Week 1: Twins/Fear

So, my twin sons have been alive for exactly a week. Born at around 5.30pm on the 12th of January (I have begun brainwashing myself to forget the exact times as to combat the inclination toward continually referring to an ‘older twin’ and casting the ‘younger’ as an inferior). The shit has definitely not hit the fan. (Yet.) I believe that they are still in the rather dormant ‘sleepy stage’ people keep reminding me about. Although I truly hope not. Since bringing them home myself and my partner, B, are getting sleep. Around 7 to 8 hours, albeit in 3 to 4 hour blocks. And I would like to believe this is due to some divine calling manifested within my core that I am an innately great parent. But I suspect the ‘sleepy stage’ is a better explanation.

At the time of their birth O weighed in at a respectable 3.16kg and A at a very lean looking 2.60kg. (For some reason the midwife registered his weight as 2.59kg, then incorrectly wrote down 2.95kg, but I can assure you it was exactly 2.60kg, their birth-weights and the placentas are indelibly etched into my mind, for better or worse). They both seemed incredibly small. (Not the placentas. Fused together, apparently, they seemed like a 10kg purple octopus, from which I had the honor of severing a remarkably sinew-y tentacle at the moment of each boy’s birth. The first I would say successfully, the second pulsed thick streaks of blood over my partners’ inner thigh, quite surprisingly (I may have uttered a thankfully understated “shit!”. I thought I had done something incredibly bad. But I was assured it was perfectly normal by the Obstetrician. Childbirth is completely un-fucking-believably normal.)

Compared to our first son, L, who weighed in at over 4kgs (the exact number I have already forgotten, because it just wasn’t as important) maybe incredibly small doesn’t cut it. Malnourished. Emaciated. Frightening. Not in a “woe is life, how will they ever survive?” way, but a “wouldn’t want to come across it swimming through a swamp I happen to be wading hip-deep in.” horror film kind of way. They were menacing, shrieking, purple, blood-covered and very, very wrinkly. (And they had just slid into the room in the most horrific way possible.) But for all the uncertainty and fear birth elicits, it quickly melts away when they shove one up your t-shirt to keep warm whilst the other comes to a sweet, silent repose on the chest of the ever-so exhausted, but relieved, love of your life. A moment that truly contains every conceivable wonderment of our strange existence on this planet. (The fused placentas, however, came to rest in a much too small kidney dish on a trolley filled with used medical utensils like something out of a Cronenberg film. Where they would stay for about an hour and a half, to our shared disbelief, intermittently distracting us from the fairytale of childbirth like a butchered elephant in the room. I believe it was shift change for the midwife team.)

Despite the half hour or so of unbridled joy and unshakeable fear the rollercoaster of actual child birth elicits, the labor was exceptionally well managed and incident free. Compared with the thirty-seven hours of drug-free childbirth B experienced with L, an induced, epidural administered twins birth seemed, to her, a breeze. At one point she (very humbly) wondered aloud what all the ‘childbirth fuss’ was about. Something which would come as little surprise to those who know her. She is tough. Although she grew sick of carrying the boys toward full term and wished they were no longer in her belly, we both knew that birth is more like a sucker punch to her guts which begins a six month all-in brawl once you get them home. Even still, we couldn’t get out of the hospital quick enough.

Due to A’s weight dropping below 2.5kgs after birth, B stayed in hospital with the boys for three nights (instead of the requisite two). I was there around twelve hours a day. Slumping uncomfortably in inhospitable hospital furniture and doing everything I could to make B more comfortable. Having twins, it seems, isn’t exactly harder, everything just takes twice as long. Which in turn means less sleep. Which, I suppose, makes everything harder. But harder in your own home is better than harder in the oddly familiar surrounds of an unfamiliar maternity ward. So, like drug smugglers hauling two basket loads of uncut cocaine through customs, we fidgeted and tapped our toes nervously as we awaited out discharge papers to be signed. (The looks of ‘glad-its-not-me’ on other couple’s faces as we lugged two car capsules through the halls were only mildly offensive). Our relief palpable as we whisked them into our purpose-bought getaway vehicle. No tears, no fuss. Just the blinding sunlight breaking through our windscreen as we rolled from the underground car park, lighting the first day in a new era as a family of five with three children under three (*gulp*).

The first three days of home life have gone as well as can be expected, synchronized sleeping and feeding is currently maximizing our sleep time. But in the back of my mind the thought of sleepless nights, irrational mood swings (mine, not B’s), returning to work and losing touch with the easy life we knew is ever-growing.