I have sought out support in breastfeeding, both before the babies arrived, and in the last 5 weeks.  I went to two classes prenatally.  I have also been offered unsolicited advice by well-meaning mommy-friends, and called in a lactation consultant.  I have started going to an awesome support group on Thursday mornings.  From all of these sources, I have distilled a top-ten list of breastfeeding tips, as no one who needs help breastfeeding has time to read any more than 10 bulleted points at a sitting.  Heck, I don’t even know if there are ten.  It’s just a nice, round number.

• Don’t ask your mother for help.  Or at least, don’t expect her to be the ultimate resource. I tried asking my mother, whom I know successfully breastfed all three of her children.  I personally was nursed exclusively for 15 months, having refused nearly all baby food.  I figured Mom would be a good resource, especially as she was breastfeeding during formula’s hey-dey.  Nope.  Her first response, when I asked if she had any resources (books, advice, etc.) back in the 1980s, was, “No.” She initially claimed breastfeeding was natural, so easy she never gave it a second thought. This led to a lengthy discussion about the manufactured industry of lactation consultants and heavy-handed pressure on all moms to breastfeed nowadays.  Later, however, upon visiting my house and seeing La Leche League’s “The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding” on my bookshelf, she remarked that it was the seminal resource she herself had consulted.  And also that she had met with a group of stay-at-home new moms of young babies in their homes to, among other things, troubleshoot breastfeeding.  But no, it had been for her, a completely natural, instinctive thing to do.  No support whatever.  So, yeah, don’t hedge your bets on maternal wisdom.
• When we eat a hoagie (translation for non-Philadelphians: sub/zep/Dagwood/regional sandwich), we don’t just open our mouths and shove it in.  Try it next time.  Watch what you do.  I’ll bet you squish the bun/bread a bit, then roll the sandwich into your mouth from the lower lip first.  Your boobie is a hoagie for your baby.  Compress it, then roll it into the baby’s mouth from the lower lip.  Don’t just try to shove your breast into their mouth as is.  Compression while nursing also helps baby breathe, a vastly underrated function during breastfeeding.
• It’s called breastfeeding, not nipple feeding. Make sure your kiddo has a huge mouth-full of boobie.  You’re actually aiming for your nipple to go as far back as the place where the hard and soft palates meet.  Feel in your own mouth using your tongue; that’s pretty far back, and if the kiddo is only latched onto your nipple, not only will it hurt like tiny needles stabbing your breast, but there’s no chance it’ll reach that far back in baby’s mouth.
• Breastfeeding might hurt, even if you’re doing it right.  There’s some mystical bullshit out there that if it hurts, you have to adjust baby’s latch, or your position, or your chakra. Nope.  It might hurt for a minute when they’re latching, or only during the initial let-down, or for four months.  And you might be doing everything right.
• Bring kid to boobie, not boobie to kid.  Otherwise, you’ll be hunched over like some old hagitha for a half-hour, dangling your breast in your kid’s mouth.  And your back will hurt.
• To help you bring baby to boobie, get a pillow designed for breastfeeding.  My favorite is the idiotically named “My Brest Friend.”  You’ll feel like a tool the first few times you strap this planetary orbit around your midsection, and stupider still as you waltz around the house wearing a satellite dish, but it’s the best thing ever not to have to fold and fluff a regular pillow into the right position, or to strain your arm holding even the smallest infant in the precise position for any length of time.  Many people love Boppies.  They do have pretty covers, but it’ll be a cold day in Hell if you think you can wrench my “My Best Friend” away from me.
• When baby is rooting, and opening its mouth, and you seize the opportunity to shove its precious little head towards your engorged breast, manipulate your little darling’s noggin by holding it nearer to its neck, not the round part of its skull.  I usually hold my baby’s heads with a thumb and forefinger or middle finger by the mastoid bones, which are right behind the ears, near where the lower jaw attaches.  If someone tries to move your head around by pushing at the back (occipital region), feel how you tense up and resist (go on, try it.  No one’s looking).  Now feel how much more control they’d have by holding nearer the neck.  Now you have ultimate control over baby’s noggin.  Use it wisely.
• Set a stopwatch so you can keep track of how long baby is nursing for.  You can try just watching a clock and doing the math, but in my experience, your brain will be too fried to do even simple subtraction.  Plus, when you’re at it ‘round the clock, you won’t remember if the :19 you’re calculating from was from the 3pm feed or the 6pm feed.  The doctors profess to love and support breastfeeding, but it makes them nuts, because it’s so hard to measure.  They want numbers for their reports, so they can make calculations, compare to charts, and write goals.  If you have a formula-fed baby, you can ask how much it’s taking from a bottle, and report back in ounces.  Easy.  With a breast-fed baby, the best you can do on a regular basis is count wet/dirty diapers, and ask how long they nurse for.  Babies are all different, and some are more efficient than others.  Women produce more milk at different times of the day.  And sometimes babies who hang out for a long time at the breast, are just dicking around, using you as a human pacifier.  Sure, you can weigh a baby before and after a feed, but on a daily basis, the duration and frequency of a nursing session is the only number you’ll be able to give the doctors.
• Get an iPad or an ereader or at least some good phone apps.  Nursing is not only time-consuming, but also soporific.  To keep yourself from falling asleep mid-suckle, download engaging books and mind-numbing games.  Until your baby knows it has hands and can stop flailing about volitionally, you’ll have to help it stay on the breast.  This requires at least one hand.  You will value any and all activities you can do with the other hand, and you may eventually tire of 3am TV infomercials.  Though I am only a recent convert to the ebook world, I have found yet another lesser-known advantage over paper books – you can turn the pages with the swipe of a finger, and don’t have to deal with a paperback folding up, losing your page, or holding the spine open with two fingers and turning pages with another.  While you’re at it, download a stopwatch app and a nursing log app.  The doctors will love you.
• I guess I only had 9 tips.  Oh, no, wait.  Here’s one more – keep trying.  Breastfeeding can be really hard, but don’t give up.  Call in the troops.  Get a lactation consultant, or go to a breastfeeding support group.  Call a mommy-friend, or  use your iPad to find an online support group.  But keep at it.  You’re awesome.
• Oh, shit.  Another one.  This one was personal, and stems from a failed 4am feeding where L. wouldn’t latch.  Through streaming tears, I pleaded with her to stop rejecting my breast, to stop rejecting me.  And while this may seem silly from the comfort of daylight hours, it was very real to me.  A baby’s difficulty latching, or sucking, or removing enough milk is not a personal affront on your motherhood.
• Or your best intentions.  It killed me to have to supplement with formula on doctor’s orders because my babies had lost too much weight since birth.  But by adding formula for only two weeks, I was able to appease the doctor’s need for numbers (Yes, we give her up 2oz to “top off” after a 20-minute feed, etc.), and once I could show my babies were gaining weight, we were back to boobie.  It did not mean I was a failure that I had to give my children formula.  We just needed some help.

