One woman's perspective of (twin) parenting (and other thoughts about things)
TW: blood, hospital, poorly baby, neonatal care, post-surgery care
Alright, folks, here we are. After a relatively gift-like pregnancy and remarkably enjoyable major surgery, we reach the first few days of Parenthood. Now, buckle up, because this is not going to be a story about those first few perfect days where everything is beautiful and life makes sense and babies are miraculous wonderful beings (I mean they are, but that very much took a back seat).
The first couple of weeks (apart from the first couple of days at home where literally the world could have ended and we would have been none the wiser) were really bloody shit.
I’d use stronger words, but I’m not sure what the etiquette is on using Big Swears on blogs.
First of all, my experience of the postnatal ward was horrendous.
I had heard from many a mother that postnatal is just there to be endured, and boy they weren’t wrong. However, chuck in a pandemic that means I really don’t want to be there and what you end up with is a horrendous 24 hours of being imprisoned on a ward full of new mums and screaming babies (a real delight for an introvert with a strong tendency for sensory overload), and being so desperate to leave that, in hindsight, you end up going home too early.
Smol T was smaller than expected. They were fine and dandy on all the tests, but had some trouble with blood sugar levels. This is almost certainly due to the militant and unrelenting pressure on me to keep trying to breastfeed even though a) I was clearly far too tired, b) there were two of them who wanted feeding at different times, c) Smol T was, well, really rather small and d) neither Smol seemed especially interested in the whole thing.
My own post-surgery recovery was a walk in the park compared with the near obsessive testing of Smol T’s blood sugar levels and manipulation of testing times/blurring the lines between acceptable levels and not just so we could all agree that I was allowed to go home. Obviously they wanted me there about as much as I wanted to be there, given the COVID situation, but as I say, in hindsight, rushing my discharge was probably a mistake.
Before we cover the post-postnatal days, I should just mention the few lovely moments that I do remember from those first few hours.
At some point in the middle of that first night, an angel dressed in a nurse’s uniform came in and asked me if I wanted her to take the Smols away and give them some formula so that I could sleep. I think that nurse possibly saved all of our lives, both metaphorically and, in the case of Smol T, actually. Why it took so many hours for somebody to offer to do this (despite “fed is best” being written all over my birth plan), I will never know. Letting go of that anger is still an ongoing process.
At some point the next day, two ladies came in when my husband happened to be there to do hearing tests on the Smols (how do they do it on newborn babies?! It’s magic) and they needed names for the forms. Which is when we finally settled on Smol J’s name - nothing like a bit of administrative pressure to force a decision…!
Finally, there was one of the most beautiful moments I think I will ever have - at some point the next day (I have no idea when), I asked one of the student nurses (Georgina?) to help me hold them both. The first time I’d done so since the operating theatre. She popped them both on my chest, all wrapped up in their tiny sleepsuits and blankets and then all of a sudden my face was leaking. I became acutely aware that I would do anything - anything - for these two tiny humans and I suddenly realised that the love I felt for them was completely overpowering and unlike anything I had ever experienced before. I kind of knew it was coming, because people say things like that all the time, but until you experience it for yourself, it’s not really tangible, you know? Georgina insisted on taking photos, which I was a bit ambivalent about because it was all about the moment for me, but I’m so glad she did, because it’s one of my favourite photos and brings back all of those feelings in a heartbeat.
Back home, my husband had dropped the dog off with the neighbours (bless him, he’d been on edge ever since I went into hospital - dogs are so astute) and made his way in to pick the three of us up and bring us home. I’d managed to walk around a bit by myself, I’d passed my wee tests (FYI, weeing after childbirth is quite weird. They’re not lying about the golf ball sized clots… and you have to go A Lot before they let you leave), Smol T had scraped by on the blood sugar level tests and we were Ready To Go Home.
At this point, I have no idea what order things go in. To be honest, it’s all kind of blur from here until 3 months after, if you zoom out enough. But these first ten days especially have, largely, passed from my memory. I’m not sure they ever made it in, to be honest. A twin mama friend of mine told me that sleep deprivation inhibits memory formation, and I distinctly recall telling somebody on that first Friday that I’d slept about 6 hours IN TOTAL since getting up on Tuesday morning to head in for surgery. I have no idea how normal that is, but I think it’s probably pushing the boundaries of healthy.
