Mother Frequency

It’s amazing how tuned in you become to the sound of your child’s cry.  Actually your child’s every noise.  I can be dead to the world (in my one hour sleep I manage at night or my rare naps during the day) and I will immediately wake up if one of my children murmurs.  All other noise I can filter out but the sound of my children pierces through the densest layers of fog and fatigue.  And the layers are dense, believe me.

And what is also amazing is how some fathers (i.e. Marko) can sleep right through high-pitched wailing times two.  They babies can be yelling in the bed right next to him and Marko will sleep through it. 

It makes taking a nap very hard.  Because the slightest murmur wakes me up.  And babies are noisy little critters at the best of times.  I try and let others look after them while I nap but I absolutely cannot sleep if they cry.  I get all anxious.  As much as I need to sleep and no matter how tired I am, I have to get up and see that all is ok with them.

In fact I read an interesting thing the other day.  It was an article written about CIO (crying it out) used to sleep train etc and the person writing the article was anti CIO.  She said that apparently mothers are biologically programmed to be agitated by the cry of their newborn.  This was to ensure that the needs of the newborn were met.  Now I don’t know how true this is, but it does feel that way.  When your child cries it is very difficult not to do any thing.  It does cause a feeling of agitation / anxiousness.  Each cry causes a physical reaction, it actually feels like pain in my chest.  How do you just ignore the cry? 

Now imagine the extreme state of agitation when you have two screaming babies and you can only console one at a time.  Last night was musical arms.  As I got one calmed down and to sleep the other would start.  This went on from 12 until 5.  Seriously.  Then this morning, for the first time since they were born, I let them cry.  I had to get the bath stuff ready and I needed two arms for that.  So I put them on my bed and left them to cry for the few minutes it took to get the bath stuff ready.  It was traumatic, there was much static in the Mother Frequency. 

And you know what, you can’t turn the damn frequency off.  There is no on/off switch, and unfortunately no volume button either.  And for such little bodies, the little buggers emit a hell of lot of noise.

Comments

[Boulder]

Your children are gorgeous.

My college roommate felt that MF (mother frequency) hit & become more heightened with each of her children. She finally resorted to an ear-plug in one ear for sanity's sake and the other ear open to be a good mum. It is all about balance, after all, isn't it? :)

Can't imagine what it must feel like with 2 wee ones pulling at your heart-strings. Hang in there, things WILL smooth out. PROMISE.

xoxo

[Lila]

Oh dear Tertia, how I know what you're talking about. For years I couldn't take a shower without hearing crying in the noise of the water. I was sure someone is crying. So I spent quite some time running naked and dripping between the shower and the baby room.

In German, we have a word for this special kind of sleep, "Ammenschlaf". Interesting enough it's "wet nurses's sleep", and connects breastfeeding and sleep. It's an old word from the times when mothers gave their children to wetnurses. Well nowadays we would call it mother's sleep, or parental sleep. My DH has it, too.

Dear Tertia, you're doing a great job. Your babies are lucky to have you. It won't hurt them if they cry - even if it's painful for you to hear. Sometimes I think I tried to hard to avoid crying in my eldest. No matter what you do - you will always feel you might have done even better. But you do your very very best, and this is quite close to perfect. So no fretting any more.

Look at your beautiful angels. All your efforts pay. they are gorgeous!!!! Thank you for the pictures, I love them. Kate and Adam as part of my morning routine...

[girlwonder]

When i had my third daughter i was so used to hearing a toddler cry that for the first few hours my husband and i actually went "Awwww" when she cried, we thought it was so cute. Clearly she clicked onto this very quickly, by the next day she began to cry in this high pitched wail that she still has to this day.
I can't sympathise on the twins, but i'm right there with you on the noise factor.

[Linda]

Good Lord, those are gorgeous kids. WOW.

[blackbird]

Ack! screamy babies!

When people would ask, all those years ago, how we were doing with nighttimes and sleep, re the new baby, K would say --oh, he slept through the night. And I would look at him incredulously as NONE of them slept through the night before they were old enough to walk,
it was just that HE NEVER HEARD THEM.

How perfectly wonderful that you have screamy babies.

[KatS]

How adorable they are! They are gaining weight. You get the World's Best Mother award!

[Lioness]

T. it is true, mother are truly biologically programmed for that and little ones are programmed to be as etopeimeletic as possible - inducive of care-giving, thus continues your ethological education bcs we all know you're bored.

What impresses me most abt Adam and Kate is how they're so into the whole YMCA dancing already, I give you 10 years till they go clubbing. Party on, babies!

[katie e.]

what's too bad is that you may never grow less sensitive to their noises. i'm 24 years old and living back at home right now, and when i was sick and coughing during the night about two months ago, my mother learned that she still wakes up to every noise i make.

[Deborah]

I can't speak to babies crying, but I know that if one of my cats so much as farts during the night, I hear it. On the other hand, they can repeatedly walk across my husband's face without him missing a single snore.

Guess that's why they call it women's work.

[Melani]

When my two children were small, I heard EVERY little thing. Now, they are 8 and 6 yrs and I don't hear a thing but my husband does. Of course, he still nudges me and says one of the kids is calling for you. Fortunately it doesn't happen much now. I wish I could send you some sleep. Also, those babies are absolutely gorgeous!

