I go back to work officially on October 6th, but yesterday and today I attended a Pediatric Epilepsy Seminar which is part of the annual meeting of the Child Neurology Society happening this week in Los Angeles. This means I left the house at 6:40 am and didn’t get back until 5:30 pm. Yes, it was my first full day away from the twins.
Actually, it wasn’t that bad. I didn’t cry–although the first thing I did when I sat down and introduced myself to the conference attendees next to me was pull out pictures of Eleanor and Miranda. Part of my calmness in being away from the kids is knowing that they are being cared for by my mom. She’s excellent with the babies. She talks to them all day and is very responsive to their needs. Pretty much the ideal caregiver. My mother quit her job as a preschool teacher to take care of the twins full-time. Although she lives 40 miles away, she commutes in with my father in the morning and leaves with him at around 5:30 pm. (My dad works 2 miles from where we live.)
My mother started coming up to take care of the twins about 4 weeks ago when Bernard had to go back to work. Basically, it’s been the two of us handling the kids during the day. I’ve also been able to take a daily nap while my mom’s been here. As I described in my last blog entry, the twins can keep one person busy 24 hours non-stop, and yesterday, my mom was by herself for the first time. And yes, the girls ganged up on her. By the time, I got home my mom was frazzled and exhausted. She couldn’t remember who ate when and how much. When I walked through the front door, she was feeding Eleanor and rocking Miranda in her car seat with one foot.
She started to express some doubts about her ability to take care of the twins. This has Bernard and me extremely worried, since we haven’t looked into other options such as daycare or a nanny. I decided to call the only mother of twins that I know, my friend Sandra, who used to work at my hospital. I figured she could answer some of my twin specific questions, like, did you have to hire two nannies when you went back to work?
I’ll talk about our conversation in my next blog entry.
I see a lot of twins around here, and they are only with one nanny, but I think it takes special skills to take care of twins. You have to know how to juggle the schedules of two and get them on a schedule. (I guess you know that already.) You may consider getting a mother’s helper to give your mom a break occasionally – usually a high school or college student who can give your mom a hand with the girls. They can even watch the girls after you get home so you can cook (and eat) dinner, etc. They don’t cost as much as sitters/nannies since they are not as experienced and someone will be home supervising them.