I couldn’t tell you what I ate, how often I fed the babies, whether my husband slept, what I felt or whether I enjoyed or hated any of it. It is, I think, as close to being completely cut off from reality as I think I have ever been, or ever will be again. It is a strange feeling trying to recollect as much as I can for these posts - there’s just a ten day void punctuated by very occasional fixed points in time where Things Happened.
For example, the day after we came home, we had a visit from a midwife. As far as I can tell, this visit serves two main purposes: check on the babies, and make mum get out of bed. This was the first time we’d brought the babies downstairs - it was the first of a very long (and ongoing) process of bubble expansion. I was told in no uncertain terms that I needed to shower twice a day and at some point I should remove my surgery dressing myself (WHAT). Incidentally, that ended up being way easier than I thought it would - I think it happened on day 3 or 4, but honestly I’m not sure. And I was also told to keep wearing my surgical stockings for another couple of weeks (again, I think?) - I have no idea how often, or if, I managed to wash them. I feel like I might have washed them by hand in the shower? Literally no idea.
Then there was the first time my own midwife came to see us and weighed the Smols. They both lost a fair bit of body weight in the first few days (up to 8% is normal, I think, but they had lost 10/11%) so she put them both on what I called Weight Watchers and came back most days (every day?) to check that it was all going in the right direction. I remember crying with joy when Smol T had put on 60g in one day because they were finally going in the right direction.
Somewhere around here, the breastfeeding basically stopped altogether, involving a particularly hideous moment where I had to feed Smol T some formula for the first time. I have never known heartbreak like it. I will write about the breastfeeding story another time.
Around day 8 it must have been, my husband noticed that Smol T was a bit more lethargic than normal and felt a bit colder to the touch than Smol J. We mentioned it to the midwife but she wasn’t overly concerned. I brushed it off as early parenting paranoia and we carried on. But he brought it up again a few times and at one point I got the (slightly crappy) thermometer out that we’d bought a few weeks previously and took both their temperatures. Smol J was a solid 36 degrees but it didn’t register a reading for Smol T. We tried again. We ummed and ahhed and wondered whether we were just being paranoid new parents et c. We rang our GP (at 4pm on a Friday afternoon) and they ummed and ahhed and said maybe if we felt up to it, we could bring the Smols down and they’d have a go with a better thermometer.
I didn’t really want to, my husband suggested we just went because it would set our minds at rest.
That was the first time we left the house with them.
The GP ummed and ahhed and also couldn’t get a reading but was sure it was because his thermometer wasn’t really designed for tiny babies. So he rang the neonatal department at the hospital.
They ummed and ahhed and said that if we felt up to it, we could head down there and they’d have a go with a better thermometer.
I really didn’t want to go to hospital (primarily on account of only just having escaped there having miraculously - in my mind - avoided contracting COVID), but again, my husband suggested we go because we’d be home again before we knew it and all would be well.
I cautiously grabbed their changing bag (pre-packed because that’s the kind of person I am) and we loaded them into the car, dropped the dog off at the neighbours again and trundled off to the hospital.
The hospital nurses ummed and ahhed and went through three hospital-grade thermometers before deciding that maybe - just maybe - the thermometers weren’t broken and that they were dealing with a hypothermic baby. When they finally got a reading out of one of the thermometers, their temperature was 32 degrees.
T was immediately put under a heat lamp and all of a sudden was connected to a million wires, surrounded by beeping and concerned looking medical professionals.
I said to a mum friend the other day that when you have genuinely considered the possibility that your baby might not come home with you again, it really helps you put all your other new parent anxieties into focus. I have never known fear like it.
However, I have this very handy tendency to go into Shit Just Got Real Mode, which I can only describe as a switch flicking in my head, at which point I become this kind of Zen super calm version of myself and everything seems to slow down to a pace where I can make sensible decisions and keep my brain from short circuiting. I decided to stay with Smol T overnight (having gotten over the disappointment of not being sent straight home), I texted a couple of mum friends to ask for support and to share any experiences that might help, and I sent my husband home with Smol J (who wasn’t allowed to stay on ward, but that was probably for the best) and a list of things I’d need bringing in in the morning.
