A 6 Month Update: The Mom of Twins Who Gets 8 Hours of Sleep at Night

Hello world! Sorry that I haven’t written much lately, okay, since April! Yikes! But I will continue to play the “twin card” and say that I have just been too busy. And honestly, I have. In addition to having the twins, I also still work part-time from home. So this means that once the babies are finally down for the night I log on to my computer and work for a few hours until I go to bed. Every once in a while it occurs to me that I should use that computer time to Blog, but then I remember that no one pays me to blog and twins are EXPENSIVE! So then I just work because that actually brings in some income. Rest assured that I have not forgotten about all of our readers out there and we appreciate every thought and prayer that ya’ll send our way.

It is now July first and the twins just turned 6 months old. Wow. Wait. Hold the phone. How can it be true that these living, breathing humans were in my body just 6 months ago? Every day these little angels astound me. I cannot believe that I get the honor of being their mother. I get to hold them and care for them every day. I get to watch the miracle of life develop and grow right before my eyes. They change every day. They grow every day. It is so amazing to watch their little personalities develop. Each baby is so different from each other. And it is amazing. God is so amazing; He has allowed me this window into His intricate design…sighs.

At 6 months old Elliana is 15lbs 13oz and 26inches long. She is so big! Her hair is a light auburn and her eyes are still a beautiful blue with gorgeous long eyelashes. She is such a beauty. She scrunches her little face up when she smiles and her little eyes get so squinty! She loves to babble and blow spit bubbles. She is teething and loves to chew her hands and her blue crinkly elephant. Her hands and feet are still so incredibly tiny and chubby; shoes do not fit her feet. She loves new sights and is very observant and mellow.

At 6 months old Elijah is 15lbs 15oz and is 26.5inches long. He is my little bruiser (quarterback in the future?) He has strawberry blond hair and big clear blue eyes. His eyelashes and eyebrows are also strawberry blond so he may stay very fair (like me.) He is very handsome, a lady killer for sure. His smile lights up his whole face, oh, and it is the most adorable crooked smile that steals your heart. He is beginning to babble and drool, quite the combination. He has big hands and long feet that are so soft and fun to hold. He agrees, seeing as how he gnaws his hands and just recently discovered his feet. Oh, and he is teething too. He can really chomp down on your finger! He too likes new sights and new sensations.

Both babies still love bath time and new people. They are such mild mannered and happy babies. They spend most of the day smiling and melting hearts! When the twins were 11.5 weeks old we began a sleep training program based on the book “12 Hours Sleep By 12 Weeks of Age” and it changed our life. I am happy to report that our babies sleep 12 hours at night and take 3 naps a day. Yes, I am the mother of twins who gets 8 hours of sleep at night and (usually) a daytime nap! No one can believe this, but it is true! The program works. I couldn’t have asked God for more perfect babies.

A few weeks ago we started solid foods. Eli is ready for them and does very well. He has loved everything I have given him. So far he has had sweet potatoes, carrots, peas, green beans, pears, peaches, prunes, squash, avocado, and banana. Elli on the other hand is not quite ready. Anything that you put in her mouth she pushes out. She doesn’t make a yuck face at any of the foods though, so that is good. Our pedi recommended letting her try the different textures even if she doesn’t eat them.

Life is good. I could have never imagined what life with twins would be like, but I couldn’t imagine it any different either. Some days are harder than others but every night when I sneak into their room to check on them I see that it is all so very worth it…

Then and now

Eli just born (4.13 pounds)

Eli at 4 months (and 13.4 pounds!)

Elli just born (4.3 pounds)

Elli at 4 months (12.9 pounds)

Twins: Some Firsts

Eli in the NICU

Elli in the NICU

Eli always so happy!

Guess who is going home?!

First moments home :)

First doctors visit

First real bath!

Eli's first bath

The Week We Lived in the Hospital: The NICU Days

Ah, the NICU. What a strange place indeed.         It was strange enough to suddenly not be pregnant (without hours of labor) but to have the twins in the NICU made is seem all the more surreal. Having to visit your brand new babies is an odd and unpleasant thing. The first time I got to hold my babies was in a strange, sterile room, surrounded by strange people, crying babies and beeping machines. Also, I wasn’t allowed out of my wheelchair, so that was a bit unnatural as well. All in all, it was just really hard to get personal and have that cinema inspired bonding time.

