And No Way She's Gonna Have Time to Blog About It...

You've probably all heard about the octuplets born in Southern California earlier this week. Apparently, the octuplets mom says she's going to breastfeed. To which, I say, sure, hey, go for it. You probably should grow two or three more breasts, though. I'm not exactly an expert or anything on octuplet parenthood, but:

• It takes us about a half hour to feed both babies, and they eat every two hours.
• Eight babies is four times as many babies as we have.
• So it'll take them four times as long to feed the octuplets as it takes us to feed our twins (assuming the mom fails at trying to grow some more breasts). Four times a half hour equals two hours.
• So it'll take them two hours to feed the eight babies, and so as soon as they finish feeding the last baby, they'll have to start all over with another feeding cycle.
  
• Which means -- zero hours to sleep or eat.
• Which means -- better grow some more breasts.

I really feel for the parents. I'm not sure they know quite what they're getting into. Kathy and I look back at our first month with the twins, and we can laugh about it now, but I think we both have to admit now that the first month was a living hell. Total unadulterated hell. It was a month of crippling sleep deprivation, endless breastfeeding frustration, fear, confusion, and as a nagging certainty that we were doing everything wrong and were going to totally fail as parents. I'm not typically all that emotional, but I was breaking down into tears of helplessness and frustration on pretty much a daily basis, and it was even harder on Kathy as the mom than it was for me. And that's even though we had a lot of help from my parents for the first couple weeks.

So multiply that by four, and you have the joy of the first month of octuplet parenthood.

So, octuplet mom, if you're reading this somehow, all I can say is -- I feel your pain. Or, at least, I felt your pain. Or, I guess, I felt about 25% of your pain.