One baby wants to sleep, one wants to squirm and make faces.
Saturday, July 2, 2011
This is how it goes
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Just some cuteness
Here are some average-quality pics from my phone. I need to get on Matt to process his fancy camera pictures.
That last picture was taken today when I went out for frozen yogurt. The lady at the table next to me was a grandma and nanny, and she fired this list of questions at me: "Aren't they too young to be outside? Are you breastfeeding or supplementing with formula? What kind of formula are you using? What kind of diapers? How many pounds of baby weight do you have left to lose? Are you swaddling them at night? Don't pet my dog; you don't have any wet wipes and you'll get the babies sick!!" It was all rather blunt, but she was really just excited to talk shop with a new mom. And I totally petted her dog with my elbow. I'm not going to leave a dog unpetted.
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| Last day at the hospital, and their first time together since birth |
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| Baby tetris |
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| I can't even handle this level of cuteness |
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| Hayley foolishly exposing her soft underbelly |
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| No sense of self-preservation at all |
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| Baby, TV tray, same thing |
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| Sarah's off her oxygen! |
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| Crazy milk-tongue face |
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| "Why do I get dizzy when I squeeze these tubes?" |
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| The girls out in the world |
That last picture was taken today when I went out for frozen yogurt. The lady at the table next to me was a grandma and nanny, and she fired this list of questions at me: "Aren't they too young to be outside? Are you breastfeeding or supplementing with formula? What kind of formula are you using? What kind of diapers? How many pounds of baby weight do you have left to lose? Are you swaddling them at night? Don't pet my dog; you don't have any wet wipes and you'll get the babies sick!!" It was all rather blunt, but she was really just excited to talk shop with a new mom. And I totally petted her dog with my elbow. I'm not going to leave a dog unpetted.
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Settling In
The girls finally came home from the NICU on Friday at 9 days old. 9 days sounds a lot shorter than the time actually felt. It was hard, but it was also a routine. Care time was at 2, 5, 8 and 11, so we made the 8am and the 5pm before and after work. When I first came home from the hospital, I wanted to camp out at the NICU all day long to be with them. What else did I have going on? Why on earth wouldn't I? But after the 8 and then the 11, I was so exhausted I couldn't take it, especially with no place to nap. So we had our two visits a day, and I pumped and slept and pumped and slept the rest of the time at home.
On Thursday, the day after they told us "one more week," suddenly the girls turned a corner and sucked down their entire bottles, which was the last criteria to go home. They told us we could room in with the girls that night and then take them home in the morning. So after five o' clock care, Matt and I took advantage of our free NICU babysitters for the last time and had dinner at the Cheeky Monk. Then we came back to spend the night in a creepy little windowless bedroom which was jammed randomly into the hospital like a room for psych experiments. It was a rough night; the girls were disoriented being away from the familiar NICU, and Hayley was particularly afraid of the dark. We ended up keeping the TV on all night long on mute so she'd have enough light to feel at home. She and Sarah alternated their freakouts, which was kind of convenient, since there was only one to soothe at a time. But it was frustrating to see one fire put out and sleeping peacefully while a new one started up. We couldn't help thinking, "If we only had one, it would be quiet right now!" Also, they still had their heart and oxygen monitors on, but the leads weren't that secure so we woke up several times to frantic your-baby-has-no-heartbeat alarms. That was really annoying, but the monitors were helpful too. When one started fussing, we could look at their heart rate and see if they were melting down or just sleep grunting. So it was a long night, but we made it through unscathed and took them home the next day.
The first few nights at home were a reeaalllly big adjustment. I won't lie; there were tears every day. It's not that the workload was even that bad; the girls do sleep a lot. But it was incredibly overwhelming to turn on a dime like that and suddenly live life on a three hour schedule. Matt and I each handle one girl per feeding session, so we couldn't even break into shifts and get more sleep. Feeding/changing/comforting takes about an hour, so there's no more than two hours of sleep at a time for either of us. (One and a half if I stay on top of pumping.) It's not terrible in itself, and we haven't even felt that sleep deprived, but it's just the relentlessness of it that made that initial adjustment so demoralizing. As Matt put it, we know that they'll be sleeping longer in four months, but when you're living three hours at a time, that feels like a geologic era away. On top of that, there was the intense guilt for having negative feelings at all when we'd finally brought our babies home, so it was a rough time.
