I heart my Motorola Video Monitor!

Finding out you're going to become a mother brings much joy into your life and (for super-organized teacher types like me) a lot of decision making! As a first time Mom, it is challenging to grasp exactly what you are going to need when it comes to baby supplies. Ask any retail establishment for suggestions and the list will be long in order for you to achieve Super Mom status. Asking friends with kids is a great starting point, but the best teacher has been my own experiences. A lot of suggestions from friends have helped me create my list of "must have" baby items, but it is important to to realize that your parenting philosophy will have a lot to do with determining what baby products are Needs, Wants, or Must Haves. Likely a baby monitor will make your list of Must Have baby products and if you're like me, a lot of research goes into selecting a product like this one. Our original choice of baby monitor was the Safety 1st Digital 2st Audio Monitor. We started using our baby monitor the night the girls came home and although the girls were across the hall in their own room we felt the need to have the monitor cranked. Within days the monitor was off as we could easily hear the girls down the hall. Eventually we only used the monitor when we were in our rec room watching TV or entertaining. The background noise from the Sleep Sheep and the space heater were so loud not only could we not actually hear our girls, but it was distracting to hear while talking or watching TV. We quickly abandoned the monitor as it caused more frustration than assistance. 

Then we entered the world of sleep training. Let me tell you, during this time, we did not need an AUDIO monitor to inform us about our girls behaviour. Their bedtime and nap protests were crystal clear in any room in our house, including our front porch. My neighbour suggested we purchase a video monitor as she found it highly effective to be able to SEE what her son was doing while she was trying to sleep train him. Sometimes they are crying because they want to be picked up or are fussing because they are resisting sleep....at these times, I didn't want to go into their room to check on them. But when one of the girls would get their arm or leg stuck between the bars, it was nice to be able to see what was going on and go in to comfort them and free up their twisting limbs!

We purchased a Motorola 3.5" Colour Video Monitor with 2 Cameras (one for each girl's crib) The fact that you can pan, tilt and zoon the cameras offer the ability to see both girls even though they move around all over their crib when they sleep. The infrared night vision allows us to see the girls sleeping even in low-light conditions. The monitor even has a great microphone that allows for two-way communication; we can hear them if we have the volume on and with the press of a button we can speak to them. The monitor has an excellent range as we have been able to walk to our neighbours 2 doors down and chat outside with them while still viewing our girls sleeping. Other features include an out-of-range alert, a room temperature display, a sound level indicator and a low-battery alert. There is even five lullabies programmed into the monitor to help you clam and lull your little one to sleep. The only feature I wish the monitor had was a display of the time which would come in handy during sleep training.
 
Now that we have a video monitor we use it consistently throughout the day. It is a great way to check on our girls without entering their bedroom and possibly disturbing their sleep. It is also great when you wake in the middle of the night to hear your baby crying that you can see (in our case who is crying) and what they are doing. While the monitor was on the more expensive side, it was worth every penny and we were lucky enough that the monitor went on sale for $100 off. This is definitely one baby product I would highly recommend to my future friend Moms.

1st Rankin Cancer Run!

Abigail and Molly participated in their first ever Rankin Cancer Run! With Daddy off to Chicago with Uncle J-Bone, Hiller and Steph for the Detroit/Chicago playoff game, I was on my own to get the girls ready to be a part of the Niagara Catholic Bee-Attitude Rankin Cancer Run Team! The girls were really pulling out all the stops to make it easy for me! A quick breakfast feeding, no major poop incidents and lots of smiles helped me get them out the door on time for the big event! Thank you so much to my friends Melissa and Sean for letting us have VIP parking so close to the event! What a life saver that was! As I entered the Lion Club park filled with thousands of people, my Valco Baby stroller and identical twins became my parting red sea as hundreds of people moved out of the way for the girls to find our team. (Having a huge double stroller has that effect!) Never has negotiating a huge crowd ever been so easy! Thankfully I was able to find Beth, Anna, Terri and other team members from the CEC. One of the greatest things about the Rankin Cancer Run, other than the obvious funding for an important cause that stays in our own community, is the overwhelming support from so many in Niagara. It is a wonderful feeling of community to see so many individuals raising money and walking or running together.

Abigail and Molly during the Rankin Cancer Run!

Getting ready for today's fun was not without it's challenges and curve balls. Potential stress creating events included: traffic, having to make formula, feed, change, dress and pack up the girls alone in a 45 minute time frame, finding the team in a crowd of 10,000, realizing once I was at the park that I had forgotten their hats, sunglasses and soothers in the car (total Rookie Mommy move here) and attempting go for a 5km in a huge crowd during nap time.

Definition of a Successful Event with the Turkettes:

VIP parking at a friend's house, no tears and no crying despite the forgotten soothers, a 50 min nap while walking even though it was sunny and we were in a huge crowd, no major poop incidents (see previous posts, LOL) and smiles for all who took a peek at the girls.

We ended the morning with a quick diaper change and lounging on Sean and Melissa's front lawn in the sun while we played with our toys! It was a great first Rankin Cancer Run for the Turkettes, looking forward to making this an annual event for the girls! We missed you Daddy!

To Sleep or Not to Sleep...

That is the question I'm certain is on Abigail's mind for every nap time and bedtime. "Should I go to sleep since I'm so tired, or should I stay up in case I miss out on any of the action?" I spend my days intently reading my daughters' sleep clues, looking for any hint of tiredness in the form of yawning, eye rubbing (which is just the cutest!), decreased activity or mild fussiness. In constant clock watching mode my sleep clue sensitivity heightens once the girls have been awake and active for over 1.5 hours. All activities are planned around protecting the sacred "sleep time" as I struggle through the joys of sleep training. Walks are shortened, dinners are eaten later, and my eye is on the clock all in an effort to have our beauties achieve the coveted parental goal of being able to say "Why yes, my girls sleep through the night!" (while beaming with pride and feeling extremely well rested)

I'm knocking on wood as I dare to type this, but the girls have had three great nights of sleep in a row. We have an excellent routine of eating awake for the last time around 6pm, a dream feed at 11pm and then the girls have been sleeping until 7:30am or later!!!! I swear I've died and gone to heaven. The days just seem better likely because I'm no longer a sleep deprived zombie! Big changes to our routine that have really made the difference (from what I can determine) making sure the girls are awake by 8am at the latest, so if they aren't awake yet I make sure they are up. Usually just opening the blinds in their room is enough to provoke the cutest stretching and stirring you've ever seen. Then I put the girls in Abigail's crib together so they can hangout while I make a cup of tea and warm their breakfast.
While the feedings are going well and we usually only have 5-6 per day, negotiating the naps has been the new sleep training challenge. While the girls need at least 2 a day, sometimes 3, it can be a challenge to spread them out so they don't interfere with their 7pm bedtime. The biggest struggle is convincing Abigail that she should be sleeping. I constantly struggle to get her to sleep in her crib on her own without the crutch of constant rocking, holding or soothing. She's fine if you hold her, but the second you put her down she becomes a crying, writhing octopus! I keep repeating the mantra that the struggle now will be worth the sleep later. I guess we'll find out in the future if all the hard work will pay off.  Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Inquiring Minds Want to Know If...

As an educator, I've always believed curiosity to be a wonderful thing. Once I became pregnant with twins and now a mother of twins, my view of curiosity has been altered. It all began with the simple first questions that are asked of all pregnant women, "How far along are you?", "Is this your first?", "Do you know what you're having?" When I would reply with "Twins" the onslaught of questions would then continue, some becoming more personal in nature. I suppose my mood at the time had much to do with the response I would give to these inquiring minds, but I found myself growing more amused and a tad sarcastic as time passed. So here are my most or rather least favourite questions asked or comments made when random strangers learned I was expecting twins.

Them: "Twins!! Wow, were you surprised?"
Me: Absolutely not, I planned it."

Them: "Did you have IVF?" (in vitro fertilization)
Me: "No, I had SEX."
(To which their response was usually one of shock...but hey, you asked.)

Them: "Twins, are they real?"
Me: "As opposed to?"

Them: "Wow, Twins! Did you have help?"
Me: "Yes, my husband played a vital role"

However, the most frequently asked question by far was "Does it run in your family?" The answer to this question is no. While my grandfather had twin sisters, this is completely irrelevant because Molly and Abigail are identical twins. My learning curve of twin knowledge has been rather steep this past year and that knowledge includes the fact that identical twins are NOT genetic and can happen to anyone. Fraternal twins on the other hand are often genetic (passed through the maternal side of the family) or can occur as a result of in vitro fertilization due to the fact that two eggs are implanted in the mother. Throughout our entire pregnancy we had frequent visits to the St. Catharines General for nonstress tests and ultrasounds. At each ultrasound we would inquire how many placentas were visible. One placenta would mean the girls were identical, two would mean they were fraternal. It wasn't until my placenta was sent away for testing that it was determined that my pregnancy was monochorionic-diamniotic meaning that I had one placenta and two amniotic sacs, therefore the girls were IDENTICAL.

Now as the girls and I meet different people in public the questions continue! Here are a few of the more common ones:
"Are they twins?"
"Are they identical?"
"Does it run in your family?"
"Are you breast feeding?" (yup, strangers asking this.)

But the question that everyone wants to know is "Are they sleeping through the night?"

Sigh....

I guess it depends on your definition of "sleeping through the night". The literature I've been reading defines sleeping through the night as a stretch of sleep lasting six hours or longer. We have longer stretches of sleep but sadly we still have the odd middle of the morning feed around 4:30am or so. A few times this week I have been surprised to wake up feeling resting around 7:30am let's hope this a growing trend! Fingers crossed as the girls continue to grow, they will continue to sleep!! They did however give me a great Birthday present of sleeping in until 7:30am! Just awesome!

A Mother's Day Baptism

To add a little excitement to my first official Mother's Day, we celebrated the girls Baptism as well! Last year on Mother's Day we told our parents we were expecting, little did we know it was two at the time, so Mother's Day seemed like a good day to bring everything full circle! (and anyone who knows me, knows I like that kind of organization/symmetry! LOL)

Apology Time:
Since we planned the girls' special day on Mother's Day, we didn't want to burden our friends with the decision of choosing between the girls or their Mom, so we didn't expand the invitation beyond our family. In hindsight, since many of our friends mentioned they would have liked to have come, we should have mentioned it and let our friends decide. In short, we're sorry. If you didn't get the invite, it wasn't because we didn't want you there!!

Thank you to Father Peter for once again providing a wonderful ceremony to mark another milestone in our lives, full of his usual humour and beautiful explanation of the sacrament. The girls handled the water over the head with a few smiles from Abigail and a bit of uncertainty from Molly. We have been parishioners at Star of the Sea Church for over 25 years so it was wonderful to have the girls Baptized there.

Molly and Abigail looked beautiful in their dresses (Thank you Mom and Dad for your gift) my maternal Grandmother gave the girls silver crosses to wear on their special day. Also very special to me was the girls' Baptismal sweaters and blankets made for me by my Nana back in 1997 in case she wasn't alive to see my first child (in this wonderful case, children) Baptized. Thankfully, Nana Greene at 89 years old was alive and well at the Baptism, able to see her 7th and 8th Great-grandchildren christened!

Special thank you to Jen, Jamie, and our sisters Michelle and Monique for standing up for the girls as their Godparents. We are truly blessed to have such amazing friends and family in our lives. Your love and support for the girls is a wonderful thing to witness. We are so fortunate to have all of you in our lives.

Molly

Abigail

On the Road Again...

One would think our first road trip with the girls that included an "up the back poop" and a "down the leg poop" would deter us from traveling again, alas we are in the middle of road trip #2 in the same week! Call us crazy, call us brave, but we've taken the Turkettes to the Viamede Resort in the Kawartha Valley with Jen and Martin. This time, the car ride to our destination involved ZERO poop incidents (thankfully) and once we were arrived there was no "crazy lady" attacking our kids!

