Life with Twins: 7 Months
This might turn into a photo dump, but that’s okay too!
If you haven’t yet, feel free to read my twin birth story here. That prefaces a lot of this and will give you more of a backstory. To highlight, I was terrified of having twins. I have sibling twins, they were born when I was 5. My brother had a lot of lung issues and was in the NICU in Marquette for awhile (not sure how long). And when he did come home, he had breathing tanks and would cry until he purpled out, etc. It was a very hard experience for my mom and this is probably where a lot of my fear came from.
But, I settled into pregnancy and decided to hope for the best. And miraculously, that’s what happened! After the twins were born, we brought both of them home when they were 1 day old. For all you NICU moms, I know this is amazing- we were so grateful to be taking our babies home together.
After the twins were born, Matt took a whole month off of work. It was amazing. Matt works out of town and is gone for 9 days at a time, then home for 5 straight days. I couldn’t even imagine him being gone at all in that first month, so it worked out that he could take two trips off and be home with me. I think this made a HUGE difference for how our life as a family of 7 started out. Plus, the twins were happy and sleeping (yay!), so we did A LOT of beach days. Talk about dreamy. So we lounged in babies, had beach days, relaxed and enjoyed all the love from everyone until right after the 4th of July. It actually worked out perfectly too, because that week after the 4th, his company had some meetings up here, so he was working, just not on the road. It was the perfect transition week for me.
Life after Matt went back to work went amazingly well. I didn’t know what to expect, but it did. We took it slow and continued to enjoy the babies. We really really enjoyed the summer. I just soaked in the UP beauty and warmth. When things would get chaotic at home, I would pack the kids into the car and we’d drive. I just soaked in the beauty and enjoyed the quiet. Sometimes, we’d stop at a beach for a swim. One particular evening we stopped at Eagle Harbor, one of my favorite spots. We had the beach mostly to ourselves (the kids and I), so they swam and the babies relaxed. The babies were SO content, until we packed up the van. Then Gus just started bawling, as if to say, “MOM!!! I was enjoying the beach!!” LOL. Apparently he enjoyed it just as much as I did. The rest of the summer was spent doing much of the same. I went back to work super part time in August.
Since then, the babies have been growing, changing, and now sitting up and starting to act interested in crawling! Gus can be a spaz when he is hungry or tired and Hallie is usually as happy as can be. Sleep is weird. Sometimes they are up a lot, sometimes not. I just flow with it. I am not habitually exhausted so that is a huge win for me. Usually, one of the babies is in my bed in the morning. On average, I am up about 4 times per night. And when I am, the babies just eat and go back to sleep. We have it good. Of course twins are more work than one baby, but these two combined sleep better than Ethan did, so that’s nice.
I’ve come to realize that everyone has hard things in different seasons of life. Is this hard? Sometimes yes. It’s a lot of work, it’s tiring. I am thankful for Encompass to fill that part of me. I am thankful for all of the support I have. I am thankful that Matt is amazing husband and dad. He helps me so much. But they are the biggest blessings and makes us so happy! Now, for a photo dump:
