There is an old saying that goes something along the lines of “the squeaky wheel gets the oil”. People use this saying in reference to children a lot. In our family, Dean and I have two particularly squeaky wheels. Princess, our oldest, and Tank, the youngest by a minute, are both squeaky wheels. Don’t get me wrong, Tinker Belle can out squeak the others on occasion, but in general she is easy to please. The problem is, onlookers see our family working as a unit and sometimes feel that Tinker Belle is on the outer perimeter and not getting as much attention as the other two. This bothers me, because it matters to me that others see me as a fair mother, and it particularly bothers me when people are referencing just the twins.
I can’t stand to see a family unit in which there is a “favorite”. I’m always one to root for the underdog, and it makes me sad to think of the one child who can be left out. Therefore, I spend a great deal of my day trying to divide myself equally as much as possible. This of course, is impossible to do exactly, but I truly strive to give all of my babies the same amount of smiles and praise. However, I DO NOT believe in taking a child who is independent in nature and making her a dependent child. I know this is possible because in some ways I subconsciously did it to Princess. I know for a fact that I never let her walk herself into a store or restaurant from the car until I was so far along in my pregnancy with the twins that I couldn’t. This meant she was three before that happened. It wasn’t something I consciously did; rather, it was just easier for me to control the situation if I was carrying her. In fact, I tended to carry her around the house for the same reason. Therefore, I made her dependent on me in that way when she probably would not have chosen to be if given the option. I refuse to do this to the twins.
When we came home with the twins, it was all about survival. We decided to co-sleep with Princess when she was a baby in order to actually get some sleep. She has never been a great sleeper, and that was just something we did for our sanity. When I was pregnant with the twins, we moved Princess into her own room and Dean took the job of lying down with her for a while at night. It seemed cruel to just cut her off of any type of co-sleeping when we were the ones who started it to begin with. With the twins, we tried a variety of things to see what worked out. While I firmly believe that we as parents mold the personalities of our children to some degree, the twins have taught me a lot about natural tendency as well. For example, Tinker Belle prefers to sleep in the mini crib that is in our room, while Tank wants to be in bed with us. Right now, Tinker is in a bouncy chair sleeping because of her severe reflux. I sit the bouncy down in the mini crib so I can get to her easily when I need to. I feed her in the bouncy when she wakes up hoping that it will teach her not to wake up in the night (fingers crossed). I do the same thing with Tank. He either sleeps on a pillow in between Dean and me, or in a bouncy chair. (I feel the need to keep them elevated for now.) It’s a pretty even split between which he does. People have made comments about how it’s sad that Tinker Belle sleeps by herself while Tank does not. I personally think that is a ridiculous statement because I know for a fact that Tinker Belle sleeps better than the rest of us. While there are safe ways to co-sleep with a child, it feels very unsafe to me to co-sleep with two that are both so young. I’m constantly worried with just Tank in the bed, so I was a wreck on the nights when we had both twins in the bed with us. Tinker Belle is tiny in comparison to her brother (3 inches shorter and 6 pounds lighter at the moment), so I don’t want him rolling on her or anything. So, if I were trying to be “fair” I would either have to force her to sleep with us, which she doesn’t want, or kick him out of the room completely because letting him cry too hard for too long is sure to wake her up. Ideally, I want to move them both into the nursery. They both wake up twice a night right now, so I’m honestly not sure if I’m up for that transition. I know that when I do this, I will have to move Tank first and leave Tinker Belle in the room with us for a while since it will be harder for him. Therefore, I will be accused of being unfair once again since she will get to stay with us. Oh well, there’s no way to make the “cry it out” method work when you have two little beings who will interfere with the actual process by waking each other up and feeding off of each other.
On a normal night, the twins fall asleep in their bouncy chairs while I try to get everything ready for bedtime. It is still a major process to get ready for bed. Princess needs to be clean, brushed, and situated, bottles need to be washed and prepped, formula needs to be measured, medicine needs to be given, and Dean and I try to actually bathe ourselves pretty regularly as well. To say the least, it takes a while. I have definitely laid them down and let them put themselves to sleep in their correct location, and it worked pretty well, but I just can’t seem to get that perfect bedtime routine together where all three drift off to sleep in their own little beds without any struggle on my part. However, my crazy bedtime routine is at least a routine, and my kids seem to like it just fine. It does bother some of those around us, however, that the twins are not rocked to sleep. It bothers them even more if one twin, usually my squeaky wheel Tank, is rocked to sleep and the other twin is not. As I said before, this doesn’t happen all that often, because with Dean taking care of Princess’s bedtime routine, it leaves just me with two babies. I don’t know how many of you have ever tried to rock two babies to sleep at once, but it is almost impossible, and rocking one at a time means the other one is screaming his/her head off waiting for his/her rocking turn. That is why Dean got creative and began rocking them both at once in their bouncy chairs.
When our routine is off, the babies struggle. It being Christmas time, our routine has been crazy. Christmas Eve made them exhausted, so they didn’t sleep well that night, which made them a little grumpy on Christmas day. By that night, they were over it. Tank threw a fit, so I rocked him to sleep. He is easy to rock to sleep. I was holding him until our company left, but the comment was made, as Tinker fussed in her bouncy seat, that I should rock her to sleep too. Tinker is not easy to rock to sleep unless she is absolutely exhausted and can’t fight it anymore. (She tends to fight sleep worse than the other children.) Therefore, Dean was bouncing her. When I put Tank down to pick her up (who wants to argue about child rearing techniques on Christmas?), he started rustling around threatening to wake up. She wasn’t immediately happy either when I picked her up and started trying to rock her, so she was taken from me and rocked to sleep by the person who made the suggestion. I try not to get too defensive about comments made as to how I should put my kids to sleep, because I know that I do the best I can and Dean and I are the ones who put them to sleep every night of our lives. Therefore, I let people make their suggestions and then I do what I have to do to keep them happy, healthy, and safe.
When it comes to just the twins, I think people believe that since Tank is a squeaky wheel, he gets more attention. This may be true to a little in that he probably gets picked up one or two more times during the day and calmed. However, since he gets picked up so many times, he doesn’t get held as long. When Tinker Belle cries, we know that something is actually bothering her. She’s dirty, doesn’t feel well, needs comforted, etc., so we tend to pick her up faster when she cries and hold her longer. People don’t see this, because she isn’t one to act out when in a chaotic situation. She’s very serious and observant, while Tank is either laughing or crying and mainly concerned with his own emotions. In the end, it probably equals out more than people think. I don’t know how to make people see the evenness of their little lives, so I guess I should just be the best mother I can and let the critics critique away.
I know you’re probably wondering why I even posted about this. I guess I just wanted to encourage other moms with more than one child, and especially mothers with multiples that you have to just mother each child as he/she needs and let go of the “I have to be perfectly fair” idea. I’m right there with you, but I think we’re just too hard on ourselves. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with a baby crying a few minutes, and there’s nothing wrong with one sibling sleeping one way, while another sibling prefers to sleep another way. Maybe I don’t do everything right, but it’s obvious that my children are loved and cared for, and none of them resent me thus far for anything. Hang in there mommies, we’re going to make it.
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