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Double Trouble
My pregnancy was considered "high risk" because I was carrying twins. Although I was grateful to have been able to work through my eighth month, I was not happy about going on maternity leave one month early. Little did I know, a short maternity leave was going to be the least of my struggles.
The reality was that my job was only protected for a twelve week maternity leave, and letting my job go was not a feasible option. First of all, I was a single mother. I was fortunate enough to have graduated college with a bachelor’s degree in sociology, but a liberal arts degree did not land me a luxurious job. I was lower middle class, but with two babies on the way, I instantly became working poor. Second of all, one of my twins was diagnosed as "hydrocephalus." She had water on the brain, but the doctor assured me that there was a simple surgery that could treat her. I was informed that most people with "hydrocephalus" underwent a rather routine procedure that inserted a shunt into their brain to drain out the excess fluid. Nothing involving drilling a hole into my infant’s skull sounded "routine," but whether I liked it or not, I needed my health insurance now more than anything.
The twins were born at thirty-six weeks. Tara was a healthy six pounds. Abigail was four pounds and fifteen ounces. And I had eight weeks left on my maternity leave to heal from an emergency C-section.
The twins weren’t expensive in the beginning. I breast fed both of them, and I was handed down enough clothes to dress them for the next three years. All I had to buy were diapers.
I went back to work after the twelve week time limit was up. Fortunately, I worked for an employer that provided a "pump room." It was a secure, private room that allowed mothers to use a pump during their lunch break to store breast milk for their babies. It helped me to exclusively breast feed the twins for two more months and saved me a fortune on formula. Eventually, I had to start supplementing with formula while I was at work, but I continued to nurse the twins when I was at home to cut back on the cost. I didn’t switch exclusively to formula until Tara got her first tooth. It didn’t take long for cost to rise after that. Once both twins tasted bananas, the food bills have never stopped.
The anxiety I felt after going back to work was almost unbearable. It took months before I could concentrate on my work because there was not a minute that went by when I wasn’t worried about my babies. I was especially worried about Abigail after her medical condition had been confirmed by a neuropediatric surgeon.
Life didn’t get any easier when I found out Abigail’s surgery could only be performed at an out-of-network hospital. In layman’s terms, that meant that I was going to have pay a portion of the bill. Plus, I had used up all of my paid days off while I was on maternity leave. I was utterly disgusted with myself when I had to leave Abigail a few days after her surgery to go back to work. Thankfully, Abigail never had any complications from the surgery and is a healthy child.
I was fortunate to have family to watch the twins while they were infants so I could go back to work. But as they got older and schedules began to conflict, I had to enroll them in a part-time nursery. More bills :(.
Being a single mother isn’t easy. Being a single mother of twins is hard. It gets overwhelming at times because I’m always tackling one problem after another, but it’s funny how I never find myself regretting any of it.
Click here to read other articles by Sarah Richard.
Copyright © Sarah V. Richard. Reprinted with permission.
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