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About that night nurse

I can only afford the night nurse two nights a week, so she is not there every night.  Would be nice….  Hence me being up at all sorts of ungodly hours.

However, the night nurse situation is not working out exactly as I imagined it might.  The first night was obviously a write-off as I wanted to make sure all was ok.  The second night, last Friday, I woke up to help with every feed, so I hardly had any sleep.  The problem is the two of them (the babes) set each other off, so they wake up at the same time, or when one cries.  So they both woke up, and as you know I don’t want them to cry for too long, so I got help to help feed.  I can’t lie there and hear one of them crying and I am also not prepared to put earplugs in and risk that one of the lies and yells for 30 minutes.  Not yet, it is too soon.

Unless I can make a plan to let them eat on different shifts I might do away with the night nurse.  I am not paying all that money to get up any way.  I will also put them in separate rooms and try that.

And to be honest, I am not 100% comfortable with her.  She is sweet, but she doesn’t have the same philosophy I do.  I think she would be quite prepared to let the one cry while she feeds the other.  That is not acceptable to me.  So I listen out for them when she is there, not exactly conducive to a good night’s sleep.

I don’t think getting another night nurse is the solution.  I think I need to try and get these babies on different eating shifts the nights she is there.  I will try one or two more times.  As I said, she is sweet, and she looks after a set of twins in my mother’s suburb, so she comes recommended. 

So, that is the story of the night nurse and why I was up at 03:00 am posting on my blog.  BTW, the only chance I seem to get to go online is in the middle of the night with an awake baby in my arms.

Next update will be an introduction to the wonderful woman who helps me with the babes during the day.

Twin Question

Any one with twins have their babies in separate rooms?  I am thinking of putting my two in separate rooms.  They set each other off.  They are much better when they sleep apart.  As soon as the one cries, the other one wakes up and joins in the yell fest.

Last night they slept apart and Kate only woke up twice while Adam was awake every bloody 90 minutes (he wasn’t feeling well, the poor little critter).

I don’t want to have two baby rooms, but I thought of moving the one crib into the spare room. 

I am not sure whether it is because my two spent their first two weeks of life apart while Adam was in the ICU but they don’t like to sleep together.

And as you know, sleep is v v NB.

Mother Shock

This is brilliant, this is exactly what it is like, I know it's long, but read it, it is fanfuckingtastic.  Thanks to Andrea for allowing me to publish this on my blog.  Please read further here  http://mothershock.com/read.html or read her blog at Blog: http://www.mothershock.com/blog.  And do yourself a favour and buy the book!

Excerpt 1: Introduction
>From "Mother Shock: Loving Every (Other) Minute of It"
Copyright 2003
by Andrea J. Buchanan, published by Seal Press
Get it online here! http://sheknows.com/cgi-bin/go/jump.cgi?ID=249
Read more from Andi: http://SheKnows.com/about/Columnists/Mother_Shock/

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Introduction

Imagine you have just moved to a foreign country. You have the worst case of jet lag ever. The guidebook you brought, which seemed so comprehensive before you left home, does not tell you everything you need to know. You do not yet speak the language, and everything is confusing. Your spouse or traveling companion either hasn't come with you or gets to go back home each morning, coming to visit you only at the end of the day. In this new place, the customs are very different. Your natural ways of behaving and interacting are no longer appropriate. Despite the newness of everything, in this particular country you are expected to adapt immediately. But the rhythms of life are different here, and you are constantly sleep-deprived. You miss your old life, where everything was familiar. You miss your friends back home, who only imagine the excitement of your travels and are unable to fully understand the difficulties you describe.

This is what it feels like for many of us when we become mothers: we find we have entered into a strange new world with a language, culture, time zone and set of customs all its own. Until we become acclimated to this new, seemingly unfathomable territory, we exist in a state of culture shock. We are in mother shock.

