As much as I love food, recipes and creating something from nothing, I have to put things into perspective. At this time in my life, grandchildren are what make everything taste better. These past several years, I have been able to witness the outcome of some truly remarkable feats of nature and medicine with a lot of love and endurance thrown into the equation.  My husband and I have two older beautiful grand boys, Rayfe, in Atlanta, GA. and Paxton, in Houston TX.  The four year old in Houston was conceived using IVF (invitrofertilization) and the two year old in Atlanta, was conceived naturally.  Both are incredible little human beings whom you will hear about in my posts now that I’m blogging about life and priorities. The twins are the newest miracles  added to the Houston family, a boy and a girl,  Gibson Grant, and Grier Lynne, three months old now, who have, like the first two grandchildren,  stolen my heart.  As their brother,  Paxton,  they too were conceived through  IVF and born at Women’s Hospital.  My daughter, Alison and her husband , Grant, had gone for the second time,  to Houston IVF, but not before  several hiccups that sent discouragement and anxiety through their souls. It is not a trip for the impatient ( which worried me), or for the weak of heart, because there is a lot of pain along the way.  Having lost one twin, early in the first pregnancy with their four year old, they were nervous when toward the beginning of this pregnancy, the ultrasound  once again showed two babies. Twins are always a higher risk than a single birth, and  their gestation period gets more complicated each month with crowding, somersaulting , and general pressure on the mother’s body to keep both happy and healthy so they can go as close to  full term as possible before delivery.  December 23rd had been set for a C-section delivery, but early on the morning of the 21st, my daughter started to bleed and was told to get to the hospital, after which her doctor came in and got the babies out in a hurry.  Both went to the NICU ( Neonatal Intensive Care Unit). Gibson weighed 4lb. 15 oz. and Grier weighed 5lb. 5oz.  The doctors were concerned that  Gibbs wasn’t able to maintain his body temperature and eat efficiently. Grier just seemed to adjust well to her whole new life outside the womb  and quickly went into the regular nursery the following day. Meanwhile,  my daughter’s blood pressure had skyrocketed after the birth.  With no earlier sign of pre-eclampsia, the doctors were surprised but quickly responded with a special IV to lower her pressure and anti-anxiety medicine to help her relax and sleep.  She began to look more like herself after three days and both babies  were cleared for coming home with all carseats tested and checked. Everyone  was released on Christmas Eve afternoon to the pleasure and surprise of us all! A Merrier or more Blessed Christmas couldn’t have been possible. Now, didn’t that sound easy!

Once those babies got home and really woke up, the fun began. At this point, there are a few bits of information that you should know if you are getting ready to  either have twins yourself or be around them to help smother with  kisses.  With two newborns, get ready to forget about everyday routines- the news, emails, phone calls,  cooking a meal, adult conversation, putting on make-up or shaving, taking a shower,  walking to the pantry for a bottle of water, blah blah blah.  It just ain’t gonna happen. When you have twins, one of them conspires with the other to howl at the exact moment your foot is touching the enticing bath water or your hand is half way through a text message with the security system at your own house, (since of course the  burglary alarm is going off at that moment). HOW do they know? They  haven’t been on this earth for more than a few days when they know how to squirt you directly in the face at the precise moment their bottoms are exposed to air.  Or, when a dirty diaper has just been changed and  the bottle  is immediatley inserted into the tiny mouth, you hear the  sound of shooting liquidy bullets coming through the clean diaper as if by military timing. When one depletes the entire month’s supply of baby wipes and dirty diaper baggies,  the other will yell to be changed and the process begins all over again. Feeding is a similar experience. If you are the grandparent, never let on to the parents that you have blown in the babies face just to get a break from the  blood curdling screams for a split second. When they are hungry, both will try to out yell the other with a desperation like you have never heard. They have very little confidence in your ability to have food in the house and will display panic unseen by adults in their lifetimes.  (The poor mom, who is frantically pumping breast milk in the master bedroom shouldn’t hear any of what is occurring, or her milk will  dry up and that will cause more baby distress).  So, how do you do it?  Well, you try to anticipate when the babies will wake up, get the bottle in the warmer, and since one baby might like breast milk and the other one prefer formula (don’t try to argue with a newborn), you make sure at least one is coded with a blue/pink band on it to keep the bottles staight.  Then you wait. If Baby Girl has decided to sleep through her feeding, no worries. The breast milk can sit out for awhile, but heaven knows you better get the formula eating Baby Boy to drink it while it’s warm. The special expensive  brand for fussy and gassy babies should be thrown away after an hour or so. Newborns with gas filled digestive systems are unhappy campers and nothing is worse than worrying whether or not it was the formula that brought on three solid hours of wailing. Feeding, burping, feeding some more and juggling to keep the babies awake until they finish what amounts to about two ounces of liquid, takes so long that now it’s almost time for the next feeding.  Once again, there are TWO babies. Don’t forget.

Naps and bed time are a whole new chapter.  Trying to decide where the twinnies will sleep and how to keep them asleep is tricky.  Forget about them closing their eyes to enjoy those gorgeously decorated baby beds with designer bumpers and dust ruffles. They won’t sleep in them, so go ahead and give them some portable tilted bassinets which they will love. Pacifiers, (which the pediatrician will discourage because he hasn’t spent one night with a newborn in over thrity years) are lifesavers, but when they fly out of your hands in the dark room and you fumble for one on the floor, holding at least one baby as you do this, just know that the thirty second rule still applies today.  Stick it back in the baby’s mouth and don’t worry who gets which one.  Perhaps the parents aren’t glancing at the video monitor as you do this. Also, twins love to exchange each other’s germs.

My daughter was definitely thinking ahead when she started asking about night nurses the day she found out she was pregnant. After many friends’ good suggestions, she found a winner in Diane. Working with newborns in the NICU for years, she can swaddle those babies up and feed them both with one arm outstretched and one on the bottles using her chin as guidance. As they’ve gotten bigger, she lays them each in their small basinets on either side of her rocker and uses their Nuby Wubs (pacifiers with little stuffed animals at the end) to angle their bottles and curtail impatient tears. Now, she’s doing most of the training to get them to sleep through the night.  In the meantime, the savings put aside for a night nurse is quickly diminishing.  Since she doesn’t come two nights a week, everyone except four year old Paxton has night duty.  After a couple of those, parents and grand mom are greeting the night nurse at the door with babies in hand. All this may seem to be a lot of trouble but it isn’t. One smile, coo, giggle, kick, or silent gaze is enough to make all the busyness of twinnies totally worthwhile.  When I nicknamed Gibson, “Billy Goats Gruff” because his cry sounds exactly like a little billy goat, I had to laugh because the first thing the pediatrician’s nurse said at their last check-up was, ” Hey you sound just like a billy goat when you cry”.   Then, there’s Grier, “Miss Bobblehead Moment”, who now wants to sit up and move around like a big girl when just a couple of weeks ago, she would bobble every time she didn’t have a hand directly behind her head.

Everyone asks what reaction Paxton has had to his new siblings.  His big brother love is beyond words. He can’t wait to greet them and hug and squeeze them each morning, begging his mom to let them come snuggle on his bed or in his tent. He was a bit in shock over the crying at first, but now that they are smiling and looking at him like he’s the man, I think he is both proud and a bit possessive.  His new love for being in pictures and  videos is trully unprecedented, as he used to run from the camera or turn his face and shy from it. Not any more.  Also, they look at him with intensity, and whether it’s because they want to be ready for an elbow in the eye or a dinosaur tail sticking them in the arm, who knows, but it’s probably their wonderment at this fellow who is always there to make them smile, or shake them up a little so they can handle some preschool  roughhousing.  Whatever the reason, the love is overwhelming and both sets of grandparents are savoring the memories and recording the smallest details so that we can remember to tell our own kids who are now parents themselves, just how great it is to be a “Grand”!