I understand a horse’s hooves; they make it possible to support all that weight on a variety of surfaces at a variety of speeds. I understand an eagle’s talons; they’re useful for keeping a good grip on perches and for killing and holding prey. I understand a bear’s claws; they’re great for knocking a salmon out of a river in one swoop, and for scratching bear asses. I don’t understand a baby’s fingernails.
Baby fingernails are cute in the sense that all baby things are cute (“Oh, isn’t that the cutest little poopie!”), but for the most part, they’re an excellent argument against Intelligent Design. Only a moron would combine a complete lack of motor control with little razor blades on the fingertips, and for good measure, throw in a clenching reflex to make it almost impossible for a parent to safely groom or maintain them. (I proposed giving my Dremel tool a shot, but Mommy has an irrational fear of using power tools on babies.) If there’s a Designer involved in that, he’s either an idiot, or he hates humans. Here’s how I see that design process going:
Let’s see…cute irresistible face? Check. Stirs up deep feelings of love and a desire to nurture them? Check. Teeth for chewing? Nah, I’ll make those come later, because they might interfere with breast-feeding. What am I leaving out? I know! They need claws so they can gouge their own faces and scratch the bejeebus out of Mommy’s and Daddy’s necks when they’re being held!
Taking care of Brooke and Claire is immensely satisfying and rewarding, but there’s not a whole lot of variety at this point from one day to the next. Both to amuse ourselves and to have some convenient shorthand to get us through our days, we’ve come up with some baby lingo that makes complete sense to us, but would probably leave anyone else scratching their heads at times. Here are some of my favorites:
Yours (That one)/Mine (This one) — Both babies are ours, and we do use their names most of the time and we balance our interaction with both, but when we’re holding or otherwise attending to one baby each, it’s easy to just describe them as yours (that one you’re holding) or mine (this one I’ve got).
Latte — A bottle that is prepared with a combination of formula and breast milk. We’ve learned that we’re less likely to waste any breast milk (which is hard to come by) if we just feed it first and give a formula chaser, but lattes were common for a while.
Chaser — The extra 1 oz. or so of formula we’ll give if a baby has finished her usual amount but still seems hungry.
About to blow — The transition from perfectly content baby to fussing or crying is quick and mostly unpredictable, but if you’re looking when it happens, you can usually tell the fuse is lit from the signs of impending unhappiness written on their face and expressed in body language. That’s a baby that’s about to blow.
Fussin’ Roulette — When both girls are calm or sleeping and we want to pick one up (especially if we’re each taking one), this describes that chance that the one you pick up will start fussing soon, or if both are involved, that the one you pick will start fussing before the other one.
To Poop — Our girls poop on their own from time time, but they still frequently need help in the form of a suppository, so besides the standard usage, we also use “poop” as a transitive verb, as in, “It’s time to poop her because she hasn’t gone in almost two days now.”
Fire in the hole — Sometimes, when we attempt to poop one of the babies, they go immediately upon being stimulated with a Q-tip and some K-Y, or the subsequent insertion of a suppository. Other times, the suppository has to stay in there a while before it has the desired effect, so if a baby has a suppository in but hasn’t pooped yet, she has a fire in the hole.
Zizzy Chair — We owe this phrase to our baby nurse, Helen, who’s originally from Hungary. She’s very fluent in English, but there are occasional gaps in her vocabulary, like the word “vibrate”. A zizzy chair is what we would otherwise call a bouncy seat. Bouncy seats have a vibration switch, so combine that with a gap in one’s vocabulary and a little onomatopoeia, and you get zizzy chair.
So here’s how our conversations go these days:
“I can’t remember who ate when. Did this one eat recently?” “Yeah, I gave that one a three-ounce latte about an hour ago and she even took an ounce chaser. This one is probably ready to eat soon, though. “I guess that’s why mine is nice and calm and yours is about to blow.” “It seems like I lose at fussin’ roulette every time. I don’t think this one has pooped for almost two days now - think I should poop her?” “No need. She’s already got a fire in the hole.” “When did you do that?” “I did it when you were changing the batteries in the zizzy chair.” “Have you eaten today? “Nope. You?” “Nope.”
“I can’t remember who ate when. Did this one eat recently?”
