they'll be okay

“Should we go to that café tomorrow?” my husband says. “Remember the place we went to a couple of years ago? It was really good.”

“Let’s go tomorrow,” I say. “After breakfast, before the boys’ nap. It can be their lunch and our brunch.”

He needs this. He’s been working very long hours lately and doesn’t really do anything else. We have no social life, basically, and I’ve been watching him struggle with that. While he carries the heavy load of working and earning our living, I’ve taken on most of the care of the boys.

It’ll be good. A nice change of air. The next morning, we go.

It’s fine. Chaotic, obviously. Brunch with twins is mostly running around after them rather than actually sitting down and eating, even with my mother’s help there. But we’re out of the house. We’re doing something different. A change of air.

We order food. It arrives late. I keep looking at the time. It’s nap time. We have to go.

By the time we’re in the cab, we’re already late, and the ride home is twenty-five minutes. Once you’re past nap time, twenty-five minutes is too much of a risk.

I know this. I know from experience that if they fall asleep in the cab, transferring them into their cribs without waking them is a really, really big challenge.

I watch their eyes start to close and what I fear happens. They both fall asleep.

“You grab one, I’ll grab one,” I tell my husband as we’re pushing the pram through the front door. “Let’s just take them upstairs as smoothly as possible.”

I carry one of them upstairs, lower him into his crib and shush him a little. He stays asleep.

The twin my husband carries wakes up crying.

“He’s sweated,” my husband says. “We should take his clothes off.”

The twin I’ve put down is still wearing all his clothes. I don’t mind. He’ll survive for an hour. We’re not putting their sleep sacks on anyway, and when you sleep, you run a little colder. You’re motionless.

But we’re trying to be quiet and get this done quickly.

“Fine,” I say. “Take his clothes off.”

He cries even more while my husband undresses him. We put him down in his crib and he cries harder. He won’t let us leave.

I ask my husband to leave the room so I can try to settle him.

“For fuck’s sake,” I mutter under my breath. “You should have just left his clothes on.”

I can feel myself getting triggered and agitated. I’m getting angry at my husband because the plan is that I put them down and then go to the gym. Now my plan is ruined.

My husband comes back into the room.

“See?” I say. “I told you. You shouldn’t have taken his clothes off.”

He tries to help me. It doesn’t help. Our son is still crying at the top of his lungs. We lie down on the floor beside him, but he stands up and wants to play. He’s not going back to sleep.

He slept for ten minutes in the cab. Just enough sleep to stop him from falling asleep again, but nowhere near enough to carry him all the way to bedtime.

My plan is gone.

So much of my day is out of my control that nap time is precious to me. It’s the one part of the day I set aside for myself. An hour, and now it’s gone.

I’m pissed.

Because I’m pissed, I need this to be someone’s fault. Apparently, my husband’s. He suggested the café. He took the clothes off. Never mind that I agreed to both. Never mind that he’s standing there trying to help me fix it.

I know what I’m doing. I can almost watch my brain building the case against him in real time.

Still, I’m pissed.

Eventually, I climb into the crib with him and ask my husband to leave again.

“I’m just going to lie down with him.”

If I try to shush him or calm him down, he thinks it’s fun. So I do nothing. I lie there and pretend to be asleep.

He climbs on top of me, puts his fingers in my nose and pats me as though he’s putting me down for a nap.

This is the hardest meditation ever, I think to myself.

Half an hour into this, the other twin wakes up too.

He’s now slept for only thirty minutes. I try to shush him back down, but he won’t go. He starts crying like a maniac.

He’s overtired. He wants to sleep, but he can’t sleep. Everything I offer annoys him. He doesn’t want his dummy. He doesn’t want his bottle. He doesn’t want a snack. He doesn’t want to be cuddled. He doesn’t want to be patted.

My husband comes into the room.

“This is a disaster,” I say.

“I know.”

We offer our son a snack. He seems so out of it that I’m not even angry with him.

“I think I should take them out,” I say. “Maybe he’ll sleep a bit on the walk. I think he’ll sleep on the walk.”

Still, I ask my husband what he thinks.

I’m the one who spends whole days with them. I know their rhythms. I know the small signs. I know what usually happens next.

Still, I ask him, as if he is suddenly supposed to know better than I do.

He doesn’t say anything substantial, because what substantial thing is there to say? He’s trying to help. I’m the one looking for an answer that doesn’t exist.

My mind starts building the case against him again.

“I think something like this happened with the nanny the other day,” he says. “He woke up early and cried a bit, but they were fine afterwards.”

For a moment, I let that make me doubt myself.

Then it hits me. Trust your fucking instincts.

I knew the brunch outing was risky, and I still went. I knew I should have kept them awake in the cab, but I didn’t. I knew we shouldn’t take his clothes off, but I didn’t insist.

Each time, I knew.

“We’re going on a walk,” I say.

I strap them into the buggy as quickly as I can. I grab what we need and get them out of the house. I haven’t even peed since this morning, but I can’t stop to do it now. I just need to get out of the house as quickly as possible.

One of them is happy as a clam, chatting away, pointing at the birds and the dogs.

The other one is crying at the top of his lungs.

“Mama. Mama. Mama.”

We walk for twenty minutes. He keeps crying.

I stop and try to calm him.

No.

Half an hour in, I stop again and take them out of the buggy. I tell them we can stay in this little area.

No.

They immediately start running away.

Three warnings.

I put them back in the buggy and we keep walking.

Another fifteen minutes. He’s still crying.

My mental health really depends on knowing what’s coming. I can deal with a lot when I know what the day is going to look like. All of this is throwing me off.

It’s why I almost never let them nap anywhere but home. It’s why we’re always home before it’s time for them to sleep. I need that structure as much as they do.

Someone at the end of the road seems to be collecting signatures for a cause or something.

I swear, if they talk to me, I will scream.

“Do you have a moment?”

I smile politely.

“Sorry.”

“Mama,” he cries again.

I start doubting myself.

Did I misread him? Does he need something else?

I keep walking.

At some point, without even realising I’m doing it, I start singing.

“The wheels on the bus go round and round.”

It seems to be working.

I turn on the playlist I made for them, full of children’s songs they love that don’t give me a headache.

We listen. We walk.

Every few minutes, there’s another “Mamaaa,” but the cries get further and further apart.

Until we’ve been walking for fifty minutes and everyone is calm.

I can feel my nervous system settling. I take a deep breath. Then another.

I reach for my phone, but I can’t check it. It’s at the bottom of the buggy so they can both hear the music equally.

I haven’t looked at my phone in forty minutes.

I’m walking. I’m taking deep breaths. The sun is shining.

It’s okay.

We’re okay.

On the way back, I take the long way home. We’re all calm now. There’s no reason to rush.

As we get closer to the house, I hear someone calling my name.

I turn around.

It’s my husband. He’s come out looking for us.

We pass a man pushing another pram. His baby is crying at the top of his lungs.

“They’ll be okay”, I think.

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