When I became pregnant, I scoured the Web for information. I read about women trying to have babies; women who battled infertility; women who were three months pregnant, six months pregnant, nine months pregnant; women who miscarried early; women who delivered late; women who loved being pregnant; women who hated it. I tested the Chinese Conception Calendar to predict my baby's gender; I looked through the endless selections of baby names; I comparison-shopped for strollers. I signed up for e-mail newsletters detailing the rapid, invisible development of my in-utero guest. I posted on discussion boards and argued over parenting techniques with other women
who were not yet mothers. I learned about Toni Weschler's Taking Charge of Your Fertility, Ferberizing and the horrors of Ezzo and Bucknam's Baby Wise. I discovered the bible that is Fields's Baby Bargains. I enrolled in birthing class and began to watch the cable series A Baby Story. In short, I tried to do all the research I could and know everything there was to know about my biggest project to date: having a baby.

But then I had my baby. Suddenly I was in unfamiliar territory. I'd had nine months to anticipate being a mother, and then about thirty seconds to snap into being one. When I eventually left the hospital, shell-shocked by the whirlwind of sleep-deprivation, two days of pre-labor, an excruciatingly epidural-free delivery and the unbelievable reality of my baby in my arms instead of snugly lodged inside me, all I could think was: why does no one talk about this?

It wasn't just that the sun seemed so bright to me after being inside for two days, or that the cars driving past suddenly appeared to be death traps on wheels, or that the streets were full of grime and dirt I hadn't noticed before, or even that I saw the people around us as the germ-delivery systems they really were. It was that everything was fragile, everything was tenuous: I had crossed over to a strange new world, a world where another person's life literally depended on me, and everything seemed at the same time both more real and more unreal. I realized I had spent the past nine months learning how to be pregnant, not how to be a mother -- and being pregnant was the part that came naturally. Finally, after all my wondering, after all my preparation, after all my research, I had crossed over to the other side, and instead of being happy, I was in shock. Why had no one told me about this? Why had people been talking about slings and bouncy seats instead of telling me what motherhood is really like? Why had I never bothered to ask?

I had packed my bag for the hospital, but I ended up going on a much longer trip. I felt that in becoming a mother I had been transported to a foreign country, with a whole new language, a different culture, a striking political landscape and a punishing time zone to adjust to -- and this sense of being in a strange land was all the more jarring since, of course, I hadn't left home.

Suddenly I was only allowed a few non-consecutive hours of sleep a night, yet I still needed to function normally to care for a tiny, incredibly loud baby who didn't speak my language. Suddenly I had to know how to interpret my baby's cries, which in the beginning sounded merely like incessant screaming, not nuanced vocalizations full of clues as to what she needed. Suddenly I had to assume the mantle of responsibility for another human's life, despite the fact that I barely felt responsible for my own. Suddenly I had to navigate my way through baby books, parenting articles and advice from experts, grandparents, well-meaning friends and complete strangers.
Suddenly I had to be the one to know which was the safest, best, most baby-friendly stroller/car seat/highchair/sling/bassinet/baby food and where to find the cheapest/most environmentally friendly/least politically offensive place to buy it. Suddenly I was supposed to be the authority on all things related to my child. I was a new citizen in a brand-new country, and not only was I supposed to be immediately acclimated to living there, I was supposed to be the President.

But although it seemed that my entire world had shifted in the course of one exhausting, joyous, eventful day, it didn't seem as though anyone else had noticed. I waited for that mythical maternal instinct to kick in, waited for someone -- a mother, my mother, any mother -- to acknowledge that yes, really, everything does feel different and new and difficult, and that's okay. But nothing kicked in, aside from sleep deprivation, fear and self-doubt, and what I heard was that newborns are easy, that mothering, at the beginning at least, is not that hard. So I suffered my culture shock in silence, and as I began navigating my new surroundings with my daughter in the world instead of inside me, I silently wondered why I couldn't cope as easily with that transition as I had with changes in my pre-maternal life.

My sense of emotional dislocation reminded me of what I'd read about geographical dislocation: the phenomenon of culture shock and the general fish-out-of-water experience a person has when uprooted from her normal environment. So I did some research and discovered that the similarity between culture shock and what I was experiencing as a new mother was even more pronounced than I had imagined. The term "culture shock" was first coined nearly half a century ago by anthropologist Kalvero Oberg to describe the anxiety produced when a person moves to a completely new environment. In general, I learned, there are four phases to the adjustment cycle:

1. Initial euphoria, also referred to as the "honeymoon" stage, usually lasting from a few weeks to a month, where the newness of the experience is exciting rather than overwhelming;

2. Irritation/hostility, the "crisis" stage, in which many of the things the traveler initially found intriguing and exciting now seem annoying, frustrating, depressing or overwhelming;

3. Recovery, where the traveler eventually becomes acclimated to the new country and feels less isolated; and

4. Adjustment, the final phase, in which the traveler can function in both cultures with confidence.

These phases of adjustment seemed to correspond so neatly with the first year of motherhood, I realized Oberg had provided a perfect description of the process I was in the midst of -- this dislocation, this coming to grips with an entirely new way of living, was a kind of culture shock. It was mother shock.

