Ever found yourself screaming, "It's f@#^ing SLEEPY TIME!" at 3am? Well, mama, this post is for you.

There were a few times in college where I remember dramatically labeling myself "sleep deprived."  Doing so was kind of sexy.  Getting up and dragging oneself to class with tousled hair and last night's eye makeup smeared all over the left facial region said "I consider myself quite busy and important...too much so to shower before class.  Aren't I mysterious?"  Or something like that.  Young Hollywood seems to think itself chronically sleep deprived, with their ever-so-posh hospitalizations for "exhaustion."  

I have come to feel a bit territorial over the terms "sleep deprived" and "exhaustion."  Mothers are sleep deprived.  Every one else is just whiny.  (Disclaimer: My three-day sleep total = under twelve hours.  I am not rational, kind, or understanding at this moment.  Prepare to be offended.  Prepare to be horrified.  Just don't say I didn't warn you.)

Because our nation clearly has an issue tossing around the terms "sleep deprivation" and "exhaustion" like candy at a parade, let me attempt to set some new parameters to the concept.  If you cannot relate to the following incidents,  congratulations, you are NOT sleep deprived.  If you can, it's official.  You are sleep deprived.  Welcome to the club, sister.

You are definitely sleep deprived if...

• You are writing/reading this post while eating an entire batch of buttercream frosting with a spoon.  Caffeine is too obvious and reeks of trying to hard.
• Within the last week, you've turned to your husband at 4am and hissed, "I am going into the fucking kitchen to grab a fucking frying pan to fucking smash my fucking face in because I CANNOT fucking take any fucking more of this and I am so. fucking. tired." and he just rolled over and went back to sleep without saying a word because it's the third time you've threatened tonight and so far you seem to be making hollow threats.
• You've zoned out for A TEENSY SECOND in the grocery store and upon zoning back in you find your fifteen month old standing up on the seat of the cart leaning into the back to pop open a beer.
• In a desperate attempt to keep from becoming one of those mothers who yells, you've taken to loudly reciting children's books and songs when you've had it up to here: "I SAID A BOOM-CHICK-A-BOOM!  I SAID A BOOM-CHICK-A-BOOM!  I SAID A BOOM-CHICK-A-ROCKA-CHICK-A-ROCKA-CHICKA-BOOM!  Your children are terrified when you start to sing.
• You've screamed, "it's FUCKING sleepy time!" at 3am and wondered who the crazy screaming woman is and how she got into your bed.
• Yesterday you fell asleep laying in the middle of the living room floor with your fifteen month old twins playing loudly right next to you.  You woke up to find three sticky fingers in your nose, a thumb in your ear, and two smooshed noses pressed against your forehead.  
• You've run out of diapers but because you are too tired to go to the store, you pray that nobody will poop.  Of course somebody poops, at which time you are faced with either fashioning a diaper out of duct tape and paper towels or opening the diaper, removing the poop, and re-applying the diaper like it never happened.  Since this is purely a hypothetical situation, we do not need to get into discussing the choice that was made.

I think you get the gist here.  Of course, do keep in mind that, as stated above, these are all purely hypothetical situations which probably definitely NEVER HAPPENED in my house.  But if they happened to you, I think you should know that you are probably definitely not alone.  Wink wink.  

bed bugs.

Holidays, fork-mashed with sweet potatoes and breast milk. Part three.

So we've kind of spent the last eleven months staying within a 90 minute radius of our house, since eventually somebody is going to poop or need a nap or a boob, and that 90 minute radius just seems safe. We knew it couldn't last forever.

The week before Christmas we made the trek North to visit Kyle's family. We made the genius maneuver of travelling at night, starting off just before the babies' bedtime so that they would be none the wiser, travelling in sweet peaceful dreams while Kyle and I played twenty questions. Well, while Kyle drove and I slept. We were a bit perplexed to find our strategy successful.

We arrived at Kyle's sister's house, set up the babies' beds, and after a brief nursing, settled them down for the night. Cake. Maybe travelling wouldn't be the end of the world.

Quin has a habit of waking up for a midnight snack three hours too late, and despite our unfamiliar surroundings, he stuck to this routine during our visit. I picked him up and brought him into bed to nurse him back to sleep, begging for just a little cooperation. I was just settling into bed with him when I noticed a flash of light near his foot. Odd. I chalked it up to nothing more than a harmless little hallucination and continued about our business. Another flash, and then another. My mind raced to put the pieces together - a flashing, glowing foot? I settled on the only solution slightly logical: a firefly. Not being one for insects, I threw a hard elbow in Kyle's direction.

