Home again home again, jiggity jig

I survived the wedding weekend and the 40 hours away from Champ and Honey and hubs! It ended up being really fun, and I am SO HAPPY I was able to be there to support my friend and watch her take this huge step of marriage in her life. I did miss the babies constantly and I called/texted/emailed hubs a dozen times to check on them. I brought one of Champ’s swaddle blankets with me and cuddled up with it on the plane rides and at night so I could smell their sweet baby smell while I was away. And anytime a wedding guest asked if I had pics of the babies, I whipped out my phone and showed them a few of the three hundred pics I have saved on there of the babies. 🙂 Their ears must’ve been ringing alllllllll weekend long.

I realized that it’s been FOREVER since I was truly in a social setting. Hubs and I went out to dinner on February 13 (his brother was visiting) and then the next morning the pre-term labor stuff happened and I was put on bedrest for five weeks, and then the babies came and I’ve been a hermit who only leaves to take walks, etc. Of course we’ve had friends over to visit, and we went out to dinner on my bday last month, but I haven’t been ACTIVELY social in about three months. I walk around the hourse in my lulu pants and glasses. I live on coffee and granola bars. It felt like I was being released into the wild! A blow out! Make-up! Pictures! Dancing! Small talk with six other bridesmaids! Cocktail hour! A sit-down dinner! A seven-hour long wedding reception in which to meet new people and catch up with old friends!

I felt like I went from being a hermit to a social butterfly. It was crazy and overwhelming but actually completely wonderful.

And OH MY GOSH was it amaaaaaaaaaaaaaazing to walk in our apartment door yesterday afternoon and to find my chubby babies waiting there. I felt like my heart was going to burst. We spent the ENTIRE afternoon snuggling and cuddling together in my bed. 🙂

I’m glad I got the social rust off, as we are heading to our 10-year college reunion in a couple of weeks. AHHHHHH!!!!! I reserve the right to change my mind, but the current plan is for all four of us to fly (!!!) to the East coast and set the babies up with hubs’s parents and spend the first night at their house. Then hubs and I will head to campus for a day and night sans babies. Then hubs’s parents will bring the babies up to campus on Saturday so we can introduce them to our friends. I actually ordered Honey a dress and Champ a polo shirt in our school colors, so I think this is really and truly happening.

If you had told me, when they were born at under 5 pounds, that we would be able to (physcially and emotionally!) take them on a plane trip at 10-weeks old and introduce them to our best college friends, I would’ve thought you were crazy. But their ped has given them 110% clearance to travel. And I think it’s going to happen….

So yeah, basically I have two weeks to try to get my body in a place I feel good about. Honestly? I just don’t have the time or energy to exercise and lift like I need to in order to get my figure back. And I eat even more these days (breastfeeding makes me super hungry) than when I was pregnant. It’s not a good time to diet. (Of course, I don’t really need ice cream at night, but that’s another story!) Being a couple months postpartum and seeing tons of peeps you haven’t seen in 10 years = not ideal timing. I’m going to do a post on recovery from bedrest and birth + exercise + eating, etc at another time. But these babies are (of course!!!!) worth this soft body with its ginormous boobs!!!

Settling into this…

Oh, my gosh, it has been much too long since I have written. Of course I have been busy and seriously at a loss of words to articulate everything I’m feeling and doing lately, but also, part of me has been reluctant to embrace the whole “motherhood” blog thing. I was inspired by Mel’s post today, which urges us to be “diarists” wherever we are in our lives. It really resonated with me. Parenting twins (!!!!!!), amazingly, is where I am, and what I’m living, and what’s on my mind, so here we go….

I am so blessed, so lucky, so happy. Every day I feel immense gratitude for these babies. I feared I would never ever be pregnant, then I was so anxious during pregnancy, and here we are….I still can’t believe our babies are really home with us and giving us cuddles and coos and chubby cheeks to snuggle and kiss and sleep deprivation. It is all beyond awesome. I hope and pray, and hope and pray, that you are all here someday soon. In particular, my friends and very good eggs, Mrs. Brightside and TeeJay, have endured incredible pain and heart ache over the past couple of weeks—they have suffered more than anyone should have to. I pray that they find some peace; my whole heart is with them. I am also sending my best implantation and take-home baby vibes to good eggie Chon, who had a successful transfer in her IVF cycle over the weekend, please please please let this be IT.

