another brain dump

ethan is asleep... kaylee's hanging out in the ergo carrier w/ dad. so, here I am with two hands for a bit, so you get another everything-I-can-think-of post - this one with a hilarious picture at the end.

• sleep: the babies used to sleep for 2-3 hours. when we were in the hospital they told us we needed to wake them up if they ever slept longer and feed them. I don't think that ever happened, but we set a lot of alarms. now they sleep for 2-4 hour stretches. we really like the 4 hour ones, but 2 hours is more common...
• crying: they do (cry that is). they don't cry a lot (my mom says they cry much less than I did) but they do cry sometimes. when one of them cries it usually doesn't bother the other one. sometimes ethan gets a concerned look if kaylee cries, but ethan often looks concerned. most often they just sleep through the other one's cries or they just look straight ahead. they don't really look around or act inquisitive if the other is crying, it's like they're focusing or rolling their eyes or something, but usually, that's it. sometimes however, if one starts wailing the other says, oh yes, I forgot, the world IS about to end, I'll scream too... at those times it's really nice if there are two people around to comfort them.
• speaking of two people... daytime help: I have had tons of daytime help, and it's been great. in fact, every day somebody has come to visit/help. usually blake leaves around 9ish, somebody comes to visit around noonish and sometimes they stay till blake comes home, or sometimes I have another hour or so alone in the afternoon/evening. it's been pretty great - I can handle them on my own (nobody dies) but there is less crying when there are two sets of arms to hold babies. (thanks thanks thanks to all my helpers!)
• nighttime help: we did it. we hired a doula. a postpartum night doula for one night a week. most people, if they've heard of doulas, have heard of labor doulas, but there are also postpartum doulas - some work days, nights, or both. apparently (at least locally according to one doula we interviewed - and we did call 6, interview 3, and reference check 2 doulas) about 1/3 of people who hire doulas are twin parents. so what does a night doula do? well, when michele (our doula) came for the first time this week she came for an 8 hour shift - 10pm to 6am. after a little chatter, we went to bed and she took care of the babies all night long! since I'm not breastfeeding at night, we were both able to get a nice long stretch of sleep. while not feeding/changing/cuddling the babies, michele also washed all our bottles, did a load of baby laundry, and folded TONS of baby clothes. like all the newborn - 3 month clothes (plus the towels, washcloths, blankets, etc) are now folded neatly in drawers instead of haphazardly tossed and crumpled and stuffed in drawers. she records how much they drink / poo / pee for us, and leaves us a little note with that info and some advice. this first time, I just wanted to sleep, but in future weeks she can help me breastfeed as well if I want. it's pretty great because she had some thoughts on ethan breastfeeding just based on how he drinks from a bottle. plus we can ask her to do funny things like give ethan breastmilk and kaylee formula or cut their fingernails or whatever... so, we don't know how many weeks we'll use her help, but man, it was great to get such a long stretch of sleep... (oh and - michele has a phd in genetics. how crazy is that?)
• ethan's tongue. we cut it. we took him to a specialist last week to look at his mouth and tell us if he was tongue tied and if that was causing his difficulty feeding. the doc said blake was mild/moderately tongue-tied and ethan was just mildly so. he said because it wasn't super severe that it might be the problem or might not be. but, he also said that there weren't downsides to cutting the little part that was keeping his tongue tied so... we did it! ethan started crying when the doc put his fingers in his mouth, but 10 minutes later he was done crying and I was trying to nurse him. unfortunately we had fed him right before coming to the doc so the nursing was unsuccessful, but the rest of the day I watched him closely and he wasn't more fussy than usual even when feeding etc. Nursing since has been... a challenge, but occasionally successful. he's used to a bottle now, and nursing is harder. he gets easily frustrated and is hard to calm without food when he's hungry. kaylee still nurses like a champ, so sometimes I start with her, take her off before she's had too much (to make sure there's plenty left), and then try with ethan. the idea being that I already smell like milk and the hard beginning work has been done for him. this is occasionally successful, but... it's a lot of work. plus then I either have to nurse kaylee again or make her a bottle anyway, and often ethan needs a bottle to top him off... we're still going to keep at it for awhile and I plan to make another appt with the lactation consultant and maybe have michele help me, and we'll see how all that goes.
• I'm tutoring 3 hours a week now, plus 1-3 hours of work from home for the church...
• the birth announcements arrived! we sent some out, but they got moved off the table for tutoring, and the rest still need to be addressed...
• okay, i can't hold out on you any longer (and I can't stay awake much longer - losing precious sleep here people). here is the funniest picture of my little kiddos to date.