Item: As of three days from now, I will have been breastfeeding the turtles for one whole year.  I wanted to make that my facebook status today but it seemed too braggy.  But yeah.  I’m psyched about that.  Not that I believe I am anything other than lucky.  In the world of breastfeeding, I am the ttc-equivalent of getting pregnant on my first try, at home, with no drugs.  Lucky.  After having a nightmarish 2 3/4 year ttc odyssey, a miserable pregnancy, a truly shitty birth, and a month in the NICU…it is really nice to be on the lucky end of this particular thing.  To feel like at least ONE thing about this whole biological pregnancy/birth/babyfeeding world came easily for me and for my body.   I know firsthand from reading your stories how hard breastfeeding is for many women, so I try not to take my ease with it for granted, like, ever.

Item: It is a damn good thing that the bfing worked out because like woah…my second postpartum period is a crazy nightmare. (And hence, I’m so happy to have had an 11-month reprieve.)   I’m currently on hour 6 of 1-hour trips to the bathroom to replace my super tampon.  I don’t know why I need to share that particular detail with all or you except that sharing the salacious details of my monthly cycle seems to be in this blog’s DNA.  It’s what I do.  Or at least, what I USED to do, so I wanted to get back to my roots.

Item: There was a third thing.  But then I forgot it.  Doh.

How about a cute story instead?  I taught the Lion how to hold up his index finger.  So now when I say to him: “Lion, how old are you?” he smiles at me and holds up his finger, indicating: “ONE.”  It’s pretty freaking adorable.

I’ve mostly gotten my sad out over their birth and am working on feeling happy and proud about their imminent birthday.  That tends to be my MO.  Freak out about things (dates, anniversaries, what have you) in advance of the actual day and then be fine when the triggering event arrives.

In the meantime, I’ve been catapulted into my busy time at work.  Once a year, for about 6 weeks, I enter this insane work time.  My hours in the office basically double.  Right now, what this looks like is go to work all day, rush home around 4 or 4:30 pm, cook dinner, feed boys, feed moms, bathe boys, put boys to bed, rush back out the door to work for another three hours.  Come home around 10:30pm and collapse.  Rinse.  Repeat.  It. is. beyond. exhausting.  I thought I was handling it okay but today (read: the only day this week I DON’T have to be at work) I am a wreck.  Beyond exhausted, short on patience.  And because the boys are toddlers-in-training…man are they tiring.  They can tear apart a room in seconds, de-baby proof anything we had previously made safe for them, and are just basically non-stop balls of energy, times two.  Wish me luck as I survive the next four weeks of this brutality.

Not that I ever really want to wish time away.  I already find myself so wistful, so nostalgic to think that our boys are turning from little tiny babies into toddlers.  Thinking that this is our only lap around the baby block makes me sad.  And while I’m overjoyed to have the turtles we do, it is hard to believe we won’t get to do this again (probably).  I read a twin momma who put it this way: “Every first is also a last.”  So true.  And when the milestones are this precious, that can be a big lump in this momma’s throat some days.

In the meantime, I leave you with this cuteness.  The turtles are big youtubers these days.  Will. i. am and Fei.st and Adam S.andler’s appearances on Sesame Street are our top three in rotation.

See you in a few weeks!

Over the summer I wrote a post about processing some of the trauma that comes from spending a month in the NICU.  And a fellow warrior warned me that I would probably feel sad during the boys first birthday.  At the time, I didn’t really get it.  But now I do.  Big time.

I feel so sad thinking about their first birthday.  Because thinking about their birthday inevitably has me thinking about their Birth Day and that day was many things, some of them happy, many of them difficult and painful.  But what it was more than anything else was an entire day (27 hours, if you want to get specific) in which I did not see, touch, hear, smell, feel, or hold my sons.  And that reality, even 348 days later, is still very painful. When I think about their upcoming birthday, it just reminds me of this very painful truth that still hurts and feels raw and sore.  Something that I will forever wish I could make untrue.

