My Diary of Triplet Fatherhood

I had taken Evie up to the spare room adjacent to the nursery because she was crying like crazy and I wanted to give J some quiet. Fortunately, the day hadn’t been as difficult as I’d imagined but J had still spent much of it with Evie crying in the background so that now, for the last feed before bed, with Evie crying again, we were upstairs, alone.

Our conversation was simple enough but has given me food for thought all day.

“Hey, Evie, Shhh, it’s alright,” I whispered, pulling the bottle away as she began to cry again. Checking the side I could see she’d eaten no more than 10 millilitres. She was supposed to have nearer 120. “Come now.” I lifting her up a little in the hope that the change in angle might clear her nasal passages.

Her only response was pitiful sigh. She looked miserable, chest heaving to regain her breath after her little drink.

“Shall we try a little more?”

Another sigh, this time accompanied by a mournful hiccup.

I took that as agreement, tilting her back a little, but immediately she began to cry again.

“Not ready yet?”

Not even a hiccup this time, just a resigned sigh, as if shrugging the weight of the World from one shoulder to the other.

It was horrible. I didn’t want to make her cry, but neither could I let her go hungry, so I began to lower her down into an eating position again. And again she began to sob. So I began, as one does, to sing. Now perhaps it was the shock of my tunelessness on top of her other burdens that caused it but as I started singing, Evie stopped crying and looked up into my eyes, mouth still downturned, her gaze still weary but perhaps just a little more comforted.

So I sang and sang and eventually she drank her 120 millilitres and it was beautiful, just her and I, alone without distraction, working together to get through the meal. I realised as I sat there that I had never once spent any time with just one of my daughters. Even if I am holding and playing with or talking to one, I will switch my attention away occassionally to smile at or otherwise entertain her sisters. Not to mention that there is generally J there plus a Nanna or other visitor. J once took Scarlett shopping while I stayed at home with Evie and Jemima but that wasn’t the same. Up there in the quiet of the bedroom, there was nothing and no one to distract us.

Sitting alone with Evie like that was a revelation. I shouldn’t be waiting until my children are poorly to give them my full attention.

It’s been a weekend of firsts for the girls Coming home on Friday, I was greeted with an excited, “Jemima’s got something to show you” so I went over to where she was lying with her sisters on their playmat. At first I couldn’t see what was different. She was just lying there, perhaps kicking bit more excitedly than usual, gazing intently at a light in the ceiling… then she wacked herself in the face with the rattle in her hand and I realised what it was. She was holding something for the first time!

It’s amazing to watch the girls learn these things. As soon as they master getting their hands into their mouths, they are working on something new. And I mean ‘they’, too. Within hours of Jemima grasping* the ability to hold stuff, Scarlett could do it as well, and very soon afterwards, so could Evelyn. Having three children the same age gives an incredible insight into how people go from complete helplessness and lack of any knowledge to having a pyramid of skills so vast that we can’t imagine not possessing most of them. Only earlier that week I had been reading about developmental milestones and was a little worried when the website said that by three months, infants should be able to grasp light objects, then, there they are, suddenly able to do so, and at an adjusted age of only 10 weeks.

J was a little upset that she hadn’t tried them with the particular rattles they could hold before, occupied as she is with trying to keep up with the housework and make sure the babies’ basic needs are met but I think she’s doing an amazing job. The girls are constantly sung and talked to as their mum does chores, played with lots, between jobs, moved from room to room to keep their environment fresh, taken for a walk every day regardless of the weather. I don’t know where J gets the energy.

It always suprises me how much of the stuff they do is predictable. That all babies learn to do things in a certain order and to a timetable embedded somewhere within them is amazing and, for me, really brings it home that they are their own people and I’m just helping them along their way.

Then, the very next day, Evie almost managed to roll over from lying on her back. Again, something that doesn’t seem much to you and me, but considering the girls are effectively immobile at the moment, just turning themselves over is effectively an infinite increase in their mobility and marks the first step** towards walking. I am so proud.

Unfortunately, the weekend concluded with a rather less pleasant first: Evie’s first cold, poor blighter. She’s miserable. Every breath is a struggle. She finds meals even more difficult than normal, crying every few minutes from the frustration of no longer being able to simultaneously breath and suck and having to be calmed gently until she’s relaxed enough to try and eat a little more. Her congestion is also giving her trouble sleeping.

It breaks my heart not being able to make her comfortable and is also frustrating – I want so much to make things OK for her. Plus, we work to such a tight routine that the girls not sleeping or taking longer to eat means other stuff has to either be done quicker or not at all and, of course, time spent with one baby means the other get less attention which adds guilt to the mix. Especially for J – with me at work today she’s got all this to deal with on her own. It’s times like this when you realise how much caring for three babies is a juggling act.

I think Evie has caught a cold because we now keep the central heating on for most of the night against the increasingly cold weather. Even I have woken up most mornings feeling dried out and I have a big nose even by grown up standards. With their little respitory systems, I reckon the effect must be amplified. Hopefully the doctor will have a solution when J takes Evie there this afternoon.

* Sorry.
** And again.

Even though the weather has turned bitter recently, J (and I when I’m not at work) are still taking the girls out for a walk every day. When I’m there, we tend to pile into the car and go either to one of Leeds’s parks or for a walk along the canal, both of which have been something of a revelation to me. I can’t believe that I lived in Leeds for ten years without discovering how lovely the canal or Roundhay park are.

Going out with the girls is a highlight of the day. It’d be easy to get stuck indoors, lost in the daily routine, if it wasn’t for the afternoon walk but it’s definitely worth making the effort to wrap the girls up and get out into the fresh air for some exercise. It breaks the routine and makes the day shorter.

Plus the girls like it, too. At least, mostly they like it. Jemima, you see, has something of a dislike for Roundhay, pretty much every visit ending with her having screamed for at least half a lap of the lake. That aside, though, they definitely enjoy these trips, watching the world go by and napping on and off to the rhythm of the buggy’s motion.

Also, I suspect taking the girls for a walk contributes to their sleeping well in the evenings. It’s the beginning of a very predictable series of events that culminate in bed time. First the walk, then a small bottle, a bath, a larger bottle then gently up to their cots without talking or eye contact, all signal the change from day to night.

Anyway, I can’t write about their walks without posting a picture (or three) of them wrapped up in their Morrck hoodies with noses pink from the cold.

Here’s Jem…

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… Lettie…

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… and Evie, all bundled up against the winter weather.

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I think I may be becoming a tripletaholic. Talking idly with J about what it would be like having another child now and how it would change the dynamic of our family, I found myself stating that I don’t want one more baby. No. I want three. Anything less than triplets would be weird now, which I guess it has something to do with the girls being my first children and so triplets seeming so normal. I love having my three girls and when I think of having more children, I just want to repeat the experience.

Is that too much to ask? I mean, it’s happened before. A quick Googling of the subject has revealed the existence of Maddalena Granata, an Italian woman from the nineteenth century who had… wait for it… fifteen sets of triplets. That’s right. Fifteen sets. Forty-five triplet children. How brilliant is that?

J and I have started a bit late to challenge that particular record, so I’d be happy to settle for, say, half that number. Yes, seven or eight sets of triplets would do me fine. Of course, finding a buggy with 21 seats on it might be tricky and we’d have to buy a bus to get around in (and a mansion to house us all) but those are minor details I’m sure we’ll find a way round. I just want twenty-one adoring faces smiling up at me. After all, if three is mind-blowing, how blissful would twenty-one be?

Of course, there’s one minor technical difficulty to overcome first, namely that having triplets has a probability of something like a one in eight thousand which gives a total chance of this ever happening of 1 in 2, 097, 152, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000 or 2 octillion to one. And that doesn’t even factor in J hitting me upside the head for even suggesting the idea. After all, she’s the one at home right now having difficulty keeping just three of them from screaming the house down.

Actually, this reminds me of an opportunity I missed a month or so ago for a fantastic joke. Walking the babies in the park with J and two of her friends, we were stopped by a cooing old lady and her long-suffering husband. Turning to me she asked “Ooh, are they triplets?” and I almost replied, “No, I’m a mormon and these are my three wives. They all gave birth at the same time.” Unfortunately, I’m too soft and couldn’t bring myself to take the piss from someone who was being openly interested like that.