“Yeah, I gave that one a three-ounce latte about an hour ago and she even took an ounce chaser. This one is probably ready to eat soon, though.
“I guess that’s why mine is nice and calm and yours is about to blow.”
“It seems like I lose at fussin’ roulette every time. I don’t think this one has pooped for almost two days now - think I should poop her?”
“No need. She’s already got a fire in the hole.”
“When did you do that?”
“I did it when you were changing the batteries in the zizzy chair.”
“Have you eaten today?
“Nope. You?”
“Nope.”
A few mornings ago, Claire was lying on her back after I’d just changed her, and I was making my usual assortment of cooing noises and silly faces at her. She smiled. We’ve spotted occasional spontaneous smiles in both girls for a while now, but this was the first time it looked like a social smile. I stopped the noises and faces until the smile went away, did them again, and she smiled again. I shouted to Kat, who was in another room, “I think I’m making Claire smile!” and she dropped what she was doing and came running in to see. (What she was doing, apparently, was getting dressed, because she arrived topless.) We both let loose with the best baby comedy we could come up with, and Claire responded with more smiles. A couple mornings later after an early morning feeding, Brooke started smiling up a storm at Kat. Kat mercifully let me keep sleeping, but I heard about it later and we’ve been enjoying the ability to make both girls smile ever since. This smiling is a big deal.
Social smiling is part of normal development, so it’s not a big deal in the sense of being surprising, but it’s big for us because: 1) Every sign of “normal” development is good news, especially in the context of their preemie history; and 2) It’s the first outward sign of acknowledging or enjoying our presence, which all parents enjoy, of course, but it’s extra sweet after waiting two extra months.
I am completely enamored of my daughters, and my paternal instinct to love and protect them kicked in even before they were born (maybe even before they were conceived), but I think it’s a good thing we have these instincts, because there’s not a lot of personality or “giving back” from a newborn. It’s easy to love the many little things they do, and to feel joy and satisfaction in caring for them, but what I mean is that they don’t intentionally give back, because they still lack the capacity to really want or intend anything that isn’t driven completely by reflex. Social smiling may start out reflexive, too, but at least it’s in response to something we’re doing, which makes it the first hint that these babies we love so much actually know who their Daddy and Mommy are.
On a side note, I’ve confirmed that the phrase, “I think I’m making Claire smile” does not cause Kat to whip her shirt off and come running. Too bad, because if it worked again, I was interested to see what effect, “I’m making Brooke smile” would have.
It feels so nice to give a bottle to a crying baby, and she stops crying. Or to put a fresh diaper on a crying baby, and she stops crying. Or to swaddle a crying baby, and she stops crying. Or to sing to a crying baby, and she stops crying. It builds confidence in my ability to understand what my baby is communicating and to respond appropriately, which I know (or think) I did because the crying stopped. Other times, I can feed, change, swaddle, sing, or try anything else I can think of, and the crying just continues, driving nails into my brain until I want to scream, “What the fuss!”
My rational mind knows that sometimes a baby is just fussy, it doesn’t make me a bad parent if I can’t get her to stop, it might be growing pains I can’t do anything about or just some mysterious bad mood, but there’s not much room for the rational stuff when a baby is crying inconsolably. The rational mind can make it seem not so bad later on, when the crying is finally done, but in the middle of it, my instinctive mind is in charge, no matter what sunshine that idiot Rational Mind is sure to blow up my ass later on. Instinct says crying means something is wrong and if I can’t fix it, it’s my fault, and even if it’s not my fault, I can’t just ignore it and go about my business any more than I could just ignore my hair being on fire until it went out on its own.
We are very lucky, and I reflect on and appreciate that fact quite a bit actually, when neither baby is on a crying jag. It could be much, much worse, like if our usually sweet-tempered girls cried inconsolably most of the time, or had persistent physical problems that kept them in constant pain, instead of the healthy, usually consolable babies we got. Most cries end with that nice feeling I described at the beginning, but when they don’t — egad. And when they both get going, or one has finally stopped and the other starts — double egad. (Or if you want to be even more accurate — egad squared.)
