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.
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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:
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.
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!”
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.
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?”
