It’s 6:21 am. the Boys are JUST asleep. I got up to feed them at 3am after going to bed at 10:30.
5 hours of sleep is pretty good, maxing out at 5 hours of sleep for a week for so is not as good.
The New Grandparents left yesterday after assisting for six weeks, I go back to work tomorrow, and I have NO Clue how I’m going to pack 8 hours of work in on top of the time spent 'raising the Millertwins. The Boys
Both spent some time in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. Collin spend two weeks there, Alex spend almost five weeks. Both are going extremely well, now nearly twice the weight they were when born.
I figured life was grand when they were averaging 4.5 to 5 hours between feedings. Hey, one person feeds the kids at 11pm, the other feeds the kids at 4am and both get 7 or 8 hours of sleep.
Then the boys started a growth spurt. We’re lucky to get 3.5 hours a feeding.
Golly but they’re good lookin boys. I can’t get over the fact that my wife and I made these adoreable things. I’ll be feeding the first kid, the second will be crying, I’ll be unable to get the first one to burp (lesson 12: if he doesn’t burp, he’ll throw up all over himself when you lay him down.) And I’ll be getting SERIOUSLY stressed. Then Baby #1 lets out a BRAAAP and smiles at me, and suddenly I’m just not as stressed out as I was.
Diaper changing is something on par with a Tire change pitstop on a NASCAR race. A 40 pack of generic diapers lasts less than 3 days. We got 14 cans of formula from the pediatrician…we’re down to 6 cans. (They’ve got their father’s stomach I guess.)
I picked up the ‘Secrets of the baby whisperer for Toddlers’ the other day. The FIRST book was dead-on for newborns, I figured the second book would be as helpful. Two things lept out at me from the intro:
The kids from the first book at 20 months old in the second one. I can’t IMAGINE these guys at 20 months. 6 weeks has seemed like an eternity.
I guess the challenges we’ve had thusfar don’t hold a candle to the adventure we’ll have with two toddling boys.
Identical twin here.
Are they identical or fraternal?
You don’t really intend to dress them the same, do you?
You didn’t name them with cutsie similar names did you (Jesse and James, Toby and Todd et al)?
How far apart were they born? Were they very premature (if it makes you feel better were were early and also spent time in the hospital-- I think it’s standard for twins).
We’ve got Collin Michael and Alexander Ryan, they’re fraternal. (and we were shootin’ for names that were different-yet-normal-yet-not-trendy.)
And right now, SOMEBODY is crying. Which brings up something that just gets ya |right here| (thumping chest) We’ve found that we’ll either spend 110% of the day with a child sucked to our bodies, or we’ve just gotta let them cry so we can either get something done, or just decompress. (I’m decompressing now. Thanks SDMB!)
They were 5 weeks premature and born 2 minutes apart. Collin will forever be the ‘older’ brother. They spent the usual time coming to grips with the Real World. I’ll paraphrase from another email I sent out to family members:
Both children were in very good shape for babies born almost five week prematurely. They had a good birth weight, and were pretty active. That said, there are some differences between preemies and full-term babies:
Both children:
-Had to spend some time with oxygen supplementation while their lungs continued to develop.
-Needed feeding tubes and IV feeding until they could learn to coordinate sucking, swallowing and breathing. (as an aside, they’re showing they have Miller Appetites. Once they got that swallowing thing down, eating was done with gusto.)
-Needed time to get their metabolisms to the point where they could generate enough body heat to keep warm by themselves
Needed time for their involuntary nervous system to take hold. Both boys had a number of Bradycardia ( bradycardia ) events and needed monitoring. The rule is, a baby can’t go home until they’ve gone five days without a Brady event. Bradys are rather common with preemie children and are not indicative of additional problems after reaching term.
-Collin needed a little time in the tanning parlor to take care of his jaundice.
-Alex has had problems with the Brady requirements. Further observation uncovered that he was suffering from Pyloric Stenosis ( http://www.keepkidshealthy.com/infant/infantproblems/pyloricstenosis.html ) a condition where food can’t leave the stomach, causing the baby to constantly throw up his food. The ACT of doing that caused him to have his Bradys. he underwent successful surgery on 1/11 and has been transformed. We suspect he’s been in pain since birth and is much more relaxed and happy now.
So They’re fraternal twins. The wife is a fraternal triplet, and HER mom was an identical twin.
a) I shoulda done the math.
b) the record ends here with the boys I guess…unless one of THEM marries someone with a history of multiples.
My hat is off to you. One is hard enough but you seem to be doing marvelously well with two. Congratulations and yes, they’re fine looking boys. wanders off wondering how a new father can possibly sound so sane and collected
They’re so cute and even though they are fraternal and not identical, right now they look really alike.How do you tell them apart?
That is my ONE fear…having a set of same-sex twins and not being able to tell them apart.Like that episode of “Full House” where Jesse accidentally switches the booties on the kids and spends the entire episode trying to tell them apart.
You’d be surprised. They really don’t look all that much alike when you spend ‘quality’ time with them, besides, their tempraments are nearly 180 degrees opposed. One’s a stoner and the other one’s working on his first ulcer.
They’ve been apart since birth, seperate NICU beds, seperate cribs, etc. It’s rare that we dress them the same, but it’s inevitable as we’ve received a BUNCH of sets of clothing, blankets, etc. I figure it’s important that we raise two seperate people. Treating them as one-half of a set wouldn’t be fair to either of them.
They say that having twins is easier if you don’t know what it’s like raising a single child, it’s all you’ve known. Personally, I think [insert your favorite deity here] has a sence of humor and knew raising a single child wouldn’t have been a challenge for us.
:smack:
As it is, for the last 6 weeks, I’ve been getting a steady 7-9 hours of sleep a night. It’s just taking me 12-16 hours to get it. I’m not looking forward to work as I know I won’t be getting that quality sleep. :o
Thank goodness. It’s cute having identically-dressed babies, but it gets weird when they’re older. One idea I’ve heard for buying clothes for twins is to buy stuff that fits both of them in different colors. Assuming your boys end up the same size, that means you could stock up on stuff while it’s on sale, and they can still be wearing different clothes.
Besides, if they’re fraternal, why dress them alike at all? They’ll probably end up looking no more like each other than any other brothers.
