Marriage ruined by my twins. Does it get any better?

[nuckyscarnation]

We have 13 month old b/g twins. They are ivf babies so took a lot of time (and all my savings!) to conceive.

I love them more than life itself. They are the best thing that has ever happened to me and I couldn’t imagine life without them. However my marriage is in absolute tatters and I don’t know how to salvage it. We’re due to start at Relate but I’m honestly not sure it will be enough. I’m just so worn out all the time and I feel like I have nothing spare to give to my DH😪

I’m just so sad that I have my dream but at the expense of my relationship. Does it get better? Did anyone else out there manage to turn things around? Feeling very very desperate today.

OP I just want to give you a massive high five for being so committed to breastfeeding and responding to your babies. Breastfeeding is the best thing you could possibly be doing and you deserve to be so proud of yourself. Breastfeeding is not the issue here. The issue is that babies are horrifically hard work, and you're not receiving adequate support. Withdrawing breastfeeding would only be stressful to you all, and won't solve the problem of inadequate support. I wish you all the best; in my experience it's a matter of taking one day at a time and holding on to the thought that it won't always be like this.

@RandomMess I didn’t see your last post but yes that’s pretty much how I feel. Sorry but I really am going to bow out now because people here have made me feel utterly shit at a very vulnerable point.

Thank you @Methyl that’s really lovely of you to say

Well your DH is certainly being a complete dick!!!!

If you want to stop bf to sleep then start doing it in the day time first because you will be more able to cope with it. If he isn't prepared to support you then it's going to be much more difficult and quite frankly he is completely out of order

It seems that his priorities are not you and the DC

I really hope the counselling helps him grow up and pull his finger out and start being on the same team.

Are they both ebf still? I was probably offputting with my description of DD and the night weaning, but she is quite a drama queen and yours will probably be easier. I was at a danger point where DD could have easily fallen out of my bed while night bf and it was wrecking my sleep.

I see how exhausted you are as you are doing all the days and all the nights... but really, you have to take a step back and look at what can change.

To me, it needs to be the up to nine (nine?) night wakings. That's murderous on you.

Maybe you need to take one baby each in the evenings or something to get DH feeling more adept. It's probably too much to just disappear and leave him with dinner and baths x 2.

Wrt parenting books etc, I think it is pretty common for one parent to focus more on this sort of thing.

Honestly OP, regarding the breastfeeding, you're damned if you do and damned if you don't.
You're totally exhausted, suffering from sleep deprivation which is almost akin to torture and have very little support. You don't sound like you're a very happy mother at the moment. And yet you're choosing to continue with the one thing that could make such a difference to everyone if you stopped. I totally get why you feel that way, but this sounds like one time when you need all the help you can get. Yes, breastfeeding is the most nurturing, natural thing to do so of course you'd want to do it for as long as possible. Sometimes though, shit just gets in the way and compromises have to be made. Your children will not suffer in any way if the feeding stops. They will, however, suffer emotionally if they have a mum who is at the end of her tether, or a dad who they see once a fortnight.
No one is criticising you, stop being so aggressive at those who have made this suggestion. Having one baby is hard, two must be fucking horrendous at times!
On a practical note, can you afford a cleaner a couple of hours a week? Can your parents have the babies an extra afternoon? Or overnight?

If your DH won't support you with sleep training/weaning off the boob I would co sleep with babies. At least that way you should be able to get more sleep. Also if they're napping even for only 20 mins at a time try and sleep. If only one is napping then put the other one in the living room with you and make it as baby proof as possible, stick CBeebies on and doze on the sofa. I know it sounds wrong but you will only sleep lightly on and off and have sixth sense while you do it. I had to do this with my eldest as he used to get up so early in the morning and wouldn't go back to sleep. Actually it wasn't CBeebies it was dvds I put on as it was too early for CBeebies!

Breastfeeding is lovely but sometimes you just have to be pragmatic. I fed the eldest three of mine to at least 12 months, but when I had DC4 I was exhausted and getting very thin so I stopped. It was better for DS that I was well.

Your babies will be fine if you stop and you will probably feel less tired. Your DH could take over some of the feeding and start bonding with them more.

I’m not a twin mum but have had two shocking sleepers and been at very low points with DH as a result. A couple of suggestions by PP which I heartily agree with:

• you and DH agree between yourselves that this is shit and you are both tired and grumpy but it won’t last forever and that you need to just get through it together without making any big decisions right now. In other words your marriage goes into “holding pattern” as a pp described it.

• stop feeding the DC to sleep. Not stop BF, stop feeding to sleep. You almost certainly have a sleep association problem, they wake so often because they briefly wake at the end of each sleep cycle (as we all do) but unlike us they don’t know how to get back to sleep without BF. Because that’s all they’ve ever known. If you can teach them to get to sleep by themselves the wake ups will reduce dramatically and you and DH will be so much happier. (And tbh your babies may be too with better stretches of sleep).

If you do want to stop feeding to sleep you will need a proper plan - best time to start is morning nap time or bedtime rather than 11pm. And ideally your DH support, as he may find it easier to settle them without milk than you (they will know he cannot give it to them) - hopefully he might give you this support if he knows it is part of a plan to get better sleeping?

@milliefiori I just have to say: that sounds amazing. If you and DH can be that positive and creative about getting through such a challenging time I bet you'll have a long and happy marriage.

Having both our kids put a significant strain on our marriage for about 15 - 18 months each time.
I can't imagine how hard it would be with twins. Good luck with relate, hang on in there if you can. Is he helping and supporting you?

Cross-posted. Maybe you're gone but if you're still reading... you don't have to stop bf at all, but you could stop night feeding. I know what it's like; I used to leap to bf at every whimper because I was always trying to prevent one waking the other. Everyone with a baby, whether bf or ff, has to stop doing that at some point. Obviously it's much easier if you can get a supportive partner to help. Or if your babies take a soother. But you maybe could even get a friend or grandparent or paid night nanny to do it if he won't. Four or five nights should do it.
You are doing a terrific job but it's too much for anyone.

You definitely don't need to stop breastfeeding but nine wake-ups a night at that age is frankly nuts and I'm amazed you're still functioning! As PP said, they've never learned how to sleep without boob and now every time they wake slightly, instead of putting themselves back to sleep, they need to be breastfed. They don't need the calories or food overnight so it's purely a sleep association thing at this stage and it is destroying your chance to sleep and theirs too. They must be knackered also! I know when my DD has a night where she wakes up more than 3 times (thankfully v rare) she is exhausted the next day.

You don't even need to night wean completely - I stopped feeding to sleep but I still feed DD once a night generally. But I think you need to do something before you become unwell, for all your sakes.

But your DH just sounds like an uninterested and reluctant parent, sadly. It might improve as your DC get older and more able to do things that he enjoys, but it sounds like he's checked out of family life, to be honest

We've got twins and the first year was grim.
Things that helped us were

1. Gentle but consistent sleep training. So sush pat, gradually leaving room etc. No feeding to sleep. Minimal night feeding.
2. I went back to work part time at 14 months. We paid in nursery fees what I earned but it kept me sane.
3. Getting a cleaner now and again.

Sleep training is harder work in the short term but kept us sane in the longer term.
Try and work out joint parenting strategies with dh before night time. Have your strategies clearly laid out before your dc start to test you.

I fully intend to wait until they wean themselves.

4.5? Oh God. Poor poor you. The thought fills me with terror. I actually think I’ll die if I have to live like this for another 3.5 years. The exhaustion is unreal isn’t it? I sometimes feel like my whole body is shutting down!

OP, you can't simultanously a) refuse to countenance night weaning and b) express horror at the idea that you might be stuck doing this for another 3.5 years. If you won't nightwean, you may be doing just that. I get the impression that you are just kind of hoping that your kids will naturally and spontaneously grow out of the nightwakings quite soon. Well, you might get lucky or you might not. I am a member of La Leche League. It is full of crunchy mums who refuse to nightwean or sleep train. Some of the kids wake the mothers up all night long for YEARS.

You do not have to stop breastfeeding. I breastfed for three yearsbut we night weaned pretty early on (8 months or so) and I made sleep a priority, even when that meant getting tough and tolerating some crying. "Please apply your own oxygen mask first, before helping your child"remember that line from the airplane?

You also need to limit breastfeeding for your babies' health. They need plenty of fooda breastfed 13mo can be expected to feed 2-3 times in 24 hoursnot 3-9 times a night and then probably many times in the day as well. If they are tanking up on milk all night, they probably won't eat enough solids, which puts them at risk of nutritional deficiency, especially iron.

If you are breastfeeding there are limits to how much he can help you. Seriously, stop breastfeeding.

No-this is simply not true. By the time a breastfed baby becomes a toddler, they should be breastfeeding a couple of times a day (morning and evening, for most familiesperhaps three times a day if they are still only 13mo), and eating solid food and drinking water from a cup all the rest of the time. Night feeds should be cut out by this age unless there are medical reasons not to--healthy toddlers who are growing well do not need to eat at night. If you are breastfeeding like this, the breastfeeding has pretty much zero impact on your parenting life except if you do things like take long business trips away from your child which means you might need to pump once a day.

@nuckyscarnation if you’re still reading and to answer your earlier question, erm honestly I’m not sure I could say that in the moment I did feel like I still loved DH. It feels awful to say that now but I do remember wondering to myself if I’d made a mistake marrying him while our first DS was still young . With the benefit of hindsight I can see that we had just reached a bit of an impasse for a while and so weren’t being particularly kind to each other.

However, whilst I can’t even begin to imagine how insane it is to have twins, especially as your first experience of having DC, so much of what you are currently going through sounds familiar to me. I also breastfed mine until just past 2 years old and that included most of the time whilst co-sleeping and feeding to sleep at night. As well as the tiredness of being woken up so often this also did create resentment on both sides and looking back as I am able to now I can see what was going on and appreciate that both sides had merit for their feelings.

