Jabba the What?

My original plan was to exclusively breastfeed the boys. This is still my plan, but breastfeeding has been far more stressful than I expected. At 4am, this morning both boys were screaming their heads off and neither one would latch and eat. I knew that they were hungry because they'd gone on a hunger strike after the circumcision. I tried to wake up my husband to help me by throwing every soft object in the room at him. Unfortunately even a after he was covered in a blanket of bulb syringes, flip flops, nipple shields, and empty jello containers he remained asleep. Seconds after I threw the last object that I could reach without getting out of bed one of the baby nurses entered my room. She advised me that the boys had been weighed earlier that night and that they had both lost 10% of their birth weight, they were both jaundiced, Hamilton was dehydrated and that I needed to give them formula. I told her that my breasts were already engorged and that my milk was clearly coming in and she left.

Next I got out of bed crossed the room and punched my still sleeping husband in the face. Without waking up, he rolled over, assumed the crash position, and started snoring. I totally broke down and started crying because I couldn't do anything right. First I couldn't manage to give birth and then I couldn't even feed them. My worried, sleep deprived brain was convinced that I was harming my children and that I wouldn't be allowed to take them home. I wanted them to stop suffering, so I called the nursery and agreed to formula feed them. The nurse returned with formula and a nipple shield and helped my feed them by running the formula across the shield. She also lectured me about not dieting and accused me of restricting my diet while in the hospital so that I would start losing weight. I was thinking of a million snarky responses, such as I don't take nutrition advice from people who are built like Jabba the Hut, which she was, but did not. After all she was helping my kids. I just mumbled that I had been placed on a liquid diet and promised to eat buckets of ice cream and KFC upon release.

Finally, they were full and fell asleep. Even better in the morning we were released. On the way out I got a little perspective. I was sitting at the entrance of the hospital in the wheelchair, with the babies in their car seats at my feet. We were waiting for my husband to pull around the car when a woman approached me. She started crying and told me that her daughter was in the hospital, in labor, at 22 weeks with twins. I told her how sorry I was and she stood there staring at the boys collecting herself. I had planned on taking pictures of them leaving, but it just felt wrong. So, I staged a photo shoot in their coming home outfit a couple of days later.