Mama Mama Quite Contrary

I should be in bed. It's nearly 11 p.m. and the house is quiet. Vivi hunkered down early after a napless day in the sun and Eliya retired with my husband at around 9:30. Jude is making her little baby sleep noises in the seat next to me. The conditions are perfect for sleep and yet I just can't get there. There is something about being so massively sleep-deprived that makes my body reject the idea of it altogether. It's not that I don't need it. Oh boy, do I. I can barely hold a conversation muchless remember simple things like what I ate for dinner a few hours earlier. It's a long slog through the day on just a few hours of rest yet I can never seem to settle myself down much before 11 p.m. The moment I climb into bed I start to feel tense. How much time will I get before a baby wakes up? How bad will tonight be? Can I possibly make it through a night without one or both babies ending up in bed with us? (The answer is absolutely not but I cling to the...

As I write, Vivi is sitting in her rocking chair in the living room sucking her thumb. Next to her, Jude is sleepily rocking in the swing. A CD of Native American chants is blasting from the stereo and my husband is dancing in front of both girls trying to make them laugh. (It's starting to work.) I am a few feet away at the computer with Eliya quietly nursing. It is both chaotic and peaceful at the same time. I love when life can be a complete spectrum of emotion in one singular moment. Right now, my life is very, very good.

We didn't necessarily plan to have our nearly 3 year-old witness the birth of her twin sisters. As we were planning our homebirth, a part of me wanted Vivi out of the house so I could completely focus on getting the babies out. The other part wanted her there because she was so devoted to my growing belly and her "Turtles." She knew all about the placenta and where the babies would come out and that mommy was likely to be in a lot of pain. I thought that might traumatize her but my midwife assured me that it wouldn't. After all, birth has historically been a family event not a medical one. It just seemed to be a shame not to let Vivi see how the whole thing ended. I was torn about what to do right up until my labor started. Since we had put Vivi to bed right before things really got going, I thought it would be best to let her sleep. If she woke up at an inconvenient time, we could call our friend. If she slept through the whole thing, then she would get to meet her s...

Sufficient time has passed and I still haven't written the Turtles' birth story. As a conscientious first-time parent, I wrote Vivi's story within a month of her birth and it's still her favorite thing to hear and retell. I am going on 10 weeks with these Turtles and have finally realized if I wait until I feel rested and coherent, it will never happen. So here goes: I was 39 weeks and 3 days pregnant when I had an appointment with S, my midwife. While palpating my abdomen, she said, "You're contracting right now." I couldn't feel it and was relieved for that. I wasn't particularly concerned since I had pretty much concluded that I was going to be the size of a house FOREVER so what's a little contraction here and there? S then asked if she could do an internal exam and found that I was already a centimeter and a half dilated and 80% effaced. She said that she could feel a baby's head and decided to strip my membranes to get thi...

Yesterday, I saw my twins for the first time in a long time. I don't mean seeing in the sense that they were off traveling and now they're home or the daily recognition that the blue-eyed baby with more hair is Jude. I mean really seeing -- taking the moment in and truly understanding who these beings are and what our collective life is now. In the whirlwind of the past eight weeks, I have been going, going, going without much of an awareness of how, why, and for whom I am doing things. At our house, there is almost always someone crying and it rarely registers in my head who. All I do is run through a checklist of possible causes and remedies. Diaper clean? Check! Full belly? Check! Working toy? Check! Vivi occupied? Check! Gas? Ahh, that's it. Then I mindlessly proceed to try 25 different ways to relieve it. I am barely conscious. I'd like to think it is sleep-deprivation that is causing me to subconsciously check-out on my life but it's more than ...