For my part, I felt so annoyed that my DH seemed to give up helping, especially at night and in the morning when I was desperate for a lie in occasionally. There was one night that DS was asleep in our bed when he came in and he picked him up and took him back to his cot. This inevitably woke DS up and I was so angry that it was me that was now going to have to get up and deal with DS. It felt like he was being incredibly selfish and unkind to me.

However, from his point of view, whilst he absolutely loved DS to pieces, he felt that DS was coming between us quite a lot and that night he moved him into his cot, in his head he wanted to get the bed back to ourselves and to have some husband and wife time together without DS in between. That didn’t necessarily mean sex, just some time where DS wasn’t the complete focus. Looking back I can also see that by feeding the DC myself while they were young, they didn’t want to be with DH for long if they got tired or stressed out because he couldn’t give them the comfort blanket feed like I could and for a while this did upset my DH because he did initially want to be equally involved and take his fair share of settling them. After a while and after I took them off him and they settled quickly, he mostly gave up and although at the time that built up resentment in me, I can totally see how he got to that point.

In the end, it kind of came to a head and we both told each other how we were feeling. This made us realise that we both had valid reasons in reaction to how things had changed but then we also realised that it was just while the DC were young and that it wouldn’t last forever. Each subsequent DC was easier as we kind of ran the ‘holding’ pattern setup for the first year or so but this time we understood what was going on a lot sooner.
Hopefully the counselling you have planned will help you work out how and why each other is feeling as they do and you can work through it.

But...do NOT be put off by anyone else’s comments. It is a very tough time and for a while you don’t feel like you are achieving very well at looking after yourself, being a mother or being a wife. I can 100% promise you that it is temporary and that also you are doing your best with what you have going on at the moment. Once they are older you should find that your DH becomes more interested as they better interact with him too and right now I am typing this from bed alone while my DH has taken all 4DC and the dog to rugby training!

Great post, Kokeshi123. Especially bit about putting your own oxygen mask on first. I'm very pro breastfeeding but I feel sorry for new mums now who get bombarded with the message that breastfeeding on demand 24/7 indefinitely is the most precious - the ^^only - gift you can give your kids. It's brilliant for as long as it's working for both mum and baby but nine breastfeeds a night during the toddler years isn't going to translate into any detectable advantage in life, and it certainly won't cancel out the negatives of an overtired, burnt-out mother or conflict between parents. Please don't take this as an attack, OP - your posts just concern me and I think you need to put yourself first.

@nearlynermal - thank you and yes we've been married 24 years now, and our DTs are almost 18. We are very happy together.

Sorry, meant to say we are very happy together now. When DC were babies we could easily have divorced. But it was exhaustion and shock and the massive stress of this new and complex commitment that made us doubt each other. Once we started working together to make daily life better for all of us, things really improved. I think once they were 13 months old, life improved hugely.

Your situation sounds unbelievably hard OP. I only had one baby at a time and I was exhausted. I have never known how parents of multiples cope! I BF both my DC until the age of two, but I night weaned them both at nine months and I would urge you to do the same. The constant waking (nine times each per night!!!!!) is completely unendurable and if you night wean then you should find a marked reduction in this. TBH, they can't be getting decent sleep either, waking up so many times. for you and commiserations. You're doing the right thing by getting marriage counselling, but with your DH working nights I see how things are going to drastically improve unless you force some changes to your schedule with the babies. Would a 'super nanny' type intervention for a week or so help, do you think, to try and get your DC into a more manageable routine?

should say 'I CAN'T see how things are going to drastically improve ...'

The thing is zafferana many of us who’ve been in her situation have already said that it did for us. It feels hopeless, but it probably isn’t.

I have no doubt that it will get better eventually @Herocomplex. My impression from the OP though was that she's desperate for it to get better now, otherwise her marriage could end. If that's the case, then in order to make things better now she'll have to do something to change things, rather than just wait patiently for her DC to wean themselves and start sleeping better, which can take years!

I agree with this. The first year is really hard, wanting to murder your other half really normal but things should be getting better now.
They aren't and realistically they are only going to if OP makes changes. She can do a lot around sleeping and feeding by herself.

@Kokeshi123

Please do not post misleading information about Breast feeding like it is fact.

You absolutely do not need to "limit breast feeding" to avoid nutritional problems. This is ridiculous. A toddler can have a balanced diet of solids and still feed as much as they want. The very reason milk no longer feeds all their nutritional needs means their bodies seek out additional nutrition from solids.

Breast feeding satisfies a lot of needs aside from nutritional ones, comfort, closeness, pain relief.

For people saying you NEED to night wean. It might make it better. In my experience if often makes it worse. Babies/toddlers still wake and once you wean you lose your easy way of getting them back to sleep. Tiredness and frustration increases.

OP, I promise it will get easier. You are doing a great job for your babies. Your life would be easier if you had more support, but it won't last forever. I agree with the holding pattern advice.

Good luck