Tag Archives: twins

5 Tips For Surviving Twin Toddlers

You’re sat on the living room floor. All around you are the remnants of a toy explosion, beautifully orchestrated by your twin toddlers – their smiling faces gleeful as they attempt to hide the evidence beneath the sofa. Your graffiti artists have also created a wonderful piece of modern art, right in the centre of your feature wall with yellow crayons, pink pencils and black permanent marker pens. This might give you the enthusiasm to get that decorating done, that you’ve been putting off since the birth of your terrible two, or you may just collapse in a heap and sob into a glass of red. Whatever your chosen route to escapism (Pimms and an episode of A Game of Thrones is usually my tipple of choice), there is help at hand! Below I will show you how to survive under the rule of your toddler twins and to find the light at the end of the proverbial tunnel!

Tip 1 – Buy a gas mask and a pair of heavy duty gloves

I kid you not my friends. When those two drop the stink bomb in unison, you are seriously going to know about it. Not only will you have to contend with the gag inducing aroma, that your angels feel the need to waft gleefully in your face, you’ll also have to clean and change them! It can be a daunting prospect, but armed with your weapons of choice, you can have those two puppies spick and span and crawling off on their merry way, before you can say “Pass me the sick bag!”

Tip 2 – Employ re-enforcements

You survived the infant days, the 2 hourly feeds and constant sick-ups. If you’re epic then you’ve also got past waking in the small hours of the morning and playing wake-up tag with your non-sleeping cherubs. You know the drill – one wakes up, you get them to sleep, creep into the bedroom and lay them slowly, ever so slowly into the cot, tiptoe out and close the door and just as you’re crawling back into bed, the other one wakes up! (I’m still working on being epic enough to get over this hurdle) Anyway, you’ve got past most of that and you probably had a little bit of help from friends and family. Well, now is the time to really grab some family help. Ever tried going to the loo with three children staring intently at you? Yeah. It’s not going to happen! If someone offers to take them for a walk, or a play date, ~~or sell them on ebay~~, then SAY YES!! For the love of good chocolate and Pimms, say yes! You’ll get a bit of time to scrape your sanity from the floor and collect yourself, before the next wave of chaos! Continue reading →

Saturday is Caption Day

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This week The Beef (long suffering other half) braved taking Brains and Mini Beef, out on his own *shock horror*, without mummy! This was the first time that he has attempted such a feat of daring, and from the looks on their faces, all manner of plans were being hatched, beneath their angelic features.

Thankfully, it wasn’t a disaster and resulted in them both chattering away, to the entire branch of Nationwide, with what I can only describe as Brain’s Japanese accented Cling-on language, and Mini Beef finishing off her sentences with the a resounding “Yeah!”. It seems my children are turning into socially awkward nerds, just like their mother!

So what can you come up with for this weeks #SatCap? Don’t forget, you can link-up with the lovely Mammasaurus and Cap everyone else’s Sat’s. (OK that sounds slightly wrong on various levels!) But yeah..do it!

The Manifestations of Grief

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On Christmas morning 2011, our house was full of laughter, excitement and the many other things that you associate with that festive day. We had only just moved in to the property, after years of fighting for a place to call home, the twins were almost three months old and we were all glowing with the space, warmth and joy that recent events had given to us.

That morning, I received a phone call from the other end of the country, informing me that my mother had passed away.

It was a sudden and unexpected shock and something that shook my whole world. As I stood in the kitchen, surrounded by the noise of excited children, the smells of food slowly cooking and received that fateful news, it felt as if time had stood still, while the world sped up around me.

Instantly my thoughts turned to my children. Christmas was their special day and I didn’t want to tarnish that innocent happiness with my tragic news, so I carried on with the day as if nothing had happened.

I could have got through that gruelling twenty-four hours fine on my own, however I had the constant spectre of my mother-in-law, reminding me to “keep it together for the kids”, or to go have “a little cry in private”. I felt heartbroken and stifled by the unwanted attention. The thought that my mother died alone, unaware of her surroundings, with her children not having had the chance to say goodbye and for her to never have been given the opportunity to meet her two beautiful new grandchildren devastated me. After four grandsons, she had always wanted a grand-daughter and I had finally given her one along with yet another grandson.

The funeral I didn’t get a chance to make it to.

Looking back on it now, some eight months later, I’ve started to recognise the effect it’s had on me. I never felt as if I had properly grieved for her. There were no floods of tears, no beating at the floor in sheer devastation. I didn’t break down and I didn’t fall in on myself. If anything, I felt a little numb and alarmed at my lack of emotion.

For me, I think grief has manifested itself in the way that I do things and the way in which I behave. Over time, I’ve noticed myself doing things the way that my mum did, saying things that she said, taking pleasure in some every day tasks that she also enjoyed.

