Oh Boy

“Can you believe you have a boy?” This is what everyone asks me right now.

Following a decade of four girls, a decade of ponytails, braids, Flowers By Zoe, Sugarlips, and Butter, a decade of playing things like beads, dolls, dress-up, house and school, a decade of “Hannah Montana” and “Suite Life of Zack and Cody,” then “ICarly,” “Shake it Up,” “Victorious,” and my personal favorite “Good Luck Charlie,” a decade of putting on plays that are not funny and dance shows to songs like “Call Me Maybe,” “Starships” and “Blow”—yes, we finally have a boy.  

My friends and siblings with boys are excited for some testosterone to finally throw off the calm that our household has been known for. In particular they are excited for a boy to discover the never-before-childproofed Poland Spring cooler that has stood for a decade without any of my girls ever being tempted to play with it and flood our kitchen. They are hoping our crystal glasses, which we have always kept in low-lying cabinets without any child-locks are soon shattered to the ground. My friend Danny is eager to watch my husband play endless games of football on the beach with our new son, after years of relaxing and reading while our four girls quietly play what he calls “dighole” in the sand for hours. That is, those closest to me are hoping that this lone boy in a sea of five sisters is an absolute alpha-male animal.

But the truth is we have barely even noticed we have a boy. We are in too deep with the reality of two babies. Sure, my daughter Sophie has asked me “what are those ball things under Barry’s penis,” and yes, every time I change his diaper I play defense, but other than that, the novelty of a son is completely overshadowed by the insanity of twins. It sounds trite and obvious, but it is two babies. Two babies to feed, two babies to change, two babies to bathe, two babies to walk around and rock during fussy times. I am only able to write this because my sister just came and took my older three girls back to her house for the night. Our house is somewhat quiet, we are down to three.

The fact is we probably should have been more prepared for the chaos that comes with twins. The scene in the delivery room should have warned us, where I was greeted by over a dozen doctors and nurses. Two of the doctors in my practice were there to deliver me. They explained they prefer to deliver twins as a duo, with an extra set of hands. Four pediatricians stood by the warmer, ready to examine baby A and baby B respectively as soon as they arrived. Two anesthesiologists stood ready in case my delivery changed into a c-section. Another doctor was solely responsible for making sure baby B was doing ok while baby A was being delivered, and several residents were assisting throughout. Then alongside us, stood an operating table set up for a c-section, just in case, with a team of doctors and nurses ready and waiting.  This is how many people were needed to supervise my twins’ arrival into the world. And this is how many people I feel I could use right now to help me make it through each day.

We did not know what we were having. I know everyone says that, but we really didn’t. We never found out with our others and we did not want to find out the gender of our twins, despite the pleading from family members, our other four kids and so many friends. Besides, I was used to Rob’s delivery room “face drop” each time they announced “it’s a girl”—it lasted about two seconds.  Ok, maybe 2 minutes on girl three and four.

“You’ll get a male dog,” I heard my father-in-law console him over the phone when our third daughter was born.

This time around, though, with two unknowns I was a nervous wreck. Somehow a fifth girl seemed digestible, but two more at once felt tough to take. With six kids, haven’t you earned the right to both genders?

After a few big pushes, Baby A was born.

“It’s a boy,” my doctor announced, and I expected the moment to be so dramatic. I’d been imagining it four times before, the birth of a son, and I thought surely Rob would look elated.

But there was no time to react. I had a second baby sitting inside me, sitting transverse across the top of my stomach that needed to be turned around and dragged out. It was a very long 17 minutes—doctors pushing her from outside me, pulling her from inside me, it was crazy. But finally she arrived, our fifth girl.  Figures, she’d been the one monopolizing all the space in there, sprawled out like a queen, while her brother was scrunched in a ball in the bottom right corner of my uterus for 38 weeks. God this boy is screwed. 

But we did not focus on their gender then, we were too amazed by the sight of two babies.

And it’s the reality of two that is so unfathomable still. Not that one’s a boy and one’s a girl. The fact that there are two.  And I’m not sure when that will wear off.  Every time I buckle them into my double Snap n Go I do a doubletake—no pun intended--still unable to believe this is really happening and that both of these actually belong to me.

When a friend of mine found out I was expecting twins on 5 and 6, she said her sister in law had twins on 5 and 6.