Flash back to our first road trip to Barrie last weekend, where upon our arrival to the hotel many stress building events occurred at one time. Girls are scream crying because they are hungry, our basement hotel room has NO ELEVATOR access, and we have a CRV full of hospitality supplies (aka a lot of beer!) and luggage. Throw into this scenario the "crazy lady" or Queen B according to her license plate! This lady upon seeing Shawn and I with screaming twins decides now would be an appropriate time to meet these girls, start chatting up their parents and dispense irrelevant, unwelcome parenting advice. While I am open to answering the usual onslaught of twin questions, I do appreciate those who can read social cues. I found it hard to find the patience to answer this woman's questions or even hear them for that matter over Abby's desperate screams for food. All the while knowing in the back of my mind that I still have to unpack her bottles and the kettle, boil water and wait without pacing for the bottles to warm up, likely while both girls lose their minds.

Unfortunately, the woman didn't seem to feel Abigail's protests were an issue and she had the perfect solution...now, I think it needs to be noted that my friends and family are always welcome to play, pick up, feed and touch my children.because I know you, trust you and love you. However, when a stranger grabs hold of the car seat you are holding with your infant child in it, grabs your child's soother and attempts to shove it in her mouth while simultaneously dispensing parenting advice, let's just say my usual calm, nonchalant self disappeared pretty quickly.

Sigh, poor Shawn and our awesome porter Tyler had to listen to me rant about the "Queen B" for a good 20 minutes, LOL. I've since recovered and calmed down.

Although our road trips have overall been successful with the Turkettes, there has been a huge learning curve when it comes to traveling. Things we've learned:

1. Our stroller, while awesome, takes up a lot of room in our CRV.
2. Although small, the girls require A LOT of stuff!
3. Their schedule rules our day, nap times trump everything so we needed to adjust to just relaxing (okay I needed to adjust to just relaxing, LOL)
4. Making formula in a hotel room is challenging, feedings are way easier at home.
5. Any form of crying during nap and sleep time results in everyone being unhappy as you can't just "leave the room".
6. Video baby monitors rock! We were able to watch the hockey game in Jen and Martin's room next door, but still keep our eye on the girls as they slept! Awesome!
7. Back up clothing for the girls is key, you never know when poo or spit up will ruin a sleeper!
8. Time, everything you want to do takes more time with the girls.

Hopefully our two adventures have provided us with enough tips and experience to make future Road Trips with the girls enjoyable! We'll need to start our strategic planning of our big trip to Burgeo, NL this summer. 1st time on a plane for the girls, sounds daunting!

The Joys of Sleep Training!

Sleep training, while the bane of my existence this past week has been a beneficial experience for the Turcottes. It started with the realization that the girls were starting to nap less and have longer stretches of awake time! No longer were they sleeping 20 hours a day, but closer to 15 hours. While this seems like a lot, the trick is getting the majority of the hours to be consecutive hours between the hours of 10pm and 7am. 
In order to prepare for this grand adventure called Sleep Training I talked to a lot of friends who I admire as parents and who had recently sleep trained one of their children. Jenn, Beth, Natalie (neighbour) and Natalie (Biggar) all offered some great tips and advice from their own recent experiences. Then I did a lot of reading and A LOT is no exaggeration. The best sleep book I read was "Healthy Sleep Habit, Healthy Twins" (there is also a singleton version). Unlike other great baby books, the whole point of this book is to talk about sleep. 

When I first started sleep training, this is what I tried:
*Always putting the girls down drowsy, NOT asleep. (so the girls were not dependent on me through rocking, singing etc to fall asleep)
*providing white noise so the girls don't disturb each other (Sleep Sheep!)
*trying to be consistent with the bed time
*doing a dream feed around 11pm to hopefully push the girls to sleep longer through the night.
*topping up the dream feed with 10-20mL more than the usual feedings.

