What is Left of my Evening Routine now that I have Twins!

I finally lay my head on the pillow, it’s so soft and comfotable, I can feel my back pain one vertebra after the other. I ask myself why does my back hurt, then a voice inside of me remind me that I have been carrying the twins together. I had promised myself not to hold them together, but I cannot help see them both call for me after I had left them more than 10 hours to go to work. Oh, speaking of work, did I sent that email to Eric, I am sure I did, I marked it done on my planner, speaking of my planner, I should add in the sheets for January, I am already starting to add deadlines for January. It will be a tough year 2020, everybody has been waiting for it. Did that sound come from my stomach? What did I eat for dinner?… Hey! What did I eat for dinner? There is no one there to reply… I feel my body relax, that sweet moment where I am in between awake and asleep yet I don’t know it yet…

Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa, I jump right from bed and stumble my way to the twins room. It’s Christopher, he just decided to wake up.

Being a mom of twins is not easy for any type of mom, but it definitely ain’t way for a full time working mom who manages a program and has a medical condition at home.

I spend my nights waking up with Christopher, and when he decides to sleep for more than an hour, Iva decided to wake up, then comes my natural alarm at 6am when Christopher decides it time for playing. Some feeding, meds, getting dressed, out of the door, traffic, work, traffic, come home, bath, put the twins to bed, then start waking up and repeat.

With such a busy schedule, I had to alter a lot of my personal rituals, here are some of the things that remained in my evening routine now that I have twins:

1. Prepare my clothes for the next day: I like to prepare my clothes ahead of time so I don’t waste my 250 decisions quota per day in the morning. Sometimes I even plan my clothes for the whole week.

2. Prepare my food and Fadi’s food for the next day: when I cook, I usually put the food directly in small Tupperwares, yet every evening, I prepare the breakfast, lunch and snacks and I put them in the relevant bags ready to be taken the following day.

3. Place my handbag, laptop and other items near the door: I once forgot my work laptop home and went to work empty-handed, ever since, I place my laptop near the door every evening, I then got used to placing my hand bag, any clothes that I need to take to the tailor, or anything that I need to take out of the house.

4. Take a Bath: my bath is my only personal getaway, it’s the highlight of my personal time every day. If you are a mother, you are definitely nodding now! Since the twins sleep a bit in the evening, I use this time for my bath. It helps me relax, get refreshed and gives me one or two more hours of energy before I try to sleep.

5. Applying face creams and body lotions: one of my sacred rituals is applying face creams, this has become even more sacred with all the stress that I am going through, actually now I focus on eye creams too. Don’t we all!

6. Indulge with essential oils: I love essential oils, sometimes I put one drop of rosemary oil on my pillow, this has been proven to help increase memory, and that’s needed a lot since it feels sometimes that I am loosing my memory bit by bit. When I am not feeling so much like rosemary, I just put some lavender oil on my wrists to calm me down, and actually remind me of spa smells. These things that I used to indulge in pre-twins.

7. Brush my teeth and do oil pulling with coconut oil: the first part is pretty simple, there is no need for explanation yet the second part is an amazing Ayurveda ritual where I gargle coconut oil for at least 10min. It helps keep me quiet for 10 minutes, clean my tongue and teeth, keep my mouth smelling nice and it’s therapeutic. Try it!

8. Read a book: pre-twins, I used to read every morning for half an hour, read here about my morning routine before twins, now I read in the evening. My reading time now varies each evening depending on how tired I am. Sometimes it’s just reading for 5 minutes, other times it’s for more. These days I am reading a lot of books about raising children.

9. Empty my thoughts as I journal: ever since I knew that I was pregnant, I started journaling daily. This has helped me keep my sanity with all the hormonal changes and it is still helping me. I usually reflect on my day, thoughts, lessons learned and anything that comes to my mind. When I am tired this is the ritual that I skip, but I know that this is the most important that’s why I downloaded a journaling app that I sometimes use during the day to keep the flow coming.

10. Sometimes I stretch: this is something that I am doing every once in a Blue moon because I have convinced myself that playing with the twins is enough physical activity for one day, yet I plan on becoming better at it. Needless to say, I am taking 60 seconds to move around after I wear my pyjamas. I was told start slow and thus momentum will be built.

11. I write a blog post: sometimes like this evening, when I am feeling creative late a night, and when Christopher has killed my sleep, I write a blog post!

And that’s it, here goes two hours and Christopher needs to eat again and I still haven’t talked to Fadi to greet him and ask about his day!

How about you? What’s your evening routine? Is there anything else that you do? Any advise from mother’s of twins? Or even triplets?