[Tonni]

I do agree that there's some sort of biological hard-wiring going on with the crying. You might consider earplugs if you KNOW others are caring for the twins so you can nap. I've been there many times, where a mere 3 hours, or 1.5, can be a full night's rest. Keep stocking up on those naps; they're like money in the bank. And you don't have to worry about CIO yet, should you choose to go that route or use some modified form of it (many anti-CIO articles paint is thusly: let them cry till they barf. this needn't be the only way--see Elizabeth Pantley's "The No-Cry Sleep Solution" for an alternative, when the kids are older). Letting them cry while you run a bath will not harm them. They will learn to trust that mama always comes back, because you do, and you will.

[Rebekah]

Yep, Mommies hear it all and MOST guys sleep right through it. I remember when A. was a newborn, there was this sound he used to make as he was waking up. I can't describe it, but it was SO unbelievably quiet. And guess what? It woke me up every time. Actually, I was glad he made it, as it allowed me to get to him before he really started crying.

I completely agree that we have a biological reaction to a crying baby. Forget what happens if you're breastfeeding and you hear a baby (ANY baby) cry. In my experience, there is a very visceral reaction. When I couldn't settle Aidan down for whatever reason, my stomach would absolutely be in KNOTS. I would feel so stressed out. I had forgotten this until I was caring for my niece one time, and I had the same reaction to HER crying. Maybe I'm just a stress-case. =)

Tonni's right ... it's o.k. to let them cry while you're taking a shower. It's not fun, I know, but they'll be o.k., and you will ultimately feel a lot better all cleaned up.

[shari]

had to comment because I have an IDENTICAL pics of my newborns screaming their heads off laying on our bed! You're right - it is traumatic, but as you will find (and have found out already) sometimes you just have to let them cry for a minute or two, no way around it with twins. We had a home nurse that came to check on our twins two days after taking them home (to make sure they were still alive, I'm sure) - part of our ins. deal. Anyway, I was borderline hysterical from hormones/lack of sleep/new mom syndrome and she gave me a piece of advice that I think of from time to time: she looked me right in the eye and said "sometimes babies cry, and it's OK". Very matter of factly. Helped me feel like less of a bad mom when I just had to let one cry while I tended to the other.

Hang in there... btw, they are growing into such beautiful little babies :)

[persephone]

Tertia, one of my sisters eventually developed insomnia because she kept thinking her baby was crying or was about to cry, she could never relax enough to sleep. Don't let it get that far.

The biological function of being so amazingly attuned is so you can hear when the babies need you, even if no one else does. But if someone you trust is watching them, there is no useful function for your supersonic hearing, and you can sefely turn it off.

I second or third the earplugs idea. The other thing that worked for me (under slightly less pleasant circumstances, I was in Israel during the first Gulf War and couldn't sleep because I kept listening for the radio noise that came just before an air raid siren) was to go to sleep with earphones and a walkman on.

[Moxie]

I could never sleep through it, either.

Once mine was old enough to sleep stretches of time at night, I would often wake up 15-20 seconds before he did in the middle of the night. I just knew, somehow, that he was going to wake up and need me, and it woke me up.

The mother connection is really miraculous. Annoying, but miraculous.

[Shannon]

As always, I'm amazed how well you do with two when I feel the same way with just one.

Congrats again, your children are gorgeous even when hollering their heads off.

[Lana]

Tertia, you amaze me. I'm finding it so much work with one. I couldn't imagine having two. You are doing a wonderful job.

[Scully]

It was years before I stopped turning and looking when I heard a baby cry. Which I don't think is all that true, because I still stop what I'm doing and look attentively when I hear a baby cry.

I swear, I could spot my son's crying from 100 miles away.

And he's 15 now, and I still wake up if he even snorts the wrong way in his sleep. It really freaks him out when he wakes up in the middle of the night and I'm standing over his bed with a mirror under his nose seeing if he's still breathing. Lucky for him he snores every now and then.

Those are the most amazingly beautiful babies I have seen in a very long time.

And you're the WBM (World's Best Mom).

[Jody]

Beautiful Babies! Oh, those Beautiful Babies!

I'm very anti-CIO, I agree entirely that there's a biological functioning going on there, and I vote enthusiastically for: wear the earplugs! Wear the earplugs! You will be a MUCH BETTER mommy and be much better prepared to juggle sleepless babies if you have napped. As long as you know your helpers are holding the babies and doing the same things you would do to comfort them, put in the earplugs and grab an hour's sleep.

[Erin]

But Tertia, we don't know which baby is Kate and which baby is Adam without the color-coded onesies!

[Sally]

I was curious if you've swaddled at all? http://blog.glennf.com/mtarchives/004144.html

I don't have kids or anything, I was just curious if this swaddling thing actually worked!

[KellyH]

I was the same way when my daughter was a newborn- I could NOT sleep if she was being cared for by anyone else and was crying. She's MY baby, I'M her mother, I should be the one to sort it all out. I so relate to what you're saying.

Those beautiful babies are growing so well! You're doing a wonderful job. You ARE a wonderful mother. It will get better.

[mercybuttercup]

Tertia, I don't necessarily recommend the book "Secrets of the Baby Whisperer" across the board, but I will say it gave us some really useful perspective on crying and how to react to it.

You should not accept any further advice from me, as my 4-month-old woke up an average of every 40 minutes last night. So clearly, I must be wrong about everything.

[emma]

They may be noisy, but they certainly are beautiful!

[ASM]

Oh my gosh, those babies are becoming positively chubby!