La Bamba is NOT a Lullaby

I woke up before the sun on a cold morning in January to find our house in complete disarray. My head hurt like a hangover but the bottles next to the bed were definitely not of the adult variety.

 I rubbed my eyes and got out of bed, but not before realizing the pain coursing through my abdomen was not the remnants of a good time and instead the uncomfortable reminder of a c-section. I peeked into the crib across the bedroom to find my newborn son swaddled and snoozing peacefully. I walked into the family room where I could hear his twin cooing in the living room, entertaining his daddy.

“Some night, huh?” I muttered to my husband.

“Yeah…that sucked,” he said definitively. “How are we going to survive this?”

This being babyhood.

Parenthood.

Life with twins.

I shook my head. I had no idea.

It’s remarkable how quickly our little five pound wonders turned our lives completely upside down. A mere 16 hours earlier, my husband and I carried our newborn boys across the threshold into clean, comfortable home. A home my husband and in laws spent hours scrubbing, sanitizing, dusting and vacuuming just days before, anticipating the boys’ arrival.

Now, our house - our sanctuary - displayed our disheveled state perfectly. It looked like a scene from the reality show, COPS – like one of those houses the police bust into to break up a domestic violence dispute or search for stolen ID’s. Those houses always seem to be messy and disheveled, a prerequisite, I imagined, for appearing on the reality show.  Replace stolen property with baby products and we could have been starring in season 178 of COPS.

Evidence of our disastrous night littered our home. Half-empty, ready-made bottles of formula lay strewn across our kitchen counter, bedroom nightstands and dresser. In the corner, I saw the cords to my breast pump lying tangled on the floor.  I vaguely recalled fumbling with them in the middle of the night (Did I pump? Had my milk come in?) Who knows…my brain was mush. The stack of clean diapers next to the crib now looked like they’d been ravaged and tightly bound bundles of (presumably) dirty diapers filled the garbage. I eventually found our dog snoozing under a mess of sleepers and baby blankets.

Suffice it to say, our first night home with our twins the evening before went downhill fast. After a quick dinner of take out, my husband and I got our newborns ready for bed, dressing them in fresh sleepers. All was calm. I took a shower and after two weeks of hospital bedrest, this one felt so good. For a few blissful minutes, I let the calming feeling of home wash over me. After taking a last peek at the boys, I eased myself into bed and nearly cried with joy. For the first time in months, I was able to lie on my back AND breathe at the same time. A miracle! My husband, who was also exhausted, and I exchanged a quick kiss and we settled into sleep.

Or so we thought.

Moments later, one of the boys started crying, which of course, woke the other one. Their chorus of crying pierced the darkness. Sheets were pulled back, lights were flipped on and we each grabbed a crying baby, hoping the crying would subside.

It didn’t.

What transpired was a pathetic, albeit, hearty effort to meet their needs, failing miserably. We tried feeding and burping them, changing them, cuddling them and walking around the house with them.  And, if my memory serves me correctly, I swore I heard my husband hum an off-key version of Dream On by Aerosmith. Nothing worked.

Hours later and with our boys still awake and fussy, my husband flipped on the television and said, “We might as well accept the fact we aren’t sleeping tonight. I’ll find something to watch on T.V.”

I wanted to burst into tears. I was so exhausted, I could hardly see straight and now we’d be up all night. I felt the cold hand of reality tap me on the shoulder and laugh in my face.

As to be expected, our choice in television programming at 1:00 a.m. consisted of little more than infomercials and old movies. We settled on La Bamba, hoping perhaps the soulful, Latin music would coax our twins to sleep. Of course it didn’t and the mere fact it didn’t, irritated me to no end. I knew I was hitting my limit when I began to envy Richie Valens.

The rest of the night crawled by, but sometime between 4 and 5, the boys must have quieted because at 6:00, I woke up with a start, felt that horrible headache and surveyed the damage of the night before. It wasn’t pretty, but it was over. Despite the collateral damage, we fought our way through our first night as parents.

Surviving this would take teamwork, patience and acceptance that our house would likely remain COPS-worthy for a number of years. And I was ok with that, as long as I didn’t have to see Lou Diamond Phillips shaking his hiney to that God-awful tune again.

Grocery Lists

As most moms of twins, I delight in the differences between my boys as much as marvel at their uncanny similarities. Evidence of their differences were displayed recently when they made "grocery lists" by cutting out the ads in the newspaper.

