I want and need to counter-balance the tone of yesterday’s post. So here it is.

We had heard about those amazing twin pregnancies that, despite the early contractions and complications, go full-term (or nearly) and as we headed towards the end of the 2nd trimester, we had started to believe we could really make it. We didn’t, and i felt cheated and angry about that for a long time. But there’s another chapter to that: when shit hit the fan, we heard a lot about 28-week preemies who go on to become healthy, thriving babies with no long-term health issues or disabilities. Our boys are one of those success stories now

I have been stressed out about “not being able to take care of them.” There are twin moms out there who swear that their twins are even easier than their singletons. They love stay-at-home mom life and apparently have happy children. Our boys were fussy as hell and for months i cried my eyes out in terror at the thought of being left alone with them. But i was – and still am – almost never left alone with them. We have had an endless stream of help from our families, who we are enormously lucky to love and to live near, and who love us and our bundles of energy unconditionally. Our kids have literally dozens of arms to hold them and faces to smile and laugh at them, and i have a husband and a family who bend over backwards to give me the support that i need. We are fucking lucky and i don’t say anywhere near as often as i should just how much i appreciate it. Talk about an understatement: i couldn’t have survived without the help.

A year ago, i could never have imagined how things would be today. The good or the bad. We were landing on an alien planet and i think we are only, just now, barely beginning to get our bearings. But hot damn if this isn’t the wildest journey we’ll ever take. The boys are cuddlers, big time. When i hold Miles, he shoves his hands and arms down on his chest, between him and me, and lays his head down on my shoulder and tries to sort of bury his body against mine. It’s full contact, like everything else he does, it’s 200%. Ellis is a hugger. He throws his arms and face around my neck and squeezes and squeals. He pulls back, looks up at me or around the room or at someone else nearby, then goes in for a second attack. Sometimes… often… i think that they were born so early because they simply could not be contained. They were too much, too big in personality, too wild. Being born too early: that was the downside to that. The full-throttle, unbounded love they heap on us every day: that… that is everything.