The results of my strategies were positive. The girls often slept through the crying of their sister. Shawn and I got used to "free time" after 8pm as the girls were usually sleeping by this time and the dream feed allowed us to sleep until at least 4am or so instead of waking up at 2am. 

While all of this progress was very encouraging, I was frustrated by outside comments of people who knew someone with a baby at 4 months or less that slept through the night and why weren't my girls etc. etc. Plus I began to notice some patterns forming. At bed time, Molly would roll over to her left side and instantly fall asleep, while Abigail would start fussing the moment you put her in the crib and would require frequent return visits to the room to calm her down before she would finally settle for the night. This would sometimes take over an hour and cause much frustration for Shawn and I. It also became apparent that Molly had formed the habit of waking up around 4am. Regardless of what time the dream feed took place, 10pm, 11pm or midnight, she would consistently wake up around 4am while Abigail would continue to sleep. 


Revised attempt at sleep training, this is what I tried:
*put them down drowsy
*white noise
*consistent bed time
*dream feeds topped up
*trying to have the last feeding close to bed time and then stretch the dream feed until at least 4.5 hours later.
*beginning a bed time routine
*gradual extinction

This approach had a few more positive outcomes such as Abigail going down easier for naps, we think she would have made it through the night if we weren't waking her up for a feeding once Molly had woken us up. The gradual extinction was tough. After we did our bedtime routine and put the girls into bed, if Abigail started to fuss, we would respond right away, do a little check and console, replace the soother, give her a pat, tell her we loved her and then leave the room. When she started to cry we would wait 5 minutes then go in. If it happened again we would wait 10 minutes before going in. The most we ever had to let her cry was for 15 minutes but then she would always fall asleep. Totally heart breaking to hear her crying at the top of her lungs. However, she would get to sleep sooner and the one thing I learned from all of my reading is that crying doesn't have any ill health effects, but lack of sleep can have very poor health side-effects.

One problem I still found with my routines and sleep training was that I could never predict exactly when the feedings would be. Sometimes my bed time consistency would be messed up by a feeding that fell around 8pm instead of 7pm. Plus the girls were not sleeping longer than 5 hours in a row. A few more conversations for friends, a bit more reading and finally we decided to go for it...crying it out.

Final revised sleep training plan, this is what I tried (and trying right now):
 *put them down drowsy
*white noise
*consistent bed time
*dream feeds topped up
*trying to have the last feeding close to bed time and then stretch the dream feed until at least 4.5 hours later.
*a bed time routine that lasted 15-20min and happened in their bedroom
*crying it out 

We decided to try the cry it out method because Molly started joining in with Abigail and fussing at bed time. The first night was awful, Molly went to sleep pretty quickly but Abigail scream cried as loud as she could for 55 minutes. Holy stressful! We basically tried to hang out on the front porch, watch hockey or talk on the phone to keep us from hearing her cry. The second night Abigail cried for 35 minutes and Molly joining in near the end of Abigail's crying but then cried for an additional 20 minutes. Sleep training was still sucking at this point. But on the third night, when we put the girls down to bed.....NOTHING....no crying, no fussing, they just eventually fell asleep. You know what that is.....AWESOME!!!!

One important note for sleep training...starting to train your kids to sleep, days before you take them away for a weekend to the OECTA Provincial Volleyball Championships is probably not the best idea! LOL However, on the Friday night, the girls went to bed in their hotel cribs and slept right next to our very loud hospitality room and didn't wake up at all until we woke them for the dream feed! Way to go girls. Our trip through the girls off a little bit, but the best part is, the girls now sleep from approximately 7:30pm until the dream feed and then until approx 6am or later. To finally achieve this level of sleep in consecutive hours, feels like a small piece of heaven. 

Bottom line: Sleep training sucks, listening to your twins simultaneously cry it out sucks, but the reward of a great sleep for your babies and a great sleep for Mommy and Daddy, made the hard 2-3 nights totally worth it! Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Sigh....

Even though the girls made it longer than usual last night before waking up. Even though they had a great day and had three good naps. Sleep training still sucks.

Sleep Training the Girls

It totally sucks. That is all.