Oh, well, maybe I’ll get a chance to make the joke when the next set of triplets are born…

Just a quick post today. Skimming over recent entries I notice that there’s a lack of recent pictures so here’s three taken last weekend to keep you going. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to take nearly so many pics lately as it is dark both when I leave for work and when I return and those I do take just don’t come out as well without natural light. Even at the weekend, the girls are so bundled up when we go out that there’s not much to photograph and at other times they have taken to new habits that make feeding them much more difficult, leaving less time to mess about with my camera.

Anway, the pictures…

This is Evie, looking over my shoulder as she so often does. I can’t help wondering if she’s trying to spook me with that classic freak-the-substitute-teacher-out prank of looking just over their head or behind them.

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And here’s Scarlett giving me her “stop messing about and feed us will you dad” look.

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And Jemima. Again, she’s trying to trick me, unaware of the fact that I’m on to her game and know, full well, that there’s no one behind me. Is there?

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Before the girls came along, I’d never been one to be taken with fear. Not with fear of things going wrong or of danger, anyway. I’ll admit freely that I was – still am sometimes – shy, but that has its root in fear of rejection more than any belief that I should be scared of the World.

I had never really been troubled by nightmares. My outlook was generally to announce casually that “things’ll be alright” and then, if they weren’t, deal with problems as they arose, not to worry over things that hadn’t happened. An optimism that served me well. I’ve had no more misfortune in life than most and spent a lot less time fretting than many. If anything, I guess I’m too laid back about risk, over-relying on serendipidy and the goodness of people but again, I find it more pleasant going through life an optimist and am more often that not proved right about people’s good nature. These attitudes have allowed me to remain largely unfettered by worry or doubt for over thirty years, confident in my happy optimism.

Not now though. Recent month have seen me having my first nightmares for years. Dreams of loss, death, danger and fear have had me sneaking up to the girls’ nursery to check on them more than once.

And this anxiety is not restricted to the night time. In idle moments, I’ll find my mind wandering onto anxious topics. Some daydreams I have are sad. What if J and I split up? What if one of my girls was to die? How would that affect me? How would it affect her sisters? Will they be close to one another? Will they be close to their parents? Others are doubting. Will I be a good enough dad? How will I handle conflict with my children? Will I provide well enough for theri needs? Teach them the things that will allow them to wring the most satisfaction from life? Will they like me? Or anxious. Will any of my girls reveal themselves to have disabilities? How would I cope with them having (or help them cope with having) depression or ADHD, dislexia or deafness? What if we had a car crash? I dropped them on the stairs? The buggy tipped over? A car mounted the kerb when I am walking with them? Their bath scalded them? A house fire? The scenarios go on…

I suppose these feelings stem from my babies being both precious and vulnerable. That, and their presence in my life is so new that my mind is racing to assimilate the situation, skirting likely (and not so likely) dangers and difficulties. Having children has shaken me out of a lifestyle that, while comfortable, was also unrewarding, with the result that I now have to meet life head on as the manifold decisions and challenges of fatherhood assail me. For the first time in years, the future is wide open and the present has purpose and value. Anxiety is my mind’s way of being prepared for the challenges that accompany that purpose.

I had a very close call this weekend. Without expecting it, I found myself on the very brink… but managed to retreat in time. But it was close. Too close.

I should explain that the weather has turned very cold this past week or so. Each morning my car is freezing when I set off to work, the sterring wheel chilly on hands already cold from de-icing the windscreen, the badly-timed shaving of my head leaving me chilly in the morning air. Even wearing my coat with the hood up, I’m half way to work before the car’s temperature begins to become bearable.

It was those factors that were on my mind as I stood in Marks and Spencer, ready to pay for my two new purchases. Purchases that would have marked that one step that takes you beyond the point of no return. Fortunately, I realised my impending doom in time, and put the tweed flat cap and leather driving gloves back on the shelf in time. Phew!

I love being a dad, love it even more than I thought I would before the girls were born, love it in so many ways I wouldn’t have thought and so much more than I thought I would in others but there’s a difference between throwing yourself into the pleasures and rewards to be had from fatherhood and becoming a stereotype of dadness.