There are so many posts floating around in my head, but I will just tackle one for now.

First order of biz-ness: I’m going to start referring to Baby A, our little baby boy, as Champ (left, above). Because he is a champion eater, sleeper, observer, cuddle-er, everything-er. And Baby B (right, above), our little baby girl, will be known as Honey. Because she is our sweet little thing, our feisty beautiful Honey Pie.

The babies turned 7 weeks old on Monday. As they say, time really does fly. It’s strange, as each day can seem so long—with diaper changes and naps and feedings and tummy time and pumping and story time and bath time and clothing changes and walks—and yet they go for their 2-month check-up next week. It’s amazing.

So, NEWSFLASH (!!), babies come in all shapes, sizes and temperments. Our little Champ is the mellowest thing in the world. Of course he waves his hands, cuddles, cries, shrieks when we don’t feed him quickly enough—but, oh my lord—he is cool as a cucumber/happy as a clam/yada yada yada, 90% of the time. He goes to sleep right after eating in the night. He goes to bed at night without a fight. He eats quickly and efficiently. He gains weight so well. He is an easy-going little ANGEL baby, with his big eyes darting around and observing and taking in everything!

It is our blessing, not our burden, that our little Honey is so very different! 🙂 She is a fussy fussy fussy baby. The poor little thing has really severe gas….and while I think it’s improving, thanks to her digestive system maturing and a dose of Mylicon with each feeding and extensive burping and raising her mattress to a 40-degree incline, it’s still there and she’s uncomfie whenever she eats. And she eats all.the.time. Until 2 days ago, we were averaging 15 feedings a day with her compared to 10 with Champ. (Ay yi yi.) She spends her days grunting and groaning and generally showing her chronic discomfort. It’s hard to be a baby!! Poor sweet, sweet thing.

She tends to get super-duper cranky/cry-y/inconsolable during the witching hour (starting around 4pm) and it’s a full-fledged meltdown if she hasn’t napped well that day. Ditto for putting her to sleep, melt.down.city.

But, oh, she is just the sweetest thing. She loooooooooooooooooves to cuddle. She loves to sleep on our chests. She loves to roam around the apartment doing household chores with me in the sling. She has the brightest blue eyes and the most platinum blonde little mullet and she has so much fire and strength and feistiness in her for an almost 8-pound (I think?!) baby.

All of this is to preface the fact that we are, after 7 weeks, finally trying to get some order around here. I’ve been feeding on demand (a combo of nursing and breastmilk from bottles) until a couple of days ago, in order to maximize weight gain. No more! (Not that we aren’t still concerned about weight gain, we are, it’s just that we know they are capable of getting as much milk as they need by taking larger quantities in fewer feedings.) We’re finally feeding both babies AT THE SAME TIME. Which means waking up one baby if the other one wants to eat, day or night. This basically means we are trying to stretch Honey out beyond the 1.5 or 2 hours she was going in between feeds until now. And we’re letting Honey cry for a few minutes when we put her down at night before we go and check on her and re-arrange her—and I am no longer picking her up and cuddling/rocking her to sleep.

We are also trying to get them to sleep longer stretches at night. As I mentioned, until a couple of days ago they were eating whenever they wanted to. Now that we’re feeding them AT THE SAME TIME, we’ve reduced the number of middle of night feedings from 6 to 3 (rocket science!). So last night, the second night of the new “simul-feeding and hopefully longer stretches of sleep” regime, they ate at 730pm, 11pm, 230am, 5am, 730am. Those two 3.5 hour stretches of sleep they had are sooooooooo encouraging! And, just as exciting, they have been going back to sleep right after they eat. (Pleaaaaaaaaaaaaase no jinxies, newborn sleep gods.) I really really really hope they can keep this up and maybe ditch the midnight-ish or 3am-ish feed sometime in the next month or so.

Regularly scheduled napping and feed times = a bridge we probably won’t cross for some time. It’s hard to make plans with peeps because it’s always a game of roulette betting on what times of day the feedings will fall. Fortunately, AplusB is going through similar nap/feed mayhem, and we met for our very first playdate (of many!) with all four (!!!) of our babies on Tuesday. 🙂

So that’s what’s up with the babies. In other news, I am flying to NYC to be a bridesmaid in one of my best friends weddings this weekend. I know. I KNOW. I can’t believe it either. My heart aches at the thought of leaving the babies (even for the “short” 40 hours I’ll be gone) and I shudder at the idea of pumping in airports and in between wedding events and not leaking thru my bridesmaid dress. (In case you’re wondering, my MIL will be in town to help hubs survive two nights sans me.) And let’s not even discuss how chubs I’m going to look in my turquoise dress—even tho I’ve lost a lot of my pregnancy weight, the remaining 7 pounds (ahem, this does not count the extra 10lbs of IF weight I had pre-pregnancy) are somehow giving me 3 chins, a buddha belly and an overall layer of pudge. Nice.

Wish me luck on all fronts, my dear bloggie friends!!!!

One month old!

The babies are four weeks and 3 days old!!!!!!!! We took them to their one-month check-up this morning. It’s crazy thinking back on making the first trip to the ped exactly one month ago. I was so exhausted (I still am), the car seats felt so heavy (they still do)….but everything else felt more manageable today. I still have no clue what I’m doing 99% of the time, but I feel muuuuuuch more comfortable toting them around and it doesn’t take nearly as long to get out of the house. The appointment was great, all of the babies’ hard work at feedings was reflected on the scale. (YIP!) We have two butterballs (hahaha) weighing in at a whopping 6 pounds 11 ounces (Char.lie, he gained 1.5 pounds in 2 weeks) and 6 pounds 2 ounces (Lu.cy, she gained 17 ounces in 2 weeks…and it seems to be allllll belly, haha, sweet sweet girl). Great job, babies!

Lu.cy has some serious gas or possibly reflux issues that I will address in another post, after trying out a couple of fixes the ped recommended. The good news is that she’s not crying 24-7, she’s just grunting/groaning/semi-wailing most of the time (unless she’s eating or cuddled onto my chest). Poor little thing. I feel so bad for her that she’s so uncomfortable. And I feel so lucky that Char.lie is currently quite mellow in the digestion department (no jinxies!!). We are so incredibly happy and also so very very grateful for these sweet sweet babies: Along with hubs, they are the lights of my life. 🙂

Okay, here’s a little glossary of the terminology being thrown around in our house lately…

Last chance feeding – The feeds on the morning of any ped appointment, when we encourage the babies to really really really suck down that yummy breast milk to tip the scale a tad higher at the weigh-in. A la “last chance workouts” on The Biggest Loser…except with the opposite goal.

Piranha – A strong latch on the boob. When I’ve got a baby on me, if hubs is in room, he’ll look over and ask, “Piranha?” Also can be a verb if the sucking is especially vigorous, as in, “Oh my gosh, he’s really piranhaing me right now!”

Cookie monster – A very hungry baby. Also can be a verb, as in, “is she Cookie Monstering?” if the baby is rooting around like crazy.

Magical forest – Their play mat. It has cute little animals hanging all over it. We like to do tummy time on the mat and we also put them in their Boppys so they can reach for/observe the forest creatures up close.

Spa day – a.k.a. bath time. We still do sponge baths on the changing table with the babies, even though their umbilical cord stumps fell off weeks ago. They, umm, don’t really enjoy being cold or naked, so we turn on the sound machine to rainforest or ocean sounds and regale them with stories about the luxe spa treatment they are getting. 🙂

Current most-used nicknames for Char.lie: Chaz Ma Taz, Bright Eyes, Butterball, CW, C-Man

Current most-used nicknames for Lu.cy: Lucy Pie, Luce Ma Goose, Honey, Baby Doll, Lucy Lou

The hardest part?

If there is one thing I’ve learned since we got home from the hospital, it’s that I could not do this without lots and lots and lots of help.

My hubs is awesome, as a support of me and as a parent of twinsies. He feeds/changes babies as soon as he gets home at night. He cooks dinner every night. He tells me all the time how awesome I’m doing as a Mom (haha). He washes pumping supplies and bottles. He uploads our meticulous notes on their feeds into spreadsheets every morning so we can see exactly where they are. Etc etc etc etc etc. He’s awesome.

And my MIL….words cannot express how grateful we are for her help. She is a retired Labor & Delivery nurse (!!!) and has been flying into town for a few days at a time here and there to cover night shifts + a couple of hours in the afternoon (she’s subletting an apartment a few blocks away so we can have our “space”!) so I can either a) run to the grocery store, b) take a walk, or c) lay down and shut my eyes. AMAZING. She’ll be doing this for the next six weeks, and it’s pretty much the awesome-est thing in the world.

The rest of the time, hubs and I split up the night shifts. He’s more of a night owl so he’ll cover the babies from 11 until 3 or 4am-ish. Then I’m on for the rest of the night/day and he sleeps until about 7 or 8 before getting up for work. It seems to work pretty well. At night, we keep both babies in their bassinets in the nursery and the person on the night shift hangs out in the living room, doing whatever (watching TV, surfing the web, laundry, etc), while keeping an eye on the video monitor. Because a baby often needs to be fed every hour of the night, it just doesn’t make sense for the on-call person to be in the bedroom with the sleeping person right now. I really miss sleeping in the same bed as hubs (especially since I can now snuggle him without my big pregnant belly!), but I know this is not forever….

Of course, most of the time no one is here to help and it’s just the babies and me. I am in heaven with them—cloud nine. The hardest part? When I’m feeding one baby and the other one is hungry and crying and rooting because he or she is now hungry, too. Ohhhhhh, how that hurts my heart. With twinsies, you can’t be there for both babies at once all of the time….you have to crises manage each situation. Do I cut a nursing session short to attend to the next baby? Interrupt it to get try to get the second baby to latch on, too? Rearrange everyone and set them both up in Boppys for bottle feeds? And so this triage situation happens. Over and over and over. When hubs gets home in the evening, it is out of control how exhausted I feel. (This definitely tops the summer where I was training for a Half-Ironman. Ooof!)

I have never been happier, or more tired. 🙂

In an ideal, very efficient, world, I would tandem nurse them. But, so far, I’ve found that really hard to execute. For one thing, they’d both have to be hungry at the same exact time. I know someday in the future we’ll get them on the same feeding sked, but for now, we’re maximizing weight gain and that means feeding a baby whenever he/she is hungry, and at least every two hours. For another thing, it’s hard to get two babies situated on a Boppy when you’re alone. And lastly, while they both have it in them to be excellent nursers, none of us are great at it just yet…..while I can almost always get one baby perfectly latched and sucking, it’s pretty much hitting the lottery if I can get them going simultaneously.

So, I do a combo of attempting tandem feeds, taking turns nursing them, feeding them bottles of pumped breast milk, then pumping to drain my boobs, then cleaning everything up. (Sometimes all of that happens in one session, haha.) It’s not a perfect system, it’s pretty freaking inefficient, but it’s working for us right now: They are definitely chubbing up and looking more rolly-polly-ish and that makes me SO SO SO happy. 🙂

We take them outside for walks on weekends….they’ve seen Lake Michigan, been to the park, and hung out at our fave sandwich shop. They’re such a handful and I’m soooo obsessed with feeding them the MOMENT they look like they’re thinking about food…..so I’ve never taken them outside all by myself. That has got to change soon! I know maternity leave will be a lot more fun when we’re all mobile…

The best hours are the ones where one baby is happily snoozing and I have the other one on my chest for cuddles and individual QT. They melt me!!!! I try really hard to give them each as many one-on-one snuggles as possible throughout the day. Sometimes, if the timing is just right, I can put them both on my chest and they’ll nap together while I stare at them, mesmerized and blissfully happy. Sweet, sweet babies.

5 pounds!

Today I am celebrating my bday—the best one of my entire life. 🙂 It began with snuggles with the babies. Then we had an 8am appointment at the ped. Both babies have surpassed their birth weights and made it to the 5 pound mark!!!!! GREAT JOB, BABIES!!! (We’re now cleared to do tummy time with them, which I’ve really been looking forward to.) We love these kiddos so much. Not sure if you can tell from my iPhone photos, but their little cheeks (and tummies) are definitely chubbing up. Yip!!!

Current most-used nicknames for Lu.cy: Luce De Goose. Cookie Monster. Honey. Honey Pie. Lucy Pie. Current most-used nicknames for Char.lie: Super Mario. CW. C-dog. Little Guy. Charlie Poo.

Sweet little things

I keep thinking about things I’d like to post, but I get distracted. So here’s another bulleted post of this-n-that in the meantime!

