20 Tiny Fingers: Three Months In..

Through the haze of sleep deprivation which has hung over the Lancaster household for quite some time I realised that the sproglets are 12 weeks old today, officially 8 more days and they will be 3 months old. Of course if I believed everything I read on the interwebs then they 'should' only be 7 weeks old. Apparently, because a) they are twins and b) they were 5 weeks premature we shouldnt be going by their actual age but by their adjusted age instead, which to us is absolutely ridiculous. They shouldnt be trying to roll over, or holding their heads up all the time, or grabbing their toys (or my hair) but they are. Are we going to tell them they shouldnt be doing what they are doing for another 5 weeks?? Of course not. Not that they would understand us anyway!

So what has been going in here in the last 12 weeks? Lots of tears and tantrums, but at least the babies have (mostly) behaved themselves. (and just as I typed that the synchronised screaming began..again). Most of the time the days pass in a blur of 'ooh its light' and 'oooh its dark again' so its quite hard to assign certain milestones to certain times, not that we've had any major milestones just yet, unless you count breaking through the 10lb barrier which both babies have now achieved. They are both piling on the pounds quite nicely, at 10 weeks old Edward was 12lb 4oz and Harriet was 10lb 2oz. I can confidently say they are both growing well! We had a few issues in the first 8 weeks with their formula, both babies were rather windy to the extent we considered setting up our own personal wind farm. Harriet was also diagnosed with reflux so was on infant gaviscon to help stop her projectile vomiting everywhere (mostly over the cot just after we had changed the sheets). We decided to change their milk from Aptamil to SMA, first milk for Edward and Staydown milk for Harriet, and suddenly the wind farm idea is a non starter. I think Edward definitely takes after Daddy and would be happy eating whatever is placed before him as his windiness is the only difference we have noticed but the biggest change is with Harriet; she was rather grouchy on the aptamil milk and we really had to work to get any smiles but within a few days of being on the new milk she was more settled, much more laid back, happier generally but most rewardingly is now extremely smiley!

Their first jabs at 8wks passed without incident, much to the annoyance of the other mums in the baby clinic waiting room when we came out with 2 peacefully sleeping babies and they were all trying to soothe squalling singletons. I somehow doubt we will have the same success in 4 days time when they have their 2nd set of jabs.

Every trip into town is an adventure, sometimes its fun (when nobody bats an eyelid at the babies) but most of the time we have to field remarkably stupid questions with very obvious answers from remarkably stupid members of the population. Ooooh are they twins? No I was just able to have 2 babies within 2 minutes of each other, a medical first you know. How do you cope with 2? How do you cope with 1? You just get on with it. Its also amazing how people cant tell the difference between them; what are their names? Edward and Harriet. Oh thats nice, 2 little boys. ?!?!?!?!? Yes because I really would name a boy 'Harriet' and dress 'him' in a peach denim dress with spotty tights. Or the other day when we were out, 'are they boy and a girl?' I thought that was obvious: Edward was wearing grey dungerees with Humphrey the elephant on and Harriet was in a blue dress with bright red tights... AAARRRGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!! Also, for some bizarre reason, people seem to think that knowing how they were born is their business... What is that all about??

Anyway, the mini beasts have awoken from their slumber and in their own very subtle and delicate ways are letting me know that sometime within the next few nanoseconds they would like their bottles attaching to their mouths.. Such charming little creatures.