That said, my response to the three dread-laden words people whisper to me in the street (”Three. Teenage. Girls.”) has become “I’m planning to get a garden shed” and I must admit the idea is strangely alluring. I wonder how long I’ll hold out against the call of dadly stereotypicality. After all, if you have a shed, you ‘ve got to get a flat cap, and gloves, and maybe even a pipe.

It’s hard to imagine not being able to do some of the things a baby has to really struggle to learn. Things like sticking your fingers in your mouth. Ha!, you may think, Sticking fingers in my mouth? Childs Play! Well not for the girls. For them it’s proving a suprisingly difficult skill to master.

First there’s just getting your hand to your mouth. Only a couple of months ago it wasn’t uncommon for the girls to whack themselves in the face with their hands and look at me in outrage, as if I’d done it, so not only must they manouvre their arms but also figure out that their arms are even under their control, something that’s not helped by the fact that the nerve endings of young children spread out before they reach the surface of their skin. This means it’s not always possible to pinpont where a particular sensation originates from on their body. So when their hand hits, say, their ear, they don’t know if it should move left, right, up, down or whatever in order to end up at their mouth. As such, it’s not uncommon to see one of them with their hand against their cheek, desperately trying to stick their tongue out far enough to reach it, presumably figuring their hand is closer than it actually is.

Then, even if they do reach their mouth with a hand, the poor blighters can’t always work out to open their fist, or will open their hand too far, and not be able to fit their splayed fingers in. But more and more, they do manage it, happily sucking away until, in a cruel twist of Fate, their concentration lapses and their instinct to kick and flail their arms, um, kick in, then it’s back to bashing themselves in the cheek or ear again as the whole ordeal starts afresh.

I remember, last month, J and I talking about how easy feeding times would be with three Jemimas. It was towards the end of the girls’ growth spurt and while Evie still ate with her usual slow, disinterest, Scarlett had become increasingly difficult to feed, too. Only Jemima would take the amount she was supposed to in anything less than an hour. In fact, she often took more and did it in ten minutes or so.

How things change. Over the last week, Jemima ahas developed a new habit that makes her just as hard to feed as the others. After gulping hungrily on the bottle for a few minutes, she suddenly bursts into screams, turns red and thrashes wildly, just like she does when she’s had to wait for feeding time for too long. Taking the bottle away makes no difference nor does winding. She just screams for several minutes before suddenly calming down and drinking hungrily again as if nothing untoward has gone on. This happens several times a feed. If it continues I think we may have to consider renaming her to Apoplexia.

Meanwhile, Scarlett has discovered the joys of sticking out her tongue. All very well except when there’s supposed to be a bottle in the same space her tongue now occupies. And sometimes she also gets mad during a feed, although in her case, she demonstrates it by whacking the bottle out of her mouth with her arm or grabbing it and pushing it away while turning her head to the side and growling threateningly. Again, this lasts for a minute or two regardless f what we do before she goes back to happily eating away.

Several people have suggested that they may be teething and it’s true that they’re showing some of the other symptoms, like blushed cheeks and rashes on their chins, but surely it’s too early for that? Besides, why would they get upset for such a short time? And why only when eating?

If only you could just ask them what’s wrong. Not being able to communicate must be just as frustrating for them as it is for us. Instead we’re stuck with trial and error whenever they cry as we work through the causes, starting with those that are most likely. Hunger, wind, in need of changing, too hot, too cold, uncomfortable, bored, tired, overtired, not tired enough… and those are just the likely ones. Other possible causes need several days (or more) to test, such as with Evie’s slow eating, where we’ve been trying a new teat for the last week to see if it helps or when they wake early from a nap, trying to get them back into the routine has to be handled with care as trying too many tactics, too rapidly, without giving each a decent chance to take effect can just make matters worse.

With the lunchtime scream (as the lunchtime nap has now been rechristened), just trying out toppping up before the nap, topping up during the nap, two different types of increasingly filling milk, making the room cooler and, now, controlled crying, has taken over a month. A month marked by a daily two-hour spell of screaming, mind.

And that doesn’t even allow for trying to work out whether problems interconnect. Does the new milk, for example, have anything to do with Scarlett and Jemima’s feeding troubles? Does them eating less affect their waking early during nap time?