"Get up! Get up! Quin has a firefly in the foot of his pajamas and it is biting him! It is flashing and burning his foot. Get up! Get it out! I'm not putting my hand in there, it's going to be crunchy!"

And from Kyle: "???"

"Hurry! It's flashing and biting him!" I ripped open the leg of Quin's pajamas, pulled his foot out, and instructed Kyle once again. "I am not putting my hand in there. It's going to be crunchy!"

I believe he sighed. I believe he rolled his eyes. I suppose the past eleven months have also taught him enough about the level of crazy I can become on little to no sleep. He reached his hand in. "There's nothing in there. You do know it's December, right?"

"Kyle. It was flashing. I saw it. I SAW it. Your fingers are just too fat. Feel again. I don't want to touch that crunchy bug."

Repeat the sigh. Repeat the eye rolling. Repeat the pajama-foot-sweep.

"April. There is no firefly."

Exasperated and contemplating the victorious scorn I would shoot in his direction upon proving my right-ness and accompanying lack of insanity, I shoved my own hand into the pajama-foot. I braced for the crunch.

Nothing.

I swept again. Nothing. My next sweep was frantic. Nothing.

My heart raced. Is this how it ends for me? At Kyle's sister's house, away from home? This is where I will finally lose it? This is where the men in white jackets will come and take me away? This is where the real world and the world of pink elephants and phantom fireflies come to haunt me and then disappear when I run to prove myself?

I put Quin's little foot back into his pajamas. I re-closed the snaps. Spark. Flash.

The messy swirling in my brain stopped. The dust settled. Sunlight and moonbeams shone on reason.

Static. Just static.

"Oh." I tried a sheepish giggle. "I guess it's really dry in here."

Kyle was already asleep. I nudged another elbow in his direction.

"Pssst. It was just static! I'm not crazy! Static!"

"Uh huh. Night."

You really never can be too safe.

Decisions

Loving my babies is easy. Addictive. Intoxicating. Rewarding. Amazing.

Parenting is hard. Hard because it takes restraint. Discipline. Decisions.

I want so desperately to get it right. Because here we are with this grave and awesome responsibility of having created two little lives. Two beings who we yearned for, cried for, hoped for. Two tiny people we pushed and pulled into being.

And here they are. Being, learning, growing. Becoming. Right in front of our very eyes.

At first all we had to do was love and nurture. Nurse them when they needed comfort. Hold them close. Keep them clean and warm and dry. Not that it was easy. But it was rote.

Things seem to progressively become more complicated.

Sleep continues to be a struggle. Some days we have no naps. Some nights we seem to have no more than thirty minutes of sleep. We need to make a decision about how to work through it. Do we let them cry it out? Or do we wait for their systems to work through this?

I have my own opinions on this. I have instincts. I've researched. I've read. I've asked just about everyone I know. And yet I haven't found clarity.

Every cell in my motherly self screams "NO!" to cry it out. How can I sit there, as my sweet babies call out to me in the one way they know how, and not respond? I want them to feel secure in the knowledge that when they communicate their needs, they can trust me to help. But then there's the lack of sleep. They need sleep. Their parents need sleep. And they need to learn boundaries. And to self-soothe. But then there's consistency. If we start down a path of cry it out, can I stick to it? And if I don't stick to it, what does that teach them about trust and security?

I think to myself, "I just want to love them" and know before the thought has finished forming in my head that these decisions are part of loving them. Even when I don't know the answers.

Where sleep and itsy bitsy collide.

There are times when my life seems to have turned into one big swirling mass of "making it through." That makes it seem as though things are quite bleak, which they are not. Things are actually quite wonderful. But life with twins is a shitload of work.

Days sometimes mesh together in odd medleys: poop, bath time, begging the babies to sleep, marathon nursing, and desperately singing Itsy Bitsy Spider as though my very sanity depended on its ability to quell the storm.

The babies have developed a taste for the leisurely life of vacationing. They regularly take vacations from pooping (for 8 days, in our longest stretch), and a particular favorite, vacations from sleep.

Sleep.

Honestly, the word itself makes me want to cry. I love it and miss it so.

Up until about two weeks ago, we had made some progress in the area of sleep. The babies would go down (after much encouragement) in their cribs and sleep for 1-5 hours, after which they would nurse on and off throughout the night but for the most part would transfer happily back into their cribs with nice full bellies. Life was really freaking delicious.

