When I entered my front door, I didn’t hear the soothing buzz of a contented family or the soft cooing of babies. It was a visceral, jagged wall of sound, the type of sobbing that has transcended from hunger to pure, gasping fatigue. While her sister Amber let out angry, frantic squeaks in between cries, one of my twin girls, Jade, was crying in a ragged pattern that suggested she had been at it for hours.
A half-empty bottle was left on the couch, formula powder covered the granite counters like snow, and my husband, Brian, sat immobile with his elbows on his knees, gazing into an imaginary middle distance. The sight in the living room was a picture of complete home breakdown.My parental instincts screamed as I dropped my handbag and ran passed him. Amber’s little fists were clenched so tightly that their knuckles were white, and Jade’s face was a blotchy, angry red when I lifted her from the cot. Whispering the frenzied, calming babble moms use to anchor their children in a storm, I rested them on my shoulders.
I turned to face Brian as the screams eventually turned into deep, trembling breaths. I anticipated an apology, or maybe a frantic explanation about a diaper that wouldn’t go away or a missed nap. Rather, he remarked in a voice I didn’t recognize that we had to give them away while staring at me with horrifyingly flat eyes.