Two Little Children

Our pediatrician, our wonderful, warm, patient, mother-of-three-year-old-twins pediatrician, ripped my babies away from me today and replaced them with little children. It happened really fast. “How are they eating?” she asked. “Pretty good,” I said, “But, um. I still give them four bottles a day.” She winced and shook her head. I sighed. I knew I was giving them a bottle too often, but I didn’t care. “Well, see, I feel like as long as they get 24 ounces of formula each day, they’re getting all the nutrition they need so. . .”

“No, that’s wrong,” she said. “You’re thinking of them as babies, and they’re not babies. They're toddlers now, and you have to treat them like little children.”

I knew this was coming so I wasn’t surprised. But I had hoped I would get some kind of “mother of twins” reprieve, like when I admitted to her that the girls got baths only once or twice a week until they were nearly nine months old. She had shrugged then. “They don’t get very dirty, and it’s hard with twins, I know.” So I had hoped she would do the same today, she’d say she understood how hard it is to feed twins three meals a day, plus two snacks, plus get them down for two naps, and how much time and work all that takes, and yes, it really is much easier to give them a bottle at snack time because they can inhale it in three minutes and go back about their business, no muss and literally, no fuss.

But no. She was firm about this whole “time to give up the bottle” business. She assured me it would be easier than I expected. I’m sure she is right. The girls each drink whole milk from a cup perfectly fine. But she kept saying she understood I might not be ready to let the bottle go. And I kept saying, no it’s not that, it’s just easier with a bottle.

But now I know that she was right. I’m not ready to give up the bottle and I’ve been hiding behind my “it’s hard because I have twins” routine. I didn’t breastfeed the girls as long as I wanted. We had some weight gain problems, some logistical problems, and a lot of anxiety on my part because of the weight gain problems, and so by the time they were 12 weeks old I was pretty much pumping exclusively and bottle feeding them breast milk. Yes, they got breast milk for 7 months and yes, I worked my butt off to produce the milk, and yes, I know that is the most important thing nutritionally. But I really liked nursing and I’m really sad it didn’t work out like I’d hoped. So now when I cradle a baby close, her head on my breast and the bottle across my chest, her hand playing with my hair or squeezing my finger, it’s my version of nursing. And I don’t want it to stop. But I know it’s time, and not just because the pediatrician said so.

When we got home I opened the canister of formula, the last one we have, and saw that it was half full. I’ve given myself until the formula runs out, probably another day or so, to give up the bottle and “official” babyhood. I’m like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, watching the powder in the hourglass. But for us, when the powder runs out, it will be a new beginning. A new beginning for me and my two little children.