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Posts Tagged ‘dad’

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*exhale*
Things are going as well as can be expected.
The twins were born at 5lbs 12oz (Leah) and 5lbs 9oz (Mason) and are now at 5lbs 14oz each. Which means, yes they are growing, but also that we have to wake them up every 3 hours to feed them, mainly because they were 5 weeks premature and tan as hell (jaundice).
Three hours seems so long when you’re at work or driving, but when you’re twinning, it’s like 15 minutes. There’s no time to get a good poop in, a lengthy shower, a trip to the local watering hole  or even a quick nap.
But as the days slowly pass I am sooooo fucking thankful that we didn’t have twins on our first shot. I remember the “looking uphill” and “I’M SURROUNDED” feeling that I had when Dylan was born in 2008.
It was miserable not knowing how to have confidence in yourself as a parent, I remember leaving the room once when D was just a few days old and calling a friend’s wife and basically crying to her that I couldn’t change my own son’s diaper or feed him or burp him, anything! I was spooked. Nothing seemed natural, every movement I had with the baby meant a neck was flailing, or an arm was caught in a onesie, or he wouldn’t eat or burp for me… I was horrible at everything and good at nothing besides loving the damn thing.
After a few weeks of that helpless feeling I started to settle into my role as Dad, but friends and family all told me the same thing “It’ll get better” and it did. But just as I was getting a better feel for handling my little dude we discovered he had pyloric stenosis at 21 days old.
That fucked me up for a good month and a half. I was paranoid, edgy, quick to emotion, sad and completely out of sorts. Granted, none of what happened to D was at all related to anything I did or could have done, but I felt like I had somehow let my kid down. And I remember I was okay at the ER, okay in the xray, okay in the ultrasound of D’s stomach, okay while following Julie and D in the ambulance to another hospital but when they brought him back in with the IV in his arm and the bag of saline was almost as big as he was I completely lost it. I wailed like a little bitch. I hadn’t let my guard down at all that day because I felt I had to stay strong for my wife and kid.
But when I think back on it, only after I allowed myself to be vulnerable did I become a better parent. I knew I didn’t know all there is to know and at one point I was ashamed of not having prepared well enough or something dumb like that, but as soon as I accepted my stupidity, I started gaining ninja skills as a Dad without trying, they just magically came. It wasn’t instinctual or taught, it was acquired through divine somethingorother.
Now, armed with the truth that “I don’t know shit” about being a father to twins and that that is okay, I’m ready to be a ninja at it.