“I would put you in touch with her,” she told me, “but she’s still not over the shock, and the twins are 11."

I too am in a state of shock and adjustment. I don’t know when mine will wear off, but I’m sure as it does, and these babies turn into children, and develop personalities, I will soon discover whether I need to childproof that Poland Spring cooler.

The Purple Statue of Liberty

So how has it been going with six? 

Well let’s see. I got a call from the counselors of my girls in day camp informing me that both daughters are very sad and crying a lot. My oldest daughter Gabby came home from sleep away camp without any sneakers, so I gave her my Zappos username and password and told her to get herself some. My second daughter Caroline came home with a big smile but a horrible case of impetigo all over her nose. I sent her straight from the bus to the pediatrician with my husband. I couldn’t take her, or really say more than hello, because I had to run home to feed my twins.

But this is nothing. This is just my new normal.

Without a doubt, the biggest challenge I’ve had so far was getting me and my breasts, together with my four older girls, ready and dressed for my sister in law’s wedding this past Sunday. Yes, a wedding, as in I needed to walk down an aisle in a gown, less than six weeks after giving birth.

As much as I love my sister-in-law, and as happy as I was she was getting married, I’d been dreading this day since the moment I gave birth and looked down at my still very distended uterus and knew then that things were gonna get ugly. How am I going to be able to put on a gown six weeks from now? Or what kind of gown will be able to get over me?

Every pregnancy I somehow delude myself into imagining a scenario in which I give birth and imminently return to my pre-pregnancy weight. All of us mothers have been there. I remember my first pregnancy I even brought a pair of non-maternity jeans in my hospital bag as a going home outfit for myself. Needless to say, I didn’t wear them home, or even once I was home for about a year.

That is how it’s worked for me in the past, and it is certainly how things seem to be playing out this fifth time around following a natural delivery of twins born at 6’7 and 5’14 pounds respectively. When the nurses announced those numbers in the delivery room, rather high numbers for twins, I got my hopes up—maybe I really was “all baby” this time. I love that expression. “All baby.” And I actually got it a lot this pregnancy, together with the other compliments like it. “You’re all in front” or “I’d never know you were pregnant from behind” or “you must be having a boy.”

Unfortunately, I was clearly not all baby, or babies. I was about 1/3 babies, and 2/3 I don’t know what, but it’s some undefined jiggly mass that seems really happy staying put for a while.  I’m continuing to be “all in front” which is not where you want it all to be at this point. And it’s not just in my head. At my joint bris and baby naming (we had one boy and one girl), my three-year-old nephew looked up at me from under his baseball cap and with the innocent eyes of a child, pointing at my stomach, said “uh oh, Aunt Eri, I think they forgot one.”

I know what you’re thinking. That’s how every woman looks at the bris, one week after delivery, but I can assure you things haven’t gotten any better. They actually seem to have gotten worse. At a sock store this past Friday, the salesperson looked at my stomach and said, “aw, I just saw the baby move.”

“I don’t think you did,” I was forced to tell her.

“Really?” she asked, digging herself into a deeper hole. “It really looked like it moved.”

“No, I had twins five weeks ago,” I told her.

“Oh,” she said, turning bright red, “wow twins. You look great.”

I know I sound shallow and vain focusing on something like baby weight after something so miraculous like the birth of a healthy baby, or babies, takes place. And it’s true. A little weight is a small price to pay for the gift of a healthy child. But I’m human, and unfortunately I can’t help it. It is hard walking around looking pregnant when you’re not, especially in an age of thinness, and in an Upper East Side culture with an interpretation of thinness all its own. On top of the fatigue and sleep deprivation and engorged breasts and varicose veins, it is hard to walk around not feeling good about yourself.

And men don’t seem to get it. One guy I know asked me if while I still look pregnant I enjoy going to bars and getting a rise out of the bartenders by smoking a cigarette and ordering a lot to drink.  Hello?????