I hope my earnest little list offered you’re a little help.  Now go, get some sleep.  You look awful.

People who come over to visit with us and meet the babies often happen upon us at a period of low activity.  The twins typically sleep for the two-hour “slot” we have permitted a friend, coworker, or family member to hold court.  They look adoringly in the Pack ‘N Play, coo at the angelic faces, and ask us, “Do you just stare at them all the time?”  “Oh, yes!” we obligingly reply.  But we don’t.  If they’re out for any period of time, we’re running around like chickens with their heads cut off, throwing together quick meals, decanting breast milk into bottles for night-time feedings, tossing a load of laundry into the washing machine, dryer, or into disheveled dresser drawers.  We’re planning our next quick between-feeding errands to the grocery store, pharmacy, or take-out establishment.  And do I sometimes feel like a bad parent, or at least a detached parent, for doing so?  I do.

I’m very practically minded most of the time  So it makes sense that when the babies are angelically napping, I’m kicking my productivity into high gear.  I bet most parents of newborn multiples do so, out of necessity.  Sometimes I will grab that shower, leaving Mr. Apron on call for errant whimpers or explosive diapers.  But I’ve only chosen to use that time to write once.

Choosing to blog, to send some of my musings longer than a status update (or a tweet, but I don’t do that) into the world seems like an indulgence I can’t afford when we’ve eaten pasta or cookies for every meal in the last week.  At least it’s a balanced diet – chocolate chip cookies, store-brand oreos, regular oatmeal cookies, or steel-cut oatmeal cookies.  But to write?  What purpose does it serve?  Does it get the babies fed or changed any more efficiently?  Does it prepare me to be more patient with my children and husband and self the way an hour-long afternoon nap does?  Does it put a dent in the thank-you note pile? Or help the house feel less like a zoo?  Does it make sure we have food in the house?  Does it make all those necessary phone calls to doctors’ offices, blood labs, window installers, and health insurance companies?  It serves no rational purpose, and hence, feels gratuitous, or downright indulgent.

A few months ago, I blogged about preserving a “me-ness” (and of my husband’s and my desire to preserve a “we-ness”) once I add Mother to my list of titles.  I hoped I would not lose track of my own self, of my hobbies and my interests. I vowed that my identity as a mother would not supplant who I was in the 30 years before.  And in the throes of the sleep deprivation and complete disorientation of the first six weeks of my children’s lives, when I am utterly consumed with their pooping, peeing, sleeping, and feeding, I must find a smidge of “me-ness”.  Perhaps stealing away to blog while my father-in-law gazes adoringly at his (sleeping, of course) grandchildren is my way of doing so, even if it comes at the cost of clean laundry, a hot (or re-heated) meal, or showing timely gratitude for baby gifts.

P.S. I bet you wouldn’t mind another picture, eh?

The babies are definitely the coolest things to have come out of my vagina.

Which means yes, I delivered twins vaginally, which earned me quite the kudos in the hospital and quite the looks from people who think it is their business to ask such things.

I was induced Wednesday night, and given Cervadil, which was supposed to “soften” my cervix (finish effacing and thinning it) in preparation for the actual induction the next day.  The nurse said everyone reacts to the Cervadil differently, which is a nice thing to say when I lasted about an hour before intense contractions started piling up ever 45 seconds.  There was no time to use our well-rehearsed breathing exercises as contractions became more intense.  They started at a 10, and just kept going.  I was not supposed to walk around, as the babies were on a monitor, but only walking around gave me any measure of relief.  Due to hospital policy, I was stuck in bed, however.