A mother's culture shock, what I call "mother shock," is the transitioning period of the first year of new motherhood. It is the clash between expectation and result, theory and reality. It is the twilight zone of twenty-four-hour-a-day living, where life is no longer neatly divided into day and night, the triple-threat impact of hormonal imbalance, sleep deprivation and physical exhaustion. It is the stress of trying to acclimate as quickly as possible to the immediacy of mothering, a new
conception of oneself and one's role in the family and in the world, a new fearful level of responsibility, a new delegation of domestic duties and a newly reduced amount of sleep.Mother shock is not merely the hormonal plummet of the short-lasting "babyblues," and it is not the medical emergency that is acute postpartum depression. Mother shock is the transition, the period of adjustment to the
weight of all the things required of mothers, a weight that presents itself all at once. (For that reason, I think of mother shock as something almost exclusively limited to first-time mothers. Mothers of two or more children certainly have their own overwhelming initial experiences, but that element of surprise -- shock -- is missing.)

Like the traditional breakdown of culture shock into four phases of adjustment, I conceived of mother shock as comprising a cycle of stages:

1. Mother Love (honeymoon stage, the first month): The pure joy of a mother's bonding with her newborn, analogous to the "honeymoon phase" of culture shock. This is the Hallmark-moment experience of maternal bliss that we routinely see in the media and expect to enjoy ourselves.

2. Mother Shock (crisis, months two to six): After a few weeks, the stress of the new situation -- and in many cases the chronic lack of sleep -- begins to take its toll. In culture shock, the second stage is mostly sparked by unmet expectations and the strangeness of being cut off from cultural cues. The second stage of mother shock can also include those features, with the added critical factor of sleep deprivation. No matter what type of sleeper your baby is, chances are you're not getting the same amount of sleep your body has grown accustomed to for the last twenty- or thirty-odd years. A chronic sleep deficit can be brutal, and it can also strongly affect judgment, perspective and sense of well-being. With little sleep and first-time-parent nerves, disillusionment, frustration and self-doubt can begin to set in. In addition, new mothers are inundated with often conflicting advice from friends, family, doctors and even complete strangers. This can undermine a new mother's confidence, especially if she is insecure about her parenting skills or is exhausted (as new mothers
usually are). A new mother may feel overwhelmed by the immediacy of her baby's needs and may also feel isolated. A mother in this stage may feel conflicted about her postpartum body, about returning to work or not returning to work, about breast-feeding or being unable to breast-feed. She may experience depression, and it is in this stage that postpartum depression can set in for some women.

3. Mother Tongue (recovery, months six to nine): Day by day, so gradually it might not even be noticeable at first, a mother becomes acclimated to the routine of life with an infant. Physically, her postpartum body may begin to resemble the one she had pre-pregnancy, and either her baby has begun to sleep for longer stretches of time, or she is now used to getting by on interrupted and generally reduced sleep. By this point her baby is also becoming more interactive (e.g., smiling, cooing, laughing), and with more "proof" that everything is turning out fine, the mother can feel more confident in her parenting choices, less thrown by changes in routine and generally more comfortable in her new role.

4. Mother Land (adjustment, months nine to twelve): This is the point at which a mother feels more or less fluent in mothering. She feels comfortable in her new role and has assimilated to this new place in her life. She is no longer a stranger in a strange land, and she may even find it difficult to imagine ever returning to the way things were before.

Not every stage of mother shock is discrete, and not every mother will experience each stage in the same order (or duration) in which I have described them. But nearly every new mother will experience some aspect of this total period of adjustment. I see mother shock as being two-fold: the series of stages I have laid out, a timeline of adjusting to life as a mom; and the less temporally limited experience of motherhood in general. Mother love is something we can experience whether our babies are three weeks or three years old. Mother shock -- our anger or disappointment or frustration as mothers -- can be sparked from dealing with a colicky newborn or a tantruming toddler. Mother tongue, mastery of the intricacies of mothering, is something that we revisit sometimes monthly as our children change their
routines or evolve developmentally. And mother land, the feeling of contentment at being a mother, is someplace we might reach with an infant sleeping on our shoulders or with a preschooler saying "I love you" for the very first time.

