#91What I Learned After Parenting for 30 Years
Parenting Twins Part 1
I recently had the pleasure of celebrating the 30th birthday of my dear twins. As a seasoned veteran of personal experience, I believe that I now have the gravitas to offer just a few words about parenting. I now have thirty years of experience as a mother! I read an article while riding on the train home form the birthday celebration about how Millennials feel inadequate about parenting.
Duh
They are being fed a stream of carefully curated online fantasy.
Like many young mothers, I felt the expectations to nurse my premature twins. One of my best friends made it look so easy and convenient but then again, she only had one baby. I decided, even before delivery, that nursing was not for me. I decided not to listen to the academic pediatricians and those people passing judgement. I had two four-pound babies to feed every three hours and I had to figure out what was right for me. It took about an hour to feed, burb, change them both so when you do the math, I had a severe sleep shortage.
My medical training and my career in emergency medicine prepared me well for sleep disruption and functioning when tired. I placed the newborns as far away from our bedroom as possible. My husband got up with me for the first night-time feeding and we each fed one of the kids. I did the second feeding myself so that my husband could get some sleep before starting his own workday. Fortunately, at six months, my son started sleeping through the night and his sister, only woke up once a night for another year after that.
Storytime with the twins photo by Joan Naidorf
My first bit of advice: get as much help as you can. Fortunately, we had the resources to bring a nanny into our home very early. It takes a village to raise a child, as the adage says, and parents need family, friends, neighbors, babysitters, and whoever they can get. There is absolutely no shame in asking for help. The task can be overwhelming, even caring for one baby (that is a joke, people)
I was working part time when I gave birth to my twins and I made myself available to go back to work as an emergency department physician after eight weeks at home with the babies. I needed to get back to the world of grownups and help justify (in my mind) the hours that I employed my nanny. As opposed to many moms complaining so bitterly about leaving their babies when they go back to work, I found that my time away made me miss them and enjoy my time at home with them even more. Of course, I had the “luxury” of working part time so the actual time away was two or three ten-hour shifts per week. I routinely quipped that working at the chaotic emergency department was less demanding than caring for my twins.
Parenting twins has provided some valuable insight to me about the basic personalities and habits of our children. I hear and read some of my parent friends say that they believe their child behaves in a certain way because of the way they, as their mother or father, are. In other words, “She takes after me.” In my controlled experiment of raising this boy and girl essentially the same way, I can clearly see that I have nothing to do with their essence. These twin humans have become two entirely different humans with different personalities, opinions, and preferences. To add to my anecdotal experience, I have a third child who is completely different from the other two.
Clearly, I had little to do with the way those three think and act today. This thought alone allows me to have more peace around the difficult decisions that I had to make along the way. Parenting practices should not be the time for fantasies of perfectionism and lacerating self-criticism. You, as the parent, get to decide how you want to do it. By “it,” I mean: nursing or not, where to sleep, babysitting, going back to work and all those choices parents get judged on. By the way, should you even care what other people think? #50 Should You Care What Other People Think? — Dr. Joan Naidorf (squarespace.com)
or here: https://medium.com/@joannaidorf/should-you-care-what-other-people-think-bd6a2e242b6e
I like to believe that my husband and I provided the role modeling, nurturing, and resources to let each of the children grow into the sensitive and unique individuals that they have become. Many of their baby-sitters, relatives, teachers, friends, and baby-sitters provided endless love and support. I am so grateful to all the people in our village.
I have so much more parenting wisdom to share that in a few weeks, I will write a part two.
