Priorities

Through the first year of being the father of twins, I have had to make many difficult choices.

For example, I chose to watch playoff hockey games in 4X speed so that I could watch them in under 1 hour. This seemed to correspond to a 75% reduction in my disappointment in the Vancouver Canucks' performance on the ice.

With time at a premium, many regular activities were cut out from my daily routines. Much to the chagrin of my wife, shaving became something that decreased in frequency in 2012. 

For me personally, I enjoy looking back at the pictures from Beardfest 2012.  It will be a constant reminder of the days where I chose to spend time with Pritam and Darshan instead of spending time on personal grooming.

PS - Don't worry Saskatchemom, never again.

It gets better.

After slogging through the trenches for week after week, it is difficult to see an end to the battle. You solve one problem, and a new one pops up. 

Switched sleep cycle, constipation, reflux, colic...

Friends of ours told us that things tend to get easier after a few months. At the time, we could not see it happening. We were starting to get worn down. If not for the amazing support from our parents, I don't know how we would have survived.

Due to the feeding schedule assignments, in April and May of 2012, I was going to bed at 8:30 pm, so I could get some sleep before waking up at 2:00 am to help with the night feed. 

The daily grind was starting to crush us beneath its cruel sharp heel...until something miraculous happened. The twins started to sleep through their 2:00 am feed. Combine this with the fact that only one parent was needed to now feed both babies simultaneously, this meant that Amanda and I could both get a full night's sleep. 

This was the big break we were looking for.

Sleep Deprivation

Let me give you a summary of April to June 2012...
Wait a minute, those memories are no longer clear in my head. 

Where did they go?

I'll tell you. They vanished into a haze caused by 3 months of chronic sleep deprivation.

It's a good thing that I posted a lot of pictures on the internet to help me look back at a time of my life that has mysteriously vanished.

I have no recollection of this dance party.

Making mistakes.

Darshan Ross Marcotte Sarai, after a 10 week stay in the NICU, came home April 8, 2012. His sister would spend the next two days at the NICU until her graduation date.

We were now, for the first time, full-time hands-on parents. How long did it take to catch ourselves making our first parenting mistakes? 

It happened the first day. We decided to proceed with a family Easter Sunday dinner that had been previously scheduled before knowing Darshan would be coming home. The house was filled with a myriad of new sounds and new smells, and poor little Darshan, accustomed to a very different environment in the NICU, was completely overwhelmed. 

Parenting lesson learned: Kids can handle change, but they prefer consistency.

It ain't easy...

For all the emotional trials of having twin preemie newborns in the N.I.C.U. (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit), there is a silver lining for the parents. Someone else is taking care of your children most of the time. Rotating shifts of nurses are feeding, changing, bathing, and playing with your babies while you are not there. Now don't get me wrong. We were not sitting at home living it up. I would come to see the babies before work, and after work, and sometimes again in the late evening. I was given tips from the nurses on how best to feed the babies, how to swaddle them, and I took on a series of minor tasks to help the nurses in their daily routines. 

In the 9 weeks that the children were in the N.I.C.U., I was given the chance to ease into full-time, hands-on parenting, and had a series of advisors to help me through the process ... nurses, doctors, social workers, other N.I.C.U. parents

No one ever wants their baby to have to spend time in the N.I.C.U. after they are born. But, in the future, when you look back on that time, you realize that there were so many things that the N.I.C.U. experience provided you - information, support, training - and you realize how blessed you were to have had access to such an amazing facility.