major spit up on me.
• At some point I take a shower and get dressed, and also put on makeup every day, partly because it makes me feel more like a "normal" person but also because I learned quickly that a shower is a great substitute for sleep when you don't have enough time for a real nap. 
• I know it's important to try to get out of the house sometimes, but we are still being super duper careful about germs so trips to Target, the grocery store, the mall, etc. are out, leaving our options for outings pretty limited. We have gone on some nice walks around the neighborhood - one time, two women on bikes passed us and yelled, "Are you tired?" and I yelled back, "Not yet!" (which was true at the time). We have also enjoyed visits to Cosley Zoo a few times, and I can already appreciate how nice it will be to have a free zoo that is a 5 minute walk away when the babies get older to really enjoy it. I have also sometimes selfishly loaded them in to the car so that I can go get whatever food sounds good to me, because actually preparing a meal for myself is about 7,325 on my list of priorities. To be honest? The babies don't care about getting out of the house, and most of the time during the day I don't either. If I have a break in the action, give me a good book and some time on the couch with Ollie, and I'm pretty content!
• There is usually a stretch of 1-2 hours in the afternoon where everyone is fed, the house is reasonably clean, the laundry is either done or in progress, and there isn't a lot for me to do except relax. Typically this is when Ollie starts demanding to go outside, to get a treat, to sit on my lap, etc. and as soon as he is satisfied, one or both babies starts making noises - not crying, but fussing enough that I'm up and down replacing pacifiers or talking to them at what feels like 30 second intervals. There are enough days though that I actually squeeze a nap in here that I am always hopeful it will happen!
• Jeff usually gets home in time for us to do "bedtime" together. I call it "bedtime" because we have yet to get anything together that is a routine, which I keep hearing is important but mostly just sounds like a lot of work. I understand there are people that give their babies baths every day. I believe these people are insane, because my children hate to be naked, hate to be cold, and hate to cry, so baths are not quite the relaxing luxury for them that they would be for me. Usually we just do bottles, swaddle blankets, maybe a book and a little rocking, and then cross our fingers and pray that they drift off to sleep with no meltdowns. 
• Usually our first attempt at bedtime is pretty successful, leaving us a little time to either eat together and watch a little TV, or if we are especially tired just crawl in bed at 8:00pm and try to get some sleep before the night time circus begins! 
• In the good old days (about two weeks ago), it was easy to feed, change, and soothe both babies back to sleep in an hour, so we took turns at night so that we each got a block of sleep. Now, Abby is *usually* good for that, and has actually started sleeping some longer stretches at night which is amazing!....but Jake is another story. There is at least one nighttime bottle - and sometimes two UGH - where he just. won't. sleep afterward. For awhile we thought he was still hungry so we would keep offering him a little more milk, and a little more milk, until he got sleepy enough to put down. It turns out this was not a good solution - we were overfeeding him which we learned when he started projectile puking during the day and we realized he had gained a whopping 3 pounds in 2 weeks! So now, we employ an assortment of baby sleep solutions - swaddling, swing, white noise, pacifiers, rocking, patting, shushing, ANYTHING that will calm him down. What inevitably does it? Sleep on or next to one of us. I swore I would be a parent that never does this. I now realize that if you say "I will never..." before you are actually a parent, you will inevitably end up doing that very thing (see also: pictures of my children in matching outfits).
• Somehow we survive the nights, and even when they seem painful at the time - Jake shrieking at 2am is a sound that you really have to hear to appreciate how crazy loud it is - it doesn't seem so bad during the day when they're all cute and cuddly and magically fall asleep within seconds. The days of sleeping through the night seem like a glorious mirage in the distance, and I promise that when they actually get here I will never, ever, EVER take my sleep for granted again!

So, we're surviving. Most days I actually feel like we're doing great. Jake and Abby are starting to have more awareness of everything around them - reaching for toys, watching us as we move around, looking at each other sometimes which is beyond cute - and every time they do something new I am amazed. Abby rolled over the other day like it was nothing, and I was so shocked I almost pushed her back over to make her do it again. We have been told to expect that they'll hit their developmental milestones somewhere between their actual age (3 months) and their adjusted age (1 month), but I'm trying not to stress about it because I figure they'll do things when they do them. We try to get in some tummy time every day, and we talk to them and sing to them all the time, and generally just hope that we're doing enough that we aren't causing any permanent damage. We are still waiting for those first intentional smiles, and I swear if they are directed to anyone but me, NO ONE is getting a car for their 16th birthday.

I have learned a lot about being a parent in the almost two months that Jake and Abby have been home, things people always tell you but you don't really get until it happens to you. Like when you think to yourself, my babies are so big! that your heart can break and fill at the same time. That some days a little help sounds helpful, but when I think about missing out on a bottle or a diaper change it reminds me of all of the ones that I missed out on in the NICU, and I just can't do it because I don't want to miss any more. Now I understand why bleary eyed mothers wait months to leave their kids with a babysitter, which is completely illogical but now makes perfect sense to me. Even the thought of it makes me feel panicky. (Maybe I'll rest easier after seeing some smiles, so I know for sure I won't miss out on the first ones!) I remember my sister-in-law Cari (who is, by the way, an amazing mother) telling me that she missed my nephew Jimmy when he was sleeping. As a 25 year old who valued sleep above all else (necessary when you go out 2-3 times a week), this was crazy to me because right after this she told me she had gone for MONTHS not sleeping more than 3-4 hours at a time. What???! No way. But you get used to it, just like the millions of parents before you got used to it. If I slept 4 solid hours at this point, I could probably be awake for days and feel just fine. Being a parent is HARD! It's a lot of work with very little specific feedback on whether or not you're doing a good job. But, I'm a hard worker, and this may be the hardest job I've ever had but that also makes it so amazingly deeply satisfying in the moments when I feel like I'm doing it really well.

So, here's what we have been up to the past few months...

Two months old!

It took us some time to warm up to the photo shoot...

Okay, A LOT of time to warm up to the photo shoot...

....but we got there in the end. I'm glad everyone likes this picture, because it is the only one out of the almost 100 I took of the two of them that turned out well!

Sonny Acres for pumpkins, Cosley Zoo for animals, and other fun stuff

Our first Halloween!

Three months old!