You know, zombies are pretty interesting creatures.  They look human until they start moving.  Or moaning.

That is how I functioned my first year as a parent.  I looked normal.  Then you could talk to me and I would not be normal.  If you have given birth to more than one human at a time, then you know exactly what I am talking about.  If you have been more traditional in your birthing, then you may have an inkling.  But you don't have the complete picture.

See, the kids were all preemies.  They were all under 5 1/2 pounds.  My smallest was 3.12.  Yeah.  That is pretty darn tiny.  They came home quickly, less than 20 days, and we truly rejoiced at our luck and/or blessings.  But then we started asking ourselves, "What the heck do we do now?????"

When 2 babies were home it was HARD.  And we were only half-way there!  They had to be fed every 3 hours, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for 3 months.  And it took an hour or more to feed them.  Sometimes a bit less, but only if we had 4 people to hold and feed.  All those cool contraptions you see for hands-free feeding??  Yeah, we tried them all.  They never really worked with my kids.

So every 3 hours we would change diapers, warm bottles, and feed.  Then one or two babies would reflux, which is a polite way of saying they would spew all over you and the chair you were sitting in.  Usually, they only dirtied their feet.  Nice, huh?

Then we had to make the 32 bottles and add the anti-spewing meds to a few bottles but not all of them.  And run the dishwasher.  And do at least 2 loads of laundry-just the kids clothes.  I needed my laundry done about that often too because I had limited wardrobe that was spew-worthy.  I had to grocery shop.  I had to do almost all of these things on very little sleep and everything but groceries had to happen every single day.  No exceptions.

I was lucky in that we had a ton of diapers donated so we didn't buy those for the first 6 months.  And we had a ton of volunteers too.  And mostly they were wonderful people who have become more like family than helpers.

But sometimes they weren't.  Some folks meant well, I am sure, but they just didn't fit with our family.  And remember how I was a zombie?  Yeah.  I guess sleep deprivation can make you very monster-like.  I was just not very tolerant of the helpful advice I was getting.  My fuse was short.  I was sleeping about 3 hours in a row-totalling about 4 hours a day-on a good day.  It really wasn't pretty.

Other folks came in with baggage about previous hospital experiences so I got to listen to them complain about how the hospital that had just made it possible for my 4 babies to come home healthy and quick, killed their baby.  I wasn't feeling very sympathetic to that.  I know that makes me a horrible person but I would argue that person wasn't the real me.  That person was the zombie me.  Zombie me is not nice or friendly, she just wants a freaking nap.

A few others were the looky-loos.  They wanted to say they had helped.  They didn't really want to help.  And asking them to fold one of the baskets of laundry or change a diaper was not on their list of doable tasks.

There were no less than 30 people in and out of my house in a week's time.  That is a lot of people, and some were virtual strangers.  They all brought their special concoction of germs and bacteria.  Some people thought that, even after explicit requests for real hand-washing, they were 'clean enough.'

Think about being truly sleep-deprived, coping with 4 infants who have sets of wires attached to their bodies so THEY DON'T DIE, running through a monster list of things that have to be done right now, AND juggling 30 other non-family personalities in a week's time.  Did I say how not pretty it was?  It was horror film level of not pretty.

And for some reason, I wasn't leaving the house for more than an hour at a time most weeks.  That might have had something to do with the mind-set that I had to do all this stuff and no one else would do it right if I left the house.  I know.  I have control issues.

This situation lasted without a break for 5 months.  I was beyond sleep deprived.  I was in torture-mode.  As in, Guantanamo uses these techniques of torture to discover terrorist plots.  And the next 7 months were only slightly less horrific.  We learned to cull the volunteers down to the people who truly helped and we liked and we trusted.  The kids started feeding only every 4 hours then with only one nighttime feeding.  We were sleeping maybe 5 hours in a row on a good night.

So now, the next time you see a new mommy strolling with her twins down a grocery aisle, you have some idea of the crap she is dealing with both literally and figuratively.  Don't stand in front of her cart/stroller and say, "Oh my!  Are those twins????  You sure have your hands full!!!!"

She is in a hurry to get home before the babies need to be fed and she had heard those exact words at least 4 times, today, in this store.

Smile.  Say, "What a blessing!"  or "Beautiful children!" or nothing at all.  And walk on.

Don't ask if she planned this.  Don't ask if twins run in her family.  Don't take pictures.  Don't insinuate that it is better her than you.  Don't say "Suicide!! "  (I mean really guy in Walmart?  Having more than one child is not worth killing myself!)  Don't ask how this happened.  Don't count the babies.

She has heard all of this before.  You are being rude and obnoxious to think a stranger in the grocery store wants to tell you about her fertility issues, her birthing process, or her bedroom 'private time' story.

And she is a zombie and might go off on your behind.  She lost her filter the first week of sleep deprivation.