For Twin Moms

After writing last week's blog posting "Advice to My Former Self", I thought a lot about how really, this "advice" wouldn't be useful before I had my girls. But it is useful after you have twins, and not in a "getting advice" type of way, but because when you hear other twin moms stories, you realize you are not alone. To know that it's hard, and others have done it, and others have felt desperate, defeated and absolutely exhausted to their core, knowing that taking a break or giving up is not an option. And for that reason, to provide solace in the depth of twinfant madness, hopefully for some twin mom out there reading this, and also to myself even though that time has passed, I asked my twin-mom friends if they could go back in time and give their pregnant self advice, what they would say.  Jennifer's words were so beautiful, I asked her if I could post them to my blog. Here they are:

I wasn't trying or planning on becoming pregnant when I learned to expect the girls, and hadn't even spent one minute thinking about "being a mom someday" before that, so I felt really blind-sided by the whole newborn twins thing, as we all are, I suppose. I flew by the seat of my pants, and if I could go back in time I'd tell myself: "This is gonna be hard. Like, harder-than-you-can-even-imagine kind of hard. You are going to get no more than about one hour of sleep at a time, with two hours of emotionally draining work in between that MUST be done, no procrastination or putting it off 'till later. This sleep schedule will last for about 3 months, day in and day out. Then, since you're lucky, the girls will start sleeping for about 6 hours in a row at night, during which you still won't get much sleep because you'll be dying to do something, anything that makes you feel like you are more than just a mother. And while they're awake you'll be constantly trying to manage mini crisis' and somehow get the bare minimum of household chores done. Don't feel bad for not doing more. It seems to be either give the kids attention or get stuff done, and it's very hard to do a good job of both, especially early on. Then Then with twins comes the need to build up a thick skin on your heart. Mothers of singletons might not know the heartache of having to listen to the cries of your hungry baby and not be able to feed her because you're already feeding your other hungry baby. You will cry. A lot more than you expected, and you will feel like you're not doing enough, or being a good enough mum, but you are. And you won't feel that strongest-of-all-loves right away, but you will feel it, and it will fill your heart to bursting. You will sacrifice anything for them, your sleep, your sanity, your identity as apart from them, your every moment and every drop of energy. And this is how you know that you are doing a good job. Even if there are more chores to be done than there is time or hands for, and all three of you are crying at the same time, know that the fact that you are still there is proof that you are a good Mum and that you love them enough. Oh, and don't expect your marriage to come out unscathed either. You will have gone from being madly in love with each other to both being madly in love with other people, and this is hard to wrap your heart around at first. Don't blame or criticize each other. You are both just doing the best you can. Soon it will become easier and you'll become used to it, and you'll both be able to breathe again. And then when you get to hold each-other's hands instead of tiny little dimpled ones you'll ask "what did we do before we had kids?" and you'll agree that you'd never ever ask for anything other than this beautiful life.