This is hard.

Everyone always asked me "how I am doing" with the twins. As if having twins requires some unattainable skills and is more impossible than anyone could ever imagine.

Well...they are kinda right. Let me see if I explain this without pissing off all the singleton moms out there.

When I was pregnant, I went to the twin support group. All these twin moms sat around patting themselves on the back for just getting by, complaining about the singletom moms who "had it so easy" and wondered what they "did with all their extra time". I, frankly, thought they were all snobs. Having a baby IS hard. Even just one. You don't sleep, you can't go out much, there are toys and baby stuff everywhere. It is hard.

But unless you have had twins (or more, but I don't pretend to understand a triplet or quad mom at all), you have NO understanding of what it is like. Even if you have had many kids. Even if you had them close together. You just don't get it.

You don't understand putting one baby down to sleep and have the other one wake up minutes later. You don't understand tandem nursing. You don't understand not being able to pop into your local coffee shop without a major to do. You don't understand being woken up in the middle of the night not once or twice, but three or four times as the normal course of things. You don't understand the amount of diapers you go through in one day. You don't understand what it is like to eat dinner with your husband, each of you with a baby on your lap. You don't understand trying to regulate naps, only to succeed with one and fail with the other. You don't understand the pain your back is in from nursing, carrying, and holding them.

And if you have twins and you think you understand all this, throw a toddler into the mix. Then you really won't understand.

This is hard stuff. Really hard. And we have good kids. The girls are easy (in comparison to what I hear from others) and Parker is just being a 2 year old, poor kid. He doesn't understand why mommy can't read him a book when she is feeding the gals. His requests to "put Miranda in the chair" are so sincere and sweet, you want to cry.

And I do end up crying a lot these days. Out of sheer frustration. Out of exhaustion. Out of guilt that I feel bad when I asked for all this and SHOULD be enjoying every minute of it, not counting the minutes before Michael gets home.

Anyway...just some perspective for all you moms out there. Yes, having a baby is hard. Having a few in a few years is hard too. But until you buy diapers in bulk on a regular basis, you just don't understand.