Do you remember it? Forget it! (The mysterious case of dwindling time)

Do you remember when you decided to go to the cinema on a mid-Sunday afternoon and then you would pick which film to see? Do you remember when you had sex whenever and wherever you wanted? Do you remember when a Tuesday afternoon was the best time to have a hot bath and put on all the creams and lotions that you found in your bathroom? Do you remember when a Friday at noon your partner would phone and tell you "prepare your weekend bag because we're going for a break?" Do you remember when a friend phoned and the most usual sentence was "let's meet in half an hour and go for a drink"? Do you remember what it was like to dance in a disco or in the town's festival until the small hours? Do you remember what it was like to wake up at 10 and dawdle in bed? Do you remember what it was like to go shopping with friends and spend hours visiting every shop's fitting rooms to find those trousers, shoes or blouse which you wanted? Do you remember when weekend breakfasts calmly span out? Do you remember when organising a dinner was not a difficult logistic operation? Do you remember how well epilated, tanned and fit you used to be? Do you remember what it was like to have time to do things? Do you remember when you kept up to date with your hairdresser's appointments and all your grey hair didn't show up underneath your headlights?

I've almost forgotten all these. The twin invasion began with a clear time robbery- MY time! You won't have time to do all these things. Not even to think about them. The twin invasion represents a new dimension of "tiredness". I'll go back to this later on. Right now, I urgently need to have my highlights done!

Working on Carnival, but having great fun!

How the hell do you prepare a baby bottle?

Now that I reflect upon it, I can't understand how come I got to thinking that I did not even know how to prepare a baby bottle. For months I prepared up to 16 a day. Our motto was: "Prepare bottles, feed bottles, wash bottles". I had the terrible feeling that I did nothing else all day but go around showing my bare breasts and feeding them. And in only two days I understood the sentence that everybody told me: "You'll spend a fortune on milk".

When I got home I realised that those babies had to eat. In hospital, the support "bottles" were already prepared for you, but at home you have to prepare them yourself. When we were left alone and I became aware of this, I had an attack of powerlessness, anger and desperation. How did we have to boil the bottle? Which teat would they like the most? And which measurements of milk did we have to prepare? All this was something that I didn't understand and which I was obsessed by. Everyone told me: "You'll see, if she is still hungry she'll ask for more". But I was fascinated by this sort of "faith" that everyone had in my ability to notice these things. At that point, I could not see anything and I burst into tears because I didn't know how to prepare a bottle. Luckily, it was Jordi -my husband- who told me that it had no secrets for him and did it. 

2 girls. 8 bottles. 16 baby bottles a day. Yes, of course, they were small but 16 bottles a day is quite something. And the other big question- which milk to buy? We bought the same one which we were given in hospital (but note our total lack of knowledge about types of milk, which are better and why, etc.) I don't want to advertise the product for free, but the first 900-gramme Enfalac 1 tin cost almost 24 euros. Do you remember that it was 16 bottles a day? It can last up to 3 days. 31 days, divided by 3, it's 10.3 tins. 10 tins by 24... What???!!! 240 euros a month just on milk???

The twin invasion which multiplies your expenses by a thousand also makes your inventiveness and wit multiply by thousand. On the one hand, the peace and quiet of being at home and the fact of slowly taking control of the situation helped heaps in my breastfeeding and I combined breast milk with formula. When the time was come, I could not rely on other people's experiences, their tips or philosophies. I smoothly did whatever I came up with. On the other, the fact that helped us stop the increasing expense in milk tins was finding out about the twins' partners in their world conspiration. We learned how to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies.