1000 posts - a celebration and changes

Here it is.  The 1000th published post on Olive Dragonfly.  I never could have imagined back when I started writing in 2011 that I would still be doing it 5 years on, almost to the day!  My first post here was on the 27th February 2011 and so much has happened in that time.  I'm amazed I even noticed this was the 1000th post to be honest, I blog so sporadically these days but I'm still here and usually constantly writing posts in my head, most of them just don't make it on to the computer!  I'm writing this in my lunch hour at work (the only guaranteed time I won't be interrupted in a day!  There are in fact a further 244 draft posts on my blogger home page, either unfinished posts such as the twins' birthday party, their first snowman, our entire trip to Saudi, our holiday to Turkey, various Christmas posts from a busy December... or ideas I had but never got round to actually writing.  I've actually got a loooong post all written about the new year and how low I was feeling (which I ended up briefly mentioning on Facebook and have since felt completely differently so I never posted it.  It just seemed a bit too woe-is-me and self indulgent!)

This year I am hoping to write more with more of a focus on the other things in my life apart from the twins, now that I have other things in life again!  Their first year was mostly a blur of twin shenanigans and breastfeeding.  Amazing but exhausting and all consuming.  Now they are sleeping well (fingers crossed that lasts!) and I am no longer breast feeding, I have started doing more of the other things I love.  I started up my own baking club down here and have been enjoying baking more as well as meeting more new people.  We've had dinner parties and been invited to friends' homes for fun afternoons and evenings out.  I managed a few crafts for the twins' birthday and at Christmas and Nik and I have managed a couple of nights out alone.  As for the twins, their personalities are certainly developing and they are so much fun and doing more and more so we are able to have more adventures together when I'm on my own with them.

On the blog side of things, I'm hoping to write more reviews of places in and around my new town as there are so many that I love!  I've also recently decided to remove a few older posts to smarten up the blog a bit and give it a more professional appearance in general.  Let's face it, quite a lot of my older posts were a bit rambling and the photos left a lot to be desired.  So after this post is live, I'll be tidying Olive Dragonfly up a bit and hopefully posting more quality posts about a range of things again and not just the twins ;)  Although they'll obviously still be a main focus as they are the main focus of my life now and no matter what, Olive Dragonfly will always be about my life and the things/people I love.

You may have noticed that Roz hasn't been around on the blog for a while.  She's also found life to be very busy since having Aaron and her last post was a year ago now.  She's still very much around on Instagram and in fact, pregnant with baby number two!!  Such exciting news and not long to go now until I'll be having to make another little trip up to Glasgow to meet the new baby star!  As life is going to get even busier for Roz, I don't think she will be back writing again on the blog for a while yet but I hope she will be back with some more updates on her gorgeous house (and gorgeous babes!) when time allows.  One of my new friends down here has expressed an interest in writing for us so she and Roz will be guest writers from time to time.

Now that I live in a smaller area, I am a bit more conscious about some of the more personal posts I've written before and I feel weird about people in my community possibly reading them whereas I didn't feel that way when publishing them to the world before.  I've been nervous to show anyone here my blog as I wasn't sure what they might make of it.  I still don't make a secret of our IVF and am happy to talk about it if asked (which, as we have twins, does sometimes happen!)  Some of these IVF posts will also disappear though.  I will be keeping the main story of our IVF live as it was such a huge thing for me to be able to write about that openly and receive the most amazing support from my readers and friends.  I will never forget the way people helped me during that dark time of life and will be forever grateful.  Any posts I do remove will still be there, just not live on the blog any more.  I have kept ALL of the comments I received in an email folder as well so I will always have them.

I never used to care what people thought of what I wrote and I don't know why that's changed.  Maybe it's because I'm a parent now or perhaps just as I've moved such a distance, I feel I'm sort of a new person here and I want people here to get to know me as I am now and not necessarily everything that has gone before, at least until they do know me properly.  Meeting a whole new community over the past year and a half has been daunting and hard at times.  Making friends as an adult can be tough and although it's made MUCH easier by having children and baby groups to go to, I also don't want that to define me.  As it is, now I feel I have found some real local friends as well as surrogate mothers and grandmothers even!  Being back at work has also helped broaden the people I know of course and it's been lovely having another side of me back.

Last night I went along to a meeting about setting up a new, modern WI here and I am so excited to be a part of it.  I'll be writing more about that soon but I'm just thrilled that my non-twin-related social life is picking up!  I started my own baking club recently and have been asked to make that a part of the new WI.  I've also joined a local book club but haven't been to a meeting yet.  This first book I read as part of it was A Thousand Splendid Suns which I might not have read otherwise but was an amazing, if harrowing, read.  I found it particularly interesting having visited a restricted Arabic country albeit not to the extent in the book thankfully!