Oh, but seeing and touching those precious little lives that grew inside me was breathtaking. They were both so tiny and fragile! Each baby had a different rotating nurse every 7 hours. Some of them were heaven sent, others not so much. They were all good about letting us visit as long as we wanted though, and never kicked out our visitors when it was past visiting hours. The second day they moved our twins into the “isolation room” so that they could be “together.” It was just this small room with a sink and a chair, but it turned out to be a private little sanctuary for my family and me.

One majorly frustrating thing was that the nurses immediately brought me a pump to be sure my milk came in, and I wasn’t invited to attempt breastfeeding. The whole pumping thing was very strange and alienating. I had this lofty expectation that I could breastfeed until the kids were 2 if I wanted, I didn’t imagine myself pumping. The hospital automatically starts feeding premature babies 22 calorie formula due to their size. I, being a first time mom and a mom of newborn preemies, didn’t know how to even begin breastfeeding babies that were so tiny, kept in the very public NICU, and being fed by bottle. No one even suggested helping me try for days.

Once we did try, we found that the babies both had mouths that were so tiny they couldn’t form a latch at all, even with the help of every lactation consultant on hand. So I would practice when them when I could and bring them whatever colostrum I could produce (which wasn’t much) and they were fed solely formula. Baby girl was a champion eater but Baby boy was a little slower to finish his bottle (40ml). The crazy thing was that when he wouldn’t drink 40ml within 30 minutes they stuck a feeding tube down his nose!! My heart dropped when I walked in and saw my baby (who was born without any complications at all) with an orange tube taped to his face. My husband and I fed them both often and we discovered that baby girl was a “chugger” and he was a “sipper.” You just had to have patience with him.

Both babies passed all of their tests and screenings and were both gaining weight within a few days; we figured they were coming home soon! The doctor told us on Wednesday that if they continued to eat well and gain weight they could come home the next day. So I was discharged with the idea being that I could come back and get them when they were discharged the next day. Well I called the next morning to see how they did and the new morning nurse told me that the night nurses reported that both babies had “been bad eaters” so they stuck feeding tubes down both their noses!

I was flabbergasted! We had fed them so many times that we knew their habits and we knew that the way baby girl ate, there was no way she needed a tube. Ever. It turns out that the night nurses were two women who had never dealt with our babies before. I also recognized one of them as a nurse we had overheard goofing off and having a foul mouth in the NICU. I just knew right away that what had happened was these nurses just didn’t want to take the time with our babies and gave them tubes as the easy way out. We just couldn’t believe it because this meant that they were not coming home!!

My stay at the hospital was 5 days, and then I went home. Well, when we got this news, we decided to use our “1 free night” at the hospital just so that I could be a part of every feeding, to be sure that no one was cutting corners to be lazy, and in affect keeping the twins there unnecessarily. When I got there, I found that their new nurse was AMAZING! She was the best part about the hospital. She spoke with the doctor and they agreed to allow us to have the babies stay in our hospital room that night! So amazing and unexpected! She also told me that if I wanted to get my babies home then I needed to stop trying to breastfeed them because it makes them too tired to eat and it burns calories which makes them lose weight, thus keeping them in the NICU longer.

We spoke to the doctor on call that day and told him that regardless of circumstances we never wanted a tube put into our children again without being notified, and without giving them time to eat. He was very understanding and wrote that order into their charts. The night with them went well. My husband slept like a rock, as he usually does, and the nurses came in to check on the babies every 3 hours. So since they had the tubes put in Thursday, they had to go 48 hours without a tube and gain weight 2 days in a row to go home. That meant the soonest they could go home would be Saturday.

So we also spent all day Friday at the hospital (who let us stay another night for free!) We had the same amazing nurse that day too. I told her our adoption story and it gave her chill bumps. I told her how we had waited 7 years to be pregnant and now the hospital was making me wait even longer to take them home, and how that was so hard. She became determined to help us get them home! We spent all day not knowing whether or not they would be coming home because their weigh in wasn’t until 2am.