So often, J or I will ask the other what they think we should do, only to be confronted with an equally bemused expression. It’s hard to believe that no one has told us what we’re supposed to be doing. If you require hours of training to own a car, how come we can be handed three newborn babies and just told to get on with it? Surely everyone doesn’t just muddle through like this? Or do they? Is that how the nation is brought up?

You never realise, when they’re a kid, just how clueless your parents really are. Maybe that’s why some people claim becoming a parent is a rite of passage into adulthood. It’s not that you’re getting wiser, or more important, or earning a place in society. No, it’s just that you’re officially let in on the big secret – Mum and Dad don’t know best, they’re just muddling through life like everyone else.

When did they get so big? It’s amazing. The girls were three months old on Friday and it’s really made me take notice of how very big they’ve become. That day at work, I trawled the web for a growth chart so I could see how much bigger than they should be for their age they really were, expecting them to be near he upper end of the scale, possibly off it completely.

Why else would they now be too tall to lie widthways in a cot? So tall that when I bath them, it only takes one kick to send both them and half the water exploding across the kitchen table? On top of that, the girls have recently been unable to fit in not only 0-3 month age range babygrows but 3-6 month ones, too.

As it happened, the Health Visitor came that day and did the measurements, even plotting them on a growth chart, so my research and baby length analysis skills were un-needed, and I found, to my disappointment, that, in fact, none is more than on the 75th percentile for length (I don’t suppose you should call it height when they can’t stand yet). Which is impressive, considering how premature the girls were, but not in the realms of size my imagination had prepared me for.

By the way, Scarlett now weighs 12lb 9, Jemima 12lb 4 1/2 and Evelyn 12lb 3 1/2, which explains why I find myself really having to engage my muscles to lift them nowadays and why the triple buggy gets more of a slog to push by the day. At this rate, I’ll have muscles like Arnie by the time they’re one.

Earlier this week on the radio, they were discussing the lies parents tell their kids and lots of listener called in with the things their parents had said to them. They ranged from the cruel (the ice cream only plays a tune when there’s no more ice cream left) through the cunning (it’s illegal for anyone under the age of 13 to switch on televisions) to the inane (TV turns your eyes square).

It was the TV turning your eyes square call that got me thinking. Before I was ever a dad, I had nothing but scorn for parents who plonked their children in front of the telly to keep them amused. Such passive entertainment struck me as the antithesis of what kids need. Childhood is, more than anything, a chance to learn, and learning is so much more powerful for being interactive and challenging. Doing, not watching, is what we are made for. Why else would it be so accepted that people have to make their own mistakes even when others have made them innumerable times already?

You hear stories of kids starting primary school barely able to speak let alone being ready to move on to reading or writing. And why is that? It is (at least we are told it is) because their childminder is a television, their parent never having given them the interaction they needed to develop.

Which brings me to the thing that has been troubling me. You may have heard of Baby Einstein, but in case you haven’t, I’ll explain. Baby Einstein is a range of DVDs designed for babies and very young children, featuring faces, moving objects, coloured lights, puppets and the like, all set to a mixture of synthesized classical music and nursery rhyme tunes.

I’d heard them being praised on various websites and forums before the girls were born, everyone making the point that they keep babies entertained so their parents can get on with housework/get five minutes peace/clean their teeth finally despite it being three in the afternoon. At that time was, great… for the parent. For the child… perhaps not so great, this being the invention, essentially, of a way to plonk children down in front of the telly from an even earlier age.

Compounding these misgivings was a certain disgust at the cynical nature of the title, “Baby Einstein”, as if these things would somehow result in their infant viewers growing into geniuses. Einstein himself managed to become a genius OK without them, after all. No, the name is really, I thought then, a balm for the parents’ consciences. A way of justifying neglect in the name of nurture, masking entertainment as education.

