But I didn\u2019t know anything the night my twin daughters Una and Esme were born. I was bubbling over with joy and adrenaline. My mind was a complete blank.<\/p>\n
No matter what sort of books you read, classes you take, training you think you\u2019re doing, nothing prepares you for being a parent. There\u2019s no transition. You fully aren\u2019t a parent, then: BAM! You are. It\u2019s like becoming a different creature. You feel like Gregor Samsa.<\/p>\n
A better insect analogy: you\u2019re a fly, whizzing free and aimless through the air. Then, suddenly, you\u2019re an ant\u2013ready and willing to trudge slowly, carrying a hundred times your own weight on your back.<\/p>\n
Pregnancy is no preparation. Pregnancy is its own thing\u2013an existence that\u2019s like neither the one you had before, nor the one to come. It\u2019s purgatory on Earth. And it lasts forever<\/em>. Pregnancy is not like any 9-month period I\u2019ve ever experienced. Those lasted 9 months. This took 15 years.<\/p>\n My wife\u2019s C-section, however, was literally 8 minutes\u2014slightly less than the album version of \u201cPurple Rain.\u201d The strings would have still been going by the time Nola and I became parents of 2 screaming, kicking, glistening, 5-pound aubergine people. Purple rain, indeed.<\/p>\n The doctors showed us Una and Esme\u2013take a good look, parents, get that terrified expression off your faces\u2013then whisked delirious Nola to a \u201crecovery\u201d room, where they allowed her to \u201crecover\u201d for a few minutes. Or until they could locate a junkie orderly.<\/p>\n A side note: The difference between dayshift and night shift workers at the maternity ward is like the difference between, well, day and night. The dayshifters keep your newborn alive with pizzazz and aplomb while perfectly explaining to you how they are doing so. They are loving, understanding, calm, and efficient in dealing with the hysteria of brand-new life and brand-new parents.<\/p>\n Nightshifters\u2026not so much. It wasn\u2019t just the junkie. It was also the angry, muttering nurse who felt it necessary to barge into Nola\u2019s room multiple times nightly to turn on the lights and move stuff around. (The one thing she didn\u2019t do was turn off the 20 minute English-language instructional newborn care video that was on an all-night loop for the Hispanic woman in the next bed who spoke no English.)<\/p>\n *************<\/p>\n When we took our babies home from the hospital, all hell broke loose. What are the first few months with twins like? Imagine two people screaming in your ear all day and night. Now imagine being required to keep those people as close to you as possible. I loved Una and Esme immediately and completely. But I still spent many days wondering when the next bus left for Atlantic City.<\/p>\n Nola and I also had our unique dramas. For example, my exploding lip incident. One night, when the babies were 20 days old, and they were finally asleep, we watched Gran Torino<\/em>. It was such a pleasure to watch a film that I barely noticed my mouth getting numb. I paid more attention a half-hour later in the bathroom, when I saw my upper lip was literally four times its normal size. But for being white, I was a living 19th century racist cartoon. Drawn by the biggest racist ever.<\/p>\n I got whisked through ER triage\u2013that\u2019s how bad it looked\u2013and told I had acute angioedema. If this allergic reaction had spread to my throat I could have stopped breathing, which often leads to death. It took two weeks for my lip to return to normal size.<\/p>\n A month later I had another, milder, angioedemic reaction<\/em>. I went to a number of allergy specialists, who noted I didn\u2019t seem allergic to anything.<\/p>\n I offered that the Internet told me these reactions could be triggered by stress.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s possible, but unlikely,\u201d they all said. \u201cHad there been a major change in your life prior to this episode?\u201d<\/p>\n I wondered, Am I allergic to fatherhood?<\/p>\n *************<\/p>\n Two months later something far worse happened. I dropped Una. It was Father\u2019s day weekend (I know, the irony) and we were at my family\u2019s country house\u2014a rustic log cabin in a charming state of disrepair. I tripped over a crack in the stone walkway and pitched forward with my 12-week old girl in my arms. I had her all the way until my left knee hit the walkway, and, rather than breaking my fall with an infant, I released her.<\/p>\n Una fell face first. Then she just lay there. She looked up, bleeding from her cheekbone, and silently stared at me. I was relieved when she started crying, since I already was.<\/p>\n Nola rushed Una to the nearest hospital, Putnam County, which is, I believe, the hospital other countries cite when denigrating the American health care system. Putnam\u2019s star doctor was a literally a dwarf with eyes set so close together they almost overlapped. He ordered a number of X-rays, the last set of which revealed what appeared to be bleeding on Una\u2019s brain. They\u2019d have to keep her overnight. A nurse told Nola she\u2019d pray for her child. My wife called me sobbing.<\/p>\n Later that day, Doc Closeeyes said that, while he was pretty sure that it was a brain bleed, perhaps they\u2019d better take the ambulance 30 miles to Westchester Children\u2019s Hospital, where \u201cthey have much better facilities.\u201d (And, he neglected to mention, much better doctors. Wise is the man who knows he knows nothing.) Tiny Una was strapped to a gurney, plugged with IVs, and carried to the ambulance by huge paramedics who did their best to console Nola.<\/p>\n I met my wife and baby at Westchester Hospital. Una was strangely calm and casual, smiling even. (Baby, your brain is bleeding!) The doctor, who was not a dwarf and whose eyes were appropriately distanced, ate an ice cream sandwich. He smiled and said everything was fine. He strongly doubted there was any brain bleeding, but they\u2019d do an x-ray just to be sure.<\/p>\n \u201cNope,\u201d he said, when he returned 20 gut-wrenching minutes later. \u201cNo bleeding on her brain.\u201d<\/p>\n No? So what is it?<\/p>\n \u201cWell, lil\u2019 Una does have a pretty nasty scrape on her cheek.\u201d<\/p>\n He told us that what Putnam\u2019s doctor thought was a brain bleed was likely \u201ca smudge.\u201d Or possibly \u201csome blurring.\u201d<\/p>\n Blurring?<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m not sure what he thinks he saw,\u201d said the doctor. \u201cYou know, Putnam doesn\u2019t have great facilities.\u201d<\/p>\n *************<\/p>\n We managed to avoid any more ambulances for the rest of the year. The babies, healthy and thriving, have settled into being cute little identical twins who drive strangers apeshit.<\/p>\n If you don\u2019t like talking to strangers, don\u2019t have identical twins. The endless comments are not all positive. That old standby, \u201cDouble trouble!\u201d (always delivered with a chuckle, like it\u2019s so clever because it rhymes) is actually a crappy thing to say. Who would point at a single baby and yell \u201cTrouble!\u201d at her parents?<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/kalish-sweatpants-001.jpg\" "\\"\\"")
<\/a>\u201cDouble trouble\u201d is a comment that often comes from the African-American community, who, besides that and the occasional \u201cYou got your hands full!,\u201d are overwhelmingly positive when it comes to identical twins. This is a good thing, because, right before we found out Nola was pregnant, we moved into a not-quite-legal sublet in Harlem. If you want to be illegally subletting white gentrifiers in Harlem, don\u2019t have identical twins. They\u2019re not known for their inconspicuousness.<\/p>\n