Jealous Mommy

August and Finley are just starting to get nervous around new people. They’re at ease with people they spend all their time with: me, Matt – and our nanny.

Yes, I already have a nanny even though I’m still on maternity leave. Flora comes four days a week and makes it possible for me to do things like shower. She’s great with the babies – maybe too good.

Today when I came home from running a few errands, August didn’t even look at me. He was totally focused on Flora. I’d been gone an hour and already he seemed to have forgotten me. I literally rubbed his foot and head and pinched his little cheeks until he looked at me and gave me a big gummy smile. “Hi, it’s me mom… remember me? I’m the one who has been with you every single day since you were conceived. Yeah, look at me!”

Trying to get his attention made me feel like a insecure, desperate teenager vying for the affections of the popular boy at school. He just has no idea what a grip he has on my heart. It feels awful and ugly, but I get jealous when August and Finley hit it off with anyone besides me.

Of course I want the boys to enjoy being with their nanny. But there’s this: Soon, my maternity leave will end. When that happens the nanny will be with my boys all day. She’ll be the one to greet them when they wake up and hold them up as they try to stand and pick them up if they fall. I’ll swoop in for a couple hours in the evening -- their most cranky time of day – before they conk out for the night (that is if they ever learn to sleep through the night!) And that is what makes me jealous.

The New Normal

Being mother to twins feels like wrestling a giant squid. There’s always another unexpected strangle hold coming to pull me under. But now that I’ve been a mom for four months, I’m learning to get this beast under control – sort of.

In the past few weeks, I’ve experienced glimpses of the thing I used to call “life.” Matt and I went to brunch -– twice -- with the babies. We also once socialized outside our home with the boys. We drove to the San Fernando Valley for a pumpkin carving party. Admittedly, we did not actually carve pumpkins. We showed up an hour early and left 30 minutes after the party started. But we went and that’s the point.

We’ve also started to just go ahead and venture out with August and Fin because the other choice is to stay at home for the next 18 years. Our little adventures have had mixed results: We’ve been to Trader Joe’s on a Sunday afternoon to grocery shop (bad idea); a nursery to look for flowers for the garden (too many bees!); a Halloween party for multiples (a success!); and Costco (terrifying, babies or no babies).

It’s not been easy -– nothing is easy anymore -– but I see hints of a new “normal” emerging. I still feel like I’m fighting a giant squid and I certainly look like I’ve taken a beating -- my hair is unkempt and I rarely wear makeup. But I fit into my pre-pregnancy jeans and I managed to watch the season premiere of “Top Chef.” With the help of a part-time nanny, I’ve gone grocery shopping, to yoga, to a doctor’s appointment, to the mall. I’ve become expert at loading the babies and their stroller into my car or just getting ‘em all out on the sidewalk to a stroll. I’ve even briefly carried both babies at once now that they can hold their own heads up.

So the new normal is a very, very scaled back version of the old normal: 20-25 minutes of free time at a stretch, brief appearances at barbeques, movies on Netflix instead of in the theater, lunch out but never dinner. But it’s fine. I mean, I’ve said in the past that I don’t care if I never go out to a nice dinner or sleep in past six a.m. again. That’s not exactly true. I ache for a morning of lounging in bed reading the paper, for enough personal time to go to the gym, but we -– my family and I –- are birthing a new life together. We're taking baby steps to figure out how to walk and later to run and that’s all I can ask for right now.


NOTE: typos are bad and I try not post them. But, as I mentioned, I have twins, which means I can’t always proofread as well as I’d like. Thanks for your understanding.