When I speak about mother shock with other mothers, many of them readily identify the feeling: the disconnect, the giddy joy of caring for a new life contrasted with the gnawing fear of falling short, the numbness that got them through the blurry, sleep-deprived days and nights of the first three months of their child's life. There is a light-bulb moment I can actually see happening when we talk about mother shock and put those difficult months of transition in context. Shock is generally not what comes to mind when picturing a new mother and her tiny infant, and yet when I compare the shock of new motherhood to the experience of culture shock, mothers get it. They recognize themselves in the description of a traveler in a strange land, they relate to the stress of trying to acclimate in the face of information overload. They are relieved to finally put a name to what we new mothers experience as we hover in the gap between our past world and our present, trying bravely to put aside our own needs to tend to those of our defenseless newborns, attempting to navigate the sheer strangeness of so much responsibility and so much selflessness on so little sleep.

This book is an exploration of mother shock from the inside out, featuring essays written during the first three years of my daughter's life. I have organized the essays by subject matter rather than in pure chronological progression, to loosely correspond to the stages of mother shock I have described. In the first section, "Mother Love," I write about not only the joy of being a mother but also my misconceptions about motherhood and my pre-partum worries about what it would be like. In "Mother Shock" I explore the darker feelings of maternal anger, frustration and ambivalence. In the third section, "Mother Tongue," I write about learning to speak the language, scaling the learning curve of early motherhood and my adventures in navigating everything from playgroup politics to learning the hard way why no one should ever take an eighteen-month-old to a business lunch. The final section, "Mother Land," features essays on what it's like to embrace motherhood in all its complexity, reconciling my pre-maternal life with my current one and feeling comfortable walking around both with and without a stroller between me and the rest of the world.

When I first left the hospital with my baby, looking at the world for the first time as a mother, I asked myself, "Why does no one really talk about this?" As I grappled with my own experience of mother shock I realized why: it is problematic to discuss the difficulties of mothering without seeming ungrateful, uncaring, unappreciative or unbalanced. It is difficult to contradict the conventional assumption that motherhood is noble and joyous and uncomplicated. But just because women have been having babies since there were babies to be had doesn't mean that becoming a mother isn't profoundly life-changing. Having a baby takes a matter of hours; becoming a mother is a much more gradual transition.

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>From "Mother Shock: Loving Every (Other) Minute of It"
Copyright 2003 by Andrea J. Buchanan, published by Seal Press
Get it online here! http://SheKnows.com/cgi-bin/go/jump.cgi?ID=249
Read more from Andi: http://SheKnows.com/about/Columnists/Mother_Shock

03:37 am

Just got Kate to sleep.  Now Adam awake and in my arms.  As soon as I have finished this post I am going to give them both a jolly good hiding.  No TV for a week.  I am putting my foot down.  The little f*ckers ;-)

That’s why

05:00am.  I haven’t slept yet.  First Adam, now Kate.  I am desperately tired.  Tired tired tired.

As you know, I’ve been finding this motherhood stuff extremely hard.  It has been an enormous shock just how hard it is.  I thought I knew, I thought I was prepared.  I had read countless books, yet not one spoke about just how hard it is.  How relentless, how overwhelming, how all the time it is. 

And I wondered why no one had told me.  Why no one speaks about it?  It has made me feel like a useless mother.  Like I was the only one finding it so hard.  And me, of all people, who should be so grateful, so happy.  Why was I not feeling waves of love, gratitude and contentment?

Thank goodness for all of your honesty.  You’ve made me realize that motherhood in the newborn stage IS hard.  That I am not a total freak for not loving every minute of it.  And the more people I speak to, the more I hear the same stories.

I wondered why no one had told me, no one had warned me.  Why don’t they discuss this type of stuff in childbirth / ante natal classes?

