The Curse of the Nurse

I’m sure you didn’t really think I was managing my six kids without a baby nurse. I mean come on--I’m human. And I live in the city where for almost every new mother a baby nurse is a duh. Although, when I first found out I was pregnant I decided I wouldn’t need a nurse this time around. I figured I have a good babysitter who would surely be able to help me with the baby and my other four girls are in school all day. Piece of cake.

But that was when I thought I was having one baby. With the news that two were on the way, the circumstances changed. “You must get a baby nurse,” everyone said to me in panic. You see I had to be convinced because I never really was a baby nurse person. I’m a little bit of a control freak, especially with training a baby to sleep, and since as I told you before I was always a breastfeeder, determined to nurse through the night and not skip any feeds, there really was never a compelling reason to have a nurse for very long. If you don’t use them at night, what’s the point? 

I also had never really had much luck with baby nurses. For Gabby, I had a nurse who was very sweet, weighed over 300 pounds, and had a bad hip that rendered her borderline immobile. She went back to sleep in the morning till about noon, snoring like a rhino on the living room couch (we had a one bedroom then), and liked to eat dinner with me and Rob every night. Still, she introduced me to the Johnson and Johnson lavender scented bedtime bath, my favorite baby smell in the world, and for that I’ll always be thankful. After eight days I told her I thought I was ok on my own, and we parted quite amicably. She even took the recipe for my mother’s cholent as well as the Kosher Palette cookbook, whose dishes she had loved so much during her time with us.

My next baby nurse never showed and sent another 300 pound, gold-toothed replacement instead. My third baby nurse I caught smoking in the bathroom. And my fourth baby nurse, I really liked but had a job two weeks after me, and so there was no opportunity to extend her stay.

Still, I knew twins were a different story, and anyone I knew who had twins had used a baby nurse, often for very long periods of time and so I decided I should not try to be a hero.  I found someone who said she “loved doing twins,” told me she’s “very easy,” “happy to eat anything” I have in the house, and I booked her for three months.

What an interesting three months it has been. And by interesting I mean maddening. Nearly every day I cried to my husband about something she was doing or not doing. She made no attempt to get the babies on any schedule. Any time they woke up, she immediately rocked them back to sleep, shouting at them to “shush, shush shush.” And when they were sleeping she woke them to eat. (My twins were not preemies who needed to be wakened.) She’d lower the shades to begin their “night” at 5:30 pm. From her very first night in the house, she insisted both babies needed a “top off”—and remember I was the dairy queen. Nearly every night that I walked into her room—their room—one or both babies was sleeping on a boppy pillow on her bed, while even in the darkness I could see the words printed in bold letters “No Para Dormir” (not for sleeping). Most nights when she brought one or more into my room to breastfeed, I was handed a baby with wet clothes. “I think he’s wet,” I told her. “It’s just sweat,” she told me. Sweat? That’s a first, a newborn sweating in my 67-degree air-conditioned house. When I asked her when she would expect my babies to start sleeping through the night—my other kids slept 12 hour-nights by two or three months--she responded with a philosophical question, “does anyone really sleep through the night? Even adults get up to get some water or go to the bathroom.”

And as for being easy? Yes I suppose she was, so long as we loaned her our ipad, made sure she had full selection of cable channels on her TV, gave her small advances of pay, and didn’t ask her to go for any walks. (Though from the Caribbean, she did not like the sun.). And as for eating anything? Yes, I suppose she did that too—so long as it was freshly sliced nova, baked salmon salad, baby lamp chops, or the sunny-side up eggs she’d ask me to make for her every morning.

I knew pretty quickly I was in big trouble and I made a bunch of calls to other nurses, who either wanted more money per day than Lebron, or they weren’t available, or they needed every Sunday off, or they asked me to describe the room they’d be sleeping in, and so I never made the switch. And unfortunately, as much as I wanted to send her on her way and do it on my own, with twins I knew I couldn’t be down a man. I needed her so I could leave my babies freely during the day and help my older girls get back to school. I needed her so I could pull off meals and synagogue attendance over the Jewish holidays.  I needed her so I could try and get a five or six hour stretch each night to make it through the next day.

In the end, with two weeks left in her term, right before a long Jewish holiday weekend where I was having a lot of company, she left for her day off, saying she felt a little “sick” and never returned. Like a boyfriend I knew I should have broken up with first, I felt stung, but the truth is, my babies have never seemed better. Over the past week, one twin is sleeping the 12 hour night a baby should, and my other one is getting close. They are cleaner, they take naps, in cribs, they have not slept on pillows, and the whole tempo in my house is actually a lot calmer.  I am surely more tired, but at least I feel my babies are being well cared for.

