We recently returned from a trip to the mountains with our girls, which involved a lot of car travel, a lot of naps on the go, and 3 nights spent in 3 different places. It was great. The girls did awesome. We took a similar trip about two months ago, and I can't believe how much easier it's becoming to travel, and to be spontaneous, with twins. We did hikes, we camped (in an RV, but it still counts), we stayed in hotels, and we ate in restaurants 3 times a day. I feel like we can do anything again. For a long time that wasn't true. I know in the grand scheme of things that 2 years isn't really that long, but when your lives change like ours did, it felt like a really long time.
I think every expectant parent believes, to some degree, that a new baby will have to adapt to them, not vice versa. That you'll keep doing whatever you did before, and baby will come along for the ride. That your life will not be dictated by baby's schedule ("We're not going to be those parents who..."). This may work well for some people, but this definitely did not work for us. Our 'normal' lives were very much interrupted when babies came into the picture. For months our activities were very much planned around our daughters schedules, and they still are to some extent. Now there's just more flexibility. They don't need to sleep nearly as much or as often, and we don't suffer total meltdowns if bedtime gets pushed up by an hour. With time, we have found a new normal. It didn't take two years, but it took awhile. The training occurs on both ends. We slowly train our babies, and they slowly train us, and somewhere along the way, we find a balance.
I believe that all people thrive on routine. Our minds and bodies function best when we eat, sleep, and are active on a regular basis. As soon as you see what happens when you push your infant past their limits, you never want to do it again. MELT DOWN. Everyone suffers. You're tempted often, by those people who don't see the effects of keeping a "she's doing just fine" baby out a little later. But by the time you're trying to get that baby settled into bed an hour later than usual, she's overtired and stressed, which means she's full of adrenaline, which means a hellish time trying to get her to bed. It happens every time. Once you've been there, your survival instincts kick in, and you learn how to avoid meltdowns at all costs. When there's two babies to contend with, it can become quite restrictive. Any kind of activity had to be carefully timed, and the window is short. Think about getting two babies fed, two diapered, two dressed (possibly diapered again) in car seats, in the vehicle, unloaded, doing said activity (strollercise, play date, shopping, etc.) and then you have to get them loaded back up again and home for a nap, with another feeding and diapering in there somewhere. Your window for all of that might be 2 or 3 hours. Like I said, restrictive. It takes some trial and error (aka meltdowns in public) to figure out what you can and can't accomplish in that time frame. Sunday dinners with our extended family would start at 4 or 5, so that we could leave and get the girls into bed by 7. We did put them down to sleep in one place and transfer them home on a few special occasions, but I wasn't up for the challenge very often. The exhaustion I was experiencing in that first year definitely made it worse. People probably thought I was a real drag, or maybe a bit over the top with how strict I was with our bedtime. My only excuse is that I was in survival mode. Once the girls became good sleepers (which they did), and once chaos didn't ensue when we stepped outside of routine, I became much more relaxed.
Which brings us to now. I'm exhausted just thinking about how much effort it took me to go out with the girls in that first year, and I was doing it on little to no sleep. Now I'm well rested, and going out is leaps and bounds easier. An incredible amount of growth and development happens in that first year, and not just for babies. Becoming parents was a huge adjustment. With time, we've become much more comfortable in our roles. The challenges are there, and I expect they will last a lifetime, but the rewards just keep getting better and better.
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