God is soooo good! Saturday morning the report was that both babies ate well and both gained weight, thus they could go home! Wow, they only stayed 1 week in the NICU and they came home at the same time, which apparently is great for premature twins! We basically lived in a hospital for 7 days. The only pleasant thing about the stay was not having to cook! Our really special nurse sent us home with all sorts of goodies, including clothing that had been donated for preemies to wear. Apparently the preemie community is strong there. They have a reunion every October and every baby gets sent home with a handmade blanket made by past preemie parents.

I am sure that we were there that long for a reason. I am just an impatient person (which will have to change soon with twins) and I wanted to have them home. Although there were unpleasant things about living at a hospital for a week and not having my babies in my arms, I know that I need to look at the positives. Such as, all the advice and tips we received, the amazing nurses who cared for my babies and me, the rest I was able to get in between visits, the quick and painless birth process, oh and THE MIRACLE OF EVEN HAVING THESE BABIES!

A Birth Story: Part 2

          The only surgery I have ever had was a tonsillectomy, so I had no idea what to expect from a c section. The spinal block didn’t hurt too badly; I think the I.V insertion hurt worse! The strangest part was how exposed I was, literally. And there are so many people who come in and out of the operating room while you are laid out for display on the operating table. My strategy throughout the spinal prep, spinal insertion, surgery prep and surgery itself was to pretend that none of this was strange or uncomfortable and to focus on what the rewards would be.

Like I said before, everything moved very fast. My OB had already begun to cut me open by the time they brought my husband in! I was definitely pretty numb, although I could feel everything they were doing to me. Everything I read describes the sensations as “pressure” but I’m not sure that is how I would describe it. It was a strange feeling every time they separated a layer of flesh or muscle and even stranger when they removed a baby. The worst part of the whole surgery was the nausea I felt. I was so afraid I would vomit, and I prayed hard the whole time that I wouldn’t.

          When they pulled out the babies they cried immediately, and then I cried. I knew their lungs were working perfectly based on their screams! All I could do was try to see glimpses of my babies being cleaned and inspected while the doctors removed my placentas and stitched me up. When I tried to look at the babies my vision would cross for some reason so I had to look out of one eye! My husband was able to be with them and take pictures; eventually they brought them over to me to briefly say hello before whisking them away to the NICU due to their premature status.

          At some point a nurse rolled me over to the recovery area and apparently they didn’t have a room available for me right away so I spent two hours in a recovery holding area; alone except for the nurse. I vaguely remember her asking me some question and I remember me asking her a million questions and rambling…the meds had me a little loopy! They finally brought me to a room but I wasn’t allowed to get up for 6 hours. I also had a catheter, an I.V and a pain relief pump attached to my body to there wasn’t much moving around. Six hours rolled around and I still wasn’t allowed to see my babies because the NICU had received an emergency admittance and couldn’t allow any visitors in. I didn’t get to see my new babies until 1:00am Sunday morning (8 ½ hours after they were born!)

          I have to be honest and say that this was so hard on me. First they took my babies away to the NICU, then I wasn’t allowed to see them, and my husband and mother stayed with the babies so I was all alone for a long time after delivery. Having a c section and then not seeing my babies for so long made it seem like birth never really occurred. The whole thing was surreal. Having the babies stay in the NICU instead of in our room made it seem even more like a dream, as if I didn’t really have babies. This created a strange disconnect. It was so hard to believe that just hours before I had 2 babies in my body and now they were gone…having to go and “visit” our babies was strange too. They were surrounded by sick babies and hooked up to all sorts of monitors, not to mention the nurses who were always around. I didn’t have a chance to just be alone with my babies and bond with them. I hated this feeling of disconnect.

          Although our babies were born perfectly healthy, without any medical complications, it was still scary to see them with all those leads attached to them which were hooked up to the constantly beeping monitors. Our babies were so tiny and delicate! Four pounds is just so small and their heads seemed as if they could fall off at any moment! I was just in awe with these tiny creatures; these compact humans…and the fact that they were mine. I know that we adopted these babies as embryos but they came out with our coloring! Baby girl is a brunette like my husband and Baby boy is a blonde like me! They both had blue eyes like me, but with hazel starbursts around the pupil (my husband has hazel eyes) and Baby boy has my pale/reddish skin tone and Baby girl is slightly more olive like my husband. The fact that we could see ourselves in them was just another blessing, a kiss from God. The funny thing is we posted pictures of them on Facebook and people who don’t know that we adopted embryos kept exclaiming about how they looked like us! How cute!

