Oh for a steady diet of Oprah and Ricki

In The Australian yesterday (I know, but it's the only broadsheet I can get here in Brisvegas, and sometimes I want to read a real newspaper made of paper), P3t3r Saund3rs railed against parents who 'sit at home watching daytime television' while taxpayers support them.

Daytime television!

There's a man who hasn't spent much time at home alone with two children.

How to make a business phone call

1. You have to wait until both twins are relatively calm to begin with.

2. Put one twin in their cot and wind up the mechanical mobile as far as possible, to give yourself every available millisecond. Unfortunately the mobile will spin quite fast, and the music will play an oddly discordant version of its assigned tune; it sounds a bit like one of those horror carnival scenes, just before the madly grinning clown pops up and terrifies us all.

3. Move to other end of house. Discordant mobile tunes are unprofessional.

4. Put second twin on breast.

5. Make phone call. Don't spend too long on the small talk. Don't fall asleep from the oxytocin rush.

11.40a.m.

According to my books, they've only got three days' worth of crying left, because it all gets much easier after twelve weeks.

I can manage three days.

Really, I can.

10.30a.m.

Will someone please shut that baby up?

Inauguration

<- picture of health

Well, we have really been inculcated into the world of parenthood now.

The twins had their two-month immunisation on Thursday and by Friday Junior had a fever of 38.8. We went back to the GP who sent us to Emergency who admitted us (after a five hour wait) to the children's ward overnight. No toothbrushes, no changes of undies, no cardis to shield us from the frigid hospital air-conditioning. We'd missed dinner so scrounged together a nourishing meal of a packet of potato chips, a sesame bar and a packet of jelly dinosaurs from the vending machine. Thankfully my body keeps turning crap like that into nourishing four-course breast milk meals.

Junior was quite comfortable, he slept in a giant metal cot.

Lucky had to make do with a newborn crib - her head hit one end and her feet hit the other. She wasn't allowed to sleep with him, as she usually does, 'in case he's infectious'. I'm fairly sure that if he was infectious, she'd already have it.

I had a bench and Lovergirl returned to the dreaded Jason recliner, so familiar from her week in hospital after the babies' birth.

Junior was fine.

He has, however, blown his 'first bike' fund - our hospital excess is $500. So, I realise, this is why parents are always crying poor (they haven't really cost us much yet, being breastfed and in cloth nappies, and having mountains of toys and clothes given by doting family and friends).

Aren't Emergency departments fascinating cross-sections of society? And children's Emergency departments are so much more interactive than adult ones. I'm accustomed to waiting room attendees sitting quietly and politely engrossed in their outdated No Ideas. I really wasn't prepared for how much parents talk to each other. Even to us lesbian parents. And of course, the children are forming instantaneous lifelong bonds based on comparing broken limbs.

Planet baby

Life with newborns is a strange alternate reality, a shadowy, dreamy half-life of sleepless nights and hazy days. I know that outside our little universe, people are returning to work, getting geared up for 2008, exchanging holiday stories and grumbling about being back at the grindstone. Our days are a treacle-paced treadmill of breastfeeding, wandering dawn streets with crying babies, snacking one-handed and keeping chaos at bay - just.

The days are either scorching hot or raining, so between 9.30a.m. and four in the afternoon we're pretty much housebound. All the usual options for inhospitable days - movies, the pool, the beach, even the local shopping mall - are inappropriate for brand new babies. Even the backyard is baking. So we pace the house, frazzled and sweating, crooning softly to hot grizzly babies.

Our wonderful neighbours, academics both, drop in almost daily with small gifts - a bag of lychees, some fresh muffins - and bring news of the world: a success at work, an invitation to present at a conference. We reciprocate with small developments: Junior smiled this morning, the babies slept for three hours straight at the same time. It's an odd exchange. Sometimes I try to read the newspaper so I have something else to say, but I feel so removed from inflationary pressures and political intrigues that I can't really be bothered.

The Australian Open is permanently on - with the sound down, nights - and I have finally cracked the arcane codes of games, sets and matches, seeding and grand slams.

I'm slightly stoned on exhaustion and the oxytocin released when breastfeeding. I know I'll look back on this time as a magical time - brand new babies, Lovergirl home all the time, both of us finding our ways as mothers and establishing our new parameters as a family. I want to notice every moment. I used to go bushwalking, proper bushwalking in the Victorian Alps for days on end, carrying everything in a backpack: tent, food, water, bedding. Newborns are like mountain bushwalking. Once you've climbed Mt Bogong, you look back on it as the most amazing thing you've ever done. But in the moment, your knees are aching, your back is aching, you're cold and wet from the rain or sunburnt and sweating with no shade above the snowline, you're exhausted and the only thing that keeps you moving forward is knowing there is no other way to get out.

Curiouser and curiouser

What I don't understand is how anyone can look at our babies and still love their own babies better. Or, if child-free, not instantly try and convince us to put Junior and Lucky up for adoption.

More things I didn't know about babies (or, more specifically, the poo of babies):

• in boys, the poo gets caught up under the scr0tum. You have to lift it.
• It is possible to do projectile poo
• It is possible to have a full nappy, do a projectile poo as soon as the nappy is off, then do another huge poo immediately the new nappy goes on.
• It is possible to repeat this process immediately.
  

Feel free to drop in for a visit

So, how's your day going?

Things I didn't know about babies - #1 of 123,987

I didn't know babies farted so often. Big, adult-sized farts. Remarkable that such a small body can produce sounds of such expulsive power.

And thanks everyone for comments - more than you know. I don't have much time to get off my own blog and go exploring but somehow your comments make me feel like I am still in touch with the world. Blogs as inoculation against post-natal depression - there's a thesis in that.

They are both sleeping right now. At the same time. I must go and lie down. Quick!

Warning - brain approaching capacity

Here's Lovergirl studying. She's jiggling Lucky in the bouncer on the floor with her foot, while holding Junior and listening to a lecture on complex post-traumatic stress disorder over the internet.

I never wanted to turn into one of those people who only blogs - or talks - about babies.

What I didn't realise is that there is no room in your brain for anything else. Which is fortunate, because there is no time in the day for anything else either.

I have about ten hours a day sitting down breastfeeding, during which time I could read, but what do I read? Baby care books. Voraciously. I started Geraldine Brooks' March the other day but couldn't cope with the violence - men bayoneted and drowning in the first chapter, slaves whipped in the second - so went back to Your Baby & Toddler.

We're watching lots of videos but I have restricted us to romantic comedies. Lovergirl brought home Candy and I just cried.

We look forward to normal brain transmission resuming soon.

Language barrier

Lucky: Excuse me, could you change my nappy?

Me: Hi darling, what's wrong?

Lucky: It's my nappy, I've done a big poo.

Me: (patting her and speaking in soothing tone) It's alright, it's okay, go back to sleep, there's a good girl.

Lucky: (getting louder) No, it's not okay, I've done a big poo and I'm lying in it.

Me: (picking her up) Ssh...ssh...what's wrong? (rocking from side to side while bouncing on toes)

Lucky: (working up to a full fledged scream) My nappy, you idiot! Check my nappy! There is shit everywhere and I'm really uncomfortable!

Me: (baring breast and attempting to shove it in her mouth) Here you are, it's right here.

Lucky: (shaking head vigorously, lips clamped shut) I don't want anything to eat until I'm out of this pool of steaming poo I'm sitting in! Get me out of here!

Me: Let's have a look at your nappy. Oh my god! there's poo everywhere

Lucky: (calming down as nappy is removed) Oh thank god.

Liveblogging Christmas Day breastfeeding

I spend about ten hours a day at my Breastfeeding Station, which has taken over the couch in the loungeroom. This consists of:

• two fat suede cushions to prop behind my back so I sit up straight;
• two large Indian cushions, one to each side of me, to support the breastfeeding mat;
• one cotton blanket, folded several times across my knees, to raise the mat the precisely the right height ('so baby's nose is in line with your nipple,' as the lactation consultant instructed);
• one large firm foam breastfeeding mat whcih fits around my body, creating a kind of soft tray, upon which I lie (lay?) the babes, so I can feed two at once, a la this entry;
• and a small tray to hand with all the supplies I might need for a session of breastfeeding (which can take up to an hour: my mobile, the landline, the babies' feeding record, a book, a notepad and pen, the TV remote and a bottle of water.

So when a baby squawks I get myself arranged inside this structure and Lovergirl hands me first one then the other baby. I sit inside this tower of foam and babies, sweating and spurting milk. I haven't figured out how to twin feed on my own yet.

So here is my Christmas Day.

1a.m - Feed them both together. We try to start as we mean to go on. It's hard to keep my eyes open. Often I fall asleep during these midnight feeds - is that dangerous?...
(Fell asleep, awoke at 2.30 a.m with babies tucked under my arms, sleeping soundly, and L over in the single chair, also sleeping soundly. We all go to bed.)

2.50a.m. Lucky won't settle. It's probably been around an hour and a half since her last feed, despite her lying there with my nipple in her mouth for the last hour and a half. I get up and feed her again. The babies are now out of sync, damn.

Lucky continues to grumble quietly until 3.30 when Junior wakes us all up. Back to the BF station and the weird feeling of a baby sucking on each nipple. Lucky's happy to eat again - she's not always, and shakes her head vigorously with her mouth clamped shut - so we're back in sync. It's nearly 4a.m. which is good - it starts to feel like the next day, not the middle of the bloody night.I don't mind being up at 4a.m - it's more like I've gotten up early. Summer in Brisbane it's getting light by 4a.m.

6.15a.m - Hooray! Two solid hours sleep since the last feed. It felt like forever, so luxurious. I comment on how good this is to Lovergirl, who says, 'Yes, I've been sitting up with Junior since 5 a.m while he squalled.' I didn't hear a thing.

After this feed do we try for another couple of hours or are we up now? Mornings are good. The babies are drowsy and calm, and it's not so shattering to...(fell asleep again)

8a.m. Lucky's been feeding for the past half an hour while Junior is asleep with one arm slung in proprietal fashion around my breast. Lovergirl is opening presents for us. For some reason I hadn't pictured my gift unwrapping taking place behind the barrier of the BF station - I don't know why as I spend most of my waking hourse here.

8.45am Here we are agin. After both feel asleep we put them down carefully and L snuck off to have a shower - big mistake as they immediately started howling. There I was at the bathroom door, holding one screaming baby and clalling out to the other, 'It's okay, I'm right here' and enquiring anxiously of L whether she was planning a long indulgent shower or something more on the swift and refreshing side. Now they are contentedly sucking away like angels while L clears away the devastation of wrapping paper. If you want lots of presents, have children - everyone has sent a rattle or a toy that giggles when you turn it upside down.

9.20am - They're still going. I start to get a bit fed up after about half an hour. Apperently they get more efficient as they get older, but at the moment they feed every two hours for at least half an hour and up to an hour and a half. I start to feel like I am becoming the couch.

10.10 - I got off briefly to have a shower but am back due to public demand. If they would stop we could go for a walk. The attachment parenting stuff says to feed whenever they want for the first six weeks so they can learn they are valued human beings whose needs will always be met where possible - but the twins never want to be off the nipple! They just hang on for ages after they have finished feeding.

11.30am - Back from the walk and back on. With so much time at the station, I have plenty of time for reading, so I'm making a start on one of my Christmas presents, 'Women's Weekly Good Food for Babies and Toddlers' from a grandma, who else?

12.50pm - I've had about twenty minutes off from the BF station in which time I managed to shove the turkey in the oven. No stuffing - not ime for that - although I did rub it with garlic and shove a lemon up its clacker. Lovergirl will have to manage the salad, and we have a Dav1d J0nes plum pud and packet custard so no eschewing tradition in this house on the spurious excuse of newborn twins! We have banned all visitors today - no family, despite their pleas - Christmas is just too laden with expectations.

I find it hard to be stuck behind the station all day. I keep thinking of things to do but I can't. Sometimes I ask Lovergirl to do them for me but I forcibly restrain myself from barking out a long series of requests, as she is busy putting on washing stacking the dishwasher, mopping up milk leaks that splatter the floorboards all through the house, cooking meals and generally clearing about the constantly accumulating mess.

1pm - Lucky, after insisting she was starving, howling the house down to be put on, has nodded off to sleep on the mat. They love just sleeping on the mat next to my exposed breast - they will lie there quite still for hours. Try and put them in the cot and it all goes terribly wrong.

2.30pm - That was a big break! Lovergirl and I each lay on a couch with a baby draped across our stomach, which lulled them into unconsciousness while we watched an episode of the L-W0rd (my Xmas present to Lovergirl - the 4th season - thanks Mel for organising!). should keep us occupied for a few days, then we might have to get hold of the next few seasons of Six Feet Under.

Lovergirl is just serving up the turkey. There was going to be baked pumpkin but there hasn't been a hands-free moment to chop up pumpkin and put it in the oven. To think that yesterday I was pondering stuffed zucchini flowers! (there are some promising candidates in the garden) Really, a recipe from another life.

4.30pm - I've discovered that the babies will sleep contentedly for quite a long time if we each lie still with one on our stomach. All is calm, all is quietIt's beautiful, except for the sligfht handicap of not being able to move (on top of not being able to move while behind the BF station) If you don't worry about that, it's really a very good way to bring up children. So they slep for an hour while we watched another L-W0rd, until Lucky woke with a great indignant howl when Lovergirl decided she needed a drink.

So - what crap Christmas presents did you score? Probably my worst was a stoking filler from Mum, a kids book called 'Twins' that I think she omitted to read before purchasing. The book is narrated by one twin and she talks about how much she hates the other twin. On the last page she says 'ha ha only joking', but it's not enough the redeem the preceding bile. I think we'll be losing that before the babies develop their linguistic capabilities.

6.30pm - We're back. I've finished reading toddler food and even the instruction manual for my new crockpot (another mum present - I requested this one on the presumption it might be perfect for mothers whose mornings are relatively calm but evenings are frantic.)

I love the way Junior collapses into sleep when he has finished feeding, arms tenderly wrapped around my breast. Lucky, on the other hand, kind of flops onto her back in exhausted ecstasy.

About this time of day I start to feel cranky at spending so much time behind the BF station. (here's Lovergirl bringing my turkey sandwich dinner - we're also just getting onto the plum pudding now)

7.20 - still the same feed - I've been here a while, the kids won't quit. I'm now watching the Queen's Christmas meesage. She's a trouper, isn't she? Do you think she breastfed?

8.15pm. It doesn't sound so bad, babies feeding once every two hours, unitl you realise that we count the two hours from the start of each feed, not the end of the previous one. A feed can take an hour and in the evenings seem to go for even longer - an hour and a half is not unusual, then half an hour later they're ready to go again as their two hours is up.

11.00pm - Lovergirl, Lucky, Junior and I all fall asleep breastfeeding and wake up at ten to one...

And so it goes on.

Hallelujah! I have made it out of the house

This morning, we walked to a cafe.

We had a coffee (decaf of course, no overstimulated babies please).

We read the paper (well the first four pages).

Then we walked home. Briskly, before all hell broke loose.

The whole excursion took one and a half hours and the babies slept through the whole thing.

Nothing to it, this parenting business

Urban myths

Whoever coined the term 'sleeping like a baby'...

they didn't have one.

Or two.

Ode to my new life

Junior being born. Wild, huh?

Milk is leakingout my breast
Milk is dripping down my chest
Milk is soaking through my clothes
Milk is landing on baby's nose
Milk it sprays out in the shower
Voracious babes wake every hour
Milk spewed onto bunny rugs
Babies stoned on milky drugs
Nipples sagging chafed and sore
Babies screaming, 'Give me MORE!'

(Refrain)
Milkmilkmilkmilk milkmilkmilkmilk

Here they are

<--This is our girl, for the purpose of this blog to be known as Lucky*

This is our boy, whom we will call Junior-->

I want to write a long post about the caesarean birth, and how weird and terrifying I found it, feeling nothing much but a disconcerting digging sensation in my guts and how I will never forget the squelching sound as the doctors dug around in my intestines.

I want to write a long post about our stay in hospital, a bizarre other world filled with dazed new parents and brisk competent nurses and socially-challenged doctors and endless bain-marie food, and the particular night sounds of low-lit hospital corridors that Lovergirl and I got to know well as we took turns pacing with the howling Junior every night between 12 and two a.m.

I want to write a post about how magnificent our babies are, how for the first day or so I felt nothing but now I am so hopelessly in love I keep bursting into tears.

But we got home yesterday and today I have achieved the following:
- I managed to get in the shower about lunchtime;
- I rang Family Assistance and asked about the baby bonus ;
- I spoke to two people on the phone and managed to ask them about their lives as well as telling them the minutiae of mine;
- I spent about eight hours breastfeeding; there are two more sessions scheduled before midnight tonight.

All in all quite a successful day.

*Originally I posted their real names, as I so want to introduce them to you. But after reading through a homophobic rant in Copperwitch's comments stream, I thought I'd best stick to my policy of pseudonyms.