Last month I posted Miles and Emmett’s daily schedule at 5 months old. Now that they’re 6 months based on due date and almost 7 months based on birth date, they are consolidating their sleep into two naps a day instead of three, and they’re getting more active. They’re also outgrowing some of the activities we did before — namely the bouncy chairs that have been my salvation. (I predict maybe 4 weeks until they literally don’t fit in them anymore. I’m afraid. Very afraid.) The weather is also insanely hot these days, which interferes with outside time. So, it’s time to change the schedule. Continue reading
How Parenthood Messes with Your Concept of Time
One of my favorite movie moments ever is Marisa Tomei on the porch of that cabin in the woods in My Cousin Vinny, when she informs Joe Pesci that her “biological clock is tick-tick-ticking.” (If you haven’t seen it, stop being a dork and watch the clip.) When Daddy-in-Training and I started trying to get pregnant 4 years ago, I could relate to that with every fiber of my being. Now, I’m lucky if I recognize ANY clock at all, much less an internal one.
In three days, my babies will be 7 months old. How did this happen? When I was pregnant, I asked every twin parent I came across for their best advice. Over and over, people told me, “The days are long, but the years go fast.” And although I believed them wholeheartedly, I was not prepared for the mindblowingness of how completely true that is. Every day they do something new, and I look at them in disbelief and think to myself, “How is this this possible? Weren’t you just in my belly?” It’s seriously distressing. Continue reading
Daily Schedule for 5-Month-Old Twins
As a continuation of my earlier post about teaching the boys to sleep, let’s talk about the daily schedule. And I don’t mean routine, in which things happen in the same order, but schedule, in which things happen in the same order at the same times throughout the day every day. I was extremely resistant to this idea until I had two realizations (and yes, I love numbered lists this week because they help my mommyfried brain remember what I was talking about):
- If I didn’t institute a schedule I might die of sleep deprivation and frustration.
- Closer examination revealed that the boys were already ON a schedule naturally and I had just been ignoring it because I was too exhausted and exasperated to pay attention to the right things. Continue reading
How I Learned to Sleep Again, and Taught My Babies, Too
Over the last 4 weeks or so, I’ve become increasingly desperate for three things:
- More sleep.
- A predictable daily schedule.
- Unrestricted access to coffee (see No. 1).
It only took about 5 months, but the exhaustion has reached a new level. As Princess Mommy put it on Facebook a few weeks ago, my sleep bank is so overdrawn it should be in collections. Sleep when the babies sleep? Ha! When do you sleep if the babies NEVER sleep? (See Bedtime and Other Lies if you’re feeling out of the loop.)
Thanks to support and guidance from some other twin parents in my life, I revisited Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child (which should be subtitled How to Stop Your Children from Ruining Your Life) and discovered that my babies actually both had it in them to be good sleepers if I could just learn to be a good sign-reader and introduce some consistency into their — and my — day.
I’m not going to go into all the details of the book because I’ll do a crap job and then you’ll say, “Well, I tried that and it didn’t work!” because I didn’t explain it right and you were too lazy to read it, you slacker. I mean, don’t take my word for it — borrow it from the library or hit up Amazon for your own copy.
But the long and short of it is that the author, Marc Weissbluth, MD, teaches you to recognize when your child is open to sleep and create a routine and schedule that supports his natural sleep windows. For us, it was like a freakin’ miracle drug, leading to Facebook status updates like these:
And now that they’re in bed at 6 every night, I feel like I have my life back. This is a partial list of things I have done around my house after my kiddos were in bed in the last three days alone:
- Washed all of the glass doors and the insides of all the windows I could reach.
- Mopped the floors for the first time in about a year (hey, I was on bedrest and dealing with two infants for the last 12 months — cut me some slack).
- Cleaned out the refrigerator.
- Wiped down my counters and appliances.
- Created a list of more than 100 meal ideas that I can bust out from my freezer or pantry with minimal impact to my grocery list or wallet. (That’s for another post!)
- Nearly finished my baby shower thank-you notes (I know, I know…)
- Drank a glass of wine with my feet up every night.
I now feel that I can ask someone to watch my children for a couple of hours while we go out to dinner and not get the sense that I’m throwing that poor fool to the wolves, ’cause guess what: THE BABIES WILL SLEEP THE WHOLE TIME WE’RE GONE. No more endless screaming. Just hours of quiet, cherubic snoozing. (Insert the sound of angels singing here.) And the time I spend with my little Monkey Man and Doodlebug is MUCH more enjoyable because we’re all so much better rested.
If I’d know it would be this easy, I would have done it months ago. I should have done it months ago, but I don’t think I was ready to accept that it was possible to teach my children how to do things on a regular timetable without using cruel baby training methods like making them cry it out in their cribs for hours every night. Newsflash: If you pay attention to what your kids are already telling you and give them what they need when they need it, there is no crying. Who knew?
Flathead
It may be adorable, but Miles' flat head could lead to long-term problems so we think it's worth checking out with a specialist.
My baby has a flat head. It’s okay — you don’t have to assure me that he’s beautiful. He is beautiful, but also, his head is flat. Both of them are pretty flat-headed, really, but Miles’ head is particularly worrisome and has been increasingly so for months.
I asked the pediatrician about it at their 2- and 3-month visits, and she assured me that most babies’ heads round out on their own and it’s nothing to fret about. Now, I know that that is true, but I did then and continue to think now that this wisdom applies mostly to babies with a small flat spot, not babies who look like they were strapped to a board.
Dude is a tummy time champ, yet his head is getting flatter and flatter. And now that they’re approaching the 6-month mark, positional adjustments to take the pressure off his skull bones aren’t really going to make that much of a difference because stuff is hardening and fusing and doing things that normal bones are supposed to do.
Lucky for me, one of my mommy Facebook friends has a son diagnosed with brachycephaly and was kind enough to share about their experience online — and then to answer my bazillion questions when her description and photos really resonated with me. Here are things I learned about brachycephaly through research after I spoke to her:
- It’s really common in multiples because they’re all smushed together in the womb and often are pressed against each other or mommy’s pelvis, so they’re kind of misshapen to begin with. (These are paraphrases of course!)
- Most pediatricians don’t really know much about brachycephaly and chalk it up to something babies grow out of, which means that for some babies it works out fine but for other babies their heads just stay flat because there’s no intervention.
- Research shows that “when the facial bones and structures that support the eyes, ears, and jaw are out of alignment due to cranial deformation, conditions like jaw and teeth development issues leading to temporomandibular joint disorder (TMJ) can occur, vision issues, and inner ear balance issues in severe cases.” (source)
- Insurance seldom covers treatment for brachycephaly because it’s considered by most to be a cosmetic issue rather than a medical issue. (This seems to be a pattern with us — first tongue ties, now brachycephaly!)
The boys see the pediatrician again next month, at which time we are going to forcefully ask for a reassessment and referral to a craniofacial specialist. Treatment ranges from pressure bands on the head to formed helmets to surgery. Based on what I’m reading online, I’m guessing a helmet is in Miles’ future — and maybe Emmett’s too.
Just think: In a few weeks’ time, my little flathead could be my little helmethead instead. I’m okay with that if it means he will avoid a lifetime of potential problems. At least we’re catching it early-ish, before it’s too late to fix it.