Today you’ve officially ended your first turn around the sun. Good for you! That wasn’t so hard, was it?
Every time I think of you two being “one” and your time on this rock measured in the length of years, I just choke up. I know deep down that the next twelve years will sneak by me as fast as the last twelve months did and all I’ll be able to say is, well, heck. That was fast, wasn’t it?
I wonder sometimes how it all looks from your perspective, this being born thing, this growing up business. For months you were tucked safely away inside me, then one day, BLAM! You were thrust into the blaring light of day amidst screaming and crying and adoration and elation. And then swept up in this constant rhythm of doing, first breathing, eating, pooing, sleeping, crying then cooing, smiling, laughing, rolling over, holding your bottle, sitting up, and then babbling, crawling, eating finger foods, standing, using a cup, climbing, talking. It’s all happened so fast, it seems to me. But probably not to you. Nor will the next 12 years. They’ll feel like a lifetime to you and you will do so much in those years. And it will be a breath, a blink, to me.
Guys, I really don’t even know what I’m trying to say here. All I know is that last night, nearly all day yesterday, I cried at the thought of this day. I know, I know, you’re probably wondering what’s wrong with your mother, and I don’t have a simple answer for that. Everyone tells me it’s normal for mothers to cry when their babies have a birthday. I guess it’s just part of being a mom.
I want you to know that the tears don’t mean anything bad, though. Nothing is wrong. Everything, in fact, is just as it ought to be. You’re here. We all survived the first year of your twindom, and I’m sorry but there were days during those first months of your life when I just didn’t know how we were going to make it. But we did, and here you are – growing, doing, becoming the people you were born to be, right in front of my very eyes. At least, when I can get the tears out of them I can see that. And that is as it should be. I wouldn’t, couldn’t ask for anything else.
Except maybe this.
As you continue to grow and explore this crazy rock on which we dwell, never forget that no matter what you do or who you become, I love you. You won’t always be my babies. In fact, you’re almost not that now. But you will always be the center of my everything, my hope for humanity projected forward into time.
Well, you think those dreams are dead, anyway, and then one day you discover that they are very much alive in you. And you can’t say that’s good, and you can’t say it’s bad. It just IS. Like the fact that you have green eyes or a hot temper or a certain weakness for guys doing yard work.
You thought it was over. Been there. Done that. You were Wrong. Very, very wrong.
Prosolar Mechanics, WE Fest Wilmington NC 2000
It’s not over at all. But you have no idea what that means.
And then the next thing you know, WOOSH. They’re graduating from college and you’re out your retirement fund.
I should really be calling this post a placeholder. It’s holding the place for a lot of things I need to tell you about. Like, the fact that the boys turned 9 months old. And then, about 15 minutes after we ordered their 9 month old commemorative plates and matching cup set, they turned 10 months old. And then they had their first Thanksgiving and their first bath in the big bath tub together. And then I cried because they are too adorable and too sweet to believe and I’m still not home with them every day like I should be and I know, and you know, kindergarten is right around the corner and what then? What THEN?
I know there are women out there who are okay with being working mothers. I salute them. I’m just not one of them. Meaning, I am a working mother. In fact, I am the sole provider working mother right now. But I’m not okay with it, other than the fact that it is what is and I have to be okay, in the most general of terms.
I also have to tell you about the band. Oh lord, the band. That’d be my band, whose name shall not be mentioned here because I’m having interweb crossover identity issues. I went back into private practice a few months ago (I’m an LCSW therapist type for kids, yo) and I just do not want people I work with finding this blog. We’re playing in 26 days (crap pants here) and this is the first time we’ve played in 8 years, almost to the day.
Before I became a mom, and before I became a therapist, I was a musician. I was very serious about it. I never had the kind of financial or commercial success I’d hoped for, but I did make all kinds of music with all sorts of fantastic people and it made my life better. And now I’m doing it again and it feels so strange and familiar and like I’m traveling back in time but yet not. Like straddling two decades when your straddler is a little out of alignment.
And that’s just the good stuff, but that’s what I’m trying to fill my head with these days. And yours too.
You’ve been on the outside for seven whole months now, which is nearly as long as you were on the inside. So if you think of it, from zygote to now you’ve probably gagoopled your size several times, not to mention your cute factor. To be honest, I’d really love to credit myself with your good looks, but I don’t know how anyone could buy it. I think I’ll attribute some to your father, some to the innate bias inherent in parenting, and some to science.
Your excellent dispositions, however? All me.
Okay, maybe not ALL me. But a lot me. Or so I like to tell your family, friends and assorted admirers.
As of this week I’ve started to work a little more often, a little harder, outside of the house making some money to keep us all in diapers and dog biscuits. I won’t kid around, it’s been a strange thing to spend fewer hours a day with you. The strangest thing being that I leave you in the morning, am gone for many hours, come home for dinner and baths and you are both different. You are more here. More you. Less mommy appendage.
In some ways this breaks me. In most ways, this is simply the coolest thing I have ever seen in my life.
People who see pictures of you ask me, “Are they total opposites in their personalities?” I don’t know why they’d ask such a thing.
To that I unilaterally answer No. What you are is individuals, close in temperament to myself and your father. I am hoping that since he and I have been compatible for oh, the last 22 years or so, that the two of you will get on similarly well, and perhaps with less bickering over guitar gear, but probably not.
Which brings me to some news. Your father and I have been asked to put the band back together for a special show celebrating the mid-90s music scene in New Brunswick. We, of course, jumped at the opportunity. Why? Because we are totally f*cking INSANE. Insane for sound, insanely eager for any opportunity to have our asses kicked (as your simultaneous appearance into our lives proves) and insanely committed to raising you both to never, ever forsake your dreams or those things that make you who you are.
Mom and Dad bring the rock, 10 years ago
I have done a little too much of that lately, but it’s about to change.
Unfortunately, that means you’ll be having more babysitting. The good news? It’ll probably be your grandparents who will likely let you stay up late and eat ice cream behind our backs. Good for them.
At this point, I feel inclined to include some kind of poignant hand wringing about how fast it’s all going, how much I already miss those tiny helpless newborns you used to be, how precious every second with you is and has been, how my love for you seems to outpace the expansion of the universe and can hardly be contained by human physiology or explained in human language.
Sure, I can go there.
But my darlings, it’s 5pm Friday and instead, I think I’d like to rush home for dinner and bath time, where I can be in it instead of just describing it.
May we spend the rest of our days together more inside the good feeling than outside, remembering how good it was.
You know it, I heart me some bulleted lists. Comes from “writing” way too damn many powerpoints. I know, I know.
I am soooo fucking busy at work these days. The weird part? I am enjoying it. I think that’s because at nearly 7 months post-partum, my brain is starting to function again and it feels kinda good.
I am as broke as I’ve ever been, and more than I’ve been in a good long while which means I need to work even more. I’m partly psyched about this, and partly guilty about it. Because time at work means time away from the kids, which makes me sad, and also, is, um, easier. There. I said it. But I’m not psyched just because work is easier. I’m psyched because it’s stuff that makes my brain work and do stuff. Yup. Uh. Huh. (*ed. note: that’s not to suggest writer’s brain is working ATM, as they say.)
I get frustrated when I get these lapses in blogging. But sometimes I can’t blog and that’s just the way it is.
There’s no good reason at all for the following: a) these thoughts to be in the same blog post b) these thoughts to be posted in a blog at all and finally c) these thoughts to be formatted in a bulletted list.
Here, have some pie. I mean, pictures of my boys with their brand spankin’ new John Deere vibrating corn teethers, sent fresh up from their grandmother in Virginia.
They are going to be seven months next week, and me the negligent blogging mother hasn’t even done a hand-wringing heart wrenching omigoditsgoingsodamnedfast post. I sort of can’t bring myself to do it. And, I haven’t had time to do it justice.
Here’s why: When I picked up my son, Bing, because he was screaming his head off like he was in the final stages of starvation, and told him, “Don’t worry, I’m going to feed you,” and then, to soothe him, held him up in front of me and made the faces and noises he loves, and he THREW UP RIGHT INTO MY OPEN MOUTH, so that I tasted baby bile and regurgitated breast milk and it spilled all down the front of my shirt, I neither reciprocated and vomited into his mouth because the little fucker deserved it, nor did I throw him across the room and shriek in revulsion because I could not “man up” and swallow. No, my first thought was, “Shit, I forgot to burp him.” Then I imagined the scene from his perspective:
Bing’s shitty morning with the dumb giant
Okay, I’m on my back in my happy place and everything is pretty chill because I’m in a fresh diaper and wearing a clean shirt (the one with the boats on it), but something is wrong—you know that feeling? The wrong feeling? Like when someone drops your head the last inch to the mattress or you just know they’re gonna walk out of the room and leave you in the crib without your ugly doll? And then I figure out what’s causing it: the electric sun is not singing. Sing, sun, sing! I command. But there’s no response. I feel empty. I don’t cry often, but man, when the sun doesn’t sing even when you’ve got a clean diaper and a boat shirt on, you’ve run out of options. Time for the waterworks. I cry for a long, long time. Really long. Forever long. Hey, I’m crying over here? What does a guy have to do to get noticed? Service is miserable in this place. I consider crapping my pants, but that’s risky because sometimes it’s not stinky enough to create the kind of urgency I need at this juncture. Finally, my giant shows up with that obsequious smile of his—like I don’t know he was hiding out in the break room arguing politics with some douchebag on the innernuts—and transports me across the room to the comfy spot in the puffy place with the blanket. He puts the artificial boob in my mouth and I drink. Nothing like expressed breast milk to put things in perspective. I decide not to fire him. I really kind of like him. Maybe I’ll start calling him that gibberish “dadadadada” name he keeps blathering at me. Also, I’m not sure how easy giants are to come by. My other, Doot, and I have two of them, a male and a female. I know, it’s extravagant, but hey, we need them. We’ve even discussed trying to get a third. Or moving somewhere with better healthcare. I sent a letter to Nana requesting asylum in her house, but I’m afraid it may have been intercepted by one of the giants. They’re pretty wily for brutes that can’t babble properly.
