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We made it to double digits, everybody!! This Sunday marks the tenth week in a row that I’ve written a newsletter for this series!
I started Self-Care Sundays with pretty much the sole purpose of forcing me to write every week, at least a little, for my mental health. Ten weeks in and I can happily report that it’s been a success! I have loved having an outlet every week. It’s been a good practice to overcome writer’s block, and has sparked creativity to write more articles outside of this series, too. The fact that anyone else ever reads what I write — much less benefits from it in any way — is just the cherry on top.
There are some new faces here, so to our new friends, welcome and hello! As a quick little tour, you can read more about me here. If you want to know more about my law school journey, check out this page. And lastly, to see any archive of all of my articles, head here. Thank you for reading and I hope you find something that motivates, comforts, or validates your parenting journey!
This week was an absolute whirlwind to say the least. It was my second week at my full-time residency, but there was one major difference between this week and the first week: we had all five kids!! It definitely made for more hectic mornings and evenings, but I was reminded throughout the week how much I love being a mom of five. I thrive off of the chaos, and my life feels more complete when our family is all together under one roof.
I used to crave the quiet of the weeks where the older kids were at their other parents. I would catch up on studying and cleaning. I was sure that trend would continue once the twins were born, because two babies are quieter than two babies plus three kids. But I was wrong, and I miss the bigs more than ever now when they’re gone.
So even though this week was “harder” in terms of logistics, it was barely noticeable, because it was such a good week.
Week #10 Favorites
- Sunday meal prepping. On our weeks with all five kids, we are pretty crunched for time. Breakfast time and dinner time can be stressful, especially when you factor in my pumping schedule. This week, I decided to meal prep before we picked the kids up. I made pasta salad to have for dinner on Monday and for my lunches, since my work has no microwave, and I made eggs bites for a quick breakfast. It was nothing crazy, but it was enough to help the start of the week flow a lot smoother!
- Sound machines. There is a sound machine in literally every room of my house. Technically even the bathrooms and kitchens if you count the fans! Nothing sets the mood for nap time like brown noise or a soft thunderstorm, and I’m not just talking about my babies’ naps.
- This milk pitcher. Isn’t it just adorable? It took me a few weeks to get into a rhythm with pumping and feeding the babies, and this helped streamline things significantly. I just dump whatever I pump throughout the day into the pitcher, and then usually after my six o’clock pumping session, I freeze whatever’s left, and the cycle starts again. I pump upwards of 6o oz a day — which isn’t as crazy of an oversupply as it sounds because I have twins — so if it wasn’t for the pitcher, there would be way too many bottles of milk in the fridge. This is much more efficient!
Week #10 Highlights
- I FOUND OUT MY GRADES FROM LAST SEMESTER AND THEY WERE GOOD!!! After an abysmal fall semester, where I got my worst grade yet, I was extremely apprehensive about winter semester. Yes, fall semester was challenging because it spanned weeks 13-28 of my pregnancy, and I was deathly ill the entire time, but winter semester was the semester where I was to give birth. Wouldn’t that be harder? Turns out, it wasn’t, and when I say I hate pregnancy just know I really hate pregnancy. The fact that birthing twins and being postpartum is easier for me than being pregnant should tell you a LOT about how my body responds to pregnancy. This past semester was challenging, but it was nothing compared to fall. So it makes sense that my grades were much, much better! That being said, it was still hard. I literally took my Constitutional Law textbook to the hospital, to read in the days following my induction, and I read during every middle-of-the-night pumping session for weeks preceding finals. The first time I left my babies for longer than thirty minutes was to go take said finals, and they weren’t even two weeks old yet. I had to pump immediately before and after the three-hour final, and the room was so quiet that I almost fell asleep — because I was probably running off of only three or four hours of sleep! I ended up taking three finals in the span of 24 hours, which any law student can confirm is insane. All in all, I’m glad the semester is over and I’m immensely proud of myself for how well I did, despite everything I went through.
2. I tackled my first outing with all five kids AND the dog, all by myself. I spent a lot of my pregnancy worrying about how I was ever going to do anything ever again once I had five kids. Turns out, you just throw $h!t in your car and hope for the best! But seriously, the reality of parenting five kids is nowhere near as bad as the worst case scenarios I made up in my head. Yes, it takes us longer to get out the door, and yes, I have to take a lot more stuff with me, but it’s doable. On this particular day, my husband had had a rough night with the twins, so around 6:00am I just sent him to bed and said, “I got this.” We loaded up the car, dropped Eloisa off at kindergarten, and headed to a local park for a walk. Ginger was thrilled to be outside, the kids declared the park their second favorite place in the world second only to Disneyworld, the twins slept the whole time, and I felt refreshed after getting in some movement and sunshine for the day. We rewarded ourselves with doughnuts on the way home, and my confidence in my abilities to parent grew just a tad. All in all, it was a win!
3. We got family pictures back! I’ll sprinkle them throughout this newsletter, and probably many of the articles I write over the next several weeks, but they turned out so good! I’m glad, because the photoshoot probably took at least five years off my life. We ran around all morning trying to get all five kids and ourselves ready in time, and in the end, I still somehow ended up pumping in the car on the way there, still in my sweats (I simply changed when we arrived). The twins cried off and on the whole time, both of them needed a new diaper as soon as we arrived, I realized those were the last of the diapers in my diaper bag, and then one of them had a blowout right at the end. You would never know any of this by the photos, though, because my friend Kaylea is amazing at her job, and I’m glad we have these photos to cherish for years to come. But phew, that was exhausting!
Self-Care Tip of the Week: Acceptance
On Saturday, I woke up at 2:00am to pump. I finished pumping and cleaning around 3:00am. And my husband asked me to take over the twins at 3:10am, because he had to leave for work in two hours. By 4:30am, they were still awake, and I decided that I was going to be awake for the day.
If I hadn’t decided that, I would have spent the next several hours getting them just settled enough, rushing to bed to try and get some shut-eye, getting frustrated when they inevitably started crying ten minutes later, repeat. I’ve done that before and it never ends well. But when I’ve just accepted that I’m up and probably not sleeping anytime soon, then any moments of rest that I do get feel more like a gift.
In a way, I think having twins has forced me to master the art of acceptance and has made me a more patient, less anxious mother. When there’s two newborns, you simply have to accept that there will likely always be a baby that’s hungry, a baby that’s, crying, a little bit of chaos at all times, and sleep that is fleeting. With my first, I was so concerned about getting her to sleep through the night as soon as possible, but with the twins, I’m much less concerned, because even if they could sleep through the night, they’d have to fall asleep and wake up at the exact same times for us to get uninterrupted sleep.
Obviously not everyone reading this has twins, or newborns, or even kids, but the principle is the same: accept the phase of life you’re in rather than fight it, an it will get easier.
That’s all for this week, friends! Thank you for being here, and I hope y’all have a fantastic week. Stay tuned for a new article around the middle of next week about what 24 hours looks like for a working mom who is also pumping for twins. It was a fun one to write! Until then ❤
Step by Step Parenting 