5:42 a.m. Theo wakes up. Every morning. Like an alarm clock. Screaming. I get up. I change his diaper. I give him a bottle. I sit in the rocking chair in the dark and pray he goes back to sleep.
He doesn’t.
6:15 a.m. The twins wake up. They come into Theo’s room together. Holding hands. Mama. Mama. Mama. One of them has wet the bed. Usually Ivy.
I change Ivy. I strip her sheets. I put them in the washer.
6:30 a.m. Mabel wakes up. She comes downstairs and asks for pancakes. Every morning. Pancakes.
I make pancakes. One-handed. With Theo on my hip.
7:00 a.m. Brandon wakes up.
He showers. Twenty-five minutes. With the door closed. With music playing on his phone.
He gets dressed. He comes downstairs. He kisses the kids on the tops of their heads. He picks up a pancake off Mabel’s plate and eats it on the way to the door.
He leaves at 7:45.
And then it’s me.
Diapers. Two kids in diapers. Theo and Ivy. Twelve to fifteen a day.
Meals. Breakfast. Snack. Lunch. Snack. Dinner. Snack. For four kids with four different opinions about which foods are acceptable. June only eats things that are white. Ivy only eats things that are orange. Mabel won’t eat anything that’s touching anything else.
Theo eats everything. Including crayons.
Naps. Theo naps at nine and one. The twins nap at one. Mabel doesn’t nap anymore. So from one to three, I have three sleeping kids and one wide-awake four-year-old who wants to do crafts.
Laundry. Four loads a day. Minimum.
Dishes. Every meal. Every snack. Every sippy cup.
Pre-K drop-off. Pre-K pick-up. With three other kids in car seats.
Pediatrician appointments. Dentist. Speech therapy for June. She’s behind on her words. The pediatrician says it’s normal for twins. I take her every Wednesday.
Grocery shopping. With four kids. In a cart that holds two.
I don’t sit down.
I want you to understand that.
I don’t sit down from 5:42 in the morning until the last kid falls asleep at 8:30 or 9:00 at night.
I eat standing up. I pee with the door open and a toddler on my lap. I haven’t read a book in two years. I haven’t seen a movie in a theater since Mabel was born.
I haven’t worn anything but leggings since 2022.
My shift runs twenty-four hours a day.
Seven days a week.
With absolutely zero breaks.
I love my kids.
I want to be really clear about that.
I love them so much it scares me. I love the way Mabel narrates everything she does. Now I’m putting on my sock. Now I’m putting on my other sock. I love the way the twins whisper to each other at night in their secret language. I love the way Theo’s whole face lights up when I walk into the room. Like I’m the best thing he’s ever seen.
I love them fiercely.
But the toll of being needed constantly, every second, by four people who can’t do anything for themselves, is drowning me.
Brandon doesn’t see it.
Somewhere along the line, we fell into a dynamic.
I don’t know exactly when. Maybe when the twins were born. Maybe when I quit my job. Maybe it was always there and I didn’t notice until it was too late.
His job is his contribution.
That’s how he sees it.
He goes to work. He makes money. He pays the mortgage on our four-bedroom house in Hilliard. He pays for the minivan. He pays for groceries and diapers and Mabel’s pre-K.
When he pulls into the driveway at 5:52 p.m., he considers his shift completely over.
He walks in the door.
He expects the house to be clean. Toys picked up. Dishes done. Floor vacuumed.
He expects dinner. Hot. On the table. Something with meat.
He expects a quiet evening. To decompress. In his recliner. With the TV. With his phone.
That’s what he says. I need to decompress, Erin. I’ve been working all day.
I’ve been working all day too.
I don’t say that.
I used to.
The first year after the twins, I said it all the time.
I’ve been working all day too, Brandon.
He’d laugh. Not meanly. Like I’d made a joke.
You’ve been at home all day. With the kids. That’s not work. That’s—you know. That’s just being home.
I stopped saying it.
It was easier.
By Tuesday of last week, I was running on fumes.
Literally. I could feel it. My hands were shaking. My vision was blurry around the edges. I’d been up with Theo four times Monday night. He was cutting a molar. He screamed every time I put him down.