• I am so incredibly happy. 🙂 Snuggling the babies melts me into a puddle of pure love and awe. I can’t believe how LUCKY we are. We love our sweet little babies so so so so SO much. Thank you, lord, for bringing them into the world safe and sound. I still can’t even believe this is my life, I am so grateful!!!!
• We were so very very very lucky that our babies didn’t need NICU time. But they were born very small—even for their gestational age and for being twins. I am plagued with guilt about their size. Even though I know it’s not my “fault”— and that I ate and ate and ate to grow big, strong babies—I feel responsible. Why can’t I let this guilt and anxiety go and just be 110% thankful to my body for all that it accomplished?
• Since the morning after we got discharged from the hospital, we’ve been going to the pediatrician every 3 to 7 days for weigh-ins. At the last check-up, they had gained weight for the first time. (Yip!!!) They still haven’t made it back up to their birth weights, but I think we are getting close. Their little tummies and cheeks seem to be filling out and they eat like champs.
• To help them gain weight, our ped has us on a strict every-2-hours eating schedule. Plus, we feed a baby whenever he/she is hungry even if it hasn’t been two hours….all to maximize weight gain. This makes for, literally, round the clock feeds. I’m trying to breast feed them more often (in the beginning I wasn’t allowed to do it much because the babies spend precious calories on the breast) because the current process is awfully time consuming (change a diaper, try to get a baby to take some milk from the boob, feed the baby a bottle, maybe change another diaper, pump, make a bottle, wash the pumping parts…..and repeat with the next baby). Whew!
• Seeing pics of other newborns kind of makes my jaw drop. Other infants look SO FREAKING HUGE! I know we will look back on these tiny, feedings-every-hour days very fondly, but right now I am so so so looking forward to those “3 hours” in between feeds that other new Moms talk about. And also to our babies chubbing up. They only have a few outfits they fit in and it kills me seeing their skinny, wrinkly legs and arms, just waiting for fat deposits. Sweet little babies.
• I cannot wait for the spring weather to arrive and for the babies to be big and strong enough for me to take them on walks by the lake and out and about! Grow babies, grow!!!
• It is SO AWESOME not being on bedrest. I have been having a blast taking out the trash, walking all over the apartment, cooking dinner, simple stuff!….in retrospect, I can see what a toll bedrest was taking on my mental and emotional state.
• Speaking of emotional states….I feel overwhelmed and exhausted a lot of the time, but cuddling with the babies always makes me feel on top of the world. There are even brief and glowing moments of “Okay, I think I might have some semblance of a handle on all of this and everything is going to be just fine.” Those fleeting moments are usually right after a hot shower, a gulp of coffee or a sip of wine. 🙂

Birth story

I wrote most of this post in the hospital. Here’s how it all went down in the wee hours of Monday, March 21…

12am The night before cervix check appointments, I get pretty anxious and tend to stay up late in the hopes that I can tire myself out enough to get to sleep. That’s how it happened that I was reading a magazine in bed at midnight. Hubs was awake, too, and we were reading/chatting in bed.  As I was switching positions,I felt a “pop” or “snap” sensation in my tum, and my first thought was, “Could that be my water breaking?!” I’ve Googled “water breaking” enough times to know a lot of folks describe it that way. My second thought was, “Naaaaaah. Must’ve tweaked a muscle or something as I was shifting in bed.”

But I went to the bathroom to check it out and my undies were wet. Not Niagra Falls by any means, but soaked with clear fluid (no scent, yeah, I checked). I wasn’t feeling any contractions, but I did start to shake with adrenaline immediately. I knew that, at 35w3d, they wouldn’t stop labor and if this was really my water breaking, and we were going to meet the babies!

12:05am I paged my clinic and the OB on call (the awesome Dr. M) rang me back in a few minutes. She said it did indeed sound like my water had broken and to head to triage and they’d page her later if I was in labor. I already had my hospital bag packed, but suddenly simply finding my pants and shoes and locking up the apartment were tough tasks to accomplish—I was so shaky! Now the contrax began. Not the tensed uterus feeling I’d learned to pinpoint from my preterm labor scare, but pretty darn bad period-esq cramps.

12:15am Hubs pulled up with the car and I plopped into the front seat with my bag. En route to triage, the period cramps intensified in a major way. It wasn’t horrible pain, but it was def intense enough that I was doing some deep breathing. The car ride was kind of surreal. It had stormed all day and the streets were wet, dark and empty.