Unfortunately, like so many of those judgements made pre-fatherhood, things are not so simple in real life. You see, we now own four Baby Einstein videos, kindly donated by a multiple mum J got to know through the TAMBA website. And the girls love them. They are transfixed by the images, their arms and legs flailing about excitedly, Scarlett even trying to sing along to Twinkle Twinkle Little Star played in farmyard animal noises with shouted grunts and open vowels. And it does give us that vital twenty minutes to keep on top of the house that I never could have imagined was so difficult to come by before being dad to three. Moreover, with so many demands on our time, it’s a sad fact that much of our interaction with the girls is of the practical feeding and cleaning variety so these tapes provide stimulation where otherwise they’d be lying on their play blanket entertaining themselves.

All of which leaves me torn. I can see the immediate benefit and pleasure but I can’t help feeling disappointed that my beautiful, precious babies are already being nannied by the TV at three months old.

Besides, does anyone, contemplating parenthood, think, “I’ll leave the TV to babysit my kid”? Of course not. But the fact that it’s so common is clue to the difference between the luxury of an idealised daydream and the demands of practacle reality.

Half an hour a day is not abandonment. As long as I bear my missgiving in mind, and ensure TV is only allowed in moderation, I ‘m sure I can balance what’s best for the girls in the long term and the demands of the here and now.

When I came downstairs this morning, not a single chore had been done. Normally, whoever does the 7am feed also changes the cots, washes the night feed bottles out, puts on the dishwasher and gets the daily laundry run going. Not today though.

Instead I found that J had succumbed to the lure that hooked me yesterday, dressing the girls up in cure frocks. And who could blame her. The first thing I noticed as I got into the front room was Evie smilng gleefully at her mum making silly noises and no way should housework take precedents over magical moments like that.

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OK, I hold my hands up. I did it. I couldn’t help myself. The temptation was just too much, especially aligned with several other factors all coming together: a good nights sleep, a bouyant mood, the girls looking particularly gorgeous, no supervision. Yes, that’s right – I dressed Evie, Lettie and Jem up in pretty pink dresses and took pictures of them all morning.

What can I say? Once the idea struck, it wasn’t in me to resist. After feeding the girls this morning, I ran upstairs and rooted through all the clothes we’ve been given for the cute dresses I knew must be in there, then, as I changed their nappies, I swapped them into matching pink, frilly frocks. They looked so cute. Even Scarlett immediately being sick down the front of hers didn’t detract too much from the effect.

ACtually, I was a bit worried that they’d look strange in dresses. We’ve dressed them in the same thing since they were born. There’s no time to faff about with anything but vests and front-fastening babygrows. So it was that I couldn’t help wondering if they’d look like blokes do in frocks, ungainly and farcical, especially considering what chubby little legs and arms they’ve developed of late. As it was, I needn’t have worried. They looked adorable.

I guess this is goodbye to any remaining vestige of manliness I might have had. Not exactly the most macho pastime, dressing little girls up in pink and cooing over them but I don’t hold much with all that macho rubbish anyway.

Here’s the pictures, anyway. Perhaps when you see how cute Evelyn, Scarlett and Jemima looked, you’ll understand why I couldn’t resist.

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It’s amazing how little light you need to see. I’m in the nursery. The door’s closed, the night light’s off and the only illumination is from a tiny LED on the monitor and a sliver of yellow from under the door. Nevertheless I can make out enough to navigate and feed. Anything white, in particular, is easy to discern: the bars of the cots where they aren’t too deep in shadow, the square thermometer on the wall, the milk in the bottle I’m feeding to Jemima. Similarly, anything with pale colours behind it can be made out by the contrast. I can see Jemima’s hand as it clutches reflexively at the air while she drinks because her sleeve is white.

In the dark you hearing comes to life: every breath from each of my girls, Jemima gulping, traffic passing the end of the road. Evie has the phlegmy wheeze of a well fed baby, punctuated by a chesty straining sound that suggests wind. She’s sleeping though so I decide to finish Jemima before switching my attention. Scarlett is quieter, her breaths shallow. She’s already sleeping deeply.

Sitting in darkness gives you time to reflect. I think about J, about what it is like for her being at home all day with three small babies, what I can do to look after her as she does the girls. I consider buying her flowers as a suprise – something to remind her that she is cared for when I’m at work. Last week my brother babysat and I took her to the pictures. Even though we chose a kids film and the cinema was swamped with children it still felt like ‘together time’, and I think J felt much better for it.