Jonathan's illustrates his free spirit approach to creativity.

James' list, on the other hand, is a tangible example of his imagination and attention to detail.

"James and Teddy's Grocery List"

A Day with the Ladies

Jonathan and James were about two months old when I made plans to take them out on an outing. A real outing. Not Target, not to the grocery store and certainly not the drive thru at Starbucks – an outing that required I get out of my t-shirt and yoga pants. This was no small feat. I was an exhausted new mother of twins and in the middle of desperately trying to establish some sort of schedule that might reward me with a little more than the two hours of sleep I was banking a night. It wasn’t going well. In fact, I felt like a judge attempting to preside over an out of control courtroom while my little defendants sat smugly in their bouncy chairs, plotting their next outburst.

 In other words, a trip that took us more than 20 minutes away from my house, my headquarters, was out of the question.

So, when my 94 year old grandmother called me up on a Tuesday afternoon to invite the boys and me to her house for lunch that weekend, I nearly declined. She lived a good 50 minutes away, the furthest I had been away from home with my newborns, and this would throw us off schedule. As it was, the boys ate every three hours and it took me more than two hours to get them both changed, fed, burped, changed again and rocked to sleep.

But I decided to give it a shot. After all, Nana was one of the most important people in my life and well worth the extra effort. Besides, I missed hanging out with her every Saturday as we had done for years.

“Okay, Nana, pencil us in on your calendar,” I told her. “But don’t use pen. The boys are really finicky and if things go haywire in the morning, we may not be able to come.”

“I am so excited,” Nana gushed. “I can’t wait to tell all of my friends!”

“Let’s keep this low key though, alright?” I requested.

As I hung up the phone, I pictured her pulling out her calendar and writing, “Missy and the boys for lunch” in her Saturday square. In pen. Then, I imagined her calling her friends or “cronies” as she called them, to share the news.

I was officially committed.

That Saturday, yawning from my night of feeding rotations and a particularly time consuming diaper blow out, I got the boys ready for our trek. I packed my diaper bag for every possible scenario, including a 15 car pileup on I-17. I dressed the boys up in my favorite matching outfits and carefully combed their wispy hair. I couldn’t help but notice how irresistible they looked in their light green and orange striped onesies with the little whimsical peach crab printed on the front proclaiming, “Don’t Feel Crabby!”

An hour later, when I pulled into Nana’s senior apartment complex, I immediately spotted her waiting for us outside. She was wearing her signature black and white printed blouse and white pants, her white hair gleaming in the sun.

I parked the car and she scurried over, practically tripping over her walker. Nana kissed the boys while I loaded their car seats in the tandem stroller. We were only a few feet inside the lobby of the building when I heard the chime of the elevator doors open and her friends step out.

I looked at Nana and she sheepishly said, “I know, I know…they were just as excited as I was to see the boys.”

I couldn’t help but laugh and hug them; their familiar faces warmed my heart.

“Oooh, this must be Jonathan,” Edythe boomed in her thick Brooklyn accent. “He’s the screamah.”

Pulling the stroller hood back for a better view, Bonnie turned to the others and said, “And this is sweet baby James.  He’s got digestion issues you know.”

I marveled about how these women knew details about the boys and could tell them apart. I had family members who couldn’t even do that.

Crammed into the elevator on our way to Nana’s apartment, I noticed the women looking exceptionally nice, like church-nice. When I told them how lovely they all looked, Sally said, “Well, it isn’t every day we get to visit with babies.”

Inside Nana’s apartment, the ladies settled onto the couch, taking turns holding the boys while I warmed their bottles on the stove in the kitchen. When I was finished, I offered the bottles to Nana and Sally and they beamed while they fed the boys their lunch. I watched them, fascinated with how natural the ladies seemed with the boys – the way they held their bottles and sat them up in between gulps. It was as if they had been caring for babies all their lives.

There was something so reassuring about these women – their calm, natural demeanor that was comforting to a neurotic, inexperienced mother like me. It was then I decided to forgo our schedule, if for just that day.  All I wanted to do was soak up that maternal goodness radiating through the room.

I am so grateful for this experience, not only because of the enjoyment I got out of the visit, but because it was the last time my boys got to hang out with their great-grandmother. I think of her so often, wondering if she's watching us from above. I'm sure she is, as I can practically hear her laugh at the crazy antics of my favorite boys.