12:45am With no traffic in the middle of the night, we were at the hospital lickety split. We hung out in the triage waiting area for about 10 minutes waiting to be seen and the cramps became seriously awful, consuming my entire body. I was wondering if I should make a bigger deal about them to the triage check-in person, but felt like all preggos must feel like this when they show up in labor: totally uncomfortable and kinda dying with pain. While waiting to be taken into a monitoring room, we made a bet on how dilated I’d be. I guessed 7cm. Hubs guessed 5cm.

1am We get taken into a monitoring room in triage and now the contractions were, like, totally severe. I ask for the first time when I can get the epidural. At this point, I was starting to become concerned that there wasn’t enough urgency with my situation. No one had checked my cervix and I was having a ton of pressure and contractions that absolutely huuuuurt. In retrospect, I should’ve articulated how I was feeling the moment I checked in at triage, but hey, I’ve never been in labor and figured this was the drill. Hubs told the triage nurse that my contractions were coming roughly every 45 seconds or minute and was that cause for concern? “No, she’s fine,” said the nurse. She continued messing around with fetal HR monitors, swabbing to check if there’s amniotic fluid present to see if I really broke my water, etc.

1:15am The triage nurse finally checks my cervix. Her eyes BUG OPEN. She grabs her phone to call for backup: “The twin patient is presenting! Page Dr. M! Prep the OR!” Turns out I’m already 10cm dilated and she can see Baby A’s head in +2 station. AHHH!!! It’s like we’re in a movie all of a sudden, and I’m on the wheeled hospital bed, being rushed to the elevator bank and up to the OR. It was honestly pretty freaky.

1:30am In OR prep, I’m in agony. The contractions are all-consuming and nearly constant. The nurses blow out two veins (you should see my left arm, it’s still black and blue) trying to get an IV in and I’m on the verge of flipping out. [Hubs says the reason they keep fracking up the IV is that I’ve stressed them out so much by continuously asking, “Is it in? Can I get the epidural now?”] They finally get it in and I’m taken into the OR to wait for Dr. M and for an epidural. I probably ask a dozen more times, “Where is the anesthesiologist? I want the epidural!” Hahaha.

2am The epidural is placed. SWEET RELIEF! Seriously, it’s like I’m a new person as we wait for Dr. M to get to the hospital. She arrives and checks out my cervix. She says we can start pushing now, but Baby A is sunny-side up and she’s hoping he’ll change position. Also, because I now can’t feel much (yay epidural!), she wants me to chillax for a bit in a special side-lying position to see if he’ll move and face the other direction, and to give me some rest before pushing. I feel like a new person, soooo excited to meet Baby A and Baby B and ready to gather my strength.

230am The nurses have Wilco playing for us on the computer and we’re all just hanging out in the OR. Life is good, haha. At about this point I begin to feel the contractions again (NOTHING like before tho!). Dr. M tells me this is good stuff, it’ll be better for pushing.

3am I’m rested up. Baby A has turned. I get a crash course on how to push/breathe out a baby. We begin with my next contraction.

3:23am Char.les William is born—screaming pink and beautiful. Utter relief as I watch his screaming body being whisked away to the annex room where a team of pediatricians are waiting. Dr. M says Baby B is still head down and that I can begin pushing/breathing again on my next contraction.

3:26am Lucy Elizabeth is born—also screaming, pink and beautiful. Unbelievable relief and joy ensue.

3:30am While Dr. M sews me up (there was some rippage), hubs goes back and forth between the annex room where teams of docs are monitoring the babies, and my bedside, showing me pics of our sweet little things. WE ARE IN LOVE WITH THESE BABIES!!!!!!! I was a celebrity in the hospital for a couple of days with all of the doctors and nurses thanks to whole arriving-at-10cm-dilated-and-presenting-a-head-and-two-babies-born-two-hours-later thing.

The end. The beginning. 🙂

Quickie update

Hi bloggies! Thank you so much for the beautiful messages on my last post. 🙂 I started a birth story post while I was in the hospital, so that’s coming soon. In the meantime, here’s a quick update filled with tons of randomness….