They were born on a Friday and so their birthday is a Saturday and we are holding their party on the actual day.  It’s a smallish affair (I think…is 20 people small or big?) mostly family, some friends, at our house for lunch which will be pizza and cake.  I think it will be a wonderful celebration for them and for us.

But what I really want is to bar the door, turn everyone away, and spend the entire day holding each of them all by myself.

S’s very beloved grandfather, who passed away in 2004, was a twin.  In fact, he was not only a twin, but he had a twin brother.  So the fact that one of his four grandchildren went on to have twin boys has been very significant in S’s family.  Last week we had a big dinner in which that whole side of the family was together.  S’s mom and her sister (the two children of her late grandfather), all four of their kids (S., S’s brother, S’s two cousins), their spouses, and all of the next generation of kids.

Prominent on this guest list was S’s aunt.  (Her mom’s sister, her grandfather’s oldest daughter.)  Said aunt had a MAJOR falling out with the family almost ten years ago over (among many other things) our wedding and the general gayness factor.  After informing us, via letter, in no uncertain terms, that she would NOT be attending our “commitment ceremony” (she refused to call it a wedding) she basically stopped talking to either of us for about 7 years.  She would act like a child and refuse to acknowledge my presence or say hello to me whenever we were in the same place.  She refused to mention my name to anyone in the family.  She behaved like a total asshole.  It wasn’t pretty.

Things were basically at that standstill (perhaps marginal improvement had been made) when we announced the pregnancy.  And S. and I held our breath while we waited for her reaction.  I fully expected it to be even more of her bullshit.  Which would have meant that we could NEVER have these family gatherings again.  Because there was no way in HELL we would allow her to treat our children that way.  But instead, she shocked the hell out of us and accepted the pregnancy.  Hell, more than that, she embraced it.  She started emailing S. and facebooking her and asking about how I was doing and how the boys were.  She sent us a card ADDRESSED TO BOTH OF US when the boys were born.  (That may sound like a small thing but for her it astronomical.)

Part of us goes–well–babies are magic and thank GOD she stopped behaving like such a bigoted ass and thank GOD she loves our boys. Part of us.

But there’s another part of me that is bugged by her about-face.  And I can’t help but wonder if there isn’t this whole biological connection (she knows the boys were created via S’s eggs) and the whole “next generation of twin boys in the family” thing that has made her acceptance possible.  That would have been withheld had the boys come from my ovaries.

When she showed up at the dinner, she had gifts for the boys.  (Another shocker.)  But she also had printed a series of old, old photos of S’s grandfather and his twin when they were babies that she gave to S.  (She often comments on FB photos about how one of the boys looks like S’s grandfather.)   And then she spent a lot of the evening trying to take one of the turtles out of my arms and parade him around.

It just bothered me.  As much as I don’t want to go looking into the mouth of this particular horse, it makes me miffed to find that suddenly, now that I’ve produced S’s genetic kids, I’m OKAY in her book.  I’m back in the family.

All of this was part of a larger aspect to the week which was the focus on S’s clan.  Everyone we spent time with (even the octogenarian relatives) seemed to understand how the boys were conceived and want to raise/reinforce the genetic tie to their family.  As much as most of it was harmless and unintentional, it often made me, and my role as the turtles’ mother, marginalized.  I spent a lot of the week feeling like more of an outsider than I usually do around S’s family.  Feeling insecure about my relationship to the boys and feeling slighted every time someone wanted to play the “who does this baby resemble in our family?” game.

It made me want to hold the boys even closer to me.  To constantly display (hence this post’s title) my mothering role.  I’ll admit I was happy we were on this trip in the middle of “stranger anxiety” phase, because both turtles are currently slow to warm up around new people and eager to reach for me (and S., but more often me) when feeling overwhelmed in new settings.  I felt this annoying need to constantly PROVE my bond to them and desire to stake my claim.  I’ve found, even when around my family (although here only my parents participate in this) that people are eager to try and claim our boys as theirs.  As part of THEIR family.  That was very true all last week.  And I’m VERY glad to be home where we are a family of four and I don’t have to share them with anyone.

