Twins Blog: The First 48 Hours
November 24, 2010, By Josh Katzowitz 0 comments
We had just arrived home from the hospital for the final time. My twins, 47 days after they had been born 2½ months premature, finally had been released from the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. The wife and I had spent the last five days putting together the bassinets, installing the car seats and nailing the changing table to my dresser.
We were ready. The cell phone in my pocket buzzed. A buddy of mine, whose newly-born daughter had just joined their family of five, had sent me a text.
“Hey Chief,” he wrote, “those kids are going to eat your lunch, aren’t they?”
I laughed. 30 hours later, I finally felt like a real father, because my twins had, in fact, eaten my lunch. And then they had kicked my ass.
Since they had been born, I hadn’t thought about parenthood in terms of singletons and twins. I didn’t know what it was like to raise one child, and therefore, raising twins didn’t seem like such a big deal. And for the first 30 hours they were home from the N.I.C.U., it wasn’t. Yes, the every-three-hour feedings were longer because there were twice as many people to serve.
But it didn’t overtly seem like it was more work, because I had no basis for comparison.
Here’s what I hadn’t counted on, though: singleton parents don’t have to worry about double disasters. Parents of twins certainly know about what I speak.
This is what happened to us.
After we took her home from the N.I.C.U., my baby girl felt the strain of constipation, and every time we changed her diaper, her distended belly grew rounder and rounder. She, heartbreakingly, spent most of her time grunting and in pain. Already, we had given her pear juice and Karo syrup, but thus far, nothing. About 11 that night, she emitted a sound we’d never heard before – a high-pitched scream that was goosebump-raising to a pair of new parents.
I rushed to a 24-hour pharmacy to obtain a product that would help give her relief. I found a box that said it was intended for children aged 2-5 years old. I asked the pharmacist, who seemed aggressively disinterested in answering any of my questions, if it would be OK to give it to an infant.
Him: “How old is the baby?”
Me: “About six weeks.”
Him: “Hmm, I don't know. I guess so.”
Me: “Because you don't have anything for infants that I could find.”
Him: “Just don’t stick it in too far.”
Me: “Just for clarification, you are a pharmacist, right?”
I returned home, and let’s just say, it got the job done. I’ll spare you the details – both for your sake and for my kid’s if they happen to come across this story years from now – but I’ll say this.
My bedroom suddenly had transformed into the set of a silent movie from the 1920's. There were three adults in my room, all bumping into each other while the babies tore up the place with their bodily fluids. I swear that Charlie Chaplin was helping me change my daughter’s diaper before somehow slipping on a banana peel. Buster Keaton, meanwhile, was burping my son before crashing through the side of a barn and Fatty Arbuckle, wearing a suit that was too short on his … well … fatty body, stood in the corner of the room and ate an ice cream cone.
Finally, we got everything settled, and I fed my daughter. She immediately began to choke.
Funny, I thought to myself, this never happened the 6 ½ weeks they were in the N.I.C.U., and perhaps that’s why I didn’t truly feel like a parent until I brought the twins home. You bring home the joy of seeing them smile, but you also have to take in the horror of listening to them scream in pain.
A few days earlier, I had breakfast with my buddy, Bryon. “The first night my daughter was home,” he said, “I thought to myself, ‘There’s no way I’m going to survive.’”
So far, I haven’t exactly felt that way.
But at least I finally feel like a parent. A parent that doesn’t have to drive to the hospital to see their precious gifts for just a few hours at a time. A parent that’s also completely exhausted.
“I’m so tired,” my wife said to me one day before we drifted into a short, unsatisfying sleep with dreams of blue lips and steaming diapers waltzing around our minds.
“It’s only been two days of them being here,” I replied, totally depleted.
“I know,” she said. “It will get better.”
I hope so.
Like my buddy Byron, at this point, I’m just hoping to survive.
Josh Katzowitz lives in Atlanta and covers the NFL for CBSSports.com. He is a featured contributor to ManoftheHouse.com and author of the book, Bearcats Rising. He's currently working on a book about pro football that is scheduled to be released in 2012.
