The old and the sleepless

At first, the babies had to be fed every two hours. They were not on the same eating schedule, so we were feeding babies every hour. It took about 30 minutes for them to eat and fall asleep, so it was constant. At night, we started out doing shifts. Charlie would stay up with babies from 8pm until 12pm. I would get 4 hours of uninterrupted sleep and then would be up for the rest of the night. Charlie would go to bed at midnight and get up at 5:30 or 6am for work. I would be with them for the rest of the day. It was like hell in our house. I would squeeze in an hour or two of broken sleep during the day. My mom came to help for the first week, then Charlie's mom came for the next week. Charlie took the third week off of work, and then I was on my own.
On Charlie's first day back at work, he had to work late and he didn't get off until 8pm. By the time he got home, I had been caring for two babies for twenty hours in a row. I went to bed immediately, but when he came to get me up for the late night shift, I laid in bed and thought to myself, "I can not get up and go take care of those babies." I felt like I physically couldn't get up and go care for them. It was the first time I realized that as a parent, you don't get an option. I got up and staggered down the hall. I spent the first weeks being so tired, it hurt. I kept hearing that thing got better around 8 weeks, but that seemed like forever to me. We were like zombies. One morning, I was carrying a baby and I slammed my little toe into the bed. My foot was swollen and purple and I hobbled to and from the kitchen to make bottles for the next feeding. Most days, a shower was a pipe dream. I was flabby, dirty, unwashed and none of my clothes fit. Miserable doesn't begin to cover it.
Postpartum blues were horrible. I cried every single day. I was convinced that I had made a terrible mistake by having children. My mom drives me crazy in a way no one else can, but all I wanted was for her to move in and help. I cried the whole day she left, even though Charlie's mom had arrived to take over. I was terrified I wasn't going to be able to do a good job. I was fine and euphoric in the hospital. Everyone is so positive and tells you what a great job you're doing and they take the babies away and you sleep, then you call and someone brings you pancakes. I didn't realize how good I had it, and I couldn't wait to go home and start being a parent. Then, when my mom and I took the babies back 2 days later for their first check-up, all the nurses remembered me and the twins. They all asked how I was doing and I burst in to tears and asked if I could come back to the hospital. After the doctor examined them and proclaimed them healthy, I (still crying) said, "They're OK?" he said yes, and mom patted me reassuringly and said, "See, I told you you're not killing the babies." It was very comforting.
Sometimes, when they were crying and I was all alone taking care of them, I would be near tears because I was so exhausted, but when I saw their little faces, I would get a rush of joy and energy. Sometimes, when they wouldn't stop crying, after feeding them and changing them and holding them, I would just lay them on the bed and cry with them. Sometimes, at 3:30 in the morning, when twin A was asleep and I finally got twin B down and was about to get a fifteen minute nap on the couch, Twin A would wake up screaming and I would feel a surge of anger and frustration followed by a surge of crushing guilt. I was desperate for sleep. After a while I was convinced that I had grown accustomed to 4 hours of sleep, but looking back, I'm sure I was functioning in an impaired way. On top of the babies, I was recovering from surgery, so I was in pain. I was afraid to take the narcotic pain medicine very often because it made me drowsy. I did ask Charlie at one point if he thought if I doubled up on vicodin, the babies might sleep longer (I was breast feeding). I was half joking...
We tried to keep a sense of humor about the situation. After 5 or 6 weeks, we stopped taking shifts and started getting up together. It was much easier, because you only had to deal with one baby at a time. We also started having some time together- when we fed babies. We were still getting up every two hours, though. We would jolt awake when they started crying on the monitor, and for some reason, we would both think they were in our bed, so we would dig through the covers, looking for the babies, until we were fully awake and then we would stumble out to feed them. We talked over and decided that it was a sign of a healthy relationship that we had replaced the sex we no longer had time, motivation or energy for with identical middle of the night, exhaustion induced hallucinations. It wen on like that for two long months. Gradually, things have gotten better. By week 10, I started believing we would survive infancy.