Brandon slept through all four.
He sleeps with earplugs. Since the twins were born. He says he needs his sleep. For work. For the drive. For safety.
I hadn’t taken a proper shower in over forty-eight hours.
Not because I didn’t want to.
Because every single time I tried, someone needed me.
Sunday morning, I got as far as turning on the water. Theo woke up from his nap early. Screaming.
Sunday night, I got in. I got my hair wet. Ivy threw up in the hallway.
Monday morning, I tried again. June fell off the kitchen stool and split her lip.
Monday night, I was too tired to stand up.
By Tuesday, I could smell myself.
Sour milk. Old sweat. Baby vomit. The specific smell of a woman who has been touched every minute of every day by small, sticky hands and has had no time to wash any of it off.
My hair was greasy enough to hold its own shape.
I had dried oatmeal on my neck.
Tuesday was a hard day.
Theo’s molar. Ivy wet the bed twice. June had a meltdown at speech therapy and bit the therapist. Mabel’s pre-K teacher called to say Mabel had been very quiet lately and was everything okay at home.
I said everything was fine.
At five o’clock, I made dinner.
Mac and cheese. From the blue box. With hot dogs cut into little coins. Green beans from a can that nobody ate.
Brandon came home at 5:52.
He walked in. He looked at the mac and cheese.
“Again?” he said.
“It’s what they’ll eat.”
“I didn’t know we were having kid food,” he said. “I would’ve grabbed something on the way.”
He made himself a sandwich. He took it to his recliner.
After dinner, I did baths.
All four. One at a time. Then two at a time. Then the twins together while Theo screamed in his crib because he hates being left out.
I washed four heads of hair. I clipped twenty fingernails. I brushed forty-four teeth. Well. Theo has four teeth. The others have twenty each. Forty-four.
I put four kids in four sets of pajamas.
Mabel’s are pink with unicorns. The twins have matching ones with ducks. Theo’s are green with little dinosaurs.
And then, at seven o’clock, a minor miracle occurred.
All four kids were bathed. In their pajamas. Fed. Settled.
In the living room.
At the same time.
Quietly.
It had never happened before. Not once. Not in fourteen months.
Theo was in his playpen. Babbling. Chewing on his green pacifier and playing with a stacking cup.
The twins were on the rug. On their blankets. Bibbas. Holding hands. Watching Bluey on the TV.
Mabel was on the couch. Cross-legged. Hugging her stuffed rabbit, Clover. Watching too.
Nobody was crying.
Nobody was hitting.
Nobody was climbing anything.
I stood in the doorway of the living room and stared at them.
I couldn’t believe it.
And I saw a tiny sliver of a window.
Brandon was in his recliner.
Leaning back. Feet up. Phone in his hand. AirPods in his ears. Something on his phone. I didn’t know what.
I walked over to him.
“Brandon,” I said.
He didn’t hear me. AirPods.
I touched his arm.
He pulled one AirPod out. He looked up at me. Annoyed.
“What?”
“Can you keep an eye on them for twenty minutes?” I said.
He stared at me.
“I just need to take a shower,” I said. “I haven’t showered since Saturday. They’re all settled. Theo’s in the playpen. The girls are watching Bluey. You don’t have to do anything. You don’t have to feed them or play with them or anything.”
I looked at the kids. All four of them. Calm. Quiet.
“I just need you to be in the room,” I said. “And make sure nobody gets hurt. Twenty minutes. That’s all.”
He let out a heavy sigh.
Long. Loud. The kind of sigh that’s a whole sentence by itself.
You’re asking a lot.
I just sat down.
I’ve been working all day.
He didn’t look up from his phone.
“Fine,” he muttered.
He put the AirPod back in.
I practically sprinted to the bathroom.
I turned on the water before I even had my clothes off. I stood there with my hand under the stream waiting for it to get warm. I counted the seconds.
I peeled off my leggings. My T-shirt with the oatmeal on it. My nursing bra that I haven’t needed in four months but still wear because it’s the only one that doesn’t dig into my shoulders.
I got in.
