I remember it as if it were yesterday.....

Randy and I were so excited to bring our beautiful baby boys home. We'd spent a good portion of the pregnancy day dreaming about lazy Sunday afternoons with our boys. As luck would have it, we bought our boys home on a gorgeous Sunday afternoon. We'd planned to spend the day snuggling babies and watching football. There were two small problems with our plan. The first being our lack of planning from a logistical perspective. When we got home, we had to rearrange our living space a bit. We had to make room for the pack n play, feeding supplies, changing supplies and all of our "souvenirs" from the hospital. Getting organized took much longer than expected. As we were about to find out, absolutely everything takes longer when you have two babies to manage. The second problem with our little plan was that we had been planning on bringing the home the BEST BABIES ever, not the Big Beasties.

Luckily, my mom was there to help us. The chaos of the day didn't seem to bother her.

In between helping us organize and making us dinner, she got her fair share of snuggling and kissing in.

Daddy also got in on the snuggle action.

By about 9:00, we were all thoroughly exhausted. We decided to call it a night. Randy and I thought it would be best for the boys to stay in the Pack N Play in our room for the first few weeks. I was nursing, so it seemed like a good idea. We put the boys in the Pack N Play and turned out the lights. I think we were in bed for a full 5 minutes before it all went south.

One of the boys had the hiccups and eventually started fussing. I got up and walked around with my tiny baby for awhile. Once he appeared to be asleep I gently placed him back down and crawl into my cozy warm bed. All in days work I thought....Another 2 minutes or so goes by, lots and lots of little farts, of course, followed by fussing. This time it was the other one. Oh well, no big deal. I again snuggle by sweet boy back to sleep. And again, I'm all tucked in my warm bed. (By this time, Daddy is fast asleep.) Hiccups again! Are you kidding me?!

I think at this point I decided to put the boys in the nursery in their cribs. (So much for keeping them right by us..) I didn't want to wake Daddy. This cycle continues for awhile. About 2 hours into the show, both boys were crying. My mom woke up and grabbed a baby. The plan was to divide and conquer. This seemed to work......for about 2 minutes. I swear, we'd get one settled and the other one would wake up. It was HELL. Around 3 in the morning, my mom and I were still up bouncing and singing to crying babies. I remember looking at my mom with eyes full of tears. "How are we going to do this?'" I asked. "Well, you can't give them back", was her answer. I cried and cried that night. My mom did the same.....

Around 3:30 I woke Randy. He told me the next day that he could "see" how terrified I was. Randy finished out the night shift on his own. While I don't think he cried like my mom and I did, I'm positive he wanted to.

Sometime on Randy's shift, he discovered a miracle fix. The nuc. Before we brought the Big Beasties home, we decided that we wouldn't use nucs for the first few weeks. The nurses in the nursery told us that sometimes nucs made it more difficult for babies to nurse. Randy immediately "confessed" in the morning to using the nucs. I remember saying to him, "if it works, let's do it." We made it less than 12 hrs without the nucs. We were in survival mode. Do whatever it takes.

After lots of coffee and a few laughs recapping the night, we went on about our day in good spirits.

Certainly with sweet little faces like this around, how bad could the day be. We took turns catching cat naps.

Looking back, I'm not sure what Randy and I were thinking. Everyone kept telling us how difficult having twins would be. It's not that we didn't believe it. Sure, we thought we'd be tired. What new parent isn't? Nothing can truly prepare you for going 2 months without sleeping more than a two hour stretch at a time. Nothing can prepare you for the major lifestyle adjustments. The list goes on and on. I quickly figured out a way for me to cope all of the new stressed and anxiety..................

A nice glass of wine in the evening..

Randy and I kind of laugh when we think back on that first night, though it's still a little raw (our boys are 8 months old now). We still get that sick feeling in the pit our stomachs if we think about that first night for too long. We made it though, that's all that matters.

On a side note, the nucs never did ruin our boys. They survived nucs and all.