Anyway, as I appear to be rambling on again, I'll end this 100th post there.  Although I guess I should add in at least one photo of the twinnies!  ;)

These a few older pictures I never got round to posting, a couple from our trip to Saudi when they were 8 months old:

And a couple from December:

Snow adventures by Bex

About a month ago, we had our first snow this winter.  The first snow since the twins were big enough to be in it!

We had A LOT of fun!  Daddy made their first snowman and Kalyan ate snow.  Priya fell over, many times, and we went for a walk along the lane.  Also, they did have mittens on but they were soon removed by clever little hands/mouths!!  And of course, Mummy was there to join in but mostly took a lot of photos!

P.S. This is the 999th post on the blog!  There will be a few changes coming soon which I'll be letting you know about next week in the 1000th post!!  :)

Baby led weaning flapjacks - date & banana - a recipe by Bex

I obviously meant to publish this way back in July, when the twins were 8 months old, but I just found it when I thought I'd make these flapjacks again.  Shows you how often I actually bake these days, even something this easy!

While staying with my parents here in Saudi, I'm finding a bit more time to experiment (and blog at last!) with some baby food recipes.  I thought I'd try baking some healthy flapjacks for the twins and dates and banana seemed a good option.  Turns out there are quite a few similar recipes already but I just made this one up as baking flapjacks doesn't need to be accurate like when baking cakes.  It seems to have worked well so I thought I'd share my version here.  It's pretty simple with just 4 ingredients and the babies love them!  (So do I!)

1 banana, mashed (115g)
55g chopped dates
150g oats
50g coconut oil or butter (melted)

A rule in our house when it comes to oven cooking anything is "if in doubt, 180oC" so I preheated the oven to 180oC.

Mix all the ingredients together in a bowl, compress into the bottom of a shallow baking tin.

Bake for 20-25 minutes until golden brown.

Breastfeeding twins, one year on - by Bex

Despite a rocky start, I've been very lucky that the majority of my time breastfeeding has been lovely.   I never would have thought at the start that I'd still be feeding them myself at 15 months!  I'm pretty proud to be able to say that.  I've been told it's not common to manage to exclusively breastfeed twins.  I could say it's been easy for me but that's not strictly true.  Of course, it was tiring, feeding two tiny babies on my own all day and all night.  At one point I was up every hour!  Tandem feeding was a godsend but it was still hard going at times.  The easy part was not having to worry about the constant sterilising and making up bottles.  Having expressed for a while, it was hard enough keeping on top of the bottles we did use, not to mention thinking about going out, packing enough formula/bottles, it was so easy to just have their bag ready with the other essentials like nappies, etc. and we could just go.  Same goes for night feeds, I could just grab them from the co-sleeper, feed them and put them back down, no waiting and no need to leave my bed unless they needed to be changed or until they were older and sleeping in cots.  I'd definitely say it was the lazy option!

I do have pictures of him smiling more than this during this sleepy feed but it's a bit too nippley for sharing!

One of my more subtle nursing tops
(but it makes me a bit too warm most of the time)

 The best part though was of course the closeness.  I know from bottle feeding them myself that you can achieve the same cuddly closeness without breastfeeding but I would have struggled to keep that when tandem feeding with bottles.  We always fed one each if we gave them a bottle and I wouldn't have been able to be quite as snuggly while trying to juggle two babies and two bottles at once, even with my pillow.  Having my hands free while they suckled, I was able to stroke them and cradle them rather than having to hold bottles.  (And take photos, videos, control the TV...)

An emergency feeding stop by the side of the road en route to Glasgow!

I forgot just quite how ridiculously huge my boobs were before we started weaning!

I did stop tandem feeding for a while when they were around 7 months old, it was more awkward using the pillow then as they would kick against the back of the sofa, plus I liked the one to one time feeding them separately gave us.  Once they were bigger and eating a few solids, they fed less frequently and for less time so it didn't matter so much to feed them together.  Plus it did get awfully hot having two babies snuggled in to me in the summer!

  

Sometimes it did cause a little issue with one having to wait if they suddenly decided they needed some milk, especially if they woke at the same time in the morning or after a nap.

Which led to occasional faces like this: (Kalyan wasn't finished yet when he was ousted!)

