This past week was a doozie! Jesse and I experienced, for the first time, what it's like being sick with kids. It is not fun, as you might imagine. We have small group Tuesday nights and this week we were hosting so I spent most of nap time tidying up the house and making sure things looked (semi) in order. Jackson had been spitting up extra a few times that morning but was still our happy little cheeser so I chalked it up to teething and didn't think much about it.
We have a babysitter for small group but our boys, being young, fairly quiet and needily wanting to be held in the evenings, usually stay with us during group. As long as they have something to chew and drool on they're pretty chill. We were cautious with Jackson because of his projectile spitting that day but we eagerly passed Samson on to our group members with baby fever.
Big mistake!
Samson ended up throwing up all over himself and the only young couple in the group without kids. Great. Sorry guys! I still thought we were teething so I stripped him down, fed him in his diaper, and passed him off to another guy in our group as we chatted at the end.
Bleh!
Again??
Seriously kid!
This is when I started to realize this wasn't a teeth issue. Samson, having thrown up all that I had just fed him, started getting pale looking and fussy. I fed him again (and Jackson of course), carefully burped them and we laid them in bed, half expecting to be awakened by them in a few hours.
Much to our surprise they slept well into the night (which they had been doing just fine before getting sick). I, however, didn't have as much luck sleeping. I was awakened around midnight with the nastiest flu symptoms. My first thought, as I was hugging the toilet, was that I was pregnant. I am not. But the constant vomiting was so reminiscent of my first trimester with the boys that's where my mind automatically went. I wasn't fully convinced it was the flu until Jesse got sick 24 hours later and went through the same cycles I did.
Neither of us had been sick from a bug like that since living on our own and it was our first sickness to endure while taking care of our twinfants. It beat us down and I don't feel like we've fully recovered yet, almost a week later.
Even though the flu lasted only 24 hours (thank God!), the repercussions of it threw us all out of whack. Having not eaten for a whole day my milk supply tanked causing us to have to dip into my freezer stash. Doing the whole bottle washing thing with twins, by the way, is ridiculously hard. To get my supply back up, not only did I eat and drink as much as possible the next few days, but I also tried nursing around the clock. Which was super important for them as well because they had lost weight throwing up so much and having less of an appetite while they were sick.
It's been hard having everyone so off schedule the last few days. I am such a creature of habit, I like planning and having my day (life and home) organized. We have had our boys on a schedule that we've found works for us, feeding them every 3 hours so between 8am and 8pm, then letting them sleep during the night. It allows us to have some time for ourselves in the evenings, encourages the boys to sleep as long as they will, and gives us as much sleep as we need. It also gives me clues as to what their needs are depending on where we are in our cycle. Now that we are off schedule we are having to "re-train" them to sleep through the night...I've forgotten how hard this was and we just went through it a few months ago! Oh well, here we go again.
I'm realizing the importance of being flexible and going with the flow of life. Just when I start to get cocky about this whole twin parenting thing they change (how dare they!) and I find myself needing to find my bearings once again. Once we get back on schedule they will probably REALLY start teething and waking up constantly at night and will once again show me that I am not really in control here. Thank you, Jesus, for the constant reminder of my need to rely on you and not on "the schedule" or things I think I can control.
Below are photo's and the beginning of the post I was working on last week before we all became sick. Our boys are 19.5 weeks old now so I'll have to do another IN/OUT photo soon:
March will always be a special month for us. At this time last year we were pregnant with our boys, although we wouldn't find out for a few more days (March 27th). It's strange to think how fast time has flown by and how many changes have occurred in just a year! They have grown from tiny little beans to 4 month old, 2 feet long little squealers.
This is my favorite face combination! Both boys do the "pout-smile" extremely well but I just happened to catch Samson in action last week. They have it in their heads that their carseats are some form of punishment and we have left them all alone in the backseat to fend for themselves. PTL for our van! Sometimes all a crabby baby needs is to hold onto Mommy's finger while she sings REM along with the radio.