An hour later, anesthesiology was giving me the epidural I had been undecided and open-minded about.  The effects were amazing and almost instantaneous.  I turned from a shaking, screaming banshee who was breaking into cold sweats, into a rational human being who played Skip-Bo with her husband.

My daughter decided she wanted to come out before I was fully dilated, so she started descending and sitting, basically, (well, head-standing) on my coccyx, for several hours.  So even though I had good “coverage” with the epidural, and was numb, she exerted incredible pressure on my ass every time I had a contraction.

Those contractions?  Never got more than 5 minutes apart and were usually 2-3 minutes.

For 22 hours.

Anesthesia, who was MIA by this point, wouldn’t be able to relieve “pressure”, only pain, so my only option once I hit a contraction was a nurse’s suggestion to apply my own counter-pressure.  This meant that my birth partner (see: husband) pushed and held a frozen diaper (standard hospital equipment on the L&D floor) against my coccyx for every contraction.  Things became glamorous.

My doctor, who was in the hospital on Thursday, had to leave by “5 or 6″, but I was dilating so slowly (several hours from 2-3cm, several more from 3-4cm), that we were on the clock, praying she’d be able to be there to deliver the babies.

Five and six pm both passed, and all that was left were contractions through my ass.  They tell you you might poop during childbirth, but they don’t tell you you feel like you have to poop for 22 hours.

I was able to wedge a frozen diaper in such a position that we could watch Jeopardy!, when nurse Laura said she thought she saw signs of “earlies” on the fetal monitor, which signifies something significant.  At any rate, the OB who had just come on checked me, and by 8pm, I was being wheeled into the OR.

Since I was having twins, and each baby gets a “team”, a regulary L&D room is just too small for the delivery.  All twin deliveries happen in the OR.  I was excited to finally be doing something, excited to relieve the gotta-poop feeling, excited to get to be an active participant in the birth.  I was transfered to the OR table, and immediately cowed by the 3  enormous lights above me.  Fourteen people at least shouting at me, different directions, different instructions.  I screamed while I was pushing, ’cause it fucking hurt.  That elicited many refrains of, “Don’t scream” as I was kind of wasting energy and breath that could be used for pushing.  So I started crying, “I’m sorry,” which only made them admonish me not to be sorry.

Once again, the breathing exercises were out the window as I couldn’t focus with everyone screaming at me and the lights glaring.  I couldn’t hear the 10-second counts, and I felt like the heads I was trying to pass were bowling balls.

After what felt like forever but was more like 43 minutes, my daughter was born.  I was delirious with sleep-deprivation from the night before (and past several weeks), as well as the pain meds they were pushing.  I heard her cry, and I said, “Baby!” as if it had just now occurred to me that pregnancy usually yields live, screaming babies.  They said push if I felt I had to push.  I still felt like I had to poop, not push, but had already delivered one child that way, so I started pushing again.  Fourteen minutes later, little brother was born.  In all the hysteria, I didn’t realize he wasn’t doing so well at birth.  In some part because I pushed him out so quickly, he didn’t get all the squeezing benefits of being compressed in the birth canal, which can help to initiate breathing.  I caught a glimpse of him, and he was completely white.  I thought he was covered in vernix, the white, waxy substance that protects fetuses from amniotic fluid, but he was white because he wasn’t breathing.  I only found this out later, as my husband finally revealed, thanks to my insecurities about their health.

“Are they really fine?” I begged.  ”Are they really perfect?” I was in disbelief, I was frantically worried someone was keeping something from me.  E. had only received a 1 on his initial APGAR.  He wasn’t breathing on his own.  His color was terrible.  As they say to assuage mothers, “Many babies need some help.”  Truthfully, he did only need a little help — they suctioned him, gave him a few breaths with a BVM, and soon he was screaming, too.  Now, at 18 days old, he often won’t stop.

My biggest triumph at this point is having carried twins to 38.5 weeks, and having had such a thoroughly uncomplicated pregnancy that I was able to deliver two healthy babies vaginally.

My biggest disappointment was in losing control, losing track of my birth plan, being unable to follow through with my first parenting decisions.

Because L. was jaundiced, it was essential she clear out the bilirubin from her system, and she ended up taking formula from a bottle.

Because E. lost too much of his birth weight (when you’re 5lb5oz, it’s more of a concern than if you’re 8lbs), we were supplementing him with formula.

Because of the madness in the OR, and E.’s low one-minute APGAR, I didn’t get to hold either child until we were all in recovery.  And Mr. Apron didn’t cut either cord.

Because I ran out of time, I didn’t get to bank/donate their cord blood.

Because breastfeeding was so hard, both babies lost weight and the pediatrician told us it was medically necessary to supplement with formula.

Because my parents don’t listen, they bought us diapers in the wrong size, sizes which will fit them when they are big enough to be in cloth diapers, which is our intention once they are out of the newborn-shit-every-twenty-minutes phase.

Because the babies screamed their heads off the first two nights and wouldn’t sleep, we began using pacifiers almost immediately.

Because I was too tired and emotionally distraught to be patient enough to breastfeed at the 12am, 3am, and 6am feedings, and we felt the pediatrician’s mandate breathing down our necks, we began bottle-feeding overnight, while I pump.

We weren’t going to bottle-feed for several weeks.  We weren’t going to use pacifiers.  We weren’t going to use formula at all.  He was going to cut the cords.  Baby A was supposed to be on me until I started pushing with Baby B.  My OB was supposed to deliver my babies.  We were going to donate the cord blood.  And none of it happened.  Every feeding where the babies wouldn’t latch on, and I held out a hungry child to my husband, who would give a bottle of the hated formula to an eagerly awaiting little mouth, I felt rejected.  I felt I couldn’t provide what I knew was the best food for my babies.  I felt the pediatrician was using the words “medically necessary” as a way to derail my first parents decisions.

Mr. Apron keeps telling me that that stuff is all minor, that I need to sort through my priorities, and look at the bigger picture.  The bigger picture always is the healthy babies, always is their welfare and well-being.  But as the items in my birth plan kept getting ignored, steam-rollered, or altered as a result of “medically necessary”, I felt helpless.  I felt ignored.  I felt like my intentions were worthless.  The induction went poorly and my contractions put me in agony?  Big deal.  The babies were healthy.  The nurses pushed meds and interventions on me so I’d be a happier patient?  Big deal.  The babies were healthy.  I had to supplement with formula and risk nipple confusion and interference with breast-feeding?  Big deal.  L.’s bilirubin numbers were dropping, and E. was putting on weight.  The pediatrician recommended Vitamin D drops because breastmilk is “incomplete”?  Big deal.  Vitamins are insurance against deficiencies.

I didn’t feel supported in my decisions as a mother.  I watched all my intentions slip away until I was left with sore nipples, a sink full of Enfamil bottles, a calendar full of doctor’s appointments, and mandates from a pediatrician who I hadn’t even met, as he was on vacation.

And those post-partum hormones coursing through my body didn’t help.

However, we’re all on the mend.  The loopiness from the Oxycodone has worn off.  The babies are back above birth weight, so we were given “permission” to drop the formula supplements.  I’m pumping during night feedings to spare myself some sanity, and I can usually make enough for Mr. Apron to feed them breast milk.  The babies are healthy, for real.  And while I do not fare so well when they soil three diapers in a row, while I’m changing them, or they pee out the back of their really cute outfits, or they break out of their swaddle for the sixteenth time, or one wakes up screaming just as we’ve put the other one down, we are, on the whole, doing okay.

I made it from pregnancy to motherhood, and our little family of two (plus the two dogs) has made room for two more very important members.

Who are probably ready for their 6pm feeding.  As I am little more than a milk factory at present, I must conclude this post.  I hope for many more naps as peaceful as this one, that I may blog some more.

Here are my munchkins:

And under other thinly veiled euphemisms, unless I go into labor on my own before next Thursday, I’m being induced then. 

I have mixed feelings about this.  While it’s kind of a relief (albeit unnatural) to have a deadline, a timeline, a birthdate (practically, though it could happen Friday if this takes a while, or Wednesday if the Pitocin drip is feeling frisky), and a plan, it feels like we’re jumping the gun and subverting Mother Nature.

If full-term for twins is 37 weeks, and average gestation is 35 weeks, then they can be born now anytime.  It’s not their health or development that is concerning me.  For goodness sake, I’ll be 38 weeks tomorrow, which is pretty much full-term (38-42 weeks is the range, actually) for a singleton pregnancy.  That’s not my worry at all, and that, of course is what’s most important — having two healthy babies.  By all signs, that’s what they’ll be.  I’ve witnessed fetal breathing (practicing for the real thing), and seen numerous ultrasounds.  I’ve felt thousands of kicks, and seen them recorded during non-stress tests.  My babies are within normal range for weight.  Today they were estimated at 6lb 5oz and 6lb 9oz, respectively.  And I’m shocked I can still walk around.  All this is very, very good.

No, what worries me, is a loss of control, a loss of a plan, ironic, really, when we have a scheduled induction of labor.  Much as I’m not the type of person to go to a birth center or even dream of  a homebirth, I worry about jumping into medical interventions when there doesn’t seem to be a need.  I’m upset that continuous fetal monitoring will ruin my plans to walk my way through contractions, that I’ll be confined to the hospital bed, and so miserable I’ll jump at the chance for an epidural, rather than taking the wait-and-see approach I’d planned on.  I worry about the cascade of medical interventions.  I worry about causing fetal distress from inducing labor before the babies tell us they’re ready.  I’m worried that the increased risk of a C-section will ruin my plans for a vaginal birth. 

Sure, I’ve done too much Googling, and not enough talking with my doctor directly.  Of course, she’s on vacation until next Thursday, so I’d have to talk to some other doc at her practice and try to get him to explain her clinical judgment that lead her to decide inducing labor was the best choice.  I should have asked her about risks and benefits when I had the chance.  And I’m not thrilled that I haven’t found any clinical studies or journal articles that indicate that a multiple pregnancy is a reason to induce.  I don’t have any other indicators — pre-eclampsia, gestational diabetes, threats to maternal well-being, babies not growing inside me, threats to their health, lack of access to medical facilities, being more than 2 weeks beyond my due date — so why?  I should have asked, eh?  I guess it all just made sense in the moment, or at least I made it up to convince myself that if I went to 40 weeks, they might get too big and make delivery more difficult.  Is that true?  Or did I make it up completely?