They were always friends again after though:

And mostly we had lovely times like this:

And again, occasional jealous twin issues:

I did eventually start tandem feeding again, without the pillow, particularly in mornings.  I found I could get Kalyan sorted and if Priya was in the right position (anywhere on the correct side basically), she would sort herself out and sit (or sometimes stand!) comfortably beside me and find her nipple.

This was about a week before their birthday.

 And tandem feeding often leads to super cute moments afterwards, like this:

She's not trying to eat him, this is her kiss!

Being able to instantly calm them was also a godsend, after immunisations for example, just whip out a boob and they stopped crying and immediately felt better with a little milk.  Or if we were out in public and one of them was suddenly starving and having a melt down, instant milk no worries about finding somewhere to warm a bottle.  And on the plane, when their ears hurt during landing, just start feeding and it's all fine.  I've now fed them on a farm, in various shops and on trains.  I love being able to comfort and soothe them at a moment's notice, it's so convenient!

It hasn't been without it's problems though.  Although here I can feed them any time, anywhere, we've visited countries where it's not quite so easy.  In Turkey, I felt comfortable feeding them on the beach or by the pool, in the bar or restaurant if required - basically on the resort.  However, out and about, knowing it's quite a conservative, Muslim country, we wanted to respect that and I didn't feel comfortable out and about if I had to feed them.  We didn't go out much anyway but when we did, I had trouble trying to keep hidden.  Luckily they were 10 months by then so it wasn't quite as difficult as when I visited Saudi Arabia which I'm sure you'll know is a much stricter country with severe rules and laws and the twins were 8 months so still drinking lots of milk between solids.

In Saudi you can't even show your ankles, never mind any other flesh, so breastfeeding is most certainly not allowed in public!  We tried to avoid making any long trips out but if we did get stuck needing to feed (and lets face it, it's a very, very hot country) we had to improvise by either using screens (reserved for families to be shielded in cafes and restaurants) and careful positioning under my abaya or hiding in the back of the car with heavily tinted windows.  I mostly managed just using the toilets though.  They have very nice toilets, often with changing areas as there are no fitting rooms in shops so it wasn't as bad as it sounds.  As you can see, trying to actually cover the twins while feeding did not work as Kalyan just ripped the cover off again!  (Mum was guarding me at the edge of the screen and Dad was patrolling outside!  I really didn't want to get arrested!)

The staff were very helpful in this Italian restaurant and put this screen up in the corner for me so I could face the wall.

In the airport, we managed to find a screened off area on the way in to the ladies toilets and prayer room where I could sit and not have to worry.

I always hoped to manage 6 months and then if I was able to keep going, stop at 1 year.  Stopping has not been as easy as I thought it might.  When we tried to cut down on day time feeding, it was often challenging with Kalyan being very moody and crying whenever he saw me if I'd been out and left him with Daddy or grandparents, I was always greeted with urgent sobbing despite him being absolutely fine for a whole day if I was gone (we did a few practice days for me going back to work when they were 10 months old).

It was very hard not to give in and feed him often throughout the day when I was alone looking after the twins, even though I knew he didn't "need" milk as he'd been on solid foods for months, drank lots of water and was given plenty of cuddles to ensure we still had the closeness he seemed to associate with breastfeeding.  I obviously wanted to comfort him and give him milk as and when it was required but if we carried on like that I'd be feeding him for years and that's just not practical for us.  The other issue was Priya being absolutely fine without but when seeing K getting milk, she'd always come crawling over for her share.

In the end, we managed to just stop feeds downstairs so they only associated breastfeeding with the nursery or our bed.  I had to just do this "cold turkey" and tried to distract him with snacks, water or toys if he started the frantic call for milk.  (It was quite a specific noise which is hard to describe.)  We timed this to be over a weekend when Daddy was home to help.  Anyway, it worked and within 3 days he was used to it, perfectly happy going all day without milk when Mummy was around and even having just a cup of cow's milk before bed.  And then they both got Hand, Foot & Mouth disease.

Both being quite ill with high temperatures, sore mouths and loss of appetite, we were back to feeding on demand, whenever and wherever.  After they were better, we managed to quite quickly get back to feeds just morning and night upstairs and left it another couple of weeks before switching back to cups of cow's milk only before bed.  Luckily this was achieved with minimal distress at bedtime and they both settled in their cots after just 5 minutes for the first couple of days and then accepted the new routine.

So here we are at 15 months, still breastfeeding in the mornings but I have to say, I'm in no hurry to stop that.  Our little morning ritual with those initial gulping cuddles are precious and I love those minutes before we all have to get up, dressed and downstairs for whatever our day holds, be it work for me and the child minder for them or a day of baby groups and Happyland!