Every night before I got to sleep, I sneak into the boys’ room to check on them.  I lean over to look at each of them in their cribs.  Sometimes I even put my hand on their backs for a minute while I listen to them breathing.  Then I stand there in the corner between their two cribs, and watch them sleep.  Every night.  I think to myself…how did I ever get so lucky?  And then I stand there for another few seconds and take a moment to soak it all in.  To pause.  To savor.  And to fill myself up to the brim with gratitude.

But then it occurred to me this morning that I started tracking my cycles in January of 2007.  Which means that this will be the first time in a mind-blowing FIVE years that my cycles will come ago without scrutiny from us.  No more charting, no more counting the days of my luteal phase, no more calling S. in to look at my mucous, no more endless 2wws, no more worrying about cramps and spotting signaling impending devastation and heart break.  Just plain, regular old, boring monthly periods.

Put that way, sounds kinda nice, actually.

It’s not that I don’t have anything to write about.  Dozens of topics and posts rattle around my head, half-composed, on a daily basis.

And it’s not that I don’t have the time.  Although that is a perennial problem.

It’s just that I have ceased finding my own thoughts interesting.  Or wait, no, they are interesting to me.  And to my wife.  But I don’t find them interesting enough to share with the public internets.  Every time I think to write about something…about the turtles, or parenting, or life right now…I just seem to stop myself.  To censor myself.  Because it seems sort of banal and lame and just not very interesting to read about.

I should mention here that when I read the very same posts from all of my bloggie friends, I don’t think ANY of those things about THEIR writing.  I love reading along and seeing photos and hearing about everything from potty training to ttc to navigating parenthood.  This seems to be some sort of special standard of scintillating entertainment and interestingness that I apply only to myself.

A million years ago before we conceived, I needed this forum so desperately, and the support I garnered here, that I couldn’t help but post about everything.  Even if it was just the status of my mucous.

But I’m in a different place now.  And I don’t know.  I’m just finding it hard to keep writing here.  It’s not the transition from infertile to mommy blogger.  Cause I feel like I did that part already.  It’s just…I don’t know.  I’m not really sure what it is.  I’m just feeling conflicted about writing on here and I’m not sure how to work my way out of it.  I don’t know if it is a privacy thing or a blog thing or what.  I’m not a social networking creature my nature.  Even though I adore reading blogs and even do have a healthy addiction to my very, very belatedly opened account on FB.

Stay tuned.  If I shut down the blog, I’ll make an announcement about it.  I won’t just stop posting and sort of disappear into the ether.  Either I recommit here and post more (dammit!) or I do something different.  Either way…I guess I have to decide.

November 2007: 11/16/07 was our first insemination.  We were giddy.  We knew for sure our baby was just around the next corner.  We were elated and excited and drunk on the idea of becoming parents.

November 2008: We were tired, bitter, and jaded.  We never thought it would take A WHOLE YEAR to get pregnant.  We hated crossing that threshold on 11/16/08.  We were out thousands of dollars and many IUIs/ICIs.  We had suffered 8 BFNs.  We decided to stop using frozen sperm from an unknown donor and began plans to try with our new KD.  We were down, but not out.  Sad and scarred, but still excited and hopeful that our KD was our answer.

November 2009: By far, the most painful of all the Novembers.  We were reeling from losing our first pregnancy, a pregnancy that took us two full years to achieve, when on 11/16/09, our 2-year ttciversary, my best friend called to tell me she was pregnant with number two.  We were getting lapped by everyone around us.  We were devastated and broken and not sure IF it would ever happen for us.  We were in so much pain.  Everything hurt, but holidays hurt most of all.

