How did it take me this long to write this post? I think I've honestly been pretty lucky with good-tempered babies who eat and sleep and play in a way that makes sense to me, and who are too young to whine or throw temper tantrums or break themselves or others. It was definitely hard in those first few weeks as I was figuring out breastfeeding and cloth diapers and laundry and feeding myself, but having two didn't seem to be exactly twice the work, and certainly not more than twice the work. In some ways it has been way less than twice the work, like when I tandem feed them and I'm up no more than 10 minutes in the night to feed them, or when they entertain themselves playing together (a favorite game recently is chase, where they crawl or walk around the house after each other, with the one in front peeking back and then both laughing at each other before scurrying off).
But I'm starting to see the truth behind the maxim that twins can be more than twice the work, at least sometimes. The sleep issue has been creaming both parents Lovebo lately. I think the boys have been sleeping not super-well for a number of reasons, which I speculate to be teething (Beck especially is drooling a lot and gnawing on things for most of the day), or night terrors (there were a few nights there a week or so ago when Theo woke us up screaming his head off and was unconsolable, as if he didn't even know we'd picked him up, which sounds like what I've read about night terrors--like anyone really knows anyway!). If some all-knowing being watching the scene had just said to us, no, he's perfectly fine, his arm just fell asleep and it felt weird; or he's thirsty, get him some water; or he crapped his pants and needs a new diaper; or he had a bad dream and just needs to be comforted; or WHATEVER, we would just do it and the problem (or non-problem) would be fixed. But instead, we are woken from a sound sleep by some manner of mumbling or crying or screaming and have to speculate what caused it and whether it will resolve on its own or whether it requires some response from us and whether, regardless of whether it would resolve on its own, we have to go in anyway to quiet the loud one so that he doesn't wake his brother up and multiply our problems.
Which leads to my most common fantasy: what if I only had ONE baby? If we had one baby, one of us could be on night watch and make an ad hoc decision about how to respond to a crying baby and, most likely, we would err on the side of seeing if the problem self-corrects and the baby goes back to sleep on his own. BUT with two babies we have to make all these calculations and speculations taking both babies into account and if the problem requires both parents Lovebo, then we're both hands-on with one baby trying to make ad hoc decisions about how to resolve the problem with him. BUT of course if I decide the babies should be comforted briefly and set back down, but Jeff comes in and grabs "his" baby and picks him up and takes him downstairs to rock him, the baby I've just set down knows damn well that his brother got picked up by Daddy and is now pissed that he is just being left in his crib by Bad Mommy. So Jeff and I have a lot of heated, yet whispered, conversations in the middle of the night (surprisingly not our best thinking or communicating time, by the way) about the best way to handle our babies who, by the way, may have had independent and unrelated causes of their sleep disturbances. And the double whammy of twin sleep problems: If I had one baby with a problem in the middle of the night that caused us both to lose sleep, I could expect that the baby would sleep in a little bit to compensate, allowing me to sleep in to compensate. Not with two babies, one of whom slept great! The baby who slept great wakes up at the normal time, happy and ready to play and chat with his brother, who wakes up pissed off and tired and takes it out on the rest of us the rest of the day. Not to mention that Mama or Daddy Lovebo is sleep-deprived.
Which is to say, sleep has been kind of tough lately. Solutions I've tried: earplugs, trading off getting up with the babies, returning to a 4am tandem nursing. The nursing seems to be the best solution for now because, while I know that the babies can go 12 or more hours at night without nursing, and that they definitely do not need the nutrition, it makes them sleep longer in the morning. When they do not eat in the night, regardless of whether they have been up at some point in the night, the babies wake up ready to go at 6 or 6:30am. When they eat at 4 or 5am, they generally sleep til 7 or later. I don't know if it's the warm full feeling in their bellies or if they are actually waking up hungry at 6 or 6:30 when they haven't eaten all night, but I don't really care. It knocks them out and that's the goal. I do not think they will wake up at 4am to nurse when they are 5 years old, and if this gets me an extra 30-60 minutes of sleep for now, I will take it. Isn't "sleeping through the night" supposed to be for US, not for the baby (ies)? Clearly, it is a work in progress....
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