TO: ANGIE JOLIE
RE: YOUR BREASTS
Hey again Angie. I swear I’m not stalking you. Seriously, it’s just that after I wrote you that last letter responding to the whole “twins situation” I kind of thought we were on the same page about how difficult it is. But then, I find out that you posed for a big fancy magazine breast feeding your babies and looking all serene and mother-earthy. Like breast feeding twins was just the most natural thing in the whole entire world. I couldn’t help but feel it was sort of a slap in the face. Admittedly, I haven’t actually seen the pictures so maybe you were wearing nipple shields and they got air brushed out and maybe there was a Boppy involved, or frozen cabbage, at the very least some damn soothing Lanolin but I doubt it. Well, kudos to you on your success, Angie. Fine, I’m probably a bit jealous.
I could tell you a whole long story about my failed yet drawn out attempt to breast feed my first daughter and how I smelled like Fenugreek for at least a year which is forty-eight weeks longer than I actually breastfed, but you don’t have time for that. Not with all that breast feeding you’re doing. But, I did quickly want to share with you that I was all cool in my decision not to even try and breast feed when I found out I was having twins. If one was hard two would be heck, right? I mean, sure, I knew I’d have to get an unlisted number so that the La Leche League couldn’t call and lecture me, or picket outside my house, but I was okay with that. But then I found out much later on that my twins would be born prematurely and all my resolve flew out the window. Those preemies, they need the breast milk. I knew I’d have to give it and them my best.
You probably don’t know this but two preemie babies plus two milk challenged boobs equals frantic pumping. Hang on, I have to go have a glass of wine just thinking about this. Okay, I’m back . Maybe you should just give me your number so I could call you…if anyone could breast feed twins and talk on the phone at the same time it would be you…anyhoo, the very day Sadie and Mattie were removed from my stomach, the nurses wheeled in this huge hospital grade pump with tubing and funnels and a motor so big it could start a car. It looked like some sort of medieval torture device. The thing sat next to my bed about three days untouched. I know I was on a lot of pain medication but I swear through the haze I heard it taunting me. But I couldn’t let it intimidate me. Read More.
Raising preemie twin girls plus a sassy preschooler while trying to make a book deadline isn’t for wussies. In her column, Make Mine a Double, Stefanie Wilder-Taylor takes imperfect parenting to an art form. Each week she breaks the pristine laws of the mommy manuals as she reveals how she attempts to parent her three children through instinct, intelligence, and a lot of trial and error.
With her Make Mine A Double column, Stefanie Wilder-Taylor is the newest member of the Mommy Track'd collection of the web's most popular voices on modern motherhood. She is the author of Sippy Cups Are Not for Chardonnay: And Other Things I Had to Learn as a New Mom and Naptime Is the New Happy Hour: And Other Ways Toddlers Turn Your Life Upside Down. She’s appeared numerous times on The Today Show, is a member of the Us Weekly Fashion Police and writes on her blog, Baby On Bored. Stefanie is currently finishing her third book while juggling her preschooler daughter and infant twin girls. Somehow she finds the humor in it… after a couple of drinks.