Everything seems to shrink around these babies. Onesies that fit just fine only a week or so ago can barely even snap shut anymore. (Fortunately, Claire and Brooke are pretty set for the next few sizes with all the gifts and hand-me-downs they got from friends and family.) My arms must be shrinking, because the girls don’t fit the way they used to, and I know my hands are smaller, because my cupped hand doesn’t swallow them up anymore. I suspect my chest is imploding, because I can barely fit them at the same time if I hold them there nestled beneath my chin.
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Premature babies have two ages: 1) their actual age based on the day they were born; and 2) their “corrected age”, which is based on their full-term due date. Their corrected age stops mattering after a while, but it’s important for assessing early development, because milestones like “Most babies begin to babble and to imitate some sounds by the end of the third month” are based on what’s normal for full-term babies. Without correcting age for prematurity, most preemies would appear developmentally impaired, even when they’re perfectly normal. In two days, Brooke and Claire will be exactly two months old, but today was their due date, so in corrected age, they just turned zero!
We track poopy diapers pretty carefully around here, because neither of our girls are frequent poopers. To the casual observer, that sounds like something to be thankful for, not something to worry about, but that’s not the way it works. There are some pretty serious digestive issues that can develop if the bowels aren’t moving, not to mention the simple discomfort and crankiness that accompany constipation, so when they don’t poop enough on their own, we have to help them. That usually starts around the 24-hr. mark with some gentle rectal stimulation with a Q-tip and K-Y jelly during a diaper change. That sometimes does the trick, but not as often as we’d wish. The next step, like if it’s getting closer to the 48-hr. mark, is a glycerin suppository. They don’t come in “newborn” size, so we have to get the normal adult size and cut them down to about 1/8 the original size.
There aren’t a whole lot of updates to give or stories to tell about Brooke and Claire these days because they’re still doing what newborns do, and there’s not a lot of variety to that. Don’t get me wrong - I love it. It just doesn’t make for a lot of interesting stories to tell. They sleep (a lot), cry, eat, burp, poop (infrequently), spit up (occasionally), grow, smile randomly, jerk their arms around, grab stuff reflexively (including their own faces), get the hiccups, make a variety of adorable expressions and sounds, and study their ABCs. Next week they’ll start learning pre-algebra.
Brooke and Claire had their first eye exams today. It was Brooke’s first trip out of the house since coming home last weekend, and Claire’s second because she already had her first pediatrician appointment earlier in the week. It was our first time going anywhere with the twin stroller, and even though the only action it saw was a short trip from the parking lot to the waiting room, that was enough to have the first couple of run-throughs for a script I’m sure we’ll repeat over and over and over again:
“Are they twins?” “Yes.” “Boys or girls?” “Two girls.” “Identical?” “No.” “How do you tell them apart?” “They look different.” “They’re going to be double the trouble.” [Nudge nudge, wink wink.] “Yes, children suck, don’t they?”
A common variation on the question, “Are they natural”, when people find out you’re having or have twins is, “Which side of the family do they run on?”
In some ways, it’s a more indirect way of asking the same question, because if the answer is, “Neither,” then it’s probably safe to assume fertility treatments were involved, right? Wrong.
If someone asks which side of the family twins run on, they’re revealing a common misunderstanding about how twins work, even the “natural” ones. Identicals don’t run in families; fraternal twins do, but only the mother’s side is relevant if you’re asking parents of twins.
The frequency of identical twins holds steady across many cultures and gene pools and does not appear linked to any inherited tendency. Thus, twins don’t run on either side (or it is irrelevant if they do) when twins are identical.
Fraternal twins are affected by a woman’s tendency to release more than one egg per cycle, which is an inherited trait to some extent. That doesn’t mean she releases multiple eggs every cycle, or that all daughters in a twin line will have that trait, but if the women in her family have a history of fraternal twins, her probability of twins is increased. That said, if someone asks a couple “Which side of the family do they run on?”, the only relevant answer is “on the mother’s side”, because if they run on the father’s side, that could be relevant to his daughters’ future chances of twins, but it’s only the person who releases eggs who can increase a couple’s chances of naturally conceiving fraternal twins, and that would be Mom every time.
Once fertility treatments are involved, it’s completely irrelevant if twins run on either side, but the person who asked the question knew that, right?
Continuing the theme of snarky answers I fantasize about giving but probably never will:
