Perhaps that's because the first two weeks of having the boys were spent in the NICU, which brought its own difficulties emotionally, but also -- interestingly enough -- in hindsight, offered many blessings:
- It gave me time to figure out the pumping and nursing thing, without the worry of whether or not I was starving my offspring;
- It kept me busy during the day, but allowed my body to heal and rest during full nights of sleep;
- And it provided an army of trained nurses and baby-care experts ready and willing to answer all our questions, give us helpful tips and get the babies on a sleeping and eating schedule that all we needed to do to keep it up was, simply, keep it up.
It's funny. I never thought of the NICU that way before, but now that I have had a healthy singleton and been sent home from the hospital, C-section pain and all, to figure a brand new person out all on my own, I'm seeing things a little differently.
It could also be that, as LauraC says, we were prepared for twins to be hard. How could twin newborns not be? But we (well, I, mostly) had been naive to think that one baby wouldn't be so hard. And people, meaning to be helpful, often reinforced that, telling us that we'd likely find having one baby -- after having twins -- to be a walk in the park. One person even said we'd probably be bored!
Or perhaps it is just that we have really forgotten how hard it really was to have twin newborns at home for the first few weeks. Perhaps the many months of charting the boys' growth and development, of watching them smile and learn and walk and laugh, have made misty the memories of sleepless nights and eating breakfast at lunch time and skipping showers and raging emotions and too many tears to count.
Who knows exactly why having just one this time around seems so difficult. Maybe it's a combination of all those things. Maybe it's just because having a new baby is hard at times, and that's just the way it is.
Whatever the reasons, it is better today than it was yesterday, and yesterday was better than the day before. That is encouraging. And besides that, I am here with the people I love most in the world. I am alive and healthy and blessed beyond measure. I am happy.
And because I have been through this before - double time - I know I will get to the surface of this. I will get there. I will.
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Update on Clair:
1. I am pretty sure she has colic (Yay!) but we took her to the doctor today for a regular two-week appointment and he said we should try to regulate her eating a little bit more before making that diagnosis, getting her on an every three-hour schedule, instead of snacking all day (an ounce here; a half an ounce an hour later, etc.) and see if that helps her not feel so gassy and bloated at night. So we're trying that.
2. She slept in her crib today for three naps! Each nap she tolerated it less and less, but at least she saw the inside of her crib! And with any luck, she'll see even more of it from now on.
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3. She's 8 lbs., 10 oz. now, which means she gained a pound in 10 days!
4. Trying to get her to drink her bottle on a schedule is going to be hard! When she wakes up hungry two HOURS before her next feeding -- like she did today -- it's torture to watch her cry and cry and cry. This of course leads to tears on my part and boy oh boy am I sick of the post-partum weepies!
Anyway, I know this has to be done, just like the slow transition to her own bed/bedroom. So, I just have to do it. Man up, Tanika!
5. She gets cuter and cuter every day. Especially since packing on the pound (ha-ha), which filled out some of the newborn wrinkles in her face. I can't stop kissing her face. Which also makes the feeding schedule hard, because every time I kiss her little cheeks, she thinks I'm food, and starts rooting. Awww. Poor thing.
6. Nursing is officially done. And I can't stop crying about it. I feel so many ways about my inability to nurse my baby and some of the feelings are in direct opposition to one another. Completely crazy, right? It's also hard because people keep asking me how it's going. And some people are quite opinionated about how I decided to handle things. But mostly I just hope that, if Clair reads this sometime in her future, she'll know that I wanted to nurse her. I wanted to give her the very best of everything, even from the start. And I couldn't or didn't, for many reasons, but I love her fiercely, and I'll work hard every day of my life to nourish her with my love.
(And Enfamil. :-) )
P.S. Ugh! These darn weepies! Man up, Tanika!! Ugh!