I also texted a twin mama friend to ask whether she had any experience of this kind of thing, and we got our first glimpse of what it means to be parents of multiples. It’s like this amazing exclusive club, kind of like the Power Rangers but with a bit less lycra. If a multiple parent is in need, others flock to assist because We All Just Get It. Parenting itself is like this, but multiple parenting is a whole different ball game. Within half an hour, she’d contacted her twins WhatsApp group and a bunch of people had shared their experiences and explained what might happen, what that meant and offering further support should it be needed. It helped us feel so much less alone and so much less bewildered by what was happening and I will forever be grateful for those strangers who took time out of their (I now realise) crazy lives to offer their thoughts and experiences to me.
One thing that is worth saying, and I do not say this lightly: I truly believe that my husband is the reason Smol T is alive today. It would be very easy for me to pile on the Mum Guilt about why I wasn’t the one whose spidey senses were tingling, but that’s not how we work as a couple, and, on my good days, that’s not how I work either. My husband and I fill in each other’s gaps, and on this occasion, that was the difference between getting Smol T potentially life-saving treatment and not.
We were in hospital for a week. Blood tests showed a potential infection, which left untreated could have led to sepsis, which in turn can be fatal in babies, specifically those with a low birth weight. So Smol T was put on a 7-day course of antibiotics (it was originally 3 days but they felt they wanted to be extra safe - that was a crap day, when we thought we were coming home but were told we were there for another 4 days) and we all put our Big Girl Pants on and just Got On With It.
I am a relatively anxious person and throughout my pregnancy I had forced myself to read stories about parents of multiples who’d ended up in intensive care/neonatal with their newborns because I knew on one level it could happen to us, despite every bone in my body wishing that it wouldn’t. When we were discharged 36 hours after my C Section, I thought we’d gotten away with it. We were, of course, still very fortunate because the week was spent on the regular children’s ward and other than the first night in an incubator, Smol T was largely unattached to wires and monitors and I could cuddle them whenever I wanted. We also finally got that private room I’d been hoping for… All in all, I could not fault the experience - it was everything postnatal wasn’t. It was quiet, it was filled with gentle, understanding, informative staff and I even got a takeaway delivered one evening, on the suggestion of one of the ward sisters!
My husband and I took it in turns to be in hospital and at home. I remember there being so much focus on my relationship with the babies and a non-zero amount of surprise that my husband was going to spend the same amount of time with each baby as well, and that he was perfectly capable of parenting All By Himself without me worrying about him every second of the day.
I’ll write about this more another time, I am certain, and link it back here.
Human beings’ ability to adapt and mould themselves to any given situation is nothing short of astounding. Within a couple of days, we were in a routine, thinking about things that we would never, in a million years, have expected to have to think about. We quickly established a feeding routine, which both Smols adapted amazingly to, and we fed them at roughly the same time so that we could do changeovers in the afternoon, which involved a highly convoluted series of car journeys to get me home/to hospital and my husband wherever I wasn’t. All whilst putting Smol J in and out of the car and arranging a ward nurse to babysit Smol T. It was like that puzzle where you can’t leave the fox with the chicken but everyone’s got to get over the river. We were a well oiled machine and I was - and remain - so incredibly proud of what we achieved as a family that week. Whoever was at home looked after Smol J, kept the house going and kept the dog fed, and whoever was in hospital actually possibly had an easier time of it because of the proximity to medical professionals and a quiet room to sleep in. One day, our amazing amazing friends next door agreed to watch Smol J for a couple of hours so that my husband and I could spend more than half an hour in each other’s company. But other than that, we basically didn’t see each other for a week. Ten days after our babies were born. That was Really Very Hard.
Still, for a number of reasons, it was possibly easier than a lot of what was to come. We remember saying, tongue firmly in cheek, but knowing that there was some truth in it, that looking after one baby each was a window into what it would be like to Only Have One. We still sometimes recall that feeling with fondness…
Smol T did amazingly that week. They had to have four cannulas for the antibiotics because they kept breaking (apparently this is normal), but they also made us giggle every day and their body temperature never wobbled again after that first night spent in an incubator.
Finally, at the ripe old age of 18 days old, the Smols were reunited, Smol T celebrated being home by having a good old breastfeed for the first time in nearly two weeks (and possibly for the last time, thinking about it) and we all went to bed and started again.
xx