And then.

I wish I could tell you what happened next. But I don't know what it was. And that's a part of the problem. Because all of a sudden, the sleeping just stopped. We seem to be back at square one. "Bed time" is followed by frequent wakings every 20 minutes. This pattern continues on for sometimes as many as five hours. And for the last five nights, this trend has gone on basically all night long, resulting in almost no sleep for the desperate and weary parents.

Last night, somewhere in the midst of a luxurious three hours of sleep, I felt a fluttery little scurry across my forehead and down one of my arms. I don't like things that scurry and went into an immediate state of panic. My panic was quickly overruled by my exhaustion, which refused to cooperate with my repeated commands to flail, jump, scream, and make gagging noises whilst simultaneously slapping at my own flesh until all things scurry-ish met a certain death. So I lay there in a lumpish ball of exhaustion, until finally my still very panicked brain managed to feebly lift an arm and make sloppy swipes in the general direction of arm and forehead.

And really, to be attacked by some unknown predator in my own bed when I'm already sickeningly deprived of sleep hardly seems fair.

Morning came, and perhaps pushed to the edge by my mid-sleep attack, I finally hit "the wall." My reserves were just gone.

I called in tired to work.

I brought the babies to Grammie's house.

I went home and slept. I slept like a person who's drowning gasps for air. Greedily, deeply, desperately.

Close to four hours later, I woke up feeling like Madonna in her cone bra. I rubbed my eyes and looked around.

Laying next to me on my bed was the crumpled dead body of a huge spider.

I killed Itsy Bitsy. And not just with my singing this time.

Am I caught up on sleep? Hardly. But those four hours were beautiful and precious and necessary.

Onward and upward.

Except not for Itsy Bitsy, may he rest in peace as I work on healing the many spider bites all up and down my arms.

Things We've Tried

Going into this whole baby thing, I was a wee bit unprepared for the challenges of nighttime. I imagined that bedtime in more competently run households would look something like this:

"Oh goodness gracious. It's 5pm. Time for bed." Loving mother picks up sweet and smiling baby, who definitely does not have a huge explosion of poop in his diaper, and brings him into his beautiful nursery. Lullabies fill the air, which smells like baby powder and cookies. She places her sleepy baby, who has not made a peep aside from contented coos which accompany his smile, into his crib, where he gently sighs and goes to sleep. Mother kisses baby's forehead and goes into the dining room. Of course, her dashingly handsome husband has made dinner, lit the candles, and decantered a bottle of perfectly aged Cabernet.

So in the beginning, thinking myself at least slightly competent, I was a bit surprised as I became acquainted with the realities of nighttime with babies. Picture it: Eleven PM. One baby is methodically tearing off my right nipple while the other smooshes poop with his foot while my dashingly handsome husband wrestles with a cloth diaper. Instead of a warm dinner with the perfect wine, I'm scooping frosting out of the can with my finger and drinking a beer. No one sleeps.

Five months in, we've refined this routine a bit. We've set a more reasonable bedtime (which is kind of more a goal than a reality most days. Like winning the lottery.) Our main dilemma seems to be that we cannot figure out who should sleep where. Short of trying out the crib ourselves, we've tried just about everything. Rather than cry about it (although I DO - usually at 2am) or swear about it (that comes at 3am, trucker-style), it seems most prudent to simply laugh. Just not while crying and swearing. That's when they send you away.

The things we've tried.

In some semblance of chronological order.

(Please note that in the below scenarios, the term "sleep" is used lightly. Unless noted otherwise, the term "sleep" refers to 1-2 hour stretches of sleep followed by voracious nursing.)

1. Babies in the crib (co-sleeper style, next to the bed). Parents in the bed. Result: 0 sleep. Babies hate the crib. Make bizarre, slightly humorous, slightly terrifying, chirping noises. This setup leads to...

2. Each parent sleeps with a baby on his/her chest. Sitting up. All night long. Result: Babies sleep beautifully. Parents do not sleep. Develop back/neck/shoulder issues. This setup leads to...

3. Again, each parent sleeps with a baby on his/her chest. Sitting up. All night long. Result: Babies sleep beautifully. Parents sleep beautifully too. Because now we're too exhausted to let a little "sitting up" ruin the potential for sleep. This setup continues until babies discover they prefer to sleep with their faces wedged in an armpit. Safety issue...on to the next setup.

