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A Parent’s Purview: Welcoming our Identical Twin Girls to the World
A new topography, NICU nights, and practice over production
My wife gave birth to identical twin girls in June of this year. I realized very quickly after our girls were born that every piece of advice that I’d been given on how fast time goes was truthful, and ultimately, undersold.
It’s been a blur, and it’s been brilliant all at the same time. Like a bright comet flying through the night, the first few months have felt like a blazing trail of life that’s hurtling through a new area of previously unexplored space.
Our girls were born around 33 weeks and consequently spent nearly 35 days in the NICU adjusting and learning the basic necessities like breathing and eating at the same time. Those days were trying and exhausting as incremental progress met seemingly consistent regression.
But one day, the progress outweighed the setbacks and we got to load up both girls into the back of our car and drive away from the hospital. It was such a tangible reminder that even though hard things accumulate in all of our lives, more often than not, the good will eventually out stack the bad.
I talked with a lot of friends who had kids before us about how to maintain some level of creativity, especially in these early days. Some encouraged me to pause. Some advised me to lower expectations and just practice.
I liked that. This season, these early weeks (and let’s be truthful, likely these early years) are probably going to be less about production and more about practice.
Practicing both my writing and my processing of this wild and wonderful new journey my family is embarking on.
Traditionally, I like to keep things pretty close to my chest and I tend to internalize a lot of the high points and hurdles of the day-to-day. But this is unfamiliar terrain, and I’m quickly coming to learn that there is no real roadmap for this new adventure. Sure, there are signposts along the way, but the topography looks a little different for all of us.
So, I’m writing some of it down. Not in a way of education or coaching, but in a real-time, here’s what I’m learning kind of way.