November 2010: An exciting but scary November.  We were 20-24 weeks pregnant with the turtles.  We were so thankful and so grateful.  But we were also in Labor and Delivery for contractions at 23 weeks and at the beginning of a very, very difficult 9 weeks of bedrest and complications.  We were hopeful that our dreams were about to come true, and beyond terrified at the thought of what could go wrong.

November 2011: On Thursday seated at our table, gobbling up every food in sight, will be our two wondrous, amazing, almost 10-month old turtles.  They will laugh and play and smile and eat and babble and hug and clap (new skill) and fill us and our family with joy.  Our hearts will be full to bursting.  We will say, as we do every.single.day, that we are so blessed and so lucky.  And so, so grateful.

A time to be thankful, indeed.

I have this song running through my head lately.  (The song is based on Kahil Gibr.an’s writing On Children.) I think one of the things I savor so much about this time when the turtles are small is that S. and I are their whole world right now.   I don’t mean that to sound ridiculously narcissistic.  But there is just something so cozy and wonderful about feeling like all they need in the world is food, shelter, safety, and our love.  Walking through the door after work and having Tiny crawl to me, face beaming with joy because I’m home, I think...It doesn’t get any better than this.

And, although my world is bigger, and has things like friends and work and other family and community…in some ways, parenting the turtles right now is my whole world as well.  When S. and I are bathing them and changing them into pjs and singing to them and putting them to bed at night, I feel this sense of peace and calm and fulfillment that I’ve never felt before.

But, like the song says, this time is pretty fleeting.  The older they get, the more their worlds will expand and the smaller the roles S. and I play in them will become.  That is right and as it should be.  It’s true of parenting that if you do the job right, you put yourself out of a job in the end.

But it still makes me wistful.  And sad.  To think that one day, in about a second and a half, the turtles will have friends and school and softball (or piano or karate or whatever it is they are into) and S. and I won’t be the center of their universe.  There is something so, so precious to me about this time when the four of us are this tightly-knit unit.  Bonded together.  We belong to each other now in a way that we never will again.  I mean…I love my parents but the way I feel about them is nothing like the way I feel about the turtles right now.  And it makes me sigh to think that one day, the turtles will feel about S. and I the way I feel about my parents today.

Okay so this ends up to be a total bummer of a post and it wasn’t meant to be.  I was just trying to find the words to describe the sweetness and the joy and the gift of this very short time period in which your children are so small.  I know parenting is hard and there are no days off and it is stressful and all that.  But I’m really not glossing over the bad on this blog.  I really am loving it this much and feeling this happy.  There was a long time in my life where I wasn’t sure if I would ever use the term “happy” as descriptive of my state of being.  But now I am.

Nightly, S. and I sit and look at pictures from February and March and April.  And try to remember what it was like when they were that small.  But I’ve already forgotten what it felt like to hold both of them against my chest, tucked under my chin.  No matter how hard I sat still in those moments, trying to inhale every second, trying to memorize every molecule, trying to soak in through all my pores into the very fiber of my being exactly what that felt like…I can’t remember it now.  Not really.  Not the way I’d like to.  I can’t close my eyes and feel what it felt like then.

I always knew it would go this fast.  I certainly watched eight quadrillion pregnancies and infancies pass us by while we were waiting for our turn.  And I saw how quickly you would blink and a year would have passed.  But it’s still so hard when you see it happening to you.

A friend of mine with a grown daughter said to me about watching her baby grow up: “With every new age, I mourned the age that had just passed.  But each new phase was always better than the one before it.”  I get that.  I really do.  I love having 8-going-to-be-9-on-Friday-month-olds.  They laugh and play and explore and smile and learn and change in wondrous ways every day.  But I still miss that squishy, tiny newborn phase.

I realized, recently, that I don’t want to have three kids.  And I’m pretty sure that we are complete as a family of four.  But I sure do wish I had a chance to go through all these milestones a second time.

And I know that it’s only going to keep on going this fast, and faster, as time trudges on.