And then I realized that firstly, even if someone had tried to warn me I wouldn’t have believed it.  I am sure that my infertile friends who are now pregnant are thinking ‘yeah right, it must just be her, it will be different with me. I will be so grateful and happy to eventually have my child that none what she is talking about will matter.  How hard can it be, millions do it every day’.  That is how I thought before the arrival of the babes. 

And yes, I am sure there are those who breeze through it.  Whose children sleep through right from the beginning, whose children don’t cry for hours for no apparent reason.  Whose kids never get sick.  And I know that because I have two it is that much harder, but still.  It is damn hard, even with one I’m sure.

So I wouldn’t have believed it if people had to try and warn me.

Then secondly, how do you explain to someone what it is like?  This newborn stage?  You talk about sleep deprivation and they will think ‘ok, little sleep, I can handle that’.  You can talk about the crying, about not knowing what is wrong with your baby.  About pacing the passageway at 3 in the morning, feeling desperate.  But all of these wont even begin to describe what it is like.

How do you describe it? 

The part that is so hard is the overwhelming and enormous sense of responsibility you have towards this little body.  This child who you’ve chosen / created.  And with that responsibility comes such a sense of vulnerability and a loss of control.  It’s no longer just about me, it’s about the babies.  And I am responsible for them.  There is no time off, there is no changing your mind, taking a break, running away.  And sometimes, no matter how hard you try, things will still go wrong, they will still cry, they will get sick. they wont sleep or they wont eat.  And you will want to run away, back to a place where all you had to worry about was you.  It can make you feel so helpless, so vulnerable, because more than any thing in the world, you want to make your baby happy.

I am not even doing the sense of what it is like justice.  It is just so difficult to explain. 

I honestly had no idea it would be this hard.  That I would feel this vulnerable.  It feels so scary.  Every thing I do I wonder how it will affect them.  Every action is huge.  Enormous.  Life shaping.

It’s not hard in the sense of hard work, it’s hard in the sense of ‘no matter how hard I try, it might not be right / enough’.  Hard work is fine.  I worked hard for five years at infertility, I can handle hard work.  It’s the sense of responsibility you have for your child.  And the relentlessness of it, it is all the time.

As I said, I am unable to articulate exactly what it is like.  It is overwhelming, it is scary, and it is impossible to fully explain. Yes, it is not for long, but if I could do any new mother a favour, it would be to say that the newborn stage is very hard, it is a huge shock, no matter how prepared you think you are, no matter how much you wanted this.  Don’t beat yourself up if you don’t love every minute of it. 

And yet, you do get through it, it does get easier. Even now, only a month down the line, it feels a little easier.  Not easy, just easier.  The dark cloud is lifting, I do think I was suffering from a bit of PPD.  Or perhaps even post traumatic stress disorder.  However, would I change it?  No.  Of course not.  I want these babies, I love these babies.  It’s just hard, that’s all. 

So mothers-to-be, be prepared not to love every minute of it, and that’s ok, apparently it does get better.  Just because millions do it doesn’t make it easy or fun.  And ask and receive help from those around you!

Oh, and if you can help it, do try and have one baby at a time, so much more sensible ;-)

What do you have to say for yourself now?

**warning: lots of fucking swearing ment.**

As you know, I am pretty open about my infertility and as a result many people I have come into contact with over the last five years have seen me go through my various dramas along the way.  People I work with, friends, family etc.  They have seen me deal with negatives, with failed fertilizations, difficult transfers, ectopics, miscarriages etc.

There have been a few people along the way who have felt quite strongly that I was, how should we put this delicately, um, out of my fucking mind to have tried so long and so hard to have a child.  Some of these people said so to my face, others merely thought it.  They thought I was crazy, that I should have given up long ago, accepted my lot in life.  Some even dared to suggest that perhaps it wasn’t part of God’s plan for me to have children. 

And I kept saying that I would do whatever it took, but I would have a child one day.  I would never stop trying, I was not prepared to accept a childless future.  I would have a child one day, whether through my own efforts, ART, through DE, adoption, whatever, but I would have a child one day.  I think many thought I was mad / obsessed / out of touch with reality.

I am sure that even some of the ‘not so fertile but can’t be called infertile’ people I interacted with on the various boards must have thought “she is crazy to carry on trying”.

Well, what do you have to say for yourself now you nay sayers?  Still think I should have just accepted my fate? 

