I'm not sure what time my day begins. There's no real start
or end to a day currently. I rarely get outside, so I can't judge the
time, as normal people do, on the position of the sun. Each of my
"days" is a simple cycle of waking and feeding my new twin digestive
tubes. It's been recommended over and over, that the girls should be on a
feeding schedule in which feeding occurs in a block of roughly 3 hours.
There are 8 blocks in any given 24 hour period. At least one and half
hours of each block is actually spent preparing, feeding, cleaning, and calming
the girls. If all goes really well, I will have the 1.5 hours remaining
in the block to do something else. Theoretically, that leaves the parents
of twins (I don't say multiples because I have no idea how people with
triplets+ possibly survive) some really basic life choices. Do I sleep
for 1.5 hours? I've been trying to choose this option at least 4 times a
day, preferably consecutive blocks. That of course doesn't lead to
consecutive hours of sleep, but does give me 6 hours of interrupted snooze time
to recharge. Next is personal hygiene, and fuel consumption.
Food usually wins out. I'm surprised how hungry I get when all I'm
doing in toting around little 6 pound bundles. I might be burning more
calories simply because I'm getting so little sleep. I do my best to
brush my teeth sometimes, and showering is a rarity...even before I had kids
shaving was something I only did in passing, so no real loss there. I
haven't had the chance to shave my head, which I did every three weeks
previously, as of yet. It's growing in, nice and patchy and salt/pepper.
When I was a kid I had nightmares about my parents dying, not of an
accident, simply of old age. They were ancient...must have been in their
early to mid 30s at the time. I remember crying during the late night
hours, lamenting about their approaching death. If my kids have inherited
my childhood fear of mortality, they are going to flip out when they see their
furry faced, white haired, out of shape (I can't workout or run because the
girls demand so much time...thanks for hastening my death ladies) daddy.
Anyway...showering has fallen pretty low on the priority list. Even
further down is clean clothing. I tried at first. Cleaned my self
up, fresh clothing, smelling good, just to have one end of a new digestive
tracks spew some foul smelling, liquidy mush all over me. It was such a
regular occurrence that I asked my father to make a run to the store
to buy me a dozen oversized white t-shirts. I just leave the pile at the
door of the nursery and throw one on when I cross the threshold. I asked
for white, because based on some of the patterns the girls are able to
produced, we may very well have birthed the next Jackson Pollock. (One of
a kind butt painted t-shirts will be available for purchase in the
lobby.) Way, way, way down on the list is personal time, activities like
writing this blog, or watching TV. It's taken me about 6 feeding blocks
to get this far...and I don't really go back and read what I wrote, so this may
be terribly incoherent, rambling jibberish.
So basically my
life comes down to this:
1. Feed
babies
then pick one (in order of my own personal importance):
2. 1.5 hours
of unsatisfying sleep
3. Use the
bathroom
4. Eat
6. Personal hygiene
7. Change my
clothes
8. Personal
growth
9. Personal
grooming
Now there are some
of you out there thinking, "hey, living life in 3 hour segments, 1.5 of
which is your job and the other is do whatever you want time...that's not so
bad." Well during many of those 3 hour blocks, work time bleeds into
personal time. The girls don't just eat and pass out (well not always).
Often times eating is followed by a period of alertness. So my
actual personal time is influenced by the "fussy factor". It's
simple mathematics* really.
The girls have 2
states, alert (A) or asleep (S). At any given moment they will fall into
one of these to states of being. Therefore:
Fiona
Emilia Result
S
S Both girls
asleep, 1.5 hours of personal time
A
S One twin alert,
loss of personal time
S
A One twin
alert, loss of personal time
A
A Both alert, complete
loss of personal time, edge of insanity, no bathroom break
So as you can see,
there is a 75% chance that some or all the time that the parent's of twins have
for personal growth will be stolen away from them by their offspring.
So when you have a
chance to visit with the parents of multiples, try to ignore their stained
clothing, and fetid body aroma...they probably haven't used the bathroom in
days.
*This is in no way
an accurate mathematical solution to determining the probability of my girls
being in a state of wakefulness.
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