Luckily, it only took a few days for us to get into a routine and adjust our expectations, and now we feel like we've got a pretty sustainable rhythm going. However, we know that's going to change when Matt goes back to work in a few weeks, and also when the girls become more aware of their surroundings and sleep less. So we've started planning for the future, the first step of which is to get onto a shift schedule at night. We've tried a couple ways of feeding both at once, but there are no clear winners yet. I tried crossing my legs and putting each girl into a knee crook, but they're still too floppy for that. I put them in their car seats and held a bottle in each hand, which worked better, but it was hard to get a good angle on the bottle and inconvenient to take them out to burp them. Now I'm envisioning a wedge with some small side bumpers to keep them in place. Then it will be more open for me to pick them up as needed, and I can make sure the angle is right. We can put both of them on the wedge and feed them with a bottle in each hand, or we could alternate holding one and using a bottle propper with the other, so each girl gets held every other feeding. It's the best option I can come up with since they're still too weak to nurse.
Now this brings me to a really sore subject. I know it's stupid to pay attention to internet comments, but they can still really hurt when you're new and inexperienced and just trying to figure out how to make everything work. I shopped around for bottle proppers and here are a few of the comments I found:
"What ever happened to mother baby bonding time. ... Their only small for a short time and every moment should be charished. Shame on whoever buys this product and shame on amazon for allowing it to be advertised."
"Babies need holding for their emotional health. If you want a whole nation of psychopathic demons in the future, just neglect to hold your babies at all."
"That's really pathetic."
"ya that is just really sad. never in a million years would i ever use something like that w/ any of my kids."
But the whole reason I'm getting a propper is so I can hold one of my babies when I feed them! I only have two hands; I can put a bottle in each one, or I can save one for a baby. Occasionally someone will add "I guess it could be helpful for multiples" in the middle of their judgmental frenzy, but that's almost worse. Like, "You're a pathetic, negligent, cold-hearted monster if you use a propper, but I suppose if you have twins you have to be." And unfortunately, there is a grain of truth to that. I wouldn't call it monsterdom, but I simply can't give each girl all the attention that I want to. If they cry at the same time and Matt is not immediately available, one of them just has to wait to be picked up. How many single babies get the "yeah, yeah, in a minute" treatment on their very first day home? I'm sure it will go a long way toward building character and patience in the future, but that's not what this time should be about.
Still, there are benefits. We may not have a single center of the universe, but we do have two. And when there's time to sit back and enjoy them, there's a positive feedback loop of adorableness. "Look at Hayley! But look at Sarah! Hayley's hair! Sarah's knees!" Every time I hold one, I think there can't be anything better and I'm afraid she's my favorite. Then I feel that way all over again with the other one. And when they clumsily flop their limbs at each other or a hungry Hayley tries to suck Sarah's nose, I can't imagine a single baby could ever be that cute on its own. So yeah, we may have more hassles, but everyone has hassles of some sort. Not everyone has this:
The first few nights at home were a reeaalllly big adjustment. I won't lie; there were tears every day. It's not that the workload was even that bad; the girls do sleep a lot. But it was incredibly overwhelming to turn on a dime like that and suddenly live life on a three hour schedule. Matt and I each handle one girl per feeding session, so we couldn't even break into shifts and get more sleep. Feeding/changing/comforting takes about an hour, so there's no more than two hours of sleep at a time for either of us. (One and a half if I stay on top of pumping.) It's not terrible in itself, and we haven't even felt that sleep deprived, but it's just the relentlessness of it that made that initial adjustment so demoralizing. As Matt put it, we know that they'll be sleeping longer in four months, but when you're living three hours at a time, that feels like a geologic era away. On top of that, there was the intense guilt for having negative feelings at all when we'd finally brought our babies home, so it was a rough time.
Luckily, it only took a few days for us to get into a routine and adjust our expectations, and now we feel like we've got a pretty sustainable rhythm going. However, we know that's going to change when Matt goes back to work in a few weeks, and also when the girls become more aware of their surroundings and sleep less. So we've started planning for the future, the first step of which is to get onto a shift schedule at night. We've tried a couple ways of feeding both at once, but there are no clear winners yet. I tried crossing my legs and putting each girl into a knee crook, but they're still too floppy for that. I put them in their car seats and held a bottle in each hand, which worked better, but it was hard to get a good angle on the bottle and inconvenient to take them out to burp them. Now I'm envisioning a wedge with some small side bumpers to keep them in place. Then it will be more open for me to pick them up as needed, and I can make sure the angle is right. We can put both of them on the wedge and feed them with a bottle in each hand, or we could alternate holding one and using a bottle propper with the other, so each girl gets held every other feeding. It's the best option I can come up with since they're still too weak to nurse.
