Our hospital stay was very short! Both babies were healthy and looking good and while Hudson was a little jaundiced, not enough to make them keep us longer. My hospital stay with Colbie was 5 days and I was miserable every day I had to stay in the hospital so I was happy to go home AS SOON as possible. My doctor told me I could stay one extra day if I wanted to “rest up” (I don’t know what people are talking about when they say rest up at the hospital- I can’t sleep in those beds, nurses come in every 15 minutes it seems and its so uncomfortable!) or she would release me. Trey & I decided it would be nicer to get home and since we had both sets of grandparents in town to help we figured with 6 adults we would be totally fine… right?! So we went home literally 28 hours after the boys were born and I was thrilled.
I was excited, interested and ready to see how Colbie would react or if she would even understand what was happening. At exactly 15 months old, I didn’t know what to expect. She was slightly interested when we brought them home and she got to look at them. To my surprise (and delight!) I was able to run up to her and just scoop her right up to hug and hold her. My body did not feel like I just delivered two babies and I can only attribute that to God knowing what I needed to survive. I would not have been able to care for all 3 of my babies if my body was in as much pain or as tough of a recovery as I had with my first delivery. It was amazing how mobile and capable I was and such a blessing.
That night we witnessed the first true tantrum Colbie had EVER thrown. She was the happiest baby and I think because of her age, we just hadn’t had tantrums yet. But that night for whatever reason as I was sitting in the boys room navigating feeding them both on my own with some help from my wonderful mother in law, I hear Trey & his dad talking with Colbie and trying to feed her dinner. I then hear the longest, loudest screaming/crying tantrum that had ever happened in our house. I sat there feeding my 2 new babies who were amazing, wonderful blessings, but who I was quite terrified of and still in complete shock of, listening to my toddler meltdown as if to say “you ruined my life mommy!” and I just cried. I cried because I was tired, I cried because I’m sure hormones were doing all kinds of crazy things in my body and I cried because this seemed really really really hard. Like ‘how are we ever going to do this’ hard. But you know what, I fed those babies and even unlatched, set them down and carried each one to the living room by myself, Colbie stopped crying and life continued on. This was the first of many times where I started to learn that things would get REALLY crazy, REALLY hard and sometimes REALLY overwhelming, but you just keep going and it usually doesn’t even last that long before you come out the other side and things get calm again.
Trey’s parents were staying at my parents house and everyone had told us we could have whoever we wanted to stay the night with us at any time- they just wanted to stay out of our way if that’s what we wanted or be there if that’s what we wanted. Honestly, we had no idea what we wanted or needed! In the hospital the boys were SO easy. They stayed with us in the hospital room the whole night and I woke up every 3 hours to feed them and they easily went back to sleep like perfect angels. So we figured since we were still in the sleepy newborn phase we could handle the night alone. OH MY GOODNESS WERE WE WRONG!!!!
Looking back now, I don’t know why we didn’t call someone in the middle of the night to come help. I think we felt like to be initiated into the twin parents club we had to survive a night alone. Well we sure did survive because I am here writing this now, but barely I tell you- just barely. That night they were not the perfect angels we remembered from the hospital. In fact, I don’t think there was ever more than 5 minutes that both babies were asleep at the same time.
Here was our setup:
Crib in our room that the boys would share until they were too big. We were going to try to have them sleep in their crib from the beginning if possible, but if that didn’t work we had rock n plays and baby swings at hand to help us out. I figured I wouldn’t be able to co-sleep with them since there were 2 of them and it was probably too dangerous/insane. Our dresser was transformed into a changing table with diapers, wipes, diaper trash can, extra pjs, swaddles and blankets so we could do everything within a few feet of our bed. The monitor stayed on Colbie as usual, but she was such a rock star sleeper at this point we knew she would be fine.
That first night, we gave up on the crib pretty fast- they hated sleeping on their backs in that crib. The swing worked pretty good for Hudson and the Rock N Play worked pretty good for Asher. Are they supposed to sleep in these things overnight? Is it ok to swaddle them while in these things? Blanket? No blanket? Whatever- just put them in there and see if they sleep! Trey & basically rocked and held crying babies all night long. At one point Colbie woke up and started crying! Not because the noise woke her up (because we were on the complete opposite side of the house), but because I was certain we ruined her life and she was telling us again- in the middle of the night. I looked at Trey and I could see the panic in his eyes- the same panic I felt rising up into my chest. “All 3 of them are awake”. That was all I said. He didn’t respond. We just went back to rocking. Colbie went back to sleep on her own and I think eventually we were each able to snuggle with a baby in a way that allowed an hour of sleep.
The good news is- that was our worst night. So it only got better and easier from there. We woke up, showered (when TWO sets of grandparents are there you get the luxury of taking a shower), drank some coffee and we felt like we were ready to go into battle. I know this sounds so dramatic and its funny looking back now, but honestly, that is what it felt like at first every morning. Get ready to go into battle. Take a deep breath and here we go…
So as not to be a Debbie Downer and to add some positivity to this post here are some adorable squishy baby pictures because really aren’t they the cutest little kids in the world?
The Mailhes Project 