She’s been finding it much harder these last few weeks. Our last reserves of energy went a while ago and the honeymoon period’s over. Routine is setting in. For J, one day is becoming much like any other – a stream of feeding, changing, housework, washing, preparing bottles, keeping sleepy babies awake or trying to get frantic ones settled. It can feel like things will never change when in the grip of a routine so I’ve been trying to ensure J gets a break now and then. She goes to a yoga class once a week and I have been taking my leave in little chunks, coming home early every Friday to get the week over quicker, but that still leaves a lot of time during which she has to cope alone.

Scarlett coughing snaps me out of my reverie. Is she choking? No. Just possitting, as usual. She’s never happy without a handlebar moustache created solely from her own milky spew, that one. Now Jem is crying and I realise the teat must have slipped away from her mouth as I looked over at her sister. The darkness means it takes a few attempts but I get it back in eventually and she settles down.

I have booked Thursday afternoon off this week, as well as all of Friday and Monday, and the thought of spending such a long time with my new family is exciting. I’ve felt a little distant sometimes recently. The girls have laughed a few times, apparently, for J or their Nannas, but I’ve never seen it. Missing even the slightest development makes me sad. I wonder what I was doing at work while the girls were laughing, feel sadder still at the necessity of work.

The bottle no longer moves from Jemima’s sucking so I hoick her up to be winded. She’s floppy in my arms now and I remind myself how hard it is for her at the moment, too. Growing, learning, experiencing so much for the first time, it’s all a lot to ask of someone so small. She sleepily snuggles her head into the crook of my neck and I get a whiff of that intoxicating smell. The rush of emotion it triggers is overpowering in the darkness, like a wind over embers, I feel my love and protectiveness enflame. I don’t want to put her down, but Gina Ford insists we not let them fall asleep in our arms and I can hear her breath deepening.

Outside the door, I wonder if this will last. It’s been over a month since the girls didn’t go down in the evening. Of all their nap times, this is both the one we need the most, at the end of a long day, and the one the girls most reliably sleep through. For all the complaining about Gina “Smug Knickers” Ford (as J calls her), the fact that her routines have provided J and I with a sanity-replenishing evening together each night is worth every imperious demand and lack of any admittance that all babies don’t fall into her regime that she makes.

As I write, I can hear intermittent cries through the baby monitor. Nothing strange, I’m sure you’re thinking, about that. However, I can also hear another sound. It’s somewhere between a squeak and a coo and is typical of an amazing new development: the girls are talking!

OK, before you run for the phone so as to be the first to inform the Guinness Book of Records of our miracle babies, I should point out that I’m using “talking” in a somewhat loose sense of the word. Perhaps “proto-talking” would better describe it. Just as the girls must kick and roll before they can crawl, and must crawl before they can walk, they have to make conscious sounds before they can make words and, eventually, sentences; and these are the first of those sounds.

Up until now, they only had three levels of sounds that they made. They either cried, grunted or were quiet. Sure, among those three, they managed to make some extrordinary noises, but none were vocalised. Over the last week, however, first Scarlett and then the other two have started to make a whole new range of noises. It started with shouting. All of a sudden they discovered a new range of volumes between silence and full-on crying. This was soon joined by an occassional coo. And now they are adding new sounds daily; mostly they make different vowel sounds, “aah”s, “eeh”s, “ooh”s in a variety of cadences and sometimes begun or ended with a soft consonant to make “gaa”, “lee” and the like.

It may be my imagination but there have already been moments when the “words” the girls come out with seem a little too pertinant and I can’t help imagining that they are talking already. Like when Evelyn puked down her mum’s top before looking over at me and knowingly smiling “gooey boobs” or when they yell “hungee” when they want a bottle! But then again, perhaps that’s just the sleep deprivation.

Not that the girls are the only ones to expanding their vocabularies. In the last few months I have found myself saying words that I’m not sure I have ever spoken before in my life. Words like “rumpus” and “palava”. And then there’s the deliberate changes. With small children around I’ll have to get used to yelling “bother” when things go wrong or decrying bad drivers as “what a silly man!” But to be honest, it’s quite good fun. It takes a lot more creativity to swear without swearing and the silliness of made up swearing definitely defuses situations where cruder words wouldn’t.