As I have said all along ‘fuck fate’.  I refused to accept that this was it, that I wasn’t ‘meant’ to have children.  I will decide what my future is.  No one ,or nothing else will.

I was reminded of this when I spoke to an old colleague, someone I worked with right in the beginning of me trying.  He had heard about the babies and phoned me to congratulate me.  He said “well done, perseverance pays off.  You always said you would do it”. 

And I thought to myself ‘you know what, he’s right.  I did say I would do it.  Bloody well done to me’. 

It is starting to feel real that after five fucking long years, I actually did it.  Good lord, I am exhausted just thinking about how much it took to get here. The IF devil tried to break me, and nearly did, but I made it.  I did it.  Fuck you fate.

Please note:  I have also always said that those that decide to get off the proverbial IF roller coaster are the bravest of us all.  Because THEY decide when enough is enough.  So I am not knocking those to decide to stop trying.  I was just never brave enough to have that as an option.

I can see the light.

Ok, I can see some light at the end of the tunnel, and it doesn’t appear to be the headlights of an oncoming train.

I hired a night nurse last night and while I didn’t have LOTS of sleep, I had more than 3 hours and I do feel better today.  It was damn hard going to sleep leaving my babies in the care of someone else.  I cried when I got into bed.  I felt like the WWM, abandoning my poor little babies. 

I know logically that I need help, but emotionally it is very difficult for me to admit that I need help, that I can’t cope alone.  There are many mothers of twins who do this all by themselves, why am I so effing useless that I need extra help?  Why can they cope and I can’t?  And yet, if I was hearing this from someone else I would say to them “don’t be an asshole!!  If you can afford help, take it.  Why be a martyr”  But you know how you never listen to your own assvice.

Last night the night nurse said “I can see these babies are used to being picked up”, which made me feel like shit and question myself, but I just can’t not pick them up when they are crying.  They work themselves up into such a state crying, it breaks my heart.  If it means my babies are used to being picked up, then so be it.  They are too little to just be left to cry.  But ok, they were on their worst behaviour when the nurse arrived.  I thought she was going to turn around and walk out. 

But back to the light at the end of the tunnel.  Having a few extra hours sleep last night was great.  It was the first session with the nurse so I didn’t have lots of sleep but I had more than usual.  This morning I woke up and couldn’t wait to go see my babies. 

My mother has kindly offered to have one baby sleep over once a week so that I can get a chance to play singleton mommy.  Adam slept over at granny’s on Sunday night and we all had a good night, plus I can get one whole day off a week to go for a wax, or to the shops etc while my mom and the nanny look after the kids. 

And then I am convinced Kate and Adam both just about smiled at me this morning, which was wonderful.  They are very close to smiling, they are starting to respond to me with coos. 

Plus we do seem to be finding some kind of rhythm, which makes me feel good.  We are now on four hourly feeds (instead of three), and both babies are finishing their feeds well. 

The weigh in this morning showed Adam is now 4.2 kg / 9.25 lb and Kate is 3.8 kg / 8.5 lb.  Of course I still stand in line to win the WWM Award as Adam has crusty eyes and Kate has a little thrush in her mouth.  She also has reflux and has to go onto a special formula (read mega $$$).

Adam is also getting easier to burp.  So we are all learning.  I do see light at the end of the tunnel, things are definitely getting better.

Here is a pic of the little c ritters, with a face cloth threaded through their soothers to keep them in their mouth.  Cute huh?

Calling all Armchair Psychologists

Dear Friends in the Computer, I need a diagnosis.

Do you think I am depressed?  As in PPD?  As in I need to go get some help?

Reasons I could be depressed:
- I know I am susceptible to PPD cos of infertility, twins, high risk pg, previous losses, A type personality, plus general pain-in-the-assness.
- Last night, I told Julie I hate this.  This being mother to newborn twins.  And I seriously did.  I hated it.  With all my heart.
- When they were both crying I looked at them and felt nothing.  (which made me feel horribly guilty)
- When I wake up from a nap my first thought is ‘oh no, not more of this’
- I am seriously sleep deprived
- I am so not enjoying this stage. 
- I want to run away, often.
- I wonder if I haven’t made the biggest mistake of my life.

