It's like origami

Despite my Asian heritage, profound love of order and straight lines, I have always royally sucked at origami.

So it came as no surprise to me when at the "Twins and MORE! Care for Multiple Newborns" class Mr. K and I recently attended, I basically failed the swaddling part. I mean seriously, failed. Again. I was never good at swaddling Piglet and I became so heavily reliant on the Miracle Blanket (aka swaddling for dummies) that I never honed the skill. Then of course as he got older and he kept escaping which I interpreted to mean that he was miserable in his straight-jacket, I just stopped swaddling all together.

Mr. K however, has always been a very good swaddler. He is also, by the way, a very good gift wrapper. Just sayin'. He was basically insufferable during class last weekend with his unsolicited input: "Now fold and pull tight. Tighter." and "no, no, you need to tuck that corner" and "it's too loose, the baby is totally going to escape" superior trash talking. And I was all "Who cares! We're going to use the Miracle Blankets again!"

But the truth is, I. CARE. A little.

I hate that he is so damn GOOD at this *one* task and I am so ridiculously BAD at it. Of course the instructor was all about letting us know how a good, solid swaddle is basically the difference between a screaming infant and a blissfully content infant.

So, Dante's Inferno or Nirvana, basically sealing my fate with the former.

Overall the class was great...and really terrifying. We were both just wrecked by the end of our five hour session on Saturday and staring down the barrel at another long session on Sunday. And remember, we already have one child, so none of this was really new to us. We even just brazenly skipped some parts, like the "how to give a baby a bath" part. We were all 'psssht, we do this every single night, we are all over this, suckers!' And that's when I sent Mr. K out to get me a Haagen Daz bar. The scary bits happened when the instructor had a couple with nine week-old boy/girl twins actually BRING THEM IN for part of the class. We all cooed and smiled nervously as our spouses got pale and tiny beads of sweat formed at our hairlines.

I mean, way to PUT THE FEAR OF GOD IN US.

Bring in real, live BABIES? Just like the ones we are going to have in less than eight weeks?! (six for moi) And parents who look really tired despite the fact that we know they have five nights a week of professional overnight doula help? And the mom isn't nursing, so they just, you know, HAND THE BABIES OVER to her and go to bed FIVE NIGHTS A WEEK?!

So just to recap because I'm sure your heads are spinning.

• Instructor/doula has couple bring in real babies
• babies are REAL
• instructor demonstrates simultaneous care of two babies
• couple sit there and look exhausted
• couple get eight consecutive hours of sleep, five nights a week while doula cares for babies
• couple look exhausted
• babies are not dolls, but REAL
• students sweaty, terrified

Now that is just blatant fear mongering.

There was the instructor, who incidentally, is also an amazing a professional doula and owns her own successful agency, one baby in the sling while simultaneously trying to change a diaper, find a binky, shush a baby, pick up the dropped binky, teach a class and not get peed on. I *know* that every person in the room was thinking "What kind of e.xperimental d.rug can I get from Mexico or China that will help me grow an extra set of arms so I can survive this?"

We're glad we took the time to go to the class...and weren't shy about getting a business card from the instructor!

As Strongblonde, one of my bloggy friends who has four month-old twins so aptly put it, "Twins are kinda scary." So true, so true.

Perhaps if I can just get better at origami...

Coming soon to a Piglet blog near you: baby shower post and a Prenatal Cradle tale -- the beast has arrived. Stay tuned!

*Note in the photos, how I go from happy to showing some trepidation to that "Hey, um, what?" expression. The photo of the instructor in the lower left corner? Yep, that's her with real live babies. Dems were real, peeps. Very real.