Frank

twins, unplugged

/ emmykay / 2 Comments

Oh, how I wish this was a post about our dear daughters acoustic stylings.

Alas, it is not.

To really understand the full scope of what I am referring to, I must begin with what transpired on Friday night.

My dear, sweet, lovely cousin was in from Oregon.  Considering that I hadn’t seen her in years (perhaps as many as five years), I was really looking forward to catching up with her and introducing her to the twins.

In my mind, the meeting would be fit for heaven: my twin cherubic delights would be angelically smiling and cooing whilst my cousin oohed and ahhed over their perfect blue eyes, creamy complexions and amazing ability to grasp toys with their sweet little fingers.  It would be the makings of a Norman Rockwell portrait.

What transpired instead?  My eldest twin was, in fact, angelic.  She cooed and slept and was a delight.  My youngest twin cried – nay – screamed for the better part of an hour.  We took turns rocking, singing, cuddling, walking and soothing her.  The only pause in her blood curdling scream was to inhale and start over.

While my primary and initial thoughts were, “What is wrong with my sweet baby??!!” I must also confess that in the background of my brain, I was thinking, “What is wrong?  WHAT IS WRONG?? Why won’t the crying stop? We are going to be THOSE parents.  The ones that can’t control their children.  If our children turn out to be wild teenagers, everyone will point back to their infancy and this particular night and say, ‘Yes, we all saw it coming.’ Holy heckfire – please stop crying! I’ll buy you a pony!  I’ll buy you a car! I will tell everyone publicly that you are my favorite!  Please, please stop crying!”

It’s a good thing that those thoughts were only running in the background of my brain because the rational thoughts circulating in the foreground included, “Oh my gosh, what if she has a tumor that is rupturing and I’m sitting here trying to tell her to calm down and this is an EMERGENCY! Maybe we should go to the hospital?  Would I sound crazy if I suggested that we go to the hospital? Can tumors rupture? Ahh!”

And of course, my devoted and loving husband stood next to me, his brow earnestly furrowed saying encouraging and helpful things in a hissed whisper like, “What in the world do you think is wrong with her? What should we do?  Feed her? Change her?  Over stimulation?  When did she poop last?  Should we get a Q-Tip?”

Did I lose you at “Q-Tip?”  For seasoned parents, you may be familiar with the age-old parental horror show of using a rectal thermometer to stimulate, ahem, the bowels.  When our doctor first told us that the only option to get things moving in our preemie newborns was to gently insert a rectal thermometer, we both gagged silently and thought, loudly, “one-two-three-not-it!”

The first three day stint of no-poopies almost resulted in the use of a rectal thermometer.  We held baby Ellie in our arms and told her how much we would sooo appreciate it if she would get things moving.  Miraculously, Ellie ended the stand-off with a BM that resulted in Frank sending me the following text, “POOPIES!!!”

We breathed a collective sigh of relief.

Turns out that was a bit premature.

A week or so later, Ellie went almost four days.  For some reason the thermometer seemed too harsh to us, so we opted to go for the Q-Tip.  And it worked like a charm.

And so, last Friday we found ourselves trying to remember the last time we changed a poopie diaper.  Three days?  Four days?  Hmmm.

Out came the Q-Tips.

But no dice.

We decided to pack up the girls and head home.  By the time we got home, Carrie seemed to be in better spirits and went to sleep easily.

Saturday was fine.

Sunday seemed like it was going to be OK.  The girls slept almost 12 hours.  We had K-Fam time and I started getting ready to go to a bridal shower.

You know, an event with adults, lunch, punch, copious amounts of female giggling and cake.

I love cake.

In between finishing my make-up and taking my rollers out, Carrie lost her ever-loving mind.

I tried everything.  Frank looked at me and I looked at him.

“Q-Tip?” we were hopeful it would work.

Nevermind that we were up against a serious deadline – my sister was coming over to babysit while Frank got ready for work and I left for the shower.

Q-Tip: Fail.

Then we googled options and there was a site that suggested a baby enema.

I can’t even explain how that is executed.

Enema: Fail.

At this point I was sweating from rocking and “shhing” and going up and down the stairs.  There was no way my stick-straight hair was going to hold the curl today.  It was the least of my concerns.

Oh, and Ellie had decided she did not like all of the raucous crying and started whining.

I made a very adult decision: I could not go to the bridal shower. No cake for Mama Bear.

We called the doctor’s office’s answering service.  They doctor’s office’s answering service called the doctor.  The doctor called us.  Dear, lovely, wonderful doctor suggested a suppository.

When she explained to Frank how to administer said suppository, he replied, “Oh, our poor girl!”

The doctor chuckled.  “More like, poor you! I think the suppositories are worse for the parents!”

Lovely.

Frank went out and bought the suppository while I told Carrie that if she pooped now, she could make this all go away.

Reasoning: Fail.

We marched Carrie upstairs, administered the suppository (some things are left unexplained) and waited.

Let’s just say, Carrie is feeling much better tonight and slept for the rest of the afternoon.

Moral of the story?

I don’t really know.

I just need to write this down so that when I am arguing with the girls about curfew, I can at least be grateful that this era of my life is behind me.  Well, it better be behind me.

the girls: four month update

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I am amazed at how quickly time flies since the girls were born! I am sure that time feels like it has passed quickly because of the lack of sleep and mind-numbing schedule of feeding the twins every three hours.  I am happy to say that as the girls hit their fourth month of life, their puking has subsided to only a “special” occasion occurrence (Carrie puked “Happy Father’s Day” in vomit all over her daddy – how sweet!).

Their laughing and smiling has evolved into cooed conversations where both girls try very hard to tell us very important things.  I try to imagine what they are saying, “Mommy, stop breathing on me – your breath is horrible” or “You will never guess what I just did in my diaper!”

At their four month appointment, the doctor was very pleased with their muscle tone, shapes of their heads and neck strength.  While they are still a bit “bobbly”, they are getting stronger and stronger every day.

Since the girls are still not sleeping through the night (love me some Starbucks), our doctor suggested that now would be an appropriate time to start feeding them oat cereal (rice would give them even worse constipation than they already have).  Enthusiastically Frank went out and bought organic oat cereal with probiotics and we went about the business of learning how to feed our girls.

Oh heavens.  It was a mess!  We don’t have high chairs yet, so we set them up in their bouncy seats.  While you or I might know how to use our tongues to swallow food, our girls are more interested in pushing food around their mouth.  The result is more food caked around their lips than actually makes it into their tummies.  Every feeding gets a little bit better, though.

We are also trying to work on a sleep schedule.  We had been letting the girls sort of settle into a natural sleeping routine, but now we are becoming more intentional about it.  We have a bedtime routine and we have been slowly moving their bedtime forward so that we are getting them ready for bed closer to 8:30 or 9 p.m.

All about Ellie:

Ellie wearing a special Father's Day bib for daddy!

Ellie’s red hair seems to be here to stay!  I love to snuggle Ellie and tell her how luscious she is.  She has the most beautiful, healthy-looking cheeks and perfect little lips.  She wants to be entertained when she is awake and loves to play on her activity mat.  When I lay her down on the mat, she kicks her feet wildly and swats and grabs for toys.  She especially enjoys the activity mat with the blinking lights.  Ellie is a great sleeper and is now officially sleeping in her crib and not in her car seat.  I love going into her room in the middle of the night to see what position she has worked herself into.  Ellie seems to have a very sweet disposition and loves to have mommy and daddy time so that she can babble away.  At Ellie’s four month doctor’s appointment she weighed 14 1/2 lbs and was 24 inches long (approximately 50th percentile for four month old full term babies, and 95th percentile for two month pre-term babies).  Miss Ellie is certainly thriving!

All about Carrie:

Carrie in her matching "Chicks dig pilots" bib!

Carrie loves to laugh and smile!  Even in the middle of the night, she often grins when we walk in the room and giggles at us.  She is very chatty and will talk to anyone who will listen.  She does not like to sit still and is working very hard on rolling over.  Like her sister, she is also sleeping in her crib and travels from one end to the other throughout the night.  Carrie is also very amused by her activity mat.  She especially loves bright toys that she can hold and study.  Carrie is very strong and when held up with her feet on the ground, she will stand as straight as an arrow.  She is certainly a lively baby and makes her likes AND dislikes well-known.  We are fortunate that for now, her likes seem to outweigh her dislikes.

Father’s Day

This year was Frank’s first father’s day!  To honor him, the girls (via me) made matching bibs that said “chicks dig pilots”.  When Frank was in college, he was quoted in the collegiate newspaper as having said, “chicks dig pilots” in response to the age-old question, “why did you get into aviation in the first place?”  The reporter used that particular quote as a call out for her story on the aviation school.