The Next Phase Begins

Well, starting tomorrow - actually, later today now that it's after midnight - a new era comes into our lives. My days as a stay at home Mom for the last (almost) 7 months are over and I am back to work. I wish I could say I am looking forward to it, but frankly, I'm completely dreading it. I'll get to bed tonight after pumping around 1am and be up tomorrow by 7 - not counting several wake ups with the twins - to take Thomas to school. Then I'll spend the day taking care of the babies and trying to clean up the house. At 2 I'll go get Thomas from school and bring him home. At 3:30 Melissa (the babysitter) will come and I'll get ready for work. At 4pm I'll leave for work. I'll work until 1am, come home, pump, and hopefully be in bed by 2-2:30 so that I can start the next day all over again. It makes me tired just thinking about it. My sister in law does this schedule FULL TIME - I don' t how she does it, I really don't.

Wow - it really sounds like I'm feeling sorry for myself, doesn't it? Ha! I shouldn't - at least it's only part time. I feel very fortunate in that regard. It's just that I had hoped the babies would be sleeping through the night by now and so far we are not even close. There has been some progress from last week when they were getting up every 2-3 hours around the clock again, but we are still not getting any big blocks of uninterrupted sleep and it is very wearing. My mother in law commented that in her day you would just let them cry and they would eventually go back to sleep and learn to sleep through the night (today they call this the Cry It Out method I think). The theory is fine and I must admit my reluctance isn't because listening to them cry would break my heart at this point. I'll be honest - if I thought we'd get a full nights sleep out of it, I wouldn't hesitate to let them cry it out for a while. The practice is difficult at best. First and foremost is the issue that if one is crying and left to cry it is inevitable that both will be up and crying and when they start feeding off each other it suddenly is a whole lot more complicated. When they constantly disrupt each other it just goes on and on and on. The next problem is that they are sleeping in a cosleeper next to our bed so the crying is too close for anyone to sleep through - and the only other space in this apartment to put them besides our bedroom is the living room and I'm not wild about that idea.
So - one of us gets up and takes care of the crying baby while the other baby and the other adult sleeps and then at least we don't have everyone up when one baby is crying. But then of course we are now almost 5 months into this with babies that aren't sleeping through the night. Ugh.

I had also been really hoping to carve out a substantial portion of this weekend for myself to prepare physically and emotionally for going back to work and that just didn't happen. I did get a couple of hours on Saturday, but somehow it never seems like enough to get completely recharged. There just wasn't a lot of quiet, calming time to soothe my nervousness about the upcoming week. To top it off, we decided to go to Mass on Sunday morning and this is almost always a recipe for disaster. I am (by necessity) always up very late at night and so not fully available in the mornings. This means that Emmett has a larger burden in the morning with the babies and Thomas. As the time for church approaches, everyone gets more and more tense. Emmett fails to eat breakfast on these days and this always adds to his crankiness. Thomas still (for whatever reason) doesn't act very well in church. Maybe we are expecting too much, but he is able to behave pretty well in school these days and in other environments where he has to be quiet and pay attention, but in church sometimes he is just very difficult - talking through the whole thing, disturbing other people, and generally messing around instead of paying attention. As I said, we are probably expecting too much, but it rachets up Emmett's tension level (ok, ok, and also mine sometimes :-)). Add to that two babies crying during the mass and it just becomes a major stressor. Emmett's Mom and I were trying to make it better and this just made the whole situation worse. By the time we left the church parking lot we were at each other's throats and the arguing didn't stop until the mid-afternoon. I think Sister Rita is right and that one adult plus Thomas should go to church on Sunday and the other adult and babies should stay home, at least until we are getting consistent rest and can handle the situation without everyone getting so wound up. It's just not worth it and I don't think we're getting what we should out of the Mass.

It's just so exhausting with twins. We have absolutely no time for ourselves these days. We had theater tickets for Friday, but I had to cancel it because this is a lean month financially and a babysitter for three children (or even the twins) is out of the question. We occasionally get an hour or two in the evenings but most of the time Emmett is falling asleep on the couch almost before we sit down. There is no time for ourselves, no time to connect and be a couple again. We're both exhausted from not sleeping for the last 4.5 months. We have no family nearby, so there's just no one to provide a respite ever and even if there were, we feel like it's too much to ask any one person to watch all three children.

As always, there are things to be thankful for. We are both very committed to our family and help each other as much as we can. For both of us our family is everything and in the end we are always able to overcome the tense moments because we know it's just a very trying situation and it will get better, if for no other reason than because the babies will eventually sleep at night. Once I am working again we will have a bit more disposable income and be able to hire a babysitter to get a respite once in a while for just the two of us.

Best of all, as part of our Christmas present this year, my Mom is going to come and watch all three children so we can go away for the weekend. It is the best Christmas present I could imagine and we are both so incredibly excited! We are laughing, too, because we think it's probably our one chance - once she sees how much work is involved, she probably won't make this offer again! haha I think just the idea of it is like a light at the end of the tunnel right now and I can't wait to begin planning our trip. I'm hoping to find a really romantic bed and breakfast somewhere with a great view and a hot tub where we can just relax and let all of the stress and tension roll off for a little while. Ahhh...I can almost feel the bubbles already :-).

Well, I better run...need to grab some sleep while I can. Sorry to be such a downer, but I guess it's some honestly about the challenges of life with twins. :-) Hopefully once I get adjusted to working again I can have lots of positive things to say!

Love,
Melissa