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.)
Nearly three weeks ago, I started to write a piece that began, “Today is my fortieth Father’s Day, but my first one as a father.” My plan was to combine some sweet reflections about my own fatherhood with some acknowledgements and thanks to my dad for the kind of father he has been and inspired me to be. Those thoughts and feelings are still going strong, but actual fathering has made it difficult to move them from my head to the written page.
I find it extremely difficult to write anything that feels worthwhile if I can’t focus my attention on it. I could throw some unorganized, rushed words together to convey basic info in an uninteresting manner, but I don’t consider that writing. That’s writing like whacking some random keys on the piano is “playing music”. (Ever notice that “compose” and “composition” are synonyms for “write” and “writing”, respectively?)
I don’t want to come off as complaining, because I wouldn’t trade being a daddy to my twin daughters for anything in the world, but that priority doesn’t leave much time or mental energy for non-daddy stuff like writing. When time is available, it tends to be in small chunks, but having 10-minute windows of opportunity a dozen times a day is not the same as having one 2-hr. chunk to focus. Writing isn’t the only thing that’s true for, but it’s the one that explains this latest lapse in blogging.
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.
Read the rest of this entry »
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:
A few years ago, I subbed in a bowling league where one of my teammates turned out to be a father of young triplets. When I found out, my reflexive curiosity led me to ask some version of the question, “Were they natural?” I may have tried to phrase it a little less bluntly, but the question was the same. My very friendly teammate answered politely and directly (no, they had “help”), and my curiosity was satisfied without realizing at the time what a personal or awkward question I had just asked. Now that I’m a father of twins and encounter the same question or variations on it frequently, I cringe that I ever asked it, and wish I could go back and apologize to that guy.