As any good mother-to-be who has an abstract-sequential personality, I have a list of pros and cons. 

Pros:

• My family can actually plan a time to be here. 
• My sister can start her 16 hour drive from St. Louis, and won’t miss more than one class. 
• My mother-in-law can put in for time off before the frantic phone-call. 
• My parents can make a hotel reservation. 
• The 15th is my late grandfather’s birthday. 
• It’s as far from Christmas as can be, given our Dec. 24th due date. 
• The babies will (hopefully) be home with us in time for Chanukah, so they can wear the “My First Chanukah” bibs my crazy aunt sent (just kidding about that last part). 
• I won’t have to worry about a skeletal hospital staffing near the Christmas holiday. 
• I can work up until the last few days before the Holiday break, and I’ll only miss 2 days of work, days dedicated to packing up and moving from our old building to the new school (work a pregnant lady oughtn’t do anyway). 
• We can plan dog care. 
• We can go to the hospital after rush hour, with our bags packed, and hopefully in a lower panic mode, sans regular contractions. 

And then there are the cons:

• I’ll be on continuous fetal monitoring, and, lacking telemetry, be restricted to finding laboring positions a hospital bed will allow.
• Contractions won’t be “natural” and are rumored to be stronger when induced with Pitocin.
• Inducing might not actually work. 
• It can take a long time.
• I don’t get to have the realization that I’m in labor, and the opportunity to labor at home comfortably during the early phases.
• Increased risk of C-section.
• Increased risk of additional medical interventions.
• I won’t get to walk around, not even in my room.
• I’ll never know how long I could have naturally maintained this complication-free, miraculous pregnancy. 

I mean, come on!  Who else can boast a nearly full-term twin pregnancy with a net weight gain of only 25lbs, and babies estimated to weigh over 6lbs each?  Without any morning sickness?  Not on bed rest?  Still able to drive and walk dogs and craft and only having edema in her last week (and still wearing my wedding band)?  Without wretched mood swings that drove her husband nuts? I must say, I have had a pretty awesome pregnancy.  I just wonder how it would have ended, had we given it the chance to end naturally.  And that’s part of my confusion, too. 

When it’s all over and done with, God willing we’ll have two healthy, beautiful, brilliant babies, I’ll miraculously get my figure back, lose the eight thousand stretch marks I’ve incurred over the last 6 weeks, and my dearest husband and I will have a family that all sleeps through the night.  That, of course, is the end goal, one I must not lose sight of, even as I prepare for the end of the pregnancy, and the labor and delivery that will mark the beginning of our little famly.

I’ve always been a kid who needed to fidget a little.  Not strictly ADD, it was more of a nervous habit I developed – moving some part of my body, so that my mind could focus on the task at hand.  I played with Silly Putty throughout 9^th grade geometry to keep myself awake.  I find it difficult to sit through an entire movie without feeling an unbearable urge to shift my body.  And when I’m sitting “still”, I am often tapping my foot rhythmically, or rapping my fingernails against some piece of hard plastic in the car, usually without realizing it.

Now they’ve put a medical term to my fidgets: Restless Leg Syndrome.  The commercials are goofy, and mostly dedicated to (like the ones for fibromyalgia or chronic fatigue syndrome) trying to convince you RLS exists, and of course is treatable by their drugs.  My need to move, though, never kept me awake at night.  Now, I think, my bladder wakes me up, my mind keeps me up, and my body keeps me from falling back asleep.  My legs began twitching.  I can’t explain it like the commercials do, like a tingling, or like ants marching up and down my legs.  It’s not even an unbearable urge to move them.   It’s just…moving them.  And moving them doesn’t relieve the issue.  I’d lie there, trying not to think about my legs, and then they’d jerk around on their own.  My feet would start rubbing frenetically against each other, my toenails slicing battle wounds on my calves, my toes, my heels.  I tried to pin them under my no-longer-sleeping husband or dog.  I tried sleeping on the couch and shoving my feet in the crack between the cushions to give them some deep sensory input, or at least to provide some resistance to their twitching.  Nothing worked.  And as the hours wore on, I became so tired and so frustrated with the futility of working so hard to sleep, that I would break down completely.

Many nights, I woke up a sympathetic husband who was at a loss how to help me.  He tried rubbing my back, holding me close to him, and asking if I wanted to talk.  One night the comfort of his body against mine did seem to break the spell and let me fall back asleep, but it was no cure-all, as night after night, I continued to disturb both of our rest.  I would whimper, I would cry, I would wail apologetically to my husband, knowing he had to work in the morning.  I would work myself into thrashing crying fits, working at cross purposes to my attempts to fall asleep.

I found myself at the computer in the middle of the night, the sudden bright lights of the monitor shocking my dilated pupils, trying to numb my brain with Facebook, trying to empty my mind by writing down my anxieties, trying at least to leave my poor husband alone, but nothing worked.  After an hour or so I’d return to bed and fitfully catch another half-hour of sleep in bursts, usually in the minutes before my alarm would go off.

In one of my non-sleeping stupors, I found myself e-mailing my parents.  Panicking the next day that my missive had seemed psychotic, I dug through my sent-mailbox, relieved to find out it had actually been somewhat coherent.  This of course led to a useless phone call with my mother, who chose to focus on my fatigue – not the reasons behind it – by suggesting I somehow slide a couch into my 4’x 8’ cubicle, or take cat naps at my desk during lunch, and compensate by eating half my lunch at 10:30 and 2.  I assured her that if my school had any spare spaces big enough for a couch, they’d have made it into a classroom by now.

Finally yesterday, the sleep deprivation caught up with me.  I had had a particularly rough evening.  The dog, left unsupervised, had destroyed the base of the couch in search of the tin from a pot pie, ripping shreds of corduroy, batting, foam, and Ikea “wood”, sending me into a storm of anger.  She had also eaten yet another one of my socks, one I had thought I had put out of her reach.  In a torrent I lashed out at her, raging around the house screaming, scaring my husband and myself, unable to access any coping mechanisms to calm myself down.  Even after I did, I knew sleep would not be restful.  I woke at 3:30, and I eventually gave up on sleep and instead chose to shower at 5:15 rather than trying to fight the sleep demons for 45 minutes of shut-eye.

I called myOB’s office in desperation.  I had not mentioned my difficulty sleeping last week when I saw her.  I had been running late to the appointment, caught up in rush hour traffic, and had felt guilty running through my full litany of inane questions.  What’s more, every pregnant woman has difficulty sleeping, and the complaint seemed foolish, or at least mundane.  I read about it on Facebook as my peer-group kicks into reproductive overdrive, and recommends pregnancy pillows and memory foam mattress toppers.  I hear about it at yoga, as the other women discuss iron supplements, stretching, and massage.  And I hate the pat response I always get when I do try to reach out to people – “Just wait till the babies are here!” or “It’s just practice for the sleep deprivation that comes with newborns!”  Of course, when I had worked up the courage to actually call my doctor’s office, she wasn’t there.  The entire staff of MDs, it seems, was out yesterday.  So I spoke to a nurse. Through my overwrought fatigue, I managed to convey to her that this had reached a breaking point.  Nerd that I am, I may have said, in my quivering don’t-cry-don’t-cry voice, that my difficulty sleeping was “untenable”.  So she recommended I take Benadryl.

While the smallest bit of caffeine can send me bouncing off the walls, and a Starbucks Frappuccino sets me hypomanic for at least two hours (low tolerance for caffeine is great), the antihistamine has little effect on me, as opposed to my husband, who conks out on the couch after taking one Benadryl.  Through his sniffling and schmulling (did I mention he’s sick?), he took one pill, and I downed two.  I did my yoga stretches, trying to fatigue my legs, and my sweet husband plied and massaged my calf muscles and feet until they could put up resistance no longer.  Maybe it was the placebo effect of trying something new, or throwing the book at my sleep issue.  Maybe it was the effect of the Benadryl, or maybe the fatigue had finally caught up with me.  In any case, I slept from 11 until 4, got up for my customary pee, and was able to fall right back asleep until the alarm went off.

I’ve never been one to reach for the meds as my first defense.  Many days in college I would lie on a scorching heating pad and skip class rather than treat my cramps with Advil.  I dealt with my tongue seizures for years by running and hiding rather than seeking treatment.   And through the early part of my pregnancy, I was extremely reluctant to take even Tylenol (which, of course, was all I could take) for my migraines.  As for a sleep issue, for that, too, I’d rather try my other options first.  I’d rather deal with the underlying issues, whether they’re anxiety or physical discomfort, than chemically sedate myself.  But in this case, the lack of sleep was compounding, and I was having such anxiety about sleeping itself, that I was at odds with myself.  I’d tried listing out my worries, doing my yoga, and soliciting calf massages, to no avail.  My therapist is woefully out of commission for the near future, recovering from back surgery.  And talking to my mother had of course proved futile.  I was wracked with guilt about disturbing my husband’s sleep, and barely able to function at work.

And so I took the meds.  And so I got some sleep.  I still worry about the babies coming.  I still need to talk to my therapist.  I may still need to go through the yoga and the massaging, and I won’t be giving up my Snoogle any time soon.  Maybe meds are not the answer, but they might be part of the equation.

And then, it all comes back.  It’s only an hour and a half that Mr. Apron is gone – including travel time – but if I’m not glued to one screen (TV), I’m glued to another (computer, iPad), and still immobilized enough that the feelings from the Depression come rushing back.  Sometimes I can “bootstrap” myself out of it by running through a mental list of all the things I allegedly want to do.  I of course reject doing 99% of them, but by latching onto the smallest, least cumbersome chore, I am sometimes able to gather enough momentum to pull myself off the literal or figurative couch.  However, I think my list of tasks is too long tonight, or I’m so overwhelmed in general, that I’m just going to bask in the deluge of being stuck.

The babies are coming, the babies are coming.  I’m at 33 weeks gestation.  At 30 weeks, they weighed in at over 3 lbs each, and I’m estimating that by my next ultrasound this Friday, they’ll be at 4 lbs.  I’m still terrified of pre-term labor.  I had a scare around 27 weeks, where the ultrasound showed my cervix might be getting ready for labor.  Thankfully, I wasn’t showing any other signs, and clearly, I haven’t had the babies yet, but it still shocked me into a hyper aware state, much like how Mr. Apron behaved for about a week after he was pulled over, driving past the corner where he was caught in a speed trap.  After a while, the caution and sensitivity fade, and life returns to normal.

Unless you’re having twins.  They’re coming, pre-term or not.  At the outside, if I go full-term, I only have 7 weeks left.  And if I make it “full-term” for twins, which is only 37 weeks, I have less than a month.  I speak as if I’m facing a terminal illness instead of the birth of my children.  Still, I’m not ready.  I doubt that 4, or even 7 weeks would ever be enough time to prepare, mentally.  Sure, the cribs have been ordered, and the car seats lie in wait.  The stroller is in the basement, optimistic that we’ll ever set foot outside our house again once the babies are born.  I’m mourning the end of our life as a couple, of our life as adult-focused people.  I’m not even talking about so-called adult activities, like drinking, staying out until all hours, and beer pong.  I’m talking about our adult activities, like snuggling in the bed together, watching Antiques Roadshow together, botching home improvement projects together, and evening crafting/computer time together.  Our together time.  I know we’ll make time for these things that are important to us.  I know babysitters (aka in-laws) exist for a reason, and they will provide respite care so we can go out for an evening.  But I’m still scared.  And I know that despite our best efforts (and even successes!) at retaining the essence of who we are, who we were, before children, it can never be the same.

I’m scared I won’t be ready.  I never can be.  I’m excited to meet my babies.  I narcissistically can’t wait to see how they look like us.  I can’t wait for their new baby smells.

I know I won’t be able to have my pity parties anymore either.  There just won’t be a 90-minute block of time for me to be stuck.  There will be diapers and feedings, and burping and entertaining, and soothing and swaddling.  I’m scared.  I’m scared I’ll get stuck even though it will look different than it does now.  I want to enjoy my babies whether their father is home with us, or gone for an hour or a day.  I want to be the awesome mom I know in my heart of hearts I can be.  And I can’t let the Depression get in the way.

“Does it hurt?” asked the Mother-to-Be.

“Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for she was always truthful. “When you are a Mother you don’t mind being hurt.”

“Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” the pregnant woman asked, “or bit by bit?”

“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are a Mother, most of your skin has stretch marks, and your belly drops out and you get loose in the joints and very tired. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are a Mother you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”

“I suppose you are a Mother?” said the Expectant Woman. And then she wished he had not said it, for she thought the Skin Horse might be sensitive. But the Skin Horse only smiled.

A few weeks ago, Mr. Apron and I were lucky enough to accept a large donation of baby equipment (clothing, bottles, a play mat, a mobile, etc.), and a small box of maternity clothes from a coworker of his who is done making babies.  Unfortunately, she loved and lived in jean her entire pregnancy, and jeans about the least ideal piece of maternity wear there is, not to mention that they are the key violation of my work dress code.  So her entire denim stash was out, but buried among the flowy swaths of XL shirts and clingy tank tops was a small tube of spandex.

I made it through my early pregnancy without a Bella Band; I just unbuttoned the top button of my pants and wore shirt long and loose enough that nothing was obviously amiss.  Pregnancy books say Bella Bands (and their ilk) are best for early pregnancy, to hold up your old, regular clothes, or to hold up the maternity clothes you can’t quite fill out yet.  Personally, I’m quite at the stage where I fill out my maternity duds, but I still can’t hold my pants up unless they’re super stretchy and pulled all the way over my bump.  Which causes sensory ills, and seam lines on my swollen abdomen that draw sympathetic looks from my husband.  Enter: the Bella Band.

Last week I tucked it into my bag, figuring I’d try it out on a pair of pants that I wasn’t sure would stay up all day, if I dared pull myself to a standing position at any point.  As soon as I climbed the 5 flights of stairs, the drooping waistband let me know I was going to have problems, so I ducked into the bathroom and pulled on the magnificent tube.  It’s stretchy enough to fit over my whole belly, but thin enough that I can fold it or scrunch it down.  No seams anywhere.  And if I pull it over my waistband, I magically have pants that stay up all day!  Plus, my popping belly button is smoothed over once and for all.

Friday was a dress-down day, but my previous jeans experience had been so miserable I was reluctant to join the fray.  Again, I tucked the Bella Band into my purse, and again, I knew by the time I’d reached my office that my pants situation was unsustainable.  Though they did stay up on their own, due to magic stretch panels hidden somewhere in the waistband, the denim was chafing every inch of my delicate skin.  Again, I hit the bathroom, where this time, I pulled the Bella Band on before my pants.  I covered my sensitive waist with it, then pulled up my pants.  Voila!  Added friction for anti-gravity powers, as well as a barrier between jeans and my skin.