So what did I wear to the wedding? I chose a dress from a store in Long Island that sells all kinds of formal gowns but specializes in clothing for an ultra-Orthodox, very modestly dressed Jewish clientele. Modest was certainly the way I wanted to go—very drapey, very layered, in eggplant, the color of the wedding party. I had my measurements taken in my eighth month, when I was so big, but cute big, funny big, and we said then, we’d “take it in” after I gave birth. (It unfortunately did not need to be taken in too much.) I also asked them to make sure the gown was nursing or pumping friendly, easy to lower the top so I would not have to undress each time I needed to feed.  If you’re having trouble visualizing it, picture a purple Statue of Liberty. (Sorry, a mental picture is all you’re going to get.) That is what I looked like. Luckily I didn’t have to hold the bouquet up over my head with one arm.

But the fact is I made it. And I even had a great time. Even with all my dread. Even as a purple Statue of Liberty, and even though over the course of the wedding, two people walked in on me in the bridal room pumping, with the top of my dress unbuttoned to my waist and nothing but two translucent breast shields in hand. I couldn’t even cover myself quickly because the milk was pouring out and I was afraid to get milk drops on the gown.

I missed my twins though. I was never away from any of my infants for such a long day, but I guess in large families, life cycle events are bound to intersect. With six children I would imagine and hope that one day I too have one child getting married after another just gave birth.

In the meantime though, I just had my six-week follow up appointment today with my OB, and got the green light to start exercising again. I certainly have my work cut out for me. Next summer, I told the dressmaker, I am coming back and getting a form-fitting gown made for my next life-cycle event, Gabby’s bat mitzvah. 

Four No More

OK I have a small confession to make. I am not technically living with six children yet. My older two girls are still away at sleep away camp until Wednesday. On Wednesday I will start to understand the full consequences of my reproductive actions, and probably begin to cry a lot. Friends and family beware.  

I live on Manhattan’s Upper East Side where most people’s families consist of 2 or 3 children, and some have 4. There are a few in my community with five, and then there are even fewer with more than that. It’s a category all to itself, a category of just “more than that” where people can never seem to remember exactly how many you have, they just know it’s a lot, a category that’s outgrown the traditional minivan or SUV and where people email you links to cars that look like this:

It’s the 12-passenger Mercedes Sprinter. Not allowed on certain highways. Crazy.

In wondering how my two older children, Gabby and Caroline, are going to react to the new car we need to get (still undecided) but more so to the new family unit they will find when they come home, I find myself remembering back to the night we first told them I was pregnant with twins.

You see, this pregnancy was really the first time I had older children with whom to share the news. The last time I had told them I was pregnant with what turned out to be my daughter Lily, my other three girls were 5, 3 and 2. They weren’t involved players yet. In fact, my then 3-year-old Caroline simply crapped in her pants on the spot as soon as we told her. Literally. And of course, my husband, with that oh-so-intuitive paternal instinct, did not think the news we had shared had anything to do with it. What is it with men and psychology?

But this time was different.

“Girls,” we said to them one Thursday night in mid January as we sat around the dining room table, “we have some exciting news for you.”

“We’re getting Netflix?” my then 7-year-old Caroline asked, her eyes lighting up.

“No, something different,” Rob answered.

“You got Knicks tickets? My oldest Gabby asked.

“No, more exciting than that. Something about mommy.”

“You’re having a baby?” Gabby said, raising her eyebrows in disbelief.

“Yes,” we said.

Gabby and Caroline both smiled. Sophie, who was 6, looked pale, and three-year-old Lily looked confused. But they all erupted into a loud, energetic, nervous cheer, and started dancing around the table with Rob, shaking their booties and singing some made up “we’re having a baby” song, signature Rob improv.

“Can I go video chat with my friends and tell them?” Gabby asked.

“Wait,” we said. We still hadn’t broken the second piece of news yet. The twins part.

As the dancing slowed down, Rob said “we have another surprise for you.”

“We’re also getting Netflix?” Caroline asked. She’s a little spacy that way.

“No, something also about Mommy.”

They looked puzzled, and so Rob said “we’re having a baby.”

“You told us that already,” they all said.

“Yeah, but we’re having a baby and we’re having another baby,” Rob answered.

“Twins?” Gabby asked.

“Yes!” Rob shouted with excitement.

But this time none of the kids cheered or sang with him.

Silence. Complete silence.

“What????” Gabby asked us like we were freaks. “We’re gonna have six children in our family? That’s really weird. Who has six children?” Then she panicked. “Are we going to have to leave the city?”

“No, of course not,” we said, not having a clue how the hell not.

