on exhaustion

Don't get my wrong, the babies are adorable. They're even starting to sleep more (more on that another day), but for most of the last 7 weeks (5 home in Quinn's case), they've been up every 2-3 hours over night. I often think how easy a single baby would be - after all, it WAS easier before Quinn came home, logistically anyway - but I know that's (somewhat) unfair since our girls ARE fairly good sleepers for their gestational age. I don't know how people with bad sleepers (I'm looking at you Katy!) survive (and am hoping I am not jinxing myself with this post).

Our nighttime plan (which sorta kinda works out, as we haven't really worked out Bedtime yet, though I suppose the girls are a little young) is basically for me to be on duty until midnight or so, then Chris takes over until 5 am. I get 5-6, then she's got the babies from when I get into the shower until I get home. The upside of living with my parents right now (between houses and all) is my mom is sometimes around to help.  We've been able to make this work since (something finally went right and) Chris has been very productive in the milk department (again, fingers crossed) and is usually a feeding ahead. Neither baby loves to breastfeed, and Avery in particular doesn't latch well, so they're mostly on pumped milk. I think this is awesome for so many reasons:

• I can feed them
• breastmilk has such great antibodies formula can't replicate
• I'm pretty sure what we've spent on a pump + bags for the last 7 weeks is just over what formula would have cost us, so we'll be ahead financially soon
  and
• breastmilk (and breastmilk poo and spit up) doesn't smell that bad. I had a few wiffs of formula in the hospital and it freaking reeks. I don't want to think about the out-of-baby stuff until I am forced to!

But, before I am too sunshine and roses, here is what we get a lot of in the evenings:

yes, it is almost always Avery.

When I'm really tired and woken up in the middle of the night (if there's two babies awake, all bets are off), I've been known to go searching the bed for a baby. In pillows, under blankets...the irony - we never take the babies to bed with us! (Thank goodness, since it seems I'd lose one). I frequently can't recall who I fed or changed in the middle of the night either, so its probably good we almost always do them both back to back!

But they are cute:

"I'm bigger and will take you!"

And still so crazy small:

Quinn in a 0-3 Carters gown