I’ve also started to change how I look at life. I’ve looked at what held her back from achieving a happier existence, identified them in myself and have slowly begun to change them, in an effort to learn from her mistakes.

It was her Birthday on the 1st of August and my partner asked me if I was going to wear black. This struck me as an odd thing to do. A Birthday is a celebration and I don’t think mum would have wanted me to remember her at her darkest times. She would want me to celebrate her colourful and vivacious existence and to tell my children all about her. Black just would not do.

I think grief hits people in different ways but for me, it’s helped me to keep alive the images of when my mother burned the brightest and I couldn’t ask for anything more wonderful.

Singleton Envy.

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When you find out that you’re expecting twins, in most cases it’s a bit of a shock. In mine it was a huge one and one that initially I wasn’t ecstatic about. After going through a difficult birth and subsequent traumatic first year with my first child, only to find out that you’re going to have twins and that they may have the same birth defect as their older brother, being overjoyed isn’t the natural response that springs to mind. It was something that I had to acclimatize to over the course of the pregnancy.

Thankfully their births were fine, they were born healthy and I was home within three days of going in for my c-section. However I haven’t found motherhood this time round easy. Sometimes its felt like an uphill struggle, that just keeps getting steeper each day and over time I’ve developed a sense of singleton envy. By this I mean, I at times, envy people who aren’t parents to multiples.

My eldest in hospital at two months old.

Of course I love my children, there’s no doubting that but if I’m honest, I miss being parent to just one child. I think this is enforced by the lack of time I had with my eldest during his first year. He was in and out of hospital often, he was behind in his development and I simply couldn’t do with him, all of the lovely things that I had dreamed I would do. Now the twins are here and it feels like I have even less time to catch up on what we didn’t do and although it’s probably a bit destructive to think this way but it’s the honest truth. This brings me back to the singleton envy.

You could look at it from both sides of the argument, in that while having twins as well as an older child, your time is split in three ways, but your children will also grow up with each other and so will always have a play mate. This I totally agree with and it’s comforting to know but it doesn’t stop the constant, nagging guilt that comes with it like:

Having to watch your eldest play independently, more often than you would like because you have one or two of his siblings hanging off one of your limbs, at any given moment.
Telling him to wait while you’re changing a nappy or rescuing a crawler from the kitchen and then forgetting what he asked for in the first place.
Not having the courage to go out with them all alone and having to wait for a family member to help you out
To struggle financially with the cost of three children, when you had only planned for two.
Relying too much on the TV to be your ‘entertainer’ because sometimes you are just too exhausted to say no.
Having to plan any outing (if I make it that far) for every eventuality, instead of just being able to ‘pop out’.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m in no way saying that being a parent of a singleton is any easier. Raising a child in any situation is challenging and exhausting and you all have my utmost respect for doing it. What I do mean though, is that for me, it probably would be easier and I certainly wouldn’t be so mentally, physically and emotionally tired.

I guess with hindsight it is easy to envy ‘what might have been’ and look on the situation at present in an unfavourable light. If I keep looking back at those things, I may just forget about what I should be doing right now, making the best of a difficult situation. For me and my uphill struggle, perhaps getting to the top of that hill will be the more rewarding experience.

Have you ever envied parents of singletons? How did you get over this and make the most of your life as a multiple mum or dad? I’d love to hear from you whether parents to multiples or singletons. Please leave a comment and tell me your views!

New or Used – My Purchasing Dilema

Admitting You Need Help.

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I’ll let you into a secret about myself. I don’t like leaving the house. I don’t even like popping to the corner shop for milk. It’s like a deep rooted fear and I get anxious at the thought of just stepping out of my front door. It’s completely irrational. I tell myself this on a daily basis. There is no rational reason for you to fear slipping your shoes on and nipping to the shop, but more often than not, even with that knowledge, I still can’t do it.

There are times when I’ve accomplished (to me), the impossible and walked that five minute shuffle round the corner, and when I get back home, I feel good that I did it. Most of the time though, it’s a constant battle of “I know I really should be going and getting some fresh air, taking the children for a walk, giving them new experiences and good memories.” and then, “But I really don’t want to go, I should put a load of laundry on/make the beds/tidy the rooms, what if, what if, what if…”

This started way back before having children was even on my agenda. It only really set in properly however, after my first child. He needed a lot of care and attention during his first year, as he couldn’t swallow or feed the way normal babies could. He was fed through a tube that went straight into his stomach, and he also had a colostomy bag (to collect his poop as opposed to…well..the obvious), so I was limited on how much time I had for getting us out and about. My fatal flaw was that this continued after his corrective surgery. I had been so used to staying in the (then) flat, that it became my comfort zone.