While I’m in the puffy place on the blanket, I see Doot in one of the giant swings. He spots me and the artificial boob. He is pissed. It’s in the rules that we get as much boobz as we want and, to be honest, I’m worried about his consumption. He gets pretty squirrely when he doesn’t get his drink—sucks his thumb and whines. Frankly, it’s pathetic. Milkaholism affects the whole family. Anyway, Doot is thirsty. I can practically hear his tummy tiger growling. So I knows he’s scared, because the tiger might get big and eat him if he does not get his own fake boob. He screams: “WHAeAyA AgAiAvAeA AmAeA AsAoAmAeA AoAfA AtAhAaAtA AwAhAaAtA AyAoAuA’ArAeA AdArAiAnAkAiAnAgA AIA AnAeAeAdA AiAtA AbAeAfAoArAeA AmAyA AtAuAmAmAyA AdAeAcAiAdAeAsA AtAoA AeAaAtA AmAeA!”
In a blatant display of favoritism, the giant responds to Doot immediately. The artificial boob is yanked from my mouth the instant it is empty (and it was only a half booble) and I am shunted into the other giant swing while Doot is rescued and given his own fake boob. To think I was starting to like that giant. I’ll say “Mother, I love you best,” and present her with a rose and a sonnet before he gets one “dadadadadadadadada” out of me.
Then, sitting in the swing—I do some of my best thinking here—it occurs to me the giant has two hands. In fact, I’m sure I recall him holding boobles for us simultaneously. I could STILL. BE. DRINKING. I start screaming. I call the giant every bad thing I can think of: taco pits, stubble face, no boobs. I scream so loud the boob giant hears and calls up from whereever she is, probably out getting her boobs refilled, to tell the dumb one to feed me. He waits until Doot passes out (pathetic) and then comes to get me. He comes over cooing and making burbling noises, eyes wide with that goofy open mouth smile. He picks me up and it makes me so mad I get ill. So I puke into his mouth and instantly I feel better.
I don’t know wtf is going on with me, but there’s a poverty of recent photos of the boys. I keep all photos of them organized in iPhoto with albums “month 1, month 2, etc.” and month 6, which we’re in right now, was empty up until today when I threw some pictures from my niece’s 5th birthday party in there. Here’s one of the boys from Saturday:
Do they look bigger to you? They look bigger to me, and they also seem to have a lot more hair. I should probably start to wash it or something.
Oh, and speaking of washing their hair, Doot had some fairly nasty cradle cap, which I seem to have cured by simply brushing his hair and scalp lightly, then massaging his scalp with petroleum jelly, and then washing his hair with baby shampoo. Flakes gone! So much for his “like a delicate pastry” look.
This is a blog with a mission, being, to take some of the GAHfuckdamnohnoisthisokay? out of becoming a mom when you’re over 35, or in my case now, over 40. I had infertility issues that kept me from getting pregnant when I was younger, and I was one of those hand wringers who would Google “pregnant over 35″ and just be dejected with the search results. Hardly anyone has anything good to say on the matter, or encouraging, or even maybe celebrating women who start their families later. It was all risk and warnings and that shit is just depressing.
But that’s not to say it isn’t real. Indeed, pregnancy for me was nearly every bit as hard and scary as they say it can be for women my age, especially bearing twins. I had pre-term contractions, pre-eclampsia, borderline anemia, a very tough delivery (which had nothing to do with my age, ahem). What they don’t tell you is, so fucking what?