Neither my husband nor I had much experience with babies, let alone newborns, so we were both a little awkward at first. Thankfully, my insurance covered up to five days in the hospital so we had time to take it slow and learn from the nurses. We had no idea how long the twins would be required to stay in the NICU…only time would tell.

A Birth Story and Surprise C-Section

Here it is Friday, January 25, around 7:00pm, and I just realized that my last blog post was almost 7 weeks ago…is that really possible? This time I have a really good excuse for not writing in a while…THE TWINS ARE HERE! Yep, they came early!

Baby Girl and Baby Boy were born on Saturday, December 29^th at 4:33 and 4:44. Baby Girl was born first and was 4 lbs 3oz and Baby Boy was 4 lbs 13oz. They are perfect in every way and did not have any medical complications; they didn’t even need oxygen!

I wish that I could go back and document in detail what happened in weeks 33 & 34 of my pregnancy (seeing as how my last post was about week 32) but the past 7 weeks have kind of been a blur. I will attempt to give some details that stand out to me. If you all remember, my blood pressure has been high off and on throughout this pregnancy. I also have had bad headaches and upper right side abdominal pain; all indicators of pre eclampsia. I also consistently had strong contractions that began to shorten and dilate my cervix, along with funneling. All of these factors sent me to Labor and Delivery (L&D) about 5 times in the past few months. And every time I would go my blood pressure would either be normal or barely high and all blood tests would come back normal (no pre eclampsia).

This was so frustrating to my husband and I because L&D was an hour away, there was a co-pay every time, and they always sent me home. I began to feel so silly every time my doctor insisted I go in for evaluation. Wednesday of week 34 my blood pressure was still high, then Thursday it was also high and we found out that Baby A (girl) had developed asymmetrical growth restriction which meant that her abdomen had stopped growing in order to deliver all blood to her brain development. This meant that she basically could not grow anymore and her abdomen size was in the 1 percentile. This was not life threatening but it wasn’t particularly good, thus the doctor did not order me to be delivered.

Well, Friday night my blood pressure had shot up to around 142/99 which was super high for me. After being sent home from L&D so many times, my husband and I were leery about driving all the way out to L&D; plus, we both were paranoid that we were taking my blood pressure incorrectly because we kept getting such high results. I was so worried that if I didn’t go to the hospital something bad would happen…but on the other hand I was tired or “crying wolf” and being sent home. We decided that we would wait until morning and go to a pharmacy to have them check my BP, and if it was still high we would drive to L&D.

Saturday morning rolled around, and oh, did I mention that we got a big storm Friday night that was still raging Saturday morning? We went and got my car inspected because my inspection would expire in a few days and then got my BP checked and sure enough it was still high, so off to L&D we went. Of course over a couple of hours at L&D, my BP never exceeded 131/90 and they were going to send me home so they let me have a snack. This whole time my OB had been trying to reach my perinatologist to get Thursday’s report but had been unsuccessful. I finally reached him on my cell phone and told him about my BP being low. He asked if I was sitting up when they took it, I wasn’t, and he said that if I lay down my BP would automatically be lower.

While I was on the phone with him I sat up and the machine took my BP again and sure enough it was really high. My peri then said he would call my OB because he wanted me to be delivered THAT SAME DAY…surprise to us! He didn’t want me to develop pre eclampsia or have any harm come to the babies due to my high BP. Have I mentioned that my husband and I hadn’t even showered yet that day? We thought we would just be coming back home for a lazy Saturday. Since the nurses had allowed me to have a snack my OB said I would have to wait about 4 hours for delivery. My OB informed me that although both babies were head down we would be doing a c section because I was not very dilated and my BP was climbing. Then we had another surprise; my OB apparently changed his mind about the time and was on his way; they immediately took me to the OR and began to prep me for surgery! This really was all a whirlwind. It happened so fast!