“But am I going to ever have my own room?” Yes, Gabby is a classic first born, but Rob and I tolerate it because we’re both also firstborns. “Hopefully you will,” I told her, thinking it wasn’t the best time to say “probably not.”

Caroline, in her inimitable sweet way said, “are you going to have any time left to spend with me?”

“Of course,” I said, while thinking “no way, I’m not going to have time for any of you. I’ll be lucky enough to be able to go to the bathroom.”

Sophie started crying and said, “how could you and daddy decide to have more babies and not even ask us? I don’t want any more children in this house,” she shouted angrily.

And Lily asked if the babies could sleep on a blow-up mattress in her room “tomorrow.” Four girls. Four different ages and stages. Four different reactions.

Lily and Sophie have had a few weeks to start digesting the reality of what’s taken place. And it’s not sitting well. They come off the camp bus each day rolling their eyes at me and saying “I hate you mommy.” They ask me to go for a bike ride, or play a game, or give them a bath, and usually I can’t because I’m nursing or pumping—since I’m always nursing or pumping-- and then they tell me again, “I hate you mommy.” In fact, last night Sophie said, “mommy, you should take a vacation by yourself and leave us just with daddy.” Rob insightfully wonders where this anger is suddenly coming from.

 

On Wednesday, another bus will bring home two more, and I will have two more reactions to deal with, two more lives I am once again responsible for, two more children for whom I must make time. Wish me luck. 

Holy Mama

It’s the scenario all of us impregnated women have at one time envisioned at the start of a new pregnancy. During the first doctor’s appointment confirming the news we have detected on a stick. During that first sonogram, the first time a fetal heartbeat can be seen and heard.

And this time it actually happened.

“Sit still for a second,” my obstetrician said to me November 29, 2011, “I think I might see two.”

“Might as in 20% might, or might as in 80%?” I asked her. Might is very relative.

“Might as in 99.9%,” she answered.

Oh my God, I was thinking. 

“Hold this,” she said, handing me the probe stationed between my legs that usually only the doctor handles. “I need to catch my breath and sit down.”

She had to sit down? I was the one who was just told I was carrying twins.

So what was the big deal? Twins happen all the time.

The big deal was that these were not 1 and 2, or 2 and 3, or 3 and 4, or 4 and 5. They were 5 and 6.  Yes you heard me right, children number 5 and 6, as in I already had four others. 

She told me to get dressed and come into her office.

Everything felt surreal, I hadn’t even called my husband yet to tell him. My doctor started throwing a whole slew of information at me. I could barely focus.

“Spontaneous twins,” she said, “happen as you get older” (I was about to turn 36) “and the more pregnancies you’ve had.” So now she tells me.  

“I would assume they’re fraternal,” she continued, “because they are in two different sacs, but we won’t know for sure till they’re born, since even identical twins can split into their own sacs right after conception.”

“Also, there is something called vanishing twin syndrome, so there is a chance you could lose one. There’s nothing to do to prevent it.”

“Your due date is July 24^th but we don’t deliver twins after 38 weeks, so think of it as July 10^th.”

 “And you have to have your cervix checked every other week to make sure you don’t have to go on bed rest.

“And you need monthly anatomy scans to make sure the twins are growing in sync with one another.

“Come back again next week—we like to monitor a twin pregnancy more frequently.”

Boom. Boom. Boom. The facts were being thrown at me, and I was trying to digest it all. I left the office and could barely breathe. I called my husband Rob and, just like out of a movie said, “Are you sitting down?”

“Yeah, everything ok?” I hadn’t even been feeling pregnant. I was convinced it was a false positive.

“There are two.”

He screamed with excitement and said “Oh my God, that’s crazy. That’s amazing.” Actually first he said “shut the F up.” Then he said that’s amazing.

Amazing? I hung up and started crying, part excitement, part overwhelmed, part freaking out. I was going to have six children. Who has six children who is not Catholic or Chasidic? I use birth control. I think I’m normal. At least I’m normal on paper.

The fact is our whole life changed that day. We were a family with four daughters then ages 9, 7, 6, and 3. And while no confirmed pregnancy is ever a sure thing until a healthy baby is born, or in the case of twins until two healthy babies are born, on that day in November I began to imagine a world I had never dreamed of—a world as a mother of 6.