• I did a vaginal birth for both babies. It was fast and furious (details to come). I always wondered which was harder/more painful, labor or a marathon. The answer? LABOR!
• The babies were born teenie tiny (4 pounds 11 ounces and 4 pounds 10 ounces)—despite my intense efforts to eat tons of protein, milkshakes, burgers, Sheperd’s Pie, etc etc etc, throughout pregnancy—but super healthy. From birth, their breathing and suck/swallow reflexes = perfect.
• Because they are tiny champs and we are insanely lucky, they never had to go to the NICU! We spent Monday, Tuesday and part of Wednesday cuddling them, staring at them, taking pictures of them, and feeding them in our hospital room.
• I am in love, love, LOVE with these sweet little babies. Just thinking about them makes my heart almost burst with love. We are so blessed!
• Char.lie developed borderline jaundice on our last day in the hospital. His levels stabilized with some phototherapy so he was cleared to go home with at-home bili blanket. We soooo miss cuddling with him and getting skin-to-skin QT whenever we feel like it, but it’s for his own good!
• I never ever imagined we’d get to bring both babies home with us. But the four of us left the hospital on Wednesday evening. I was shaking I was so happy. It makes me teary thinking about it now!
• We had our first pediatrician appointment yesterday morning. We loooove our doctor, she had awesome feeding tips for us and was very efficient and thorough.
• Unfort, Char.lie’s bili levels went up a bit. So hubs is taking him back for another blood test today. If his bilirubin level rises again, he’ll probably have to be readmitted to the hospital for more intense phototherapy. We would miss him so much! But we really want to nix this jaundice thing, so whatever is best for him.
• I think my milk is starting to come in (yay body!!!!!), and I am so happy that I can start giving them breast milk in lieu of formula for some feeds. The babies haven’t been able to breast feed more than 5 minutes at a time. Because it, a) burns too many calories to eat that way, and, b) because tiny amounts of colostrum/early breast milk won’t do them any weight gain favors at this point—they’re so little that they cannot tolerate losing weight like most term babies can.
• Lu.cy sleeps like a rock in between feeds during the day. Because she is seriously NOCTURNAL! Come nighttime (her witching hour is about 10pm), she is inconsolable unless she’s in our arms. It’s absolutely adorable and wonderful to placate her with serious snuggle time, but it means we haven’t had much luck catching Zzzs.
• I’ve only slept a few hours since we got home on Wednesday. I’m going on pure love and adrenaline. I have never ever ever been happier than I am right now. We love our sweet little babies so so so much!

Two good eggs…

Introducing our sweet babies!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

“Baby A”
Charles William (Charlie)
4 pounds, 11 ounces
18 inches
born 3:23am, March 21

“Baby B”
Lucy Elizabeth
4 pounds, 10 ounces
18 inches
born 3:26am, March 21

They are sweet, sweet, sweet little babies and we love them so very much! We are the luckiest people in the world. 🙂 Thank you all so much for all of your love and support, it means the world to me.

35 weeks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

If I felt safe moving more than a centimeter every few seconds, I’d be doing a ridiculous happy dance right now! YIP YIP YIP!!!!!!!!!!!! 🙂 Great job, sweet little babies! Great job, ute! Great job, cervie!

I feel like labor has to be very imminent. I am having a ton of snotty discharge, which is what happened when I went from 1cm to 3cm. And Baby A is giving me all sorts of crazy pelvic pressure. Most of the time I just can’t believe they are still in there, safely and happily hanging out and growing and getting bigger and stronger as my cervix opens up. I know this sounds crazy, but I worry about Baby A just popping out….I know, I’m nuts.

Bedrest is still my norm, though I have taken Dr. Zen’s advice and made one mellow outing each day since Monday. On Tuesday, hubs’s MIL flew in from out of town and the three of us went out to dinner. On Wednesday evening, she drove me to the salon for a haircut. Yesterday morning, she drove me to the dermatologist. IT WAS AMAZING TO BE OUTSIDE! Of course I always go right back to horizontal position as soon as I get home and the furthest I (slooooooowly) walked was from a curb to a chair at each outing. But still, it was awesome. She also did a ton of errands for us, which was so kind and has made me feel so much more “together” (Costco, Target, various returns I haven’t been able to do, etc). We are so lucky to have such wonderful Moms—I only wish they lived here instead of having to take plane trips to visit!

I know my updates are super-boring these days, and I’m sorry bloggies!! But this is my life, this is what consumes me: One more day, one more day, one more day.