Now this brings me to a really sore subject. I know it's stupid to pay attention to internet comments, but they can still really hurt when you're new and inexperienced and just trying to figure out how to make everything work. I shopped around for bottle proppers and here are a few of the comments I found:
"What ever happened to mother baby bonding time. ... Their only small for a short time and every moment should be charished. Shame on whoever buys this product and shame on amazon for allowing it to be advertised."
"Babies need holding for their emotional health. If you want a whole nation of psychopathic demons in the future, just neglect to hold your babies at all."
"That's really pathetic."
"ya that is just really sad. never in a million years would i ever use something like that w/ any of my kids."
But the whole reason I'm getting a propper is so I can hold one of my babies when I feed them! I only have two hands; I can put a bottle in each one, or I can save one for a baby. Occasionally someone will add "I guess it could be helpful for multiples" in the middle of their judgmental frenzy, but that's almost worse. Like, "You're a pathetic, negligent, cold-hearted monster if you use a propper, but I suppose if you have twins you have to be." And unfortunately, there is a grain of truth to that. I wouldn't call it monsterdom, but I simply can't give each girl all the attention that I want to. If they cry at the same time and Matt is not immediately available, one of them just has to wait to be picked up. How many single babies get the "yeah, yeah, in a minute" treatment on their very first day home? I'm sure it will go a long way toward building character and patience in the future, but that's not what this time should be about.
Still, there are benefits. We may not have a single center of the universe, but we do have two. And when there's time to sit back and enjoy them, there's a positive feedback loop of adorableness. "Look at Hayley! But look at Sarah! Hayley's hair! Sarah's knees!" Every time I hold one, I think there can't be anything better and I'm afraid she's my favorite. Then I feel that way all over again with the other one. And when they clumsily flop their limbs at each other or a hungry Hayley tries to suck Sarah's nose, I can't imagine a single baby could ever be that cute on its own. So yeah, we may have more hassles, but everyone has hassles of some sort. Not everyone has this:
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
Happy One Week Birthday
Our beautiful little girls are one week old today. It feels like I've had them forever, and it also feels like it can't possibly be a whole week already. Time is slipping away! They're growing up too fast!
Sarah is our baby A. She started off extremely small early on, to the point that the doctor thought she would become a vanishing twin. But she caught right up and stayed just slightly smaller than Hayley through the rest of the pregnancy. She was on the bottom of the dogpile in utero, and was more of a slinker than a kicker. She did protest when I leaned too far forward and trapped her against my thighs, though, and I suspect that she was the one who bounced on my bladder like a trampoline.
Sarah was the first one out, so her little squawk was the first one we heard and cried over. When I saw her for the first time, after the nurse laid her on my shoulder, I couldn't believe how beautiful she was. Objectively, too, not just emotionally. She has a round, well-shaped head with short, lightish hair and a perfect face, with long, spindly eyelashes and little pink lips. Her eyes are blue-gray, but it took days for us to see them open for longer than a second. Her right ear is folded over at the top, just like her daddy's, and her pinky toes are folded under like her Grandpa Doty's and mine. Her skin is pale, and even after the slight jaundice goes away, I think she will still be more golden than pink.
Sarah has a flaming temper, although it's mellowing as she gets healthier. She used to get so angry that she would screech like a baby pterodactyl and desat her oxygen down to 50% if she didn't like the way the world was treating her. But luckily, in the past couple days she's gotten better at maintaining both her oxygen and her composure. We're also getting better at learning her hot buttons. For instance, I thought a skin-to-skin bottle feeding would be a nice bonding time for her and Matt, but she refused to eat and spat her milk out until we gave up and swaddled her tightly again. Then she was more than happy to take the bottle peacefully. She has very definite opinions about the way she wants things to be, but when she's happy, she's incredibly sweet. She loves to be cuddled after her meals and I love to oblige her.
