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!

Week 32: A Milestone in Carrying a Multiples Pregnancy

          Week 32 has been tumultuous at best. I have been continuing to have regular contractions, low back ache, menstrual like cramps, and pelvic pressure/pain. On Tuesday I saw my OB’s Nurse Practitioner and mentioned all of these things to her (again). This woman is not unkind by any means, but she makes me feel incredibly rushed. She did not seem to think much about my symptoms and tried to dismiss me. When she finally remembered to take my blood pressure (her nurse was out sick) she found that it was high but told me to just have my perinatologist look into the next day. I had to ask her to check my cervix because she wasn’t volunteering and I was worried because of all the contractions I had been having. So she manually checked it, they can’t measure it there, and found that it was closed but starting to soften (and I am not 100% sure what that means, effacement maybe?)

          So on Wednesday I did have an appointment with my perinatologist for my now once weekly biophysical profile of each baby. The appointment went great; I actually got a great sonographer this time! Their heartbeats, lungs, stomachs, brains, kidneys, amniotic fluid, cord blood flow, etc. all seem to be in perfect condition! And I love to see their little diaphragms practice breathing! When she used the wand to check my cervical length we even got to see our little girls head and it was covered in hair! I couldn’t believe you could see the hair! The details of this appointment are that the babies look great! My cervical length is still 2.8cm, down from 4.3cm, but they are okay with this length until I get to 2.5cm. They never say if I am dilated or effaced, so I assume that I am not. 

Twin B

          My blood pressure was normal at this appointment, however, when I told this doctor about my headaches, upper abdominal pain, and high blood work Tuesday, he was concerned. He told me that if I still felt this pain on Thursday, I had to go in for a pre-eclampsia work up. Thursday morning I was still in pain so I had a pharmacist take my BP, and it was still high. She sent me home with a cuff to check it myself and throughout the day it was still high. I finally gave in and called the doctor and they insisted that I go to the hospital where I will deliver to get pre-eclampsia blood work done, which is an hour away. I had to cancel our weekly Thursday night Bible study and I waited for my husband who was 2 hours away at a staff conference. So he drove 2 hours to the conference, 2 hours back, and then an hour to and from the hospital. We got to the hospital and they hooked me up for monitoring, took my blood, took a urine sample, and repeatedly checked my blood pressure. After 2 hours, my blood pressure was normal every time and we got the lab results back. My only abnormal results were that my blood platelet levels had dropped to 180 and my uric acid level was elevated to 5.8 (which are indicative of low kidney function/failure).

          The nurse said that pre-eclampsia causes these results but that I was not being diagnosed with pre-eclampsia because my blood pressure was remaining normal. We agreed on pre pre-eclampsia. When she called my doctor with my results the decision was made to give me the intramuscular steroid shot, betamethasone, to help speed up the baby’s lung development in case they are born early due to these lab results. High uric acid levels and low platelets can lead them to induce labor early because of danger to mother and babies. This shot is a 2 part, so I was instructed to come back in 24hours for the second shot and repeat blood work to see if my labs worsened. I admit I was a little excited because they only give the steroid shot when they think labor is impending; all I could think was “I may deliver babies tomorrow!”

          Did I mention that my husband in in school for his MBA and this particular Thursday was the day before his last day of class this semester so he had work to turn in that night? Thankfully we made it home by 9pm-ish that night. This brings me to the next day, Friday. I am not sure there could have been a busier day! At 9 am my husband took our 2 dogs to the vet to update their shots; easy peasy right? Nope. Our smallest dog had a severe allergic reaction to the distemperment shot and it turned into an emergency situation and they had to keep her there (thank goodness I wasn’t there, I may have gone into labor, I love that little dog so much!) So when he got home from that appointment we had to take my car into the dealership for a quick service (a fix for something they had already supposedly fixed earlier in the week); this appointment was an hour away of course. We had another appointment that afternoon that we had to rush to after this service visit. Well, after waiting in the customer lounge for an hour, the service manager finally told us to take a dealer car to our next appointment and then come back. They gave us this really old ford Taurus that almost stalled at a red light and made horrible sounds! I didn’t think it would get us anywhere!!! While in route to the appointment the dealer called us and said the problem was with our airbag (in a 2012 car) and that they couldn’t fix it today so just take the Taurus home. That was not an option. 1) It was a death trap, and 2) our car seats and stroller couldn’t fit into it. My husband informed them of my pending labor and the need for a larger car; they said they would have to look into it.

