by Marcelle Mccallum

Created on: May 06, 2008   Last Updated: October 31, 2008

PLEASE NOTE: If you are looking for coherence or logic you are definitely in the wrong place. Herein are the ill-conceived, desperate ramblings of a sleep deprived mother of four. I make no apologies for sentences that are three lines long or jumping from one thing to another with little continuity or logic. Check back in a few years time if that's what you are after.

A friend sent me a link to a blog called herveryown by another twin mum, the first post I came across is called "Twins: The Neglect Is Built In" Bless my beautiful friend, for she couldn't have known what brilliant timing that was. Allow me to elucidate...

We have survived (hardyharharhar) the first four weeks of twin parentdom. To quote a brilliant Aussie sketch show "I won't say it isn't hard, because it is. Bloody hard". Now don't get me wrong, I love them and truth be told - the good moments already out weigh the pooh and sleep deprivation and screaming and so on. And yet, I find myself sitting here having gotten up in a fit of crank attempting to get five minutes to myself (mind you - HP is in her rocker at my feet, so it ain't exactly what I had in mind) wondering what on earth I have to do to get enough time to have a shower, go to the toilet and maybe sit for a minute or two without waiting for the cry, without being on alert for tiny two-leggeds. I have had 20 minutes away from them since we arrived back from hospital - in a dentists chair having a tooth pulled, and I am going bonkers.

We (okay - I) have made things kind of more difficult for myself in some respects by not adhering to the 'force them into the same routine' doctrine that seems to be all pervasive in twin parenting. This means the amount of time I spend feeding, burping, changing, playing and all the rest is basically double that of a singleton. We do do about one twin feed a day, but I try and make sure we don;t end up doing that in the middle of the night as we are co-sleeping and it would entirely defeat the purpose - ie me sleeping and getting to lie down. Poor little HP is refluxy, and loud with it. We spend many many hours being screamed at and headbutted whilst we try and encourage the pain making wind and acid to exit her little self somehow. Increasingly, I find myself falling back on the bottle - haven't had the time to express in the last couple of days and now of course everything needs sterilizing again, but I digress. More and more I am happy to just shove a bottle of formula in the mouth of whoever is yelling

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