See, I’m trying to cultivate a new and improved attitude about risk. Now that I’ve taken certain risks and have gotten a certain unbelievably awesome payoff, I’m here to say that if your heart truly longs for a baby and you’re over 35, go on and get pregnant. DO IT. I could have had a worse result, yes. But you know what? I didn’t, and most women my age having babies don’t either. And look what I got to show for it:
Two beautiful kids, born totally healthy.
So here’s the whole truth about my over 39 year old twin-pregnancy experience. First, the bad.
My pregnancy was great until the third trimester, when my back started to hurt so bad I could hardly walk from my car to the house without pain, and when pre-term contractions and then pre-eclampsia kicked in. That period of time involved total bedrest, three hospitalizations and a lot of unfortunate Google searches.
Being pregnant with twins caused more of that than my age. That said, women over 35 have a greater chance of multiple pregnancy. That’s not a bad thing, but it is harder.
I delivered five weeks early, due to pre-eclampsia. My delivery was tough, tough, tough. I delivered Doot vaginally and had to have an emergency C-Section for Bing. That had nothing to do with my age, or the pre-eclampsia. He had cord pro-lapse, which can be catastrophic. We were thankfully in good hands. If you’re a high-risk pregnancy, make sure you are too.
Speaking of high-risk pregnancy, if you get labeled this know it’s a blessing. You get much better prenatal care.
My recovery from delivery took awhile, and to be honest I thought I’d never feel right again. I was wrong, and knew it within about four weeks. Two weeks after giving birth I was much, much better. By a month, I was back to normal except for my weight and my tendonitis.
Oh, by the way, did you know you can get mindbendingly painful tendonitis in both wrists while pregnant, just from your hormones? I didn’t, and believe me, this was the most painful and inconvenient part of being pregnant and a new mother – worse than the sleep deprivation. No, there’s not much you can do for it but wait it out. It’s much better now at the five month mark, but it’s not gone.
Not a day goes by where I don’t do the math. When they’re 18 I’ll be 58. When they’re 25 I’ll be 65. When they’re 30 I’ll be 70. And so on. Every day I worry about being too old. Not now, of course. I feel young now. I daresay I look young, even younger than I am. But I don’t take terribly great care of myself and that has to change so I can age well and enjoy my kids well into their adult years. I don’t want them to have the worries of caring for older parents, well, ever. But then, I don’t want to die on them when they’re too young. And then, what’s too young? I’ll never, ever, ever be ready to let my parents go. In any case, I don’t get to decide any of these things, and so they are not worth the worry. But I must tell you, I worry anyway.
Now for the good stuff that waiting got me, and may get you too.
Some things that would have really rattled my 30 year old self really don’t rattle me now. I have been called a very calm, confident parent, and I have to admit that I am.
I don’t ever wish I was out doing something else that I can’t do now because I have small kids. At my age, I’ve really spent a lot of time doing exactly what I wanted. I’m not worried about my career because it’s so well established I can pretty much write my ticket now.
Even though the economy is bad and money is tough, I know I can always make money if need be (see above).
My kids live in a nice home, in a great neighborhood with an excellent school district.
In my neighborhood, many, if not most of my friends are mothers and fathers who started their families after the age of 35 or at least continue to have kids over the age of 35.
I savor every moment I have with them, even at 3am, because at 40 I really know how fast it’s all going to go. I just didn’t have that perspective yet when I was 30.
In every other way except trying to lose weight, being 40 pretty much kicks ass. My head is clear. I feel powerful. I don’t take shit from anyone. I know what’s important. I thoroughly enjoy everything I have. So really, in that sense, it’s the perfect time in my life to bring my kids into the world.
Not because of the economy or the war or the environment or any external thing. It’s a good time because it’s the time it was possible, and really, it’s as good as any and better than some.
The author, born in 1969, but shown here somewhere around late 1970.
Seems I talk a lot about time passing, right? Well, I was given a great excuse to indulge this sick tendency by Cheryl over at Twinfatuation, (who wrote the amazing Twinspiration, which all you twin parents to be ought to be pouring over!) Cheryl hosts the Way Back Whensday blog meme every week. And I thought, hey, I know these guys have only been alive for 5 months, but still, February does seem like a long time ago right now. In direct contrast to my, “oh my god, it’s going so fast” mantra. I never said I wasn’t complicated.
In any case, below are photos taken of the boys on their 1 month birthday. (Birthday? Anniversary? Huh what?) And if I do say so myself, these are not the world’s most flattering photos. But, they still make me laugh.
Dateline: February 22, 2009
Twins’ ages: One month
"Dude, I'm new at this, alright?" ~ Bing
"That's no bottle. WTF?" ~Doot
This was when I had the great idea to photograph the twins on their Monthday every month. The problem is, they weren’t in such a photo-happy mood, which led to a series of photos like this:
