Last night culminated in my hanging over the sink (I couldn’t stand upright anymore), frantically trying to cool off two bottles that were so hot my fingerprints were melting off just from holding them. I was sobbing. The babies were going fucking mental.
Five minutes before my physical and mental collapse, I had called Compadre. You know, just so another human being would know that somewhere north of the city, a woman had two screaming babies and no bottles. He got to hear what happens when I do the ‘muslin dance’, on a good day. (This is waving a muslin back and forth over my head while using a bright, chirpy voice to spout out nonsense like, ‘Mama’s dancing, yes she is. Look at Mama dance! She’s a sexy Mama, crazy Mama, dancing Mama’ etc etc. The babies like it – or at least are fascinated enough to stop crying.)
When I got off the phone with him, I peeked out of the kitchen at the babies. Once they see my face, the harbringer of hope and milk, and I dare to go out of their sight, the screaming is unbelieveable. (I should qualify all of this by saying that yesterday in general was rather nightmarish, and I believe this is because they have started teething. Also, I am lucky. The only time my kids generally cry is when they are hungry, and sometimes not even then. They are such laid back babies that when a total screamfest like last night happens, I can’t bear it. It breaks my heart. The kicker is that they’re going through a growth spurt and need to eat under every three hours and ARE ALWAYS HUNGRY.)
So…I called TMD. Just to get some empathy. Just so I could cry for thirty seconds.
Instead, pure poison spewed out of my mouth. Along the lines of, ‘Working this late is unacceptable and inappropriate and if you think you are EVER doing it again you are fucking crazy!’ I believe I said worse things, things I am ashamed to write here.
She came home.
Between the time of that phone call and her arrival, I learned that if babies scream and lose control for long enough, they will fall asleep. This is a horrid thing and I wish I did not know it.
The thing is, I hurt so bad. I woke up this morning and my pelvis – front, back, and sides – feels worse than it did on the day I was released from hospital after having Coconut and Snort. I cannot lift my feet up. So I am shuffling along, dragging my right leg, leaning heavily on pieces of furniture, door frames, etc. The pain is electric, burning, intense.
I am hooked up to a TENS machine and about to go gulp down six years worth of pain medication.
It hurts. So badly.
My front is like I’ve fallen off a high building, shattered my bones, and then someone in steel toe boots comes along and keeps repeatedly kicking me in the broken bones. My hip is a needling, bright, hot pain. My back back pelvis joint is the creepiest. All loose, all torn, and all ready to make me actually collapse at its whim. There is no predicting when the electric pain will shoot from this joint, when it will make my right leg crumple. I have tumbled to the floor several times. I am terrified this will happen while holding a baby.
So another day on the couch, my lovely babies in their bouncer chairs. No real tummy time or floor time, because it’s not just lifting them that’s the problem, it’s lifting myself.
I read in a blog of a woman expecting twins that if twins were a blessing to her, it was a curse for them. I was captivated by that sentence. Part of me believes it. Part of me doesn’t. But it’s like, they normally are getting, I suppose, half the attention a singleton might get. I feel I am providing a really good level of interaction with them, though, so I don’t often feel too guilty. But today I do.
They are supposed to have a life of chances, of possibility. Instead – for today, at least – they’ve got a Mama who is in so much pain she almost can’t bear it.