Almost two years later and our twins came along – again making it impossible at times, to get out of the house with three children, which leads me to the position I am in now. My eldest is nearing three years old, the twins are turning nine months and there really are no reasons any more for me to put the inevitable off.

When me and my siblings were younger, our mother had a similar problem. The things we should have done as children, the memories we should have had, are simply not there, because our mother never had the strength or the support to ask for the help that she needed, and it wasn’t until we all left home that she began to find her feet again in the world. Sadly it was short lived and we lost her to the dreaded C word last Christmas day, which is why I’ve come to the decision that enough is enough.

I’ve spent a huge chunk of my life trying to deal with things, rightly or wrongly, in my own way and I’m also very good at pretending to other people that I’m OK, when really the depressed, anxious, self deprecating me is screaming that no, no I’m not OK. So I called the GP this morning and made myself an appointment.

I’m not expecting miracles. I know it’s going to take a whole new way of thinking and looking at things, to get me back onto the right track. I’ve taken the first step however. I’ve admitted to myself that yes, I do need help. Perhaps it’s the fact that it’s my late mother’s birthday next week, that is prompting me to get my life in order. As much as I loved her, I don’t want my own children to remember me that way. I want them to be able to have those experiences that I missed out on, but more importantly, have me there with them to share in the enjoyment.

I’d be interested in hearing from others who have gone through or are going through something similar. What is it like on the other side?

Stretched thin.

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When we found out that I was expecting twins I was horrified, I won’t lie. The news was a tremendous shock – even more shocking because we had been joking about this very thing happening. Slowly the horror turned into fear and anxiety. How would we cope with a two year old and two new born babies? How could we make room to fit all five of us, in the dilapidated and run-down, two bedroom flat that we were currently renting? Would our relationship suffer as a consequence? How would we afford the financial costs of raising three children under three years old?

It all seemed like an impossible task, however as time went on and those fears sank into the back of my mind, I started to come round to the idea. We all did, and the wobbly moments began to subside a little. My partner found work, my pregnancy was a healthy one and we got a lot of help from the little family that we have to buy the things that we needed, in order to make a good start at raising our children.

The twins were born by c-section two weeks early, but were home within three days and that’s when the signs of Post Natal Depression began to rear it’s ugly head.

The first indication I had was when I tried to breast feed. No matter what I did, or what I tried, I simply couldn’t do it. I could barely eat enough to nourish myself, let alone the twins and my poor two year old was pretty much fending for himself while my partner was at work. From sheer exhaustion I turned to formula feeding and began to hate myself instantly for making that decision and not persevering. I’d make the situation worse by reading web forums for mums of twins, who seemed to be doing everything perfectly and this only deepened my sense of worthlessness. I had no-one around me to lend a hand, as the well wishers went back to their normal lives and I began resenting people who had only one child to look after. Who were they to tell me to hang in there, when they couldn’t begin to understand what I was going through on a daily basis?

Eventually my spiral of depression grew so bad that my partner had to leave work to help. This is something that still eats at me to this day – because I couldn’t cope, we were pushed into further poverty and financial worry and I will never forgive myself for putting us in that position.

From then though, things began to improve. We found a house that we could afford to rent and would give us much needed central heating, cleanliness and most importantly space. The twins began settling into a more predictable routine, sleeping through the night for a good eleven hours and my two year old’s jealousy subsided into something more akin to fascination and then brotherly love. We poured ourselves into making the best of what we were given, decorating, getting carpets laid and turning the house into a home that would be comfortable.

Always, in the back of my mind, would be the nagging feeling that I wasn’t doing things properly. I’d be second guessing myself, never truly trusting my own instincts and worrying constantly that I was a rubbish mother.

Now my twins are 8 months old, and my toddler nearly three. My partner has another job and I’m alone all day with the three of them, trying my best to make it to 5:30 pm. Some days it’s a breeze and I feel triumphant in the realisation that I can do it by myself. Most days however, it’s a tremendous struggle and I’m exhausted, irritable and close to tears by the end of the day. I choose to handle my PND in own my own way – the same way that I did with my eldest child, and slowly it is working. Trying to stay positive and convincing myself that it will get easier is one of the hardest things, because when you’re in the moment – when it’s 25 degrees outside and all three children are crying, the sweat dripping down your back and your lips dry from not having a chance to just stop, drink and recuperate - it’s difficult to see past it.

One day though, I will look back on these moments, fears and anxieties and count myself lucky that I had the chance to experience them, because it’s only through experience, that we discover our strengths and weaknesses – the very things that make us who we are.

Five's A Fellowship

Blogging from the geek side of parenthood