Life With Twins

Life with Twins!

So my last post was about my birth story and how the BIG DAY went. The past few weeks have been a blur. The Twins are 3 weeks old now. My friend Jessika has twins and told me if I don’t document everything with Pictures and Video I will totally forget this time in their life. Mainly because with twins you’re so sleep deprived that you’re running on Auto pilot most of the time. Boy ain’t that the truth. I think it’s like that for all new parents, but more so with twins. Exhausted doesn’t even begin to describe the level of tired I feel. There is no word that I have found yet to describe it.  Billy’s parents just gave us a nice camcorder, Yay!!! I can’t wait to shoot video and make movies on Billy’s Mac with iMovie.

So this is my stomach over the past few weeks. It’s gone down a lot. After I had the babies I still looked super pregnant. Mainly because my uterus was so stretched out and hadn’t gone down yet.  Right now I’m 3 pounds away from my pre-baby weight. Woo hoo!!! The more I pump the more my uterus shrinks and my stomach goes down. The weight has just fallen off. Besides holding babies and doing a ton of squats just to pick up or put down the babies that’s about as much exercise as I get. I think pumping helps to.  I hear you burn 500+ calories a day pumping and breast feeding alone.

So my babies are soooo cute!!!  I think they are cuter in person.  Pictures don’t do them any justice. They are Identical twins. At times they look exactly alike and then at times they look nothing alike, it’s really weird. Weston is still about a half pound lighter then Wyatt. Wyatt’s face is a lot fuller. I think once Weston catches up with Wyatt they will look more alike. 

At the hospital right after they were born the nurses did their normal tests after they were delivered. They inspected every part of their bodies to see if they had any differences like freckles or birthmarks and they found that they did not. They told us their Super Identical. At the time they were born they were about the same weight Weston was 5.5oz and Wyatt was 5.6oz. Before they were born I was like, “Oh I will totally be able to tell them apart.” Then the first time I saw them in the recovery room I thought, “OMG!!!! They look exactly the same. How am I going to do this???” It didn’t help that I was drugged up on pain killers. It took me a good 2 weeks to be able to tell them apart. I refused to take off their ankle bracelets in fear that I would pull an Uncle Jessie on Full House and Mix up my babies. Hahaha… I think it’s easier right now cause Weston is so much smaller than his brother.

Here is a picture from the hospital when the babies were the same weight. As you can see they totally look identical here. With their skinny little faces. 

This picture was taken a few days ago. Wyatt (L) is gaining weight no problem and his cheeks are filling out, as to where Weston (R) still has a skinny little face.  

Right now we have the babies on a schedule. As of this week we feed them every 2 ½ - 3 hours during the day and every 3 ½ to 4 hours at night (or pretty much whenever they wake up) we are on their schedule. Before this week we were feeding them every 2 ½ hours during the day and every 3 hours at night.  The doctor is really pushing these feeding schedules so that we can get them back to their birth weight. He gave us a goal that we must get them to gain 1 ounce a day. Our 2^nd week we totally met our goal. Last week Weston hit his birth weight and as of Tuesday was 5.6 pounds YAY! Wyatt also gained 5 ounces and was 5.0 pounds. Since Wyatt is still under his birth weight we had to bring him back to the doctor this past Tuesday to see if he’s up, we totally met our goal and he was exactly his birth weight of 5.5 oz.  We have been feeding him the same amount as his brother, which is 60-70ml a feeding. Which is about 2 ounces. Their bottles are soooo tiny. The doctor said full term babies drink 2 ounces at birth (60ml). So we are there, Yay! As of September 29th they were 39 weeks (if I were still pregnant). They will be considered full term babies on October 6^th which if I was having one baby would have been my official due date.

Tandem Feeding

 Weston (Left) Wyatt (Right)

So I’m super scatter brained so I’m hoping I’m not writing about things that are off topic or backwards. Life with twins is great but so tiring. I still have a hard time believing that they are mine. I think with your first child it’s so new and different that it takes longer to sink in. So this may sound bad but I will be totally honest. I don’t know if this happens to other new parents but it’s weird because I haven’t felt like I have a strong connection with them. I just feel like I take care of them. This feeling changes everyday though and as the days pass I do fall more and more in love with them and a bit more connected then the last. As soon as I had them I went next door to my mom’s house and told her this. I felt so bad like I was a bad parent that I didn’t have this amazing connection. She assured me that it’s totally normal and to give it time and it will soon come. I still feel like a bad mother because of this, I’m hoping I’m not the only one. Maybe this is something new mom’s don’t talk about cause their ashamed? I don’t know. But one thing I do know is I love them so much and I give them my all 24/7.  Billy and I are their slaves and will do whatever it takes to keep them happy. We try to give them the best of the best; cribs, toys, strollers, etc.  We want to be great parents and try really hard to be just that. I know with time we will get there.

The babies in one of their Rock-n-play's, seconds later they were both crying and not liking being squished together in one. 

