Monthly Archives: November 2007

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Hectic Day of Cuteness

We have had quite a busy day! The babies are 3 months old today. I know, I can’t believe it either! I took them to Olan Mills for their complementary portrait package for new babies born at our hospital. They wore the outfits from Thanksgiving… you know, Marissa’s adorable dress and Zach’s psychatrist outfit. Go back 2 posts to check them out. (Matt says Zach looks like a psychiatrist because the jeans say “approachable” and the sweater vest says “professional”). My brother pointed out that vests are always a form of protection. Bullet-proof vests protect you from getting shot, life-jackets protect you from drowning, and sweater vests protect you from pretty girls. I forget where he got that quote, but thank goodness Zach is protected from pretty girls! That is going to come in handy for his worry-prone mother!

Anyway, so we went and got some adorable pictures and the babies were angels. Tired, hungry, poopy-diapered, stinky little angels. I fully expected them to explode at any time, but they were amazing and sweet for all of it! My friend Erika has volunteered her time several times now to be my second set of hands whenever I manage to get out our front door, and she was SO helpful! The babies would tip over or roll (they are working on rolling side to side) and we’d have to run in and invade the shot to rescue them. Besides, for those looks-like-they-can-stand/sit/stay put shots that have a parent’s invisible hand hidden somewhere supporting the tushie, I can only hold up one baby at a time! Thank you, Erika!

Then we went to see our pediatrician. No, it wasn’t a well-baby 3 month visit. Instead, Marissa has been projectile vomiting a whole meal every other day for a week, then it started happening every day. Otherwise, she has been the picture of health and smiles. I called because they always say puking and urping are fine, as long as the baby is gaining weight and isn’t projectile vomiting. They wanted to see her, so we went straight there after the photos. She’s fine. We have warning signs to watch for and a couple ideas for helping her not do this anymore, but for now, she is gaining weight very well, peeing as often as we’d hope and actually is the picture of health. After her hernia surgery next week, I think things will calm down nicely!

I forget that not everyone knows that we breastfeed via breast pump around here and that it works really well for us. So our doctor asks if I’m breastfeeding, and I say yes I am, in bottles, with a bit of formula supplement in each bottle because I can’t keep up with the babies anymore. He seemed confused and wanted to know how I could know I wasn’t making enough milk because he thought they were taking it straight from me (it is a confusing issue… I feel like I make plenty of milk, but I can only feed 2 little growing peeps on my own for so long!) I said, “well, because I pump and put it in bottles.”

“Oh, why? Maybe if you breastfed them, you’d make more milk… but I’ve obviously never done it and hey, I’m glad you know what works for you.” I’m so glad he said it that way, but it makes me sigh because I will tell you that I can’t possibly produce more milk, even if I velcroed the babies to me and wore them around 24/7 working their baby magic on my maternal instincts, because I am making my maximum amount! I log it every day and keep track of what they eat and it’s all rather well-documented. So I explained and then left and ate ice cream because it helps me cope with hard questions. Matt jokingly asked if I need to consider quitting him again. No, no, I said. Then all my good work on improving my working relationship with his now very helpful nurse would be wasted! 🙂

Bottom line: Shawna is right. If you are the parents, then you make decisions that are best for your family and then you either explain that every time someone asks or stop explaining and just smile, but you STILL make the decisions that are best for your family. I’m happy to report that I no longer feel like apologizing for doing things differently! I’ve grown in accepting my best as good enough and it’s nice. I just have to look at these two healthy cuties to be affirmed these days.  I’m finding that having confidence doesn’t mean that I think I’m doing a perfect job, because I’m not and there are SO many things I would file away to try differently if given a next time!  But I have to do what I can and not do what I can’t and be okay with it!  Otherwise, life would not be full of little joys that come up unexpectedly… it would just be a crappy to do list of ways I’m failing.  I can’t really live like that.

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Guess what no longer lives with us?

We often joke that the babies hated their wires and knew how to get us to run because they would grip them in their tiny hands when upset as if to say, “I’m gonna blow!” Strap on a monitor and it acts like a bomb pack, striking fear into all around you. Once in awhile, they would yank on them and we would hear the high-pitched squealing of the monitors and run to cancel out the deafening noise. It was awful.

Rissa contemplates blowing up Zach about to blow

On the plus side, we LOVED knowing that the babies were breathing safely and had regular heartbeats, and we were glad to know when that status changed so that we could quickly intervene. As the babies have grown, however, we get lots of “lead errors” or monitor squeals because a stick-on lead has stuck to their clothing instead. Often, we could see and feel our children breathing while the monitor swore up and down that they were not currently breathing because the leads were too close together/too far apart/not sticky enough/abysmal.

With great thanksgiving then, we are happy to report that the following no longer live with us!

monitors

We’ve gone wireless, baby, and not a moment too soon! My personal goal was to be done by Thursday of this week (meaning I planned to disconnect either way), but we got the call yesterday afternoon that the last download looked fantastic and the babies are no longer in danger. Which is great, because ever since we downloaded the machines last Monday, we have barely been using them 🙂 We were SO ready to be done! This opens up so many possibilities for MOBILITY and I’m excited. Of course, all these baby sleep books I’m reading talk about how your kids lose their fabulous mobility at around age 3 months because consistent naps become so important. They said that the days of trekking around with sleeping newborns who don’t wake up at loud noises are mostly over. Well, we never enjoyed that stage as much as we would have liked, because we were always plugged into the wall during their supposedly ultra-mobile stage. It’s okay, though! I can barely haul them around on my own anyway, so I’m thinking we wouldn’t have seen that freedom whether we had the monitors or not!

Hilariously, we are still tiptoeing around their crib, avoiding stepping on the imaginary monitors and wiring that we are so used to!  That will wear off eventually.  Now we have room to build our second crib!

If the name Mark Donohue sounds familiar to you, it is probably because he is famous (well, in some circles anyway) for coining the term, “Mattsgiving.” He’s famous for many things… you’ll come across his work sooner or later.  Matt’s birthday didn’t fall on Thanksgiving Day this year, but since the babies got rid of their monitors the day before his birthday, we are calling it a Mattsgiving Day Miracle.  Happy Mattsgiving, everyone!

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Thanksgiving fun!

Here is a pictoral look at our Thanksgiving celebration.

Making faces at the grandparents, who as my mom pointed out, are “so easy to operate, even a child can do it.” And how!

Zach and Grampa Riss and Gramma

While Zach takes time to woo the ladies, Marissa jumps at the chance to play with his shark finger puppet with Daddy while he isn’t looking!

Zach wooing the ladies Marissa’s shark

Marissa reminds me SO much of Auntie Mari! She looks like Mari did at this age and has some similar personality characteristics. Hazel noticed that they even have similar names! Here they are together.

Mari and Marissa

Some Olson family portraits of the twins and the four of us. These adorable outfits were borrowed from babies in our covenant group, except for Rissa’s sweater which was knitted by a dear family friend. Please note that Marissa’s tights are anything but!

the twins the Olson 4

We enjoyed an amazing meal that everyone helped with and then some delicious desserts and Tim’s Wii system. Matt and I were sore for days, but it was so worth it to play together!

desserts the Wii

Some group pictures of all the family members who could come!

the adults with the babies

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My lengthy review of BabyWise

It would make sense for me to post pictures of Thanksgiving merriment and stories from our weekend. But I feel a bit topsy-turvy, so that will come later. Instead, I have some thoughts and I’d like to get them typed out before they disappear into the endless cycle of feedings and diapers and never resurface.

I’m going to be careful, because this post is a review of a book that inspires love and devotion in some crowds and book-burning hatred and censorship in others. I’m of course referring to BabyWise. <group shudder> I wasn’t going to read it because among the parenting philosophies/schools of thought, I already knew BabyWise’s perspective, and I presupposed that the authors were lunatics and thought, “there is no value in spending time reading crap.” You see how this book divides people? I haven’t even READ it yet and I’m all judgmental and snotty. The book was suggested to me by another twin mom and I was going to borrow it, but mysteriously, everyone I know who used to own a copy chucked it into their trashcan and had nothing to let me borrow. Thus, my suspicion that it was total crap gained momentum. Then I decided to read it so I could be sure I was right. Besides, I have to pump and I need something to do while I’m attached to a milking machine multiple times a day. So, you may be wondering, was I right?

Welllll…. that’s a loaded question. This lengthy post contains my thoughts (note to reader, these are my thoughts. I don’t claim to be right, and you don’t have to agree with me! I’d be happy to know what you think too). As a general review: BabyWise inspires extremism. You either assume they are crazy and you do whatever you darn well want to or you assume they are geniuses and you believe every word. These are both dangerous schools of thought. The book starts out with some genuinely useful principles for new parents: 1) Babies function best within the workings of a family, not as the center of the universe. 2) New parents could easily overlook their marriage with a new baby in the house, and that’s not cool because children need the stability of knowing that their parents love each other and value their relationship as a top priority. These principles are generally reasonable and a good reminder for new parents. But then the book offers advice on how best to make these principles a reality and the advice doesn’t have anything to do with the principles, and that’s where things get controversial.

BabyWise purports its program as a happy medium between the 2 extremes of parenting philosophies. Extreme #1 is reported as Attachment Theory, which they describe as follows: your baby is completely in charge. Parents have no ability to make decisions… that new baby rules the home. They must be held every single second they want to be held and fed every time they want to eat. It actually says more than once that this theory expects parents to feed their kids as often as every 20 minutes… you get the idea. Here is my question: does that actually even happen? Is there a baby who wants to eat every 20 minutes for 24 hours… what is that, like 72 meals per day? It sounds so ridiculous. Usually if babies need food more often than seems reasonable… there is a problem that should be addressed — they can’t keep their food down or there isn’t enough milk supply or something. Something fixable. It doesn’t just continue on indefinitely like the book leads you to believe. You should know that this is a completely distorted and extremist view of Attachment Theory, which I’ve found really just states that babies are trustworthy to know what they need and that especially when they are very young, if they seem upset, there is something upsetting them and it’s worth looking into instead of blowing off your child’s needs and assuming they are just being controlling and ruining your life.

I don’t remember if Extreme #2 was given a name, but it’s basically clock-ruled parenting and is presented by the BabyWise book as follows: schedule, schedule, schedule… RIGID schedule. If your kid ate at 8am and was put down for a nap, they can’t possibly need anything from you until 11am, so don’t touch them, talk to them, or help them AT ALL. The clock is in charge, and 11am is your next chance to meet their needs, so whatever you do, BE AVAILABLE at 11am! Not 11:01, not 10:59. Again, they present scheduling as far more extreme than it usually is.

Thus, BabyWise is the answer to every problem out there because these two extremes are bad. Well, compared to these two alternatives, anything would sound good! I admit it, I considered chucking the book after the first few chapters too because it sounded ridiculous to assume that you only have 3 choices, extreme #1, extreme #2, and BabyWise, the choice that claims to put the parent (not the baby or the clock) in the driver’s seat. What about moderation??? And who says that BabyWise hasn’t created their own 3rd extreme to be avoided, even though I’m not even sure yet what the BabyWise tenets are because they have frustrated me before I even get to that chapter? So I read further, mostly because I couldn’t chuck a library’s copy (a water-damaged, half-destroyed copy, meaning either it has been well-loved or well-hated) without having to pay for it.

So the BabyWise program is described as a happy medium where you use a schedule, but instead of being ruled by the clock, you assess your baby’s needs and take them into consideration. It sounds good until the major rub occurs: BabyWise claims that ALL babies should be sleeping through the night by such-and-such an age (defined as 7-8 hours of sleep) or you are parenting them badly. Wow, no wonder this book is so divisive! In my counseling basics class 2 semesters ago, we learned that counselors alienate clients when they use the word should because you are setting a standard and daring the client to consider defying you. And, if a person can’t do what they should, then they obviously suck, right? Talk about pressure on new parents! I get enough of that anyway. I almost chucked the book again. Here’s why: convenience parenting isn’t all that convenient. If I can take the easy way out in some area of parenting, I’ll pay for it later in another way! I think that the whole point of parenting is to consistently spend the time necessary to help your kids become who God has for them to be. That’s not easy and convenient, that’s hard and time-consuming! But worth it. Forcing my child to sleep all night before they are ready (by ignoring them when they cry) like BabyWise seems to suggest makes sleep the most important thing. I miss sleep… I love sleep… but there are higher priorities for me, like making sure that my kids’ needs are met!

If you ignore the whole “let your child sleep and ignore them if they cry during the night” fiasco, there actually was some decent information in the rest of the book. It had useful suggestions for how to organize my thoughts about what to expect out of the babies regarding meals. Our kids started at 8 meals a day, and are now hanging out at 7 meals a day. I knew the next step was 6, but which 6? Then which 5? Which ones get eliminated and how do you know when to do it? The information was so reasonable, I wondered if I was reading the same book! Then I reached the multiples chapter, which usually sucks in the other books I’ve read. Written in a completely different style than the rest of the book, this chapter offered grace! Ideas were presented as suggestions, not demands. The chapter accurately describe the ins and outs of a day with twins or triplets. Who are these people and what have they done with the BabyWise authors of the past 8 chapters? (I looked in the acknowledgments: they invited an author to write the Multiples chapter, a pediatrician who mothered triplets, twins, AND 4 singletons! NINE kids! No wonder she had so much grace to offer!)

Bottom line: BabyWise could be useful if you have enough confidence in yourself to know where they are full of crap (the research listed is only sometimes actual research and is sketchily presented… they only report studies that support what they have to say, so they only have a few studies to report from. It’s rather shady). I don’t recommend that brand new parents read it because it adds too much stress and hope in areas that your kids might not “perform” up to the designated standards. However, I recommend the multiples chapter to every new parent of multiples! I wish I’d known the info she gives before I had to learn it on my own! In general, BabyWise purports convenience parenting… make life as easy on the parents as possible. That sounds pretty good, but at what cost? Easy parenting doesn’t automatically improve my marriage and family life as they claim; hard work and effort improves my marriage and family life. There is no easy way to the worthwhile things in life.