4. Daddy sleeps in bed like a normal person. Mommy wedges herself as close to daddy as possible. This leaves half the bed open for babies, who are now in the bed sleeping parallel to one another and perpendicular to mommy, who wraps her arms around the two of them like a big mommy-arm baby gate. Result: Everyone sleeps. This continues until babies get too long to safely fit perpendicular to mommy and threaten to tumble off the bed.

5. Daddy sleeps on an air mattress on the floor next to the crib and the bed. Mommy continues with babies as in setup 4. Result: Everyone sleeps. Mommy feels tremendous guilt over daddy sleeping on the air mattress. Invites him back into bed under the conditions that...

6. Daddy sleeps at the foot of the bed, perpendicular to mommy. Mommy and daddy are forming an L. Babies continue to sleep in mommy's arm-gate. Result: Mommy kicks daddy. Daddy kicks mommy. Babies sleep. Did I mention Daddy is 6'6"? Sleeping sideways on a queen size bed?

7. Mommy and daddy switch positions. (This is sounding like a creepy, TMI, "how babies are made" type story at this point). Babies remain in mommy-gate. Result: Mommy kicks daddy. Daddy kicks mommy. Babies sleep.

8. Mommy and Daddy decide to try the Pack N' Play in place of the crib. Result: 0 sleep. Babies hate the Pack N' Play. Return of the bizarre, slightly humorous, slightly terrifying, chirping noises.

9. Everyone in the bed. Laying in the traditional direction. Result: Beautiful, blissful sleep. For all.

10. Mommy gets nervous babies will get smothered in the bed. Mommy and daddy attempt to teach the babies to love the crib. Result: Tears had by all. Except maybe daddy. 0 sleep. Repeat this for many, many, many nights.

11. Same as scenario 10, except for that Rhys is in the car seat in the crib, Quin is just regular ol' in the crib. Result: Rhys sleeps beautifully. For 4-7 hour stretches. Tears had by everyone else. Ok, just mommy and Quin.

12. Mommy sleeps on a futon mattress on the floor with Quin. Rhys sleeps in his car seat in the crib. Daddy sleeps in the bed alone. Result: Sleep is had for all. Especially daddy. Mommy develops severe back pain. Chiropractic bills are mounting.

13. Daddy in the bed. Mommy in the bed. Quin in the bed. Rhys in the car seat in the crib. Result: Everybody sleeps. Mommy feels tremendous guilt that Rhys is alone in the crib.

Oh, where will our travels lead us next? I'm not sure, although I'm willing to bet it will involve more tremendous guilt and the chiropractor.

About that swaddle...

So I realized in re-reading my swaddling post that perhaps I should clarify one important point:

The swaddle is perfected.  Sleep? Not so much.

Swaddling seems to have convinced the babies that their crib is NOT the devil.  Convincing them that a full night of sleep would be far more satisfying than a night spent chowing down at the boob-buffet seems to be a different story entirely.

I feel the need to point this out so that when I go back to blaming all of my bizarre behavior on my lack of sleep, nobody calls the validity of that excuse into question.

In short?  Swaddle = crib.  And "something" = sleep.

I just have no idea what that "something" is.

Toots

I love my babies' farts.

They actually don't smell so hot, and they often sound just like adult farts - not exactly appealing qualities.  But I am amazed that I have created (with a little help from my husband and modern medicine) two little beings who have adorable little round butts and actual farts that emanate from them.

The other day, I was nursing Rhys, when all of a sudden he stuck his bum out, arched his back, pulled down his little arm, and with a shockingly boyish little grunt, he let out a solid "spllllt" and then promptly resumed his nursing.  

I am so in awe over the beauty of my babies' farting that I've recounted this story to at least 10 people.  I'm aware that most people don't want to hear about the gassy secretions of my spawn. I suppose that by continuing to share toot stories, I'm really just refusing to allow others' lack of enthusiasm to dampen my day.

It has, however, occurred to me that perhaps I should not take such great pride in the flatulence of my children.  Since I'm breastfeeding, I'm pretty sure that every last Rhys or Quin fart is actually a reflection of me.  It's as though they're farting on my behalf.  And lord knows I would NEVER dream of passing gas in proper company.  Or improper, for that matter.  In fact, I'm actually physically incapable of passing gas.  But my babies, they tell all my secrets.  

"Blllllllleeet.  Mommy had broccoli last night."

"Flllllllllllaaaaaaaaaaaaoooooooooooooot.  Mommy had beans."

And now I'm sitting here and thinking how the sophistication level of this post is simply pointing out that my lack of sleep is leading to totally regressive and juvenile behavior.