So let’s see life with Twins…………..Like I said is beyond exhausting. But I love that they have each other. Once they are old enough to interact and play together it will be so awesome and a lot easier.  Every Morning goes something like this. Their schedule gets them up around 7-8am we feed them, change them and normally in the morning they will not go back to sleep right away. If they do, then awesome, that means I get to go back to sleep too, Score! If not and they stay awake I do morning play time. We have 2 baby Einstein activity mats and I will lay them down on them and let them stare in awe of the flashing lights and hanging toys. I will also put them on their sides facing each other so they can interact together. It’s sooooo adorable to see them baby talk and coo at each other.

Stretch Marks!!! I know a lot of the girls wanted to know if I had gotten any stretch marks because at the time I was pregnant I had ZERO that I could see. Well once I had the babies I still looked fully pregnant because my uterus was sooo stretched out having twins that it still made my tummy look huge. All my girlfriend asked, Whoa how long is it going to take for that to go down. I wanted to say Ummm I just had “TWINS” LAY OFF!!! I didn’t really hid my belly though because I really didn’t care that I still looked pregnant. But after about one week my stomach went down some and Surprise Surprise Stretch Marks!!! Haha… I got a few light colored marks on a small part of the lower left side of my stomach right next to my kidney scar. I’m super excited that that’s all I got. Yay!!!  As of right now It’s been 3 weeks and my stomach has gone down so much. Your uterus shrinks every time you breast feed or pump. So the more you do it the faster your tummy goes down.

Breast Feeding! Well when pregnant my plan was to breast feed. I thought, oh it will be so easy to breast feed, just hold them up to the nip and I’m all good. Ummm NOT!!!! Breast feeding is really hard and not only that but producing milk is hard too! I worked with lactating consultants, nurses and doctors multiple times a day everyday when I was in the hospital. They all said the same thing. Since my babies are preemie they are not strong enough to latch let alone suck hard enough to express milk from my teet :-P This was frustrating. So what I do is pump and bottle feed which works out great cause we can feed them at the same time and get them on a tight feeding schedule.  Then last week the worst thing ever happened, my milk supply cut itself in half and at times even less than half. This was Horrible because they are now eating more and doctor’s orders were that we needed to get them to gain an ounce a day. So we have to supplement with formula and mix it with breast milk. Which wouldn’t have been so bad if the formula didn’t upset their little tummies. They got super gassy and it gave them really bad poops.  (we just switched formula and it’s helped their little bellies a lot)

So I asked around and spoke with the Doctor on what I could do to increase my supply. So I now am drinking Mothers Milk tea, More Water, trying to remember to eat more, and from time to time I will drink a Guinness. I’ve began pumping every 4 hours and within the last few days I’ve noticed that my supply is picking up. Pumping is really no fun. I feel like a milking cow and when I don’t pump a lot of milk its super depressing. If I had one baby there would be no problem at all, I’d have plenty.  But the fact is I’m feeding two babies, so when there is not enough it makes it super frustrating and I feel like a failure.

Here is a little look in to what it sounds and looks like when both babies are not very happy. 

A few of my all time favorite baby things right now are the boys Rock-N-Play’s, I recommend them to any new mother. They are great for traveling too. These are all the boys will sleep in right now. They are great to because the bottoms are rounded and so when we have long fussy nights I can rock them in their Rock-N-Play’s.

Also my other favorite thing is baby music. Our friend Matt came over with music called Rock-A-Bye’s and what they are are super mellow baby lulabys of rock artists like Nine inch nails, Metallica, Bob Marley, Nirvana, the Beatles, Aerosmith, Dave Mathews and the list goes on. The boys love them and listen to them to go to sleep every night. I love them to and they also help me go to sleep every night haha… Check out the website http://www.rockabyebabymusic.com/?nav2=false .  They also have a Pandora station called Rockabye Baby!

Other things I love are WubbaNub’s http://www.wubbanub.com/index.html. They are little stuffed animals attached to soothie pacifiers.  They are supposed to be good for your child’s motor skills. But they’re great because you will never lose their pacifiers again. The boys love to hold on to the little stuffed animals that are just their size, as they suck on the pacifier. Not to mention it’s so darn cute. You can find these little guys at The Learning Center stores.

Oh and I really loveeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee the stretchy swaddling blanket’s.  I don’t know what brands they are but the 40x40 stretchy blankets are great for swaddling our little guys. We have nice bigger blankets but they’re too big for the boys right now.

And our life saver right now is Gripe Water. The Boys have a lot of gas and when their little tummy’s get upset we give them Gripe water and it gives them instant relief and before we know it they’re burping and farting within seconds/minutes. It’s pretty crazy to here a 5 pound baby fart louder than you, hahaha… The only thing I hate about it is that it’s like black iodine color and stains clothes.  It’s tastes good though like sugar, the babies will go from screaming crying to happy and asleep in minutes. I think this is a must for babies with Colic, in my opinion.