Two Months

Kate and Harrison reached their two month birthday on Thursday, 9/27. In just the past week, the amount of crying has started to diminish and their nighttime sleep has started to get better. They still eat about every three hours during the day and need to sleep in between each feeding. Their fussiest period is still in the evenings from ~5:00-8:30 and then we start the bedtime routine (nurse, bath, cuddles, bed). They are generally asleep between 10:00-10:15. Both are smiling and vocalizing back to us. They make great eye contact and track us around the room. Here are few things we noted about each:

Kate:

• Loves bath time - we have one every night as part of our bedtime routine and she looks like she could lie in there for a while if we let her
• Likes us to hold her standing. She has always pushed her legs straight and now that she's realized she can stand on them, she loves it.
• "Talks" to us mostly by opening her mouth and moving her tongue
• Still mostly needs cuddles to fall asleep
• Soothed by loud music; Dave Matthews Band seems to be a favorite

Harrison:

• Loves bath time - he will quiet down when we lay him in the tub even if he was screaming
• Likes to sit up straight. Leaning back isn't usually acceptable so we've taken to propping him up in a boppy with blankets behind him.
• Smiles at his own reflection in the mirror above the swing
• Makes lots of cooing noises
• Does better falling asleep when he is set down while we sit next to him rather than being held

Kate appears to be larger than Harrison, but they are actually
the same size. Harrison just has his legs pulled up.

Kate loves to stand on her legs

Kate talking to us

Harrison sits

Cute grin from Harrison

Everything Sounds Like Crying

I hope we haven't gone crazy. Both Chris and I think we hear the babies crying all the time. It usually happens when the babies are sleeping and there is something noisy preventing a clear ear-shot of possible crying. The worst culprits are the shower and sonicare toothbrushes. I can't tell you how many times I have turned off the shower thinking I hear both babies screaming right outside the door and all I hear is the faucet dripping. Keep in mind I shower in the evening while Chris hangs out with the babies downstairs. We have both walked, toothbrushes in hand, out of our bathroom and to the nightstand to look at the visual indicator on the audio monitor only to find it not picking up any sound. We swear we heard crying!

This is silly. Even if they are crying, it's not the end of the world. If they are awake, one of us is always with them and can respond to the crying. After we put them in their room for bedtime, one of us walks around with the monitor. If they happen to cry, they are in a safe place and they will be fine until we can get to them.

Things that we have heard 'cry':
Shower - every night
Sink faucets
Toothbrush
Breastpump
TV
Car engine
Train whistle
Sound of Chris cleaning the cat box
Lucy, particularly when she carries her favorite toy mouse around
Neighborhood dog barking
Silence, especially as both our heads hit the pillow

We are hoping this eventually goes away!

Make Sure They Are Breathing!

We usually get both babies to sleep in their beds sometime between 10:30 and 11:00 at night. I know, it seems late, but we are still counting the sleep between 6:30ish and 8:30ish as a nap. We could do bedtime after the ~6:30 feeding, but we've tried and they fight us pretty hard at that time.

Our nights are starting to transition from up every three hours (feeding for one of those which means we get two hour stretches) to more consistently getting a three to four hour stretch of sleep beginning at 11:00 and then up every three hours until morning. It is amazing how wonderful a three to four hour sleep feels when we had been living on a series of naps for weeks on end. By the way, we are following 'one up, both up' for feedings. There is no way we could survive feeding one, sleeping for a half hour, feeding the other which could go right into feeding the first one again, and so on. So, when one wakes up hungry they both get fed.

This past Saturday night, or technically early Sunday, I woke from a sound slumber to Chris shaking my arm saying with a slight panic in his voice, "What should we do?!" 

Me: What do you mean? 

Chris: Em, look at the time

Me: *roll over, look at the clock: 3:56* What? Have you been up tending to them?

Chris: No. Have you?

Me: No. This is crazy.

Chris: Right, so what should we do?
Me: Go make sure they are breathing!! 

