Stay at Home Dad?

 David Heitler-Klevans with his wife, Jenny, formed their band "Two of a Kind" in 1990.  It is a "kids" band with music written and performed for young audiences in mind.  This is the short story of what happened when the couple`s twins were born.  At the time both David and his wife had full time jobs to support them as well as playing shows and touring. 




By David Heitler-Klevans

I had been working as a music teacher in elementary schools for 5 years, and although I had enjoyed it for most of that time, I was starting to get burned out.  Not from the actual work with the kids, but from the work-place politics and dealing with rules I didn’t always understand or accept. 

Our identical twin sons, Ari and Jason, were born 8 weeks early at the end of January 1995.  Being premature, they had to spend their first 5 weeks of life in the hospital NICU (the Neo-natal Intensive Care Unit), hooked up to all sorts of wires and tubes.  Although this was a tough way for both parents and babies to start things off, I never really worried that they would be OK – I could tell when I looked in their eyes that “the lights were on and someone was home.”

My wife Jenny took one month of vacation time from her job while our sons were in the NICU.  When our boys finally did come home from the hospital, she had 3 months maternity leave, and she got help from both of our mothers.  I was an active co-parent, doing my share of diaper changes and on duty all night long, but since my wife was breastfeeding, there was a limit to how much I could do.

After my wife’s maternity leave ended, she went back to work part-time.  Again our mothers came through with help until my summer vacation.  I became a stay-at-home dad for the summer.  Little did I know… 

Even though I had been an involved father up to this point, Jenny had usually been there with me.  I was especially worried about what to do if both of my sons needed me urgently at the same time, to be comforted or changed or whatever.  They were so little and helpless, and there were 2 of them and only one of me.

However, I soon got into a rhythm.  There were all the obvious daily tasks of getting them dressed (often matching, but never identical outfits – Jenny found it amusing that I enjoyed coordinating their outfits!), giving them their bottles of pumped breast milk (“mom-sicles”!), changing their progressively messier diapers and giving them their nebulizer treatments (for their prematurity-based breathing needs).  My two favorite activities were reading them stories, one cuddling on each side of my lap in rapt attention, and walking them around the neighborhood in their twin stroller.  I got a lot of exercise strolling around our Mt. Airy neighborhood of Philadelphia, singing them every song I could remember until they inevitably fell asleep.  I always panicked a bit when I had to leave one sleeping out on the sidewalk while I brought his brother up to their 2nd floor bedroom to lay him carefully in his crib, but nothing bad ever happened.  Luckily, our boys were always fairly easy to transfer from the car or stroller into the house without waking.

Morning and afternoon nap times were the only times of the day that I had to myself. Doing household chores and working on booking contacts for “Two of a Kind”, the children’s music duo that my wife and I had started five years earlier.  It was some sort of poetic justice that after naming ourselves Two of a Kind, we had produced identical twin sons!

As that summer progressed, we started looking for someone to hire to take care of our boys when I went back to my teaching job in the fall.  To say that I had mixed feelings about handing over our sons to a stranger is a huge understatement.  Every time I thought about it, I could feel the anxiety in my gut.  We finally found someone that we felt pretty good about, and I resigned myself to the idea, telling myself that this was just something I had to accept.  However, right near the end of the summer, the woman we had hired called to tell us that she couldn’t take the job after all.  All of my feelings of panic returned, and I just couldn’t face starting the search process all over again.  With my not-entirely-positive feelings about my teaching job, I realized that I was infinitely happier and more fulfilled taking care of my boys.  And what started out as just a summer turned into a full year with me as a stay-at-home dad.

Quitting my job and staying home with my twin sons for their first year was one of the best decisions I ever made in my life.  Not that either the decision or the work of caring for infant twin boys was easy, but I am still so glad that I took that plunge.  I think it changed my life – and hopefully theirs as well – for the better.

Here is the family playing all together just recently for Two of a Kind's 25th anniversary.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqkAu9rVZjo


(All pictures and you tube video used by permission of the author and owner)