          So we pull into the parking lot of our next appointment 10 minutes early, only to receive an email (thank goodness for smartphones) telling us that they were not ready for us and could not see us. WHAT? Who cancels an appointment 10 minutes before its start time? Do they think we live down the road?  My husband told them that if they couldn’t see us by 3:00 that day then we couldn’t see them at all; they agreed. So we drove back to the dealership but of course they didn’t have ONE vehicle that would fit our stuff so they rented us a ford escape from Enterprise. Then we had to wait for Enterprise to pick us up, drive us back to Enterprise, fill out all the paperwork, find out the gas tank is empty and have to get it filled, and then drive back to the dealership to load all of our baby gear into this rental car.

 Are you starting to get a picture of how this day is going?

          I think that it is important to interject here that Thursday morning the orthodontist put “chains” on my teeth to close the gaps my newly straightening teeth were causing. I am pretty sure they used small bike chain! So this meant that from that appointment on I was/am in total pain from the top of my head down to my shoulders. These chains make me feel like I have the flu. I recently read a few articles that said Tylenol leads to increased asthma in children if taken during pregnancy and I have taken my fair share with these braces, so I decided to just suck it up and not take anything for pain because I don’t want to harm my babies.

          So back to the scene, we have now been out and about for 4 hours; I am in excruciating pain, starving because I can’t chew anything, exhausted and swollen. Remember, I am supposed to be on bed rest. After the ordeal at the dealership is finished we make it to our now 3pm appointment, to which the other party is still running late. We finish that appointment only to have to drive another hour to another state for a 4:30pm appointment. (I am very thankful that our 3:00 appointment had snacks in their office, I may have started hallucinating if not!) We made it to our 4:30 a little late and that one took 2 hours, so of course food was the only thing on my mind. However, we still had to drive another 1.5 hours to another state for my repeat lab work and 2^nd shot, oh yeah, and we had to stop at home to let our dog out (the one who didn’t get kept at the vet. P.S the vet called while we were on the road and told us to come pick up our dog…yeah, that wasn’t going to happen.)

          We left that appointment, grabbed a quick meal that I could chew, and took off for our next appointment. Remember that this is Friday, my husband’s last day of his current school semester and he had work due by midnight. This meant that he had to grab our laptop from home so that he could complete his school work at the hospital because we wouldn’t get back home until 11:30pm, with his work due at midnight. Phew! We arrived at the hospital around 8:30pm and they hooked me up the same as before and ran all the same tests. My blood pressure was still normal, my platelet levels were the same ( I think) but my uric acid levels had climbed higher from 5.8 to 6.1 in just 24 hours; how much more would they rise over a weekend? They gave me my 2^nd steroid shot and instructed me to follow up with my OB Monday. I have an appointment scheduled for Tuesday at their office that is closer, and part of me wonders what good it would do to move my appointment up by one day. On the other hand, if my uric acid levels rose that much in 24 hours, how much more could it rise over 3 days? I guess I will call Monday and see what my OB’s office says.

          So no babies were delivered that night, I was sent home on bed rest and diagnosed with “symptoms of pre-term labor and pre-eclampsia.” My husband finished his school work and submitted it from the hospital room, and we were out of there by 10:30pm. We finally arrived home around 11:30pm and crashed…until the next morning when he had to run out and pick up our poor little dog from the vet. And so concludes the longest day in the history of time! We were out running the gamut for 12.5 hours. At the end of the day my feet and legs looked like an elephant’s! It was such a brutal, long day. So here I am this weekend, trying to rest and recuperate and get my feet to stop looking like Barney Rubble’s!

          I am thrilled that I made it past 32 weeks carrying twins. I read a lot of women’s stories about giving birth around 32 weeks so I wouldn’t have been surprised if I had gone into labor. I am now at the beginning of my 33 week, and my guess is that I will give birth sometime in my 34-34 ½ week. 34 ½ weeks would give us Christmas babies! My OB would like me to hit 35 weeks and I agree, that would mean New Year’s Eve babies : ) 

          Oh and P.S. at this past week’s appointment Baby A had returned to a head down position! Yay! I am praying that she stays in this position so that we can attempt a vaginal birth. So my prayers are that Baby A will stay in this position, and that in the end run our birth scenario will be whatever is best for mine and the babies health.