 |
|
Brian Borchardt and his twins; twenty one month old Carter, right, and Sydney, a blur of motion on the left,
in the family's Neenah home. Photo by Wm. Glasheen
|
With increasing enthusiasm, Brian Borchardt and Jane Dias are discussing the finer nuances of the man-to-man defense vs. the zone.
“We simply won’t go certain places without making sure that we stay right on top of them,” Dias exclaims.
Among those seated around her, this observation is greeted by a gathering of vigorously nodding heads and earnest hoots of agreement.
“Absolutely. But at home, it’s definitely zones,” Borchardt says.
If the topic were merely basketball, this conversation would prove less engaging for those chiming in; however, what’s being discussed is a far more brutal contact sport — the trials and tribulations of raising “multiples,” think twins, triplets, quads, etc.
Neenah’s Dias, a working mother of 3-year-old twin sons as well as a 4-year-old son, and Neenah’s Borchardt, a stay-at-home father of 21-month-old twins (a boy and a girl) as well as a 5-year-old daughter, are hashing things out in a decidedly friendly setting. They’re sitting among other members of the Neenah/Menasha chapter of Mothers of Twins Clubs Inc.
“It feels like I’m endlessly counting heads,” says Appleton’s Christine Mazier, the mother of twin 4-year-old daughters, a 7-year-old daughter and an 11-year-old son.
“Wherever I go, I’m forever counting those heads. It’s not just the kids, but their friends too.”
Each of these parents believes one thing: Raising multiples is neither better nor worse than raising a single child at a time. “It’s more like parenting on steroids,” jokes Neenah’s Kim Smakal, mother of twin 9-week-old sons and a 3-year-old daughter.
In essence, the lows seem lower and the highs higher.
“You get so tired, you forget who had a bowel movement, who had their medicine, who had their dinner … ” Borchardt muses. “You realize quickly that you can’t keep it straight without a chart. We all live by charts.”
“We’re multitaskers extraordinaire,” Dias says.
Even though her observation is made with humor, no one is laughing.
“Life doesn’t stop”
Even today, Mazier’s eyes will fill up with tears when she recalls the shock of discovering she was carrying twins.
Five years ago, she and her husband, Daren, had done a good job of building a nice life for a small family based on a moderate income. That was until fate offered up a curve ball and the Maziers became a large family very rapidly.
“We never fathomed twins,” she says. “When I found out I was carrying them, I had to pull over to the side of the road, I was crying so hysterically … I didn’t know how we’d manage.”
Like a lot of other parents — and not just parents of multiples, Mazier notes — they simply found a way “because that’s what you do.”
The challenges they confronted generally fell into three varieties:
There were the emotional issues. “Going from raising two singletons to twins, it would break my heart when both were crying and you could only get to one at a time,” Mazier recalls.
They also regularly confront the “big picture” issues, such as the financial pinch that remains real and requires accommodations and comprises to be made daily. It’s in the very real realm of dollars and cents, for instance, that they are seeking a way to afford the parochial school education they value for their children. Mazier does some substitute teaching and babysitting to help handle expenses.
But there also remain smaller, persistent, challenges that become woven into the fabric of life. “Don’t you ever have those days where it feels like all you’ve done is prepare food, serve food or clean up after food has been eaten?” Mazier asks her peers rhetorically.
Looking back, she says, feeling overwhelmed was a natural reaction. “I felt like I wasn’t being a good mom, a good wife or a good employee,” Mazier says. “I felt like I wasn’t good at anything.”
Today — four years since the twins were born — she is more at peace. “My son had hockey. My daughter had dance classes. And I made the little ones come along with me,” Mazier says. “Life doesn’t stop because they showed up.”
A healthy sense of perspective is a crucial parenting tool for mothers and fathers of multiples, Sakal suggests.
“When it gets right down to it, what matters most is that we keep a roof over our heads and food on the table,” she says. “Kids don’t need to wear designer clothes. We had planned on sending our daughter to Lutheran school, and we may not be able to swing it now — but does that matter? We’ll have to fill in the gaps ourselves.
“Whenever we’ve gotten to a challenge we step back and look at the big picture and ask ourselves, ‘Does this really matter?’ And most of the time it really doesn’t.
“In the moment, it feels stressful. But you step back take a moment and say, ‘We’ll get by.’ We can sit there and lose sleep over it, but how good of a mom would I be if I was always losing sleep?”
“A matter of priorities”
Melody McCabe juggles a marriage, twin 21-month-old daughters as well her Neenah-based professional organizing business, Office Efficient Systems.
“My business started six months before the twins were born,” McCabe says. “Everything, however, was based on the ‘One Child’ Model. So we definitely got thrown a curve ball.”
Nonetheless, her home-based business has taken root and grown — but at a price, paid often in stress, around-the-clock hours and the inevitable fatigue.
“My husband (Joe) will come home from work and he, quite understandably, might want some ‘alone time,’ some time to relax before jumping into the fray. But I need him to watch the kids so I can do my work too.”
The upside, of course, is that being the parent of multiples has only raised the cachet of her business. Who, McCabe asks rhetorically, knows the art of organizing better than the mother of twin toddlers?
“I tell people that I’m just so efficient that I had two babies at a time,” she beams.
Dias, a partner at Appleton’s Wealth Management LLC, also gingerly walks the tightrope between her personal and professional lives. “I never dreamt in a million years that I’d have the urge to stay home,” she says. “But you know what? It’s for real. Balancing family and career is a real struggle, as it is for every parent. Maybe it’s just magnified a bit by multiples.”
Borchardt chose a different route: His wife stayed in the workplace and he chose to dedicate himself to raising the children. “It was a matter of priorities (that drove my) leaving work. The hard part for me was doing that in a society that values males who ‘bring home the bacon,’ so to speak. I suddenly found myself as ‘Mr. Mom.’ I’d still rather watch SportsCenter than Sesame Street.
“Fortunately, I’ve found a few other stay-at-home dads and we get together and talk about ‘guy’ things, like the game last night or hunting season. So it’s nice to have a peer group.”
“Respect your time”
Borchardt knew he was becoming socially isolated when he started looking forward to receiving phone solicitations.
“Just having ‘adult talk’ is wonderful … I’ve grown to looove telemarketers,” he says with a laugh. “They’ll call and I’m like, ‘Hey, whatchya selling? Tell me all about it … no, really, tell me ALL about it … ’
Finding “adult time” — the occasional evening away from the children — is more than just a luxury. It’s a virtual necessity, say parents of multiples.
Without a venue to unwind, relax or blow off steam, the pressure of child-rearing can erode morale, short-fuse tempers and damage a marriage.
“The laundry needs to get done. The twins want to play. And the older sister needs a moment of your time. Who’s the low person on the totem pole? Me,” Borchardt says.
“You do your children a disservice if you don’t find time for yourself,” Mazier agrees. “If you’re always making sacrifices for them, they won’t learn to respect your time as they grow.”
Getting away, even if only for short periods, pays off in long-term dividends, McCabe notes. “Once you recharge, you’re helping them. You’re less grumpy. You’re more responsive. You’ve got a better attitude and demeanor.”
When they became parents of twins, all agree that they also discovered their true friends.
“A friend doesn’t say, ‘I’ll help you anytime,’” Borchardt explains. “A real friend says, ‘We’re coming over at 7 p.m. next Tuesday — and you’re going out with your spouse whether you think you need to or not.’”
“An eye-opening lesson”
In the end, the only locked-in-stone rule to raising multiples is this: There are no rules.
Each family finds its own way. Some have larger support systems, others don’t. Some hit the books, others learn by instinct. Some already have children, others get thrown into the deep end of the parenting pool right off the bat.
“Regardless of the situation, the answer is always the same: You just do it,” Dias says.
“From a guy perspective, let me tell you: You learn a lot about your wife,” Borchardt says. “I’ve become much more attuned to her emotions than I used to be. I’ve started reading (the same things she’s reading) a lot more.
“The fact is, you need help. You need a partner. You need to lean on each other more when it’s multiples. I know it sounds crazy, but I believe (the twins) helped our relationship.”
“You get an eye-opening lesson in life and what really matters,” Smakal agrees.
And once you’ve survived the sleep deprivation and domestic anarchy, the value of raising multiples multiplies the rewards. “God knows more about what we need than we know ourselves,” Mazier says. “I couldn’t have asked for more. Our (twin) girls will always have each other. When their siblings go to college, they’ll still have each other.”
Avi Stern is the associate publisher/editor of Family magazine.