Hayley is our baby B. She was wildly active throughout the pregnancy and liked to make the ultrasound tech fight to get clear pictures. She gave me the strongest kicks and made my belly skin ripple and roil. As soon as we decided on her name, she quickly got the nickname Flaily Hayley.
Hayley looks completely different from her sister. She's particularly beautiful too, but her features are less classic and more striking. Her hair is long, thick and surprisingly dark for having (originally) blond parents. Her eyes are huge and almost all iris, which are deep, dark blue, and her lips are wide. She has an incredibly expressive face that goes from alarmed to bewildered to shocked to skeptical, and when she gets drowsy I can trigger the most adorable smile by tickling her chin.
Although we pegged her as the wild one during the pregnancy, Hayley is really easy-going. She does have her moments though, and her whole body turns bright, tomato red when she gets angry. Inexplicably, taking her temperature is one of the surest ways to set her off. It's only an armpit probe, but to her it's the deepest violation. She calms down easily though, especially when milk is offered, and she's equally happy to eat swaddled tight or naked bellied. From the moment she was born, her eyes were wide open, and even when we're cuddling she loves to stare intently at the world around her. So far, that's only been her NICU nook, and I can't wait to take her home and show her the world beyond.
Sarah is our baby A. She started off extremely small early on, to the point that the doctor thought she would become a vanishing twin. But she caught right up and stayed just slightly smaller than Hayley through the rest of the pregnancy. She was on the bottom of the dogpile in utero, and was more of a slinker than a kicker. She did protest when I leaned too far forward and trapped her against my thighs, though, and I suspect that she was the one who bounced on my bladder like a trampoline.
Sarah was the first one out, so her little squawk was the first one we heard and cried over. When I saw her for the first time, after the nurse laid her on my shoulder, I couldn't believe how beautiful she was. Objectively, too, not just emotionally. She has a round, well-shaped head with short, lightish hair and a perfect face, with long, spindly eyelashes and little pink lips. Her eyes are blue-gray, but it took days for us to see them open for longer than a second. Her right ear is folded over at the top, just like her daddy's, and her pinky toes are folded under like her Grandpa Doty's and mine. Her skin is pale, and even after the slight jaundice goes away, I think she will still be more golden than pink.
Sarah has a flaming temper, although it's mellowing as she gets healthier. She used to get so angry that she would screech like a baby pterodactyl and desat her oxygen down to 50% if she didn't like the way the world was treating her. But luckily, in the past couple days she's gotten better at maintaining both her oxygen and her composure. We're also getting better at learning her hot buttons. For instance, I thought a skin-to-skin bottle feeding would be a nice bonding time for her and Matt, but she refused to eat and spat her milk out until we gave up and swaddled her tightly again. Then she was more than happy to take the bottle peacefully. She has very definite opinions about the way she wants things to be, but when she's happy, she's incredibly sweet. She loves to be cuddled after her meals and I love to oblige her.
Hayley looks completely different from her sister. She's particularly beautiful too, but her features are less classic and more striking. Her hair is long, thick and surprisingly dark for having (originally) blond parents. Her eyes are huge and almost all iris, which are deep, dark blue, and her lips are wide. She has an incredibly expressive face that goes from alarmed to bewildered to shocked to skeptical, and when she gets drowsy I can trigger the most adorable smile by tickling her chin.
Although we pegged her as the wild one during the pregnancy, Hayley is really easy-going. She does have her moments though, and her whole body turns bright, tomato red when she gets angry. Inexplicably, taking her temperature is one of the surest ways to set her off. It's only an armpit probe, but to her it's the deepest violation. She calms down easily though, especially when milk is offered, and she's equally happy to eat swaddled tight or naked bellied. From the moment she was born, her eyes were wide open, and even when we're cuddling she loves to stare intently at the world around her. So far, that's only been her NICU nook, and I can't wait to take her home and show her the world beyond.
Saturday, June 4, 2011
Baby Pictures!
The babies have landed!! The big birth story post is forthcoming, but here are some pictures of the girls in the meantime.
Sarah Doty Kennedy
June 1, 2011 at 8:26am
5lb 10oz, 18.5 inches
Hayley Gail Kennedy
June 1, 2011 at 8:28am
5lb 8oz, 18.5 inches
Sarah on the left, Hayley on the right
"Psssst, I came out feet first!"
Family photo
Hayley and Sarah, day 3 in the NICU
The CPAPs are off! (And the bulbs are to keep their pacifiers in)
Up next, the story between days 0 and 3 and more pics/videos. In a nutshell, there were worries for both the girls and me, but everyone is now either fine or steadily approaching fine. This, on the other hand, may take a while to get back to normal.
Are these feet or beige gumdrops?
Monday, May 30, 2011
Just plain silly
And now, after that saga, here's a ridiculous picture for you. Since my uterus is so bitchy, er, irritable, it makes walking for more than 50 feet rather uncomfortable. So with Karen by my side, I mustered up the courage to use an electric cart to go grocery shopping for our dinner night. It was embarrassing for five minutes because I was certain everyone was judging me, but then it was fun and I didn't care anymore. And then we took pictures in produce, because... well, wouldn't you?
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| Hush, little melon, don't say a word... |
My Eventful Night (which did not end with babies)
There's nothing like a late night hospital trip to make you face your level of baby preparedness. I learned that I was about an A- for gear, a C+ for a sparkly welcoming house, and a D for accepting that babies are actually going to come out of me very soon.
I should back up since it's been so long since the last post. Honestly, every day has felt much the same as the one before, so it didn't feel like there was anything to post about. But looking back, I suppose a lot has happened. My belly is huge and numb and 75% purple, my ankles aren't quite cankles yet but my shoes don't fit, and I walk verrry, verrry slowly. Not the most comfortable, but pretty darn standard.
I've only had two real complications. First, gestational diabetes, which was diagnosed around week 26. It's been a minor pain to check my blood four times a day, but I responded really well to diet change so I don't need to take any insulin. The biggest hardships now are that I can't eat cereal or fruit for breakfast and I'm really not motivated to cook eggs every day, and that I spend too much time watching bread pudding on Good Eats or marshmallow brownies on Paula Dean, and that just makes me whiny.
The second complication is placenta previa, which means one of the placentas is blocking the exit. They usually move out if the way when the uterus grows, so I didn't worry too much about it, but it hasn't budged an inch and it's clear it's not going anywhere. That means non-negotiable C section, since the placenta would get ripped away if I started dilating and then I would bleed my way through their blood bank.
SO, with all that in mind, my OBGYN told me that I could still begin labor on my own and then come in for the C section. But if I had any bleeding at all or any signs of labor, I was to immediately call the hospital, and the first words out of my mouth should be "twins" and the second should be "previa." Roger. So that brings us to my fun night two weeks ago. (Yes, blog updating lag.)
I had a three hour maternity photo session with the Woods and Matt, which was super fun and the pictures I saw look amazing! Here's one that I love because it makes me look a squash.
The session was mostly standing with occasional sitting or walking, but that's still an unusual amount of activity for me at this stage. I felt fine, if tired, and my belly was doing the standard amount of contracting that activity brings on. But later that night, when I settled into my recliner/bed, I noticed I was still clenching up now and then. That was strange, since getting off my feet has always made that stop completely. I decided to try sleeping to relax them away, but I woke up at 3am with a belly as hard as a rock.
Now this is where I started to get nervous, since I've read over and over: "False labor will likely ease with rest; true labor will not stop no matter what you do." I should have called the doctor right then, but I'm ashamed to admit that I chickened out. I had no pain at all, not even the slightest bleeding, and I felt I needed more data than just "My belly's hard" to make a 3am call. So I timed the contractions for an hour and found that they were exactly 10 minutes apart. All right, regularity. Check.
I called the on-call doctor and dutifully said, "Twins! Previa! Contractions!" She sleepily and somewhat reluctantly agreed that I should go to the hospital to get assessed. I felt guilty since she sounded so unimpressed by my symptoms, but I'd forbidden myself to let "I'm sorry" cross my lips. So I went upstairs to wake up Matt and said something to the effect of, "Hey, I'm contracting every 10 minutes and I'm going to the hopsital, but I know you have work so you can just stay here and sleep, okay?" He was all bleary and bewildered when he asked, "What? Are you in labor?" And I assured him no, no, there was no pain and no bleeding; they would just put me on fetal monitors for a couple hours and tell me to drink more water. I'd been through this rigamarole once before a couple months ago, and it went down exactly that way. Plus, I figured that if anything did happen, the doctors would stop labor anyway and Matt would have plenty of time to come. Practical, right?
Well, when I told my dear friend Courtney that afterwards, she freaked and lectured me about how fast complications and emergency surgeries can happen, and what if they couldn't stop the labor and it happened to this person and that person and OMG never leave Matt at home again!!! And Matt told me that he had trouble going back to sleep anyway because he was too anxious, so... I'M SORRY! I was wrong, and I promise I won't do it again.
But in any case, I drove to the hospital and waddled heavily up to the front desk at 4:30am. Reception dude: "Third floor?" Me: "How'd you guess?" And then, even though I walked into the hospital, got onto the elevator, and walked a fair bit through the maternity wing to get to their reception desk, the nurse still said, "Your room is the third door down the hall. Do you need a wheelchair to get there?" Arggh, humiliating. I said I'd be quite fine, but they still had another nurse escort me down. And I'd promised myself I wouldn't say sorry, but that didn't stop me from blathering, "I'm really not in labor! I know this is all a big false alarm, but my OB told me to be vigilant, so that's why I'm here, but you don't need to worry, and... yeah." She just ignored me.
So I got to the room, put on my gown, peed in a cup, and got fitted with my three monitor straps, just like this pic from the last time.
Then they told me that since I clearly wasn't in labor, they were going to wait for the doctor to come in at her regular time in a few hours, so I should just try to sleep until then. Part of me thought, "I told her I wasn't in labor so why am I here now?" But mostly I was just happy that I was low priority and not a concern. So I settled in for my nap and asked, by-the-by, "Now if the monitors do show me going into labor, you'll just stop it, right?" And the nurse said, "Nope! You're far enough along now, we'll just go ahead and do the C-section. So... good night!"
AAACCCKKK!!!
That's when I earned my D for baby readiness because I freaked out. I absolutely could not comprehend going home with babies that day. There has to be some kind of build-up; you can't just have one of the most important moments of your life thrust upon you like that! I was 95% sure that I wouldn't actually go into labor, but it was such an unsettling idea that I then freaked out even more about why I wasn't ready and was I being a bad mother already? They were telling me I could finally meet my children and all I could think was "NOO!! Do not want yet!!"
So I got to dwell on that for four hours, and then when the doctor finally came in, I got just five minutes out of her. The babies were fine, I wasn't in labor, but I had Irritable Uterus. (Yes, I totally giggled at that description.) Essentially, my uterus was super stretched out and constantly grumbling with mini-contractions, which she told me to ignore unless they turned into something big and painful. I was surprised that she was so blase about it since my instructions had always been, "Be obsessively paranoid about the slightest twitch!" But that's when I realized that they weren't worrying about pre-term labor anymore. I was no longer pre-term! That realization was worth the whole hassle. After a whole pregnancy of precautions and worries and NICU stories, I'd finally made it past the point of fear. The girls and I were golden.
However, there was still one bit of cautiousness left. Every nurse that I talked to in the hospital asked me if I had my C section scheduled yet, and I told them that my OB was going to wait until I went into labor on my own. And then every single nurse got a tight, stressed look on her face that she tried to cover up with a stiff smile, and chirped, "Oh! Okay then!" and left the room. That was less than reassuring. So it was a relief when the doctor said at the end, "I'm going to schedule you for a C section and talk to your doctor, because it's really unlike her not to have done this already." Whew! I was happy before about laboring on my own because I wanted to feel at least one real contraction, but everyone else was making me feel like I'd be playing chicken against a bleed-out, so I was happy to get a date. I told the doctor to make sure it was an auspicious day in the Chinese almanac, which earned me a blank look, so I told her I was just joking, and that got me a blanker one. But five minutes later I got my appointment card for Thursday, June 2nd at 5:30am. A beautiful date! 6 and 2, good round numbers. It felt like a birthday, and that was enough to make it finally start to seem real and okay.
And now here I am, two weeks later, with only two and a half days left to go until the big day. Luckily, I'm feeling more at peace with the baby-meeting part. But I am still going through the whole spectrum of emotions about it: joy, excitement, panic, sadness. I feel envious of people who are nothing but excited about giving birth and being done with pregnancy. I'm going to miss my gigantic belly; it's part of me and I'm not happy about losing it. I know who the rippling elbows and feet are under my skin; they have names and personalities and they push back at me when I poke them. I'm happy to meet the people they'll become, but I'm sad to lose my relationship with the ripples. I'm happy to gain a whole new dimension of myself with motherhood, but I'm sad to leave my self-thus-far behind. It's hard to prepare myself emotionally when there are so many different emotions to deal with. But as I said, there are only two and a half days left, so I might as well just enjoy them and not try to force myself to feel any particular way. When the birth actually happens, there will be no forcing emotions anyway. They'll come out big and messy and pure, and whatever form they take will be okay.
(But my money's on happiness.)
I should back up since it's been so long since the last post. Honestly, every day has felt much the same as the one before, so it didn't feel like there was anything to post about. But looking back, I suppose a lot has happened. My belly is huge and numb and 75% purple, my ankles aren't quite cankles yet but my shoes don't fit, and I walk verrry, verrry slowly. Not the most comfortable, but pretty darn standard.
I've only had two real complications. First, gestational diabetes, which was diagnosed around week 26. It's been a minor pain to check my blood four times a day, but I responded really well to diet change so I don't need to take any insulin. The biggest hardships now are that I can't eat cereal or fruit for breakfast and I'm really not motivated to cook eggs every day, and that I spend too much time watching bread pudding on Good Eats or marshmallow brownies on Paula Dean, and that just makes me whiny.
The second complication is placenta previa, which means one of the placentas is blocking the exit. They usually move out if the way when the uterus grows, so I didn't worry too much about it, but it hasn't budged an inch and it's clear it's not going anywhere. That means non-negotiable C section, since the placenta would get ripped away if I started dilating and then I would bleed my way through their blood bank.
SO, with all that in mind, my OBGYN told me that I could still begin labor on my own and then come in for the C section. But if I had any bleeding at all or any signs of labor, I was to immediately call the hospital, and the first words out of my mouth should be "twins" and the second should be "previa." Roger. So that brings us to my fun night two weeks ago. (Yes, blog updating lag.)
I had a three hour maternity photo session with the Woods and Matt, which was super fun and the pictures I saw look amazing! Here's one that I love because it makes me look a squash.
The session was mostly standing with occasional sitting or walking, but that's still an unusual amount of activity for me at this stage. I felt fine, if tired, and my belly was doing the standard amount of contracting that activity brings on. But later that night, when I settled into my recliner/bed, I noticed I was still clenching up now and then. That was strange, since getting off my feet has always made that stop completely. I decided to try sleeping to relax them away, but I woke up at 3am with a belly as hard as a rock.
Now this is where I started to get nervous, since I've read over and over: "False labor will likely ease with rest; true labor will not stop no matter what you do." I should have called the doctor right then, but I'm ashamed to admit that I chickened out. I had no pain at all, not even the slightest bleeding, and I felt I needed more data than just "My belly's hard" to make a 3am call. So I timed the contractions for an hour and found that they were exactly 10 minutes apart. All right, regularity. Check.
I called the on-call doctor and dutifully said, "Twins! Previa! Contractions!" She sleepily and somewhat reluctantly agreed that I should go to the hospital to get assessed. I felt guilty since she sounded so unimpressed by my symptoms, but I'd forbidden myself to let "I'm sorry" cross my lips. So I went upstairs to wake up Matt and said something to the effect of, "Hey, I'm contracting every 10 minutes and I'm going to the hopsital, but I know you have work so you can just stay here and sleep, okay?" He was all bleary and bewildered when he asked, "What? Are you in labor?" And I assured him no, no, there was no pain and no bleeding; they would just put me on fetal monitors for a couple hours and tell me to drink more water. I'd been through this rigamarole once before a couple months ago, and it went down exactly that way. Plus, I figured that if anything did happen, the doctors would stop labor anyway and Matt would have plenty of time to come. Practical, right?
Well, when I told my dear friend Courtney that afterwards, she freaked and lectured me about how fast complications and emergency surgeries can happen, and what if they couldn't stop the labor and it happened to this person and that person and OMG never leave Matt at home again!!! And Matt told me that he had trouble going back to sleep anyway because he was too anxious, so... I'M SORRY! I was wrong, and I promise I won't do it again.
