Surviving the first week

After five days of hospital. We were finally discharged.  Below is Andric sitting in the brand new ride getting ready for the real world!

With all the early warnings from my new-parent friends, I was at least mentally prepared for this. The expectation going into the first month is that I wouldn't get much sleep. Sure, but no one went through the list of things we as new parents had to do!! I never knew how hard it was going to be until now.

We spent the first 4 postpartum days in the hospital, where I picked up all the needed skills to keep the twins from crying their lungs out.  

First it's feeding, 

they feed every three hours, from the 20 c.c. in the first 48 hours to now 90 c.c. at second week. In the hospital it is easy because they give you unlimited supply of single-use formula bottles where you can plug and play. but after hospital it gets tricky because feeding every three hours means A LOT of bottles to clean, sterilize, and dry.  

  The convenient single-use 60c.c. package (given to us when we were in the hospital)

Then it's burping. 

Burping is essential task because it keeps them from throwing up and being fussy. If you'd want any breather at all, this is the part that you can't ignore. I can now get them to burp within 5 minutes each, and that's pretty good!  

Once they are fed and burped, you move onto changing diapers and clothes.

This is the part when they get super uncomfortable and start crying. If you're unlucky like me, you can totally get pooped and pee-ed on.  I realized the trick is to wait to hear them poop before you open their diapers, and even if you open them up, make sure the new one is right underneath ready to go.

Since I'm still learning how much they should eat, I often don't feed them enough, and when I put them back to the crib they start crying again, which can become a dragged-out process of trying to assess what's wrong yet cluelessly end up with two loud crying babies to calm down (so very true to my blog's icon).  This whole feeding, burping, changing, swaddling, calming process takes about 2 hours. and yes you guessed it, in another hour, everything starts over again. In this very precious hour, what do I do? - clean, sterilize and dry bottles & breast pump equipment, and if I'm lucky I get to feed myself.

Thanks again to Zephyr and Jenny for thinking ahead for us. we totally forgot to buy a drying rack. this is so essential and I highly recommend it.

Also, a special thanks to my wonderful mother-in-law who used to be a professional RN and is a Godsend for relieving me from misery.  I'm so useless compared to my mom-in-law. I whine so much caring for two. Yet she is smooth sailing caring for five (twins, christy/me, and herself)  She's always so graceful and pleasant to be around, and my twins are so lucky to have her as a grandmother!