Early Morning Feeding Frenzy

It is hard to believe that next week the girls will have been home for an entire month! Where does the time go? The home nurse came this week to check in and said both girls looked great. "The Hopester" now weighs 6 pounds 12.5 ounces and Gracie Girl is up to 5 pounds 6 ounces. While Gracie is still much smaller than her sister, she is gaining about an ounce a day, which is pretty good.


The girls now need to be fed about once every 2-3 hours. This makes for days that are hectic, but seem to just fly by. Aside from the"graveyard shift," the other key shift is the early morning shift. I tend to do better with this one, and hence often awake to piercing shrieks permeating from the baby monitor in our bedroom sometime between 4-5 a.m. . Upon arriving in the nursery, I feel like John Wayne entering a high noon show down in a deserted Western town. Although, instead of John Wayne encountering the bad guys in this situation, I am greeted by my two loud, but lovely daughters.

Often times I see both girls wide-eyed, shrieking and trying to get their mouths on anything in sight (their sleeves, shirt, hands and even my arms are all fair game). The girls make a ton of noise during this time, which often snaps me out of my sleepy, groggy state. It is then up to me to get the girls changed, fed, and back to bed as quickly as possible, both to satisfy them and to preserve a few more winks of sleep for myself. Once I assure myself that the girls are ok, and that all the commotion is due to hunger, I race to the kitchen, grab two bottles out of the refrigerator, shake them, warm them, grab the Boppy pillows and burp clothes, and finally, rescue my daughters from their state of total hunger. Let the feeding frenzy begin!

Feeding both girls at the same time with the bottles is a challenge to say the least. Hope often gets cranky about not having my undivided attention, especially when I have to spend a little more time positioning Gracie due to her reflux. While I would love to take a picture of this scene to share, my hands are literally full, usually for at least 45 minutes or so. Once the girls get their bottles down, the next challenging aspect of the duel feeding is getting both girls burped while propping Gracie up to prevent the inevitable post-feeding spit up. To throw a CC Sabathiaesque slider into the equation, about half the time the girls soil their newly changed diapers during this feeding, adding for further challenges, both with them being uncomfortable, as well as their aroma making everyone (including Maggie the dog) want to leave the room running (which Mags often does if this occurs).

As the sun rises and the clock turns to 6:00 a.m., most days the feeding frenzy is under control (at least for now). I try to stumble off to bed, get another hour of sleep and then it is either Jeni or I up again for the 8:00 "1st breakfast" and the day begins again.

While Daddy and Mommy are mighty exhausted these days, there is nothing better than caring for our girls.