Cameraderie amongst mothers

About two weeks ago I returned from a meeting to a voicemail message:

A new twin mom from work wanted to know who my night nanny had been and if I'd recommend her.

(I'd recommend both of them but they are both in full-time day work now, the latter working for my friend, Eve, the single mom with twin boys)

I phoned her back (quickly I thought) and told her this but also gave her my agency's details.

We chit-chatted around this night nanny business for a bit (like, did I actually sleep or get up and help her? of COURSE I slept, I was paying for it and was hellishly sleep deprived) and then I did what I usually do:

"How are you really doing?"

She first said something about how you ALWAYS need two hands - true - and how there seems to be always one screaming - again, true.

And then I rested in the pause and she said, "did you cry every day?"

I was honest and said, "no" but then I added, "but I did feel that frustration and overwhelm and "what the hell was I thinking going through IVF for this"?

And she burst out crying.

I nearly did the same.

She sobbed and said that she cries daily. Sometimes many times a day.

How they were happy with their one child and how she's messed up their lives by wanting a sibling for her and going through this.

"And Marcia, this is why I was so scared to put back two embryos".

(true - she came to me before IVF3 and told me how she was so scared of transferring two embryos. I didn't have any advice because we only had two and I had the twin romance thing going on.)

When she stopped crying so much, I listened to her go on and on, and then we spoke nicely and I told her that there was no shame in going to see the doctor for some AD help, and that the main focus for the first couple of months is simply to survive.

Two people gave me this advice - se7en and a work colleague.

"Don't worry about falling in love with the babies, coping and loving the twin thing; just get through it for now", I said.

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Today we had lunch with a friend from work (seriously, the nicest girl in the world and I have lots of nice friends) who I don't see anymore as we outsourced the admin in that area of the business and she's moved to the new administrator. Boo!

Our babies are a year apart, exactly. In fact, her D was due by Caesar on my babies' birthday but he came 2 days early because he didn't want to share :)

Anyway, she has another friend with twins and they were also there.

Well, this mother is very much like me.

No BS and tells it like it is.

Her girls were born at 33 weeks and stayed in the NICU for 7 weeks.

She says after the first night of the babies being home, she said to her husband, "that's it, I can't do this. I'm done".

Our friend laughed but the two of us said, "we are sooooo not joking" :)

She's a SAHM and has 10.5 month-old girls. Very, very cute girls.

She's a self-proclaimed control freak - and yes, we saw this in action many times. I do love being around control freaks who are worse than I am because I appear positively laid back :)

Even D said, gosh, next to her, you are SOOOOOOOOOOO relaxed.

She said to me that she LOVED being around another twin mom because 1) at least she doesn't feel alone with the crazy chaos and 2) I gave her some inspiration (like my friend Carmen did for me many, many months ago).

And both her and my friend said they can't WAIT for their babies to be walking and talking, so for a change I had the most advanced babies :)

So there we go - I feel so privileged to be able to give other mothers (esp twin moms) just a teensy bit of comfort that they are not alone in the madness.

We do this in the blog world all the time (MandyE, I spoke about you today and how you inspired me with the reading thing) but it's different when you actually see and hear people interact with their kids.

This week I need to get moving again with my exercise - I only exercised twice last week - a dance class at the gym and once at home - and eat properly (more tomorrow on weigh-less).

I also need to stop procrastinating and put together a work presentation for the 18th - it's being critiqued by peers which is always the worst, don't you find?

How was your weekend? And what do you need to get sorted out this week?

PS. I just had a thought - I put on my Mondo list that I'd like similar people to come into my life. Could this be it? But isn't there some kind of friendship code about "poaching" friends? Have you ever met a friend through a friend? How did that work for you?

PPS this is my favourite pic of the day