But in any case, I drove to the hospital and waddled heavily up to the front desk at 4:30am. Reception dude: "Third floor?" Me: "How'd you guess?" And then, even though I walked into the hospital, got onto the elevator, and walked a fair bit through the maternity wing to get to their reception desk, the nurse still said, "Your room is the third door down the hall. Do you need a wheelchair to get there?" Arggh, humiliating. I said I'd be quite fine, but they still had another nurse escort me down. And I'd promised myself I wouldn't say sorry, but that didn't stop me from blathering, "I'm really not in labor! I know this is all a big false alarm, but my OB told me to be vigilant, so that's why I'm here, but you don't need to worry, and... yeah." She just ignored me.
So I got to the room, put on my gown, peed in a cup, and got fitted with my three monitor straps, just like this pic from the last time.
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| Two for the babies, one for the uterus |
Then they told me that since I clearly wasn't in labor, they were going to wait for the doctor to come in at her regular time in a few hours, so I should just try to sleep until then. Part of me thought, "I told her I wasn't in labor so why am I here now?" But mostly I was just happy that I was low priority and not a concern. So I settled in for my nap and asked, by-the-by, "Now if the monitors do show me going into labor, you'll just stop it, right?" And the nurse said, "Nope! You're far enough along now, we'll just go ahead and do the C-section. So... good night!"
AAACCCKKK!!!
That's when I earned my D for baby readiness because I freaked out. I absolutely could not comprehend going home with babies that day. There has to be some kind of build-up; you can't just have one of the most important moments of your life thrust upon you like that! I was 95% sure that I wouldn't actually go into labor, but it was such an unsettling idea that I then freaked out even more about why I wasn't ready and was I being a bad mother already? They were telling me I could finally meet my children and all I could think was "NOO!! Do not want yet!!"
So I got to dwell on that for four hours, and then when the doctor finally came in, I got just five minutes out of her. The babies were fine, I wasn't in labor, but I had Irritable Uterus. (Yes, I totally giggled at that description.) Essentially, my uterus was super stretched out and constantly grumbling with mini-contractions, which she told me to ignore unless they turned into something big and painful. I was surprised that she was so blase about it since my instructions had always been, "Be obsessively paranoid about the slightest twitch!" But that's when I realized that they weren't worrying about pre-term labor anymore. I was no longer pre-term! That realization was worth the whole hassle. After a whole pregnancy of precautions and worries and NICU stories, I'd finally made it past the point of fear. The girls and I were golden.
However, there was still one bit of cautiousness left. Every nurse that I talked to in the hospital asked me if I had my C section scheduled yet, and I told them that my OB was going to wait until I went into labor on my own. And then every single nurse got a tight, stressed look on her face that she tried to cover up with a stiff smile, and chirped, "Oh! Okay then!" and left the room. That was less than reassuring. So it was a relief when the doctor said at the end, "I'm going to schedule you for a C section and talk to your doctor, because it's really unlike her not to have done this already." Whew! I was happy before about laboring on my own because I wanted to feel at least one real contraction, but everyone else was making me feel like I'd be playing chicken against a bleed-out, so I was happy to get a date. I told the doctor to make sure it was an auspicious day in the Chinese almanac, which earned me a blank look, so I told her I was just joking, and that got me a blanker one. But five minutes later I got my appointment card for Thursday, June 2nd at 5:30am. A beautiful date! 6 and 2, good round numbers. It felt like a birthday, and that was enough to make it finally start to seem real and okay.
And now here I am, two weeks later, with only two and a half days left to go until the big day. Luckily, I'm feeling more at peace with the baby-meeting part. But I am still going through the whole spectrum of emotions about it: joy, excitement, panic, sadness. I feel envious of people who are nothing but excited about giving birth and being done with pregnancy. I'm going to miss my gigantic belly; it's part of me and I'm not happy about losing it. I know who the rippling elbows and feet are under my skin; they have names and personalities and they push back at me when I poke them. I'm happy to meet the people they'll become, but I'm sad to lose my relationship with the ripples. I'm happy to gain a whole new dimension of myself with motherhood, but I'm sad to leave my self-thus-far behind. It's hard to prepare myself emotionally when there are so many different emotions to deal with. But as I said, there are only two and a half days left, so I might as well just enjoy them and not try to force myself to feel any particular way. When the birth actually happens, there will be no forcing emotions anyway. They'll come out big and messy and pure, and whatever form they take will be okay.
(But my money's on happiness.)
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