Chris: *flies out of bed and comes back* Well, they appear to be fine. 

Me: Good, then we should just go back to sleep

And back to sleep we went until 5:45am. That's right - seven hours. BOTH babies slept for a seven hour stretch. It was heavenly and I'm praying for more nights like that. 

More Smiles!

We caught Kate smiling on camera this morning! Here she is:



We also got a new comment this afternoon. We were at Costco, I was pushing the stroller with the two car seats and Chris had the shopping cart. The lady handing out cereal bar samples stopped me and said the usual, "Oh, twins!" Then she says, "Are these your trainers?" What? Trainers? I was honestly trying to figure what she meant and drew a blank. "Um...I'm not sure what you mean?" Lady: "You know, your trainer children. Are these your first?" Yes they are. "Well, then they are your training children." Alright. Have a nice day.

A Visit to the RE's Office

We brought the babies to the RE's office to see Dr. NFB, our IVF nurse, and the rest of the staff yesterday. It was really fun to see them. I'm so glad they had us come at their lunch hour because we would have felt really uncomfortable walking into a waiting room full of patients with two infants. On our way out, Dr. NFB jokingly asked us if we are having more kids. As we both looked up at her to find out if our no-funny-business doctor was being funny she said, "oh, bad timing for that question?" with a huge smile on her face. :-)

It is surreal to know that we had already taken Kate & Harrison home from that office once - as 8 & 10 cell embryos - and now we were walking out with those same babies in car seats. Amazing.

Smiles!

We have now seen smiles from both Kate and Harrison!

Harrison started giving us hints of a smile last week and then clearly gave us reactive smiles on Saturday, 9/8. He is also starting to make noises and coo back at us. He noticed himself in the mirror above the swing and will smile at his reflection. Kate joined the party yesterday, 9/11, and gave me four reactive smiles in a row while we were playing on the floor. This is really fun and I look forward to more interaction with them. I was able to catch Harrison smiling on video (link below) and will work on getting a video of Kate soon. For now, enjoy our little guy:

An Encounter Outside Labor & Delivery

My OB's office is located at the hospital where we delivered. We were there last Friday for my 6 week postpartum check up and brought the babies to meet the staff. The appointment ran long so Chris had to dial into a meeting before we could get back into the car. While he was on his call, I walked the hospital hallways with the babies in the stroller praying that they wouldn't scream. I've given up praying for them to sleep. I wish I looked like the put-together-mom, but in reality I was wearing maternity jeans on an 85 degree day, going on 4.5 hours of broken sleep, and on-edge waiting for the ticking time bombs in the stroller to go off as I held a pacifier in Harrison's mouth with one hand and pushed the stroller with the other hand.

I walked past the elevators to the labor & delivery unit just as a clearly new dad loaded with bags and flowers got off. He saw us and said with curious eyes, "How old are your twins?" I said 6 weeks today. The excited dad then says, "We just had twins, too! We are bringing them home today! How is it?!" I looked at the eagerness in his eyes, saw that he was expecting me to tell him that it's wonderful and all I could get out was, "Uh....er....exhausting. [quick, think of something positive] But great. It's really great." The new dad was not phased at all. He said, "Cool!", and continued bouncing down the hallway. As I watched the kick in his step, I wanted to tell him that the only way he's walking with that much energy in the next six weeks is to get two wailing babies out of the grocery store. But he'll figure that out on his own.

Catching-up

I have not had a chance to update my blog since the babies were born. Newborn twins are hard! If I'm lucky enough to get both to sleep during the day then I have a small window to do things like run a load of laundry or eat without a baby or two on me. And sometimes I just enjoy cuddles with a sleeping baby. If it's between the hours of 9pm and 6am, we attempt to sleep.

Anyway, we are just starting to settle into somewhat of a routine and I'm hoping to get a bit of time here and there to keep documenting our adventures. I'll go back and fill in posts as I have time, but for now I'm just starting off with current goings on.