Pig in a Pinafore Dress

I haven’t wrtten for so long. And it’s not that nothing has happened. It’s that too much has happened, and instead of writing down the minutae every day, I’ve missed things out, and so everything has accumulated and I no longer know where to start.

So here is a round up of my life… now that my babies are nearly four months old…

I have managed alone for five weeks and I still feel an incredible sense of achievement. The babies are sleeping brilliantly. They go to bed around 7.30, get up once at around 4am, and then sleep until 7am, when I wake them for their morning feed. Twin One has even slept through the night, but that made me sad, as I love our intimate moments together in the early morning, the only time when I can feed them separately and hug them to my body and feel the warmth and chunkiness of them, and breathe in their smell (I am addicted to the smell of Twin Two, I inhale it all day, pressing my nose into her head). This week I also managed to get on a bus with the double buggy and go shopping with the babies – again, I waited for the heavenly round of applause, a recognition of my achievement, but there was nothing (apart from in my own head, where it was deafening).

Sometimes I have help. My mother comes for bath time several times a week (I need assistance now, as Twin One is so strong she can push herself out of the bath seat). But my mother has a more laissez faire attitude than I (thus, if the babies poo in the bath, she ignores it and lets them kick away until the water gets cold… and then pretends she has only just seen it: “Oh darling, by the way, there’s a little bit of poo there, hardly anything at all, just the size of a butterfly wing…” My ex used to say that I was like a kitten that hadn’t been taught to wash itself properly, and I can see now where that came from). I, on the other hand, am somewhat fanatical, washing all their creases, changing their clothes when they are sick, and constantly replacing the changing mats for their what-seems-like-continuous nappy off time (they love that so much, waving their little bottoms in the air and shrieking).

The babies become more and more like people every day. Or rather, they were always themselves, but now they are more so. Twin One is incredibly strong: she has already rolled from back to side, to front to back and she is not yet four months. Twin Two can hold herself up during tummy time, wobbling but steadfast (I love putting them side by side on their stomachs and listening to them grunt and struggle with the effort, it is like a joke race: it would take them weeks to reach the other side of the room). They now notice each other: it began suddenly one day when Twin Two started babbling, and Twin One whipped her head round to stare, and now they coo at each other and gurgle in conversation. A few days ago, I was holding Twin One and looking at Twin Two, who was at my feet in a bouncy chair, and I thought: “Why isn’t she looking me in the eye when she smiles?” And then I realised that she was smiling at her sister. They have also begun to play with toys, and that started suddenly too, one day nothing, the next Twin One noticed the wooden bears on a metal bar in front of her Baby Bjorn and began bashing and spinning them. They wring their hands like worried old ladies, and bite their fists, and Twin Two takes her pacifier out of her mouth by the handle and waves it around (she even tried to push it back in again when it came out halfway). And they’ve both finally learned to love the pram, and we go for long walks, and stop in cafes – today we had a Turkish flat bread and a coffee in the east end and I sat and chatted to them and they looked perfectly happy (my mother says, ‘darling I do wish you would talk to them a bit more quietly when we’re out’, but I feel, ‘what does it matter, I talk to them at home, so I’ll talk to them when I’m out, what does it matter if people think I’m odd?’).

Breastfeeding has become easy (although I supplement with formula on the left breast). I feel like a pig in a pinafore dress, a real mammal. I today composed my mammal song to sing to them (“I’m a mammal and I love my young…”). I should really be rootling around with them on the floor and letting them suckle.

I still haven’t lost any more weight and I am still eating enthusiastically. My mother, who is not that critical, did say to me the other day, ‘Darling you have to do something, you look disgusting’. And to be fair, she had a point. I have been wearing, exclusively, the same five black pairs of pajama bottoms for a year. They are either torn, or stained or stretched or ripped. The UK size 16s will not stay up – one pair actually fell down round my ankles while I was holding a baby and didn’t have a free hand to hold them. And my Godmother decided to encourage me to act the other day by photographing my bottom as I bent over to play with a baby – there were several large holes in the seat, as well as spit up trails down the side. So yesterday, urged on by my mother, I bought two new pairs of pajama bottoms and a couple of tops from Gap and felt, momentarily, like a yummy mummy (well… actually I’ve lost my shape and I’ve gone from curvy to rectangular, but I’m sure my figure will come back eventually. At least I was clean).

My babies are magnificent, an absolute joy, the great passion of my life. I love the way they look and smell and sound and feel. I love sleeping on the floor next to them during nap time, and holding them close during feeding time. I love everything about them. They are my great joy, my huge love. They are the most wonderful all absorbing thing. It would have been a tragedy not to have them. My life is full of love, I feel my heart swell in the mornings with love for them. I love them more and more even though it always seems that that could not be possible. And also I worry about them, which everyone says will continue forever. I used to be a risk taker yet now, I stand patiently at traffic lights, even when the straight road is clear to the horizon, and wait for the man to change from red to green - just in case. They are, I tell them everyday, rolling around on the floor with them, my favourites… “Do I love you with all my heart and soul? Oh Yes. I love you more than all the babies in the world, all the babies that came before you and all the babies that come after you, my favourite babies in all of time and space”.

(I think it may be time for me to end this blog).