Reasons I could be fine:
- I do love my children and wish them no harm
- Even when they are crying for hours, I still can’t just leave them, their cries still tug at my heart strings.
- I think my reaction could be considered if not normal, then understandable due to the circumstances.  I.e. I am not depressed, I am just reacting to the circumstances.  It is just a very tough time.
- Every thing seems better in the day.  It’s the night that I dread.
- I am already on Prozac – can I get PPD while I am on Prozac?

My psychiatrist warned me that I could suffer from PPD and I don’t want to be a martyr.  I know that help is available if I need it.  I am not too proud to admit that I might need help.  Yet I don’t think I am depressed.

I think that this is just fucking hard, this beginning bit.  It is not fun. It is not nice.  It is way way harder than I ever dreamed it would be.  I am sleep deprived and emotional. 

Then again, I have this little niggle that says ‘what if you are actually supposed to be loving this stage, what if other people are loving every minute of it and you are missing out because you are actually depressed’.  Because I am going to be honest here and say that I am not loving motherhood at the moment.  And while I love them always, sometimes I don’t even like my babies.  Especially at 3am in the morning, after pacing up and down for hours.

I would hate to look back in a few months’ time and think ‘if only I had got help and enjoyed the newborn stage’.  And yet, what kind of help can I get?  More pills?  Talking is certainly not going to help.  If I need talking therapy I will blog.  Believe me, hearing from all of you is worth 10x any session with a therapist.

Maybe I am just having a normal reaction to an extremely stressful situation?

What do you think?

Not a good look Muriel

And you thought Julie had let herself go.

In the list of things to do, I’m afraid looking good is right at the bottom, just after having the car washed.  (yes, indeed.  In the midst of a baby crying fest, Marko says he HAS to have the car washed Right Now.  WTF? It can’t wait until tomorrow / next week / next year / never?).

I will get round to taking the old nail polish off my toes, and I will have my legs waxed as soon as I can.  Probably around the time the kids go to school.

You know things are bad when your sister offers to give you a pedicure. 

As for my roots, well I was too scared to have my hair coloured when I was pregnant, so picture 9 months of regrowth.  Not a good look Muriel.

Lack of sleep has left crevices on my face that not even an industrial strength course of Botox will smooth out.

As I lay down last night, in my old We Try Harder T shirt, some of Kate’s puke between my breasts and fresh Adam puke stuck on my collarbone, the subtle scent of sour milk wafting from my pillow, teeth unbrushed, STILL having to wear a pad (buy shares in pad companies now, Tertia is keeping them profitable), old comfy underpants on, I thought to myself ‘I don’t think I would want to shag me’.

Although I must admit my non-negotiable is two showers every day, morning and night (and I do usually brush my teeth, it was just that night a baby fell asleep on my chest and there was no way I was waking any one up to go brush my teeth).  But I have to shower every morning and night.  Marko just has to sit with two screaming kids.  Although the shower is certainly not a leisurely one (no singing), just long enough to clean my bits.

The good thing is that I have lost a lot of weight.  Fuck the best odds diet in WTEWYAE, try the JHT (Just Had Twins) diet.  I have lost 48 pounds in 4 weeks, only about 10 to go to get to super thin gorgeous and divine status.  When choosing between sleep and food, sleep wins every time.  I know, I know, I need to look after myself.  But seriously, I have absolutely no appetite. 

Oh, and another good thing – no stretch marks!!!  Can you believe that, with such an enormous belly.  And no hemorrhoids.  V pleased about that.

So I might be hairy, stinky with furry teeth, but I am hemorrhoid-free and slim’ish. Surely that’s got to count for something?

WWM Runner Up

Yesterday I was looking at Adam’s gorgeous feet (I adore their feet, so cute), and I saw that they were looking a little flaky.  I said to myself “self, remember to put cream on his feet”), when I looked a bit closer and noticed that he had crusty dried curds between his toes.  The ‘dry skin’ was in fact old milk puke that I hadn’t cleaned away.

Then last night, I lay Kate down on my chest, trying to avoid the old milk puke marks she and her brother had deposited there from an earlier feed, when she puked again and this time I laid her face in it, so when I felt the warm wetness, I lifted her up and she had milk puke all over her face.

Nice.  My babies are covered in old milk puke.  What an excellent mother am I.  I do bath them, but only every second day.

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.