I may have worn pants that were hemmed with safety pins yesterday (I hate to commit to making real hems before I know if my $5 thrift store find is worth the effort) and covered with dog fur (this particular pair was a magnet for blond dog hairs), but my pants stayed up all day long.

If this post saves one woman from the belly pouch panels and drooping elastic waist maternity pants, I will consider my obligation to the pregnant community fulfilled.

In a class I observed today, the kids discussed the meaning of their newest vocabulary word, poverty.  As vocabulary is not a subject taught lightly here, it was not merely taught as a synonym for “poor”; the teacher wanted to make sure his 6^th graders understood relative poverty and standard of living, how a person owning in a house in Haiti might not have a TV, but would be considered wealthy, while a person in a similar situation in the United States could very well be in poverty.  He left their heads swimming with thoughts of kids so poor they can’t afford shore houses or annual trips to Vail.  I’m sure it will be a stretch for some of them to connect to a Mexican immigrant girl living the life of a migrant worker in the 1930s.

Ignorance, like poverty, is relative.  And just as these student struggle to relate to characters from stories of far off places, times, and socio-economic statuses, I, too, find myself amazed at the level of ignorance of Judaism in this community.  Note I did not specify the degree of ignorance; what astounds me is the dynamic of power the Jewish community seems to wield over a private school.

I don’t know if the changes between my childhood and the ones I’m currently observing are a result of shift in attitude and tolerance over the last 20 years, or merely in the presence of a more sizeable Jewish population in this part of the world than in the one I grew up.  I do remember the complete ignorance in my community in the late 1980s and early 1990s – not so long ago – and how it shaped my views of what is happening around me now.

My school district had not heard of the separation of church and state.  They put on Christmas concerts, tossing in a “Dreidle, Dreidle” to pacify the six Jewish students in the school.  They orchestrated crafts of countdowns to Christmas.  They let out all the Catholic students 30 minutes early every Monday for catechism, while the remaining 4 or so of us non-Catholics clapped out erasers and helped the teachers put up bulletin boards.  It was no wonder that the district continually had to be reminded each year about “our” holidays in the fall.  My rabbi had to, for each school a student in her congregation attended, call or write a letter explaining what Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur were, why we were to be excused from school, and how the Holidays were of great importance.  Still, they balked.  Still, we got confused looks at our excuse notes.  Still, we did our homework sitting in the religious school classrooms during breaks between services.

Last December, my jaw nearly dropped as I witnessed the suddenly very observant Jewish students present verbal excuses about not doing their homework for a period of 8 days.  The miracle in my mind was not that the oil of Hanukkah lasted all 8 days, but that the teachers simply accepted it.  Hanukkah is, for a child, a 15-minute observance involving lighting candles, saying 2-3 blessings (and not Catholic-style benedictions, either), and opening a gift.  Sure, there may be a night or two with family over, or a party, but do other family/party occasions warrant a week-long homework pass?

Kids take off “mental health” days leading up to and after their Bar Mitzvahs.  I think they’re at suit fittings and hair appointments.  Kids show up 2 hours late (or call out Jewish) the day after the first and second Passover seders.  Granted, the seders of my father’s youth (now we’re turning back the clock) used to involve a cover-to-cover reading of the Haggadah, and not the Maxwell House version, either.  I believe he’d be falling asleep in the matzah ball soup at 11:30pm.  Today, only the very observant still have marathon seders.  And their kids miss school as if they were the ones grating horseradish for the seder plate and making matzah balls out of their textbooks.  Do the adults call out from work, too?  Do they use the holidays as an excuse not to be meet deadlines or not to finish work projects?

What lesson are they teaching their kids about budgeting time to complete work in a busy week, about reading ahead in their textbooks so they can enjoy an evening with extended family, about being accountable for responsibilities that go on outside the protective bubble of their home/school life?

In spite of the Jewish families seemingly taking advantage of a) the school’s widespread acquiescence to Jewish holidays and customs, and b) the Jewish parents’ power (and tuition), there is still ignorance.  Though Thursday will be a school holiday (one I will not have to use a personal day for, nor acquire a note from my rabbi), the head of school decided to schedule a back-to-school barbecue for all staff…Wednesday night.

They don’t even know that all Jewish holidays start the night before.  Forget sundown, forget waiting for three stars to come out, forget even the 2^nd day of Rosh Hashanah, Friday, when several suddenly religious students will be out, you can’t schedule a barbecue for the beginning of the High Holidays when you have Jewish employees you would like to include.

So they moved it to Friday night.  I won’t even pretend to be insulted that Friday nights are always a holiday.  I won’t pretend there are any Jews on staff (or in the student body) who even feign that level of observance.  I am grateful they made the right choice to move the barbecue.  I am grateful they are trying to respect my religion and my customs. I am grateful no one has asked me in a long time why the Jews killed Jesus.

In spite of the families who take advantage of gentile ignorance, and use their checkbooks and their righteous indignation to cow the administration into special treatment for their kids (and people wonder why there is still anti-Semitism), it is still a more pleasant and more tolerant world to live in than it was in the community of my youth.

L’shanah tovah, y’all.  May your New Year be sweet.