What a weird thing the whole baby nurse phenomenon is.  The majority are not nurses. They have no nursing degree, they are just willing to give up a lot of sleep so we don’t have to. And the strangest part is that those of us lucky enough to afford a baby nurse are normally so critical and micromanaging of every other aspect of our children’s lives—we search for the perfect babysitters, the perfect doctors, the perfect speech, physical and occupational therapists, the perfect teachers, tutors, what have you, and yet along comes some woman wearing scrubs with teddy bears on them, and we hand over our newborn child to them, at his or her most vulnerable, precious and important time. 

The whole three months I felt like a character in “The Help,” leaving my little ones out of earshot, down the hall in someone else’s quarters, only in my real-life scenario that someone has no nursing degree, or knowledge of babies for that matter. She didn’t even know the words to classic lullabyes. From down the hall I’d hear her singing “the itsy bitsy spider climbing up the wall.” And as for simple tasks like preparing a formula bottle, she believed that the instructions printed on the back of the powder box to “add 1 unpacked scoop to each 2 fl oz of water was actually mistaken, and that you have to put less water in since the liquid rises once the powder is added. Hmm. Go figure, the makers of Similac and Enfamil have a lot to learn.

But it’s over. The babies are all mine, and I’m crying a lot less. When the twins are older I’ll enjoy telling them funny stories about the “nurse” who took care of them for nearly three months, and with whom they watched nearly every moment of the 2012 Summer Olympics and the US Open on HD TV. But in the more immediate future, I’ll make sure they know that the itsy bitsy spider actually went up the water spout. 

The Booby Trap

To nurse or not to nurse? That is the question we mothers are faced with each time we have a baby, and a dilemma I am struggling with right now.

As you might imagine nursing twins is a totally different experience from nursing one baby. As my pregnancy drew to a close, I gathered advice from other mothers of twins who had breastfed, and they all said the same thing. If you want to nurse twins, you need to nurse them together, at the same time.

Ok, I said to myself overconfidently, that sounds straightforward enough—two breasts, two hands, two babies. Easy.

You see I was a very cocky nurser. “The Dairy Queen” my mother-in-law used to call me with my other babies. With my firstborn Gabby I had initially been very skeptical about the idea of breastfeeding, squeamish about the idea of a baby sucking on my breasts and self–conscious to reveal any part of my body. I’m not one of those women who parades around topless in an all-women spa changing room. I’m the one who does all the tricks so no one sees anything. But from the moment Gabby was handed to me on the hospital gurney she latched on perfectly, and I was able to maneuver it all very modestly. In fact, that first night in the hospital, about 10 of Rob’s childhood and college friends came to visit us (they did not have kids yet) and asked if it was ok to come in while I was nursing. “Of course,” Rob said effusively, beckoning them all to sit down on the hospital bed with me. “Come right in.” (We all know how in-tuned husbands are with our post-partum state.) And from that moment on I knew I could be a very discreet breastfeeder. I could do it anywhere, in front of anyone, without showing anything, and thank God I had a good milk supply. I breastfed Gabby for 6 months.

Ditto for my daughter Caroline—only difference was I nursed her 8 months. Vanity had been the deciding factor. While with Gabby I had retained about 25 pounds of baby weight while nursing, with Caroline, something started happening around month 6 that we women only dream of—the nursing started sucking every ounce of fat off my body. I could eat as much as I wanted, whatever I wanted, and I couldn’t stop losing weight. God bless Caroline’s suction.

Sophie, I would have held onto similarly until the same weight vanishing phenomenon took place but unfortunately she was discovered to have a severe milk and egg allergy, and I was advised to eliminate those foods completely from my diet. I decided instead, to stop nursing, and eliminate all foods from my diet so I could look like myself again.

And with Lily I held on for about five months when the demands on my time from my older three girls became too hard to juggle with a nursing schedule.

Ha! I say now, to think that was tough to juggle.  What was that arrogant nonsense I said going into it--Two hands, two breasts, two babies? Yeah right. Next time you’re nursing a baby, imagine trying to take one hand, only one hand, and pick up another baby and get him or her to latch on as well? It’s hard. I bought this enormous pillow called My Brest Friend Twins Plus Deluxe Nursing Pillow, which made it a little easier.

Yes it looks like a brown flying saucer descending on planet Earth. And remember that part about my being a discreet nurser? Well that doesn’t work when you’re “doublefisting” as I like to call it. To nurse two babies together I can’t simply lift up one side of my shirt. No, my whole shirt needs to be raised, making the nursing experience with twins essentially a time to get undressed.

I gave My Brest Friend a shot for about six weeks, during which time my twin daughter refused to ever latch on to me. So it went something like this: I’d position them both on the pillow, nurse him, while struggling with her while she flailed her arms, wailed, and often elbowed him, then I’d finish nursing and go pump for her. She liked it bottled not on tap. Oh and then I’d have to supplement him because he was always still starving. Sounds fun right?

Those days are behind me. Now I am just a fulltime pumper. I figured once I was pumping and didn’t have enough for both babies anyway why not pump out as much as I could and let the wonders of Similac take care of the rest? And so this is where I am right now, dethroned as the Dairy Queen, forced for the first time in my life to “supplement,” but still a persistent pumper, and every day I weigh the reasons to stop versus the reasons to continue.

The reasons to stop are kind of obvious. But here are my top 10:

1) I have four other kids who need my time and attention.

2) So I can drink heavily, not just alcohol but caffeine too. OK mostly alcohol.

3) So I can take Xanax when I feel like I’m going to lose it.

4) So I can take Klonipin too—I figure I could probably benefit from alternating the two during the day regularly, kind of the way Children’s Tylenol and Motrin are recommended together for a really bad fever.

5) So I can lessen my appetite (read: diet. Actually read: starve), eating whatever I want — even cauliflower, broccoli, artichokes, too much dairy—or as little as I want.

6) So I can finally stop drinking this poisonous Yogi Nursing Mother’s Tea used to promote lactation.

7) So I don’t have to sleep in a bra.

8) So I don’t have to worry that any crying baby I see at school pickup will start to make my breasts leak.

9) So I can free myself of any hormonal residue remaining from the pregnancy

10) So my body does not need to spend the little energy it has producing milk

Reasons to continue:

1) Guilt

My breastmilk is the only thing right now I feel I can offer these babies. I rarely even give them the bottles of expressed milk, I hand them over to a babysitter for that, so I can help my others with homework or take them to an afterschool activity. Those nice nights I recall of nursing my four singleton babies before they would go to sleep, when they’d fall asleep peacefully at the breast, or better yet stop sucking momentarily to look up at me and smile, unfortunately none of that exists. It is the pump I spend the quiet time with, not the babies.

“Something’s Gotta Give.” This is what everyone says to me right now, encouraging me to stop. Ten to one doesn’t sound like much of a decision, but guilt can go a long way for a mother.

Circle of Life

If the title of a post happens to be the title of an Elton John song, you know the contents ahead might be a little heavy so any of you who’d rather not read on, I totally understand. I just can’t help myself this time of year—these High Holidays get to me.

Anyway, this is the time of year when Jews around the world think about life and death. On Monday and Tuesday, we will gather together in synagogues and read the dramatic words we’ve read for centuries—“On Rosh Hashana it is inscribed and on Yom Kippur it is sealed who will live and who will die, how many will pass away and how many will be created.”

I remember reading that passage last year and wondering if I would be blessed with another child in the year ahead, if a new life would in fact be created inside me. I did not ever wonder how many would actually be created inside me--multiples weren’t on my radar screen back then.  I just thought about the possibility of a new baby.

And in my own family, thoughts and questions about life and death seem especially prevalent right now. The last time I had a new baby was over four years ago, my oldest was just 6. But now with a 10 year old around and very curious 7 and 8 year olds as well, the birth of my twins has seemed to spark a whole series of life and death questions.

It began during my pregnancy, when my 8-year-old Caroline turned to me one night and asked, “how are we related to daddy?”

“What do you mean? I asked her.

“I mean, how are we related to him if we only come out of you?” She was looking at my very large stomach.

I hadn’t read one of those parenting books, which tells you how to explain this stuff to a child and so I was left to wing it on my own.

“Well a baby is made from a part of a daddy and a part of a mommy,” I said, “and then God helps the mommy and daddy make it into a baby.” Luckily I had religion to throw in there.

“But how do you tell God if you don’t want a baby,” my seven-year-old Sophie asked. Remember, on the night we told her we were having twins she screamed she didn’t want any more kids in our family, so you can see where her head was.

“There are ways to let Him know,” I said vaguely.

I have children who’ve unfortunately been exposed to plenty of inappropriate TV and so as you might imagine the questions didn’t end there.

“Well how do the parts of the mom and dad come together? And what do a mommy and daddy do to show God they want a baby” and so forth.

“They love each other a lot,” I said.

“And do they kiss and stuff?” Sophie asked with a huge smile. That’s also where her head is.

“Yes,” I said.

“Well, you must have kissed daddy really hard to make two babies,” she said. And with that, the conversation erupted into laughter, and “ooh laa laaas” from my girls.

My twins are two months old now. The girls don’t really ask anymore how they were made, although my 4-year-old Lily recently suggested I take my twin daughter Eliana “back where she came from” and switch her for another boy so Barry has a brother.

But interestingly my oldest has been preoccupied the past few weeks with death. Where do we all go when we die? What happens to us when we die? How can we be gone forever? “How can I never see you again?” she asks me.  All those questions that I remember so clearly being frightened of myself as a child, and if I stop and think about them today leave me every bit as frightened--if not more. I don’t have any answers for her. (Especially at 12 am in between the 11pm and 3 am feeds of my babies.) I can tell her she is young and I am young, but I can’t tell her I will never die, or that she will never die, and so she is left to swallow the uncertainty.

For some reason, this pregnancy and the birth of a 5^th and 6^th child has made me more conscious of my mortality than ever before. Rob and I joke that with so many kids, we’ve each made each other completely un-remarriageable. It’s a bad joke, and a nervous joke, because on some level I do think about what would happen if something happens to one of us, and the number of children who are now dependent on us. I am more conscious about how many children’s lives I am now responsible for, connected to and sustained by. I’m a Jewish mother after all and six is a lot of children to worry about.

This is how life works. The miracle of life is also a reminder that our lives are finite. And as I watch how quickly these babies are growing, and how quickly my older girls are growing and maturing, I know that my life and theirs is moving way too fast.

So Long Summer

When I realized I was having twins at the beginning of the summer, I thought to myself, this is the perfect time for children 5 and 6 to arrive, if such a thing can have a perfect time. There is no homework, no afterschool activities, no 8:00 am start of the school day. Nowhere I really needed to be, nowhere my kids needed to be. No real schedule, no real stress.

But as the summer has come to a close, and we have finally gone “back to school,” I can’t tell you how relieved I am summer is over. These past two weeks between camp and school were tough.

My kids sat around in their pajamas till 10 or 11 am, watching some show called “Dance Moms,” with packets of “summer homework” on their laps, staring at the TV while spacily brushing up on math, grammar, and reading skills. “I’m never gonna finish,” they cried out occasionally during a commercial. “Just do your best,” I called back, while really thinking, just be quiet and leave me alone and don’t you know that only losers actually do summer homework.

I then yelled at them to get dressed, and said things like “you can’t lie around in your pajamas all day,” or “it’s time to get moving” when really there was nowhere to move to. Each day I tried to come up with some activity for the afternoon, which somehow always involved eating something unhealthy. A long bike ride for pizza or ice cream. Tennis followed by pizza and French fries. Back to school shopping and grabbing lunch—again, pizza and ice cream. Going to the beach and the snack bar, for you guessed it, ice cream, or when I wanted to be strict, frozen yogurt.

And at some point every day there was usually a playdate. Some friends insisted on taking one of mine to their house—feeling sorry for me with my double load of babies—and to those friends I am very thankful. But others sent their kids to my house, and in some cases committed what I call “playdate rape.” It is a forceful, unsolicited dish-off of a child unto another child. And unfortunately, these playdates can sometimes go around the clock. There are no pickup times, because it’s summer, and no one has anywhere to go or anything to do.

In my community the playdate rape takes place most frequently on Saturdays, where everyone sees each other at synagogue and scrambles around to try to send their kids out. Some parents strategically send their children to shul with a bag of clothes, some casual Saturday afternoon attire—a bag that says, “hey, I’m ready to come over to your house.” I call this child a playdate slut. Sometimes their bag is actually an overnight bag, in the hopes they get really lucky and get to spend the night.

Playdate or no playdate, though, the end of each day was the real killer these past few weeks, because there was no end of the day. There was no bedtime, at least none that I was able to properly enforce. There was no compelling reason to insist my kids go to bed, and so I barely even tried. This meant there was no quiet time in my house where only my husband and I were up, where it actually felt relaxing to be home. Instead, we did things like family nighttime basketball, family movie night, family dance contests, you name it, and by the time these evening activities were over, my kids were tired and falling apart and the cycle began again the next day.

But it’s over. They are back to school, and that means back to routine, back to a schedule. Set bedtimes, less TV, more reading, learning, afterschool activities, healthier meals. It all comes together this time of year, as our children’s structured, and, yes, hectic lives begin anew. There is no question, I am going to have a tough couple of weeks now juggling two infants with the demands on my time from my older four, but I am excited for the re-introduction of routine.

I am trying to get my twins on a schedule right now, trying to get them eating four times a day, four hours apart, and getting them to do longer stretches at night. (And, since I have twins, I have the added challenge of making sure they do the same four feeds, and the same long stretches as each other—how do people do this?????) We all know it is not easy imposing a daily schedule on two or three month old babies—we get crying and resistance, not to mention very little sleep for a while. But I know from four previous times that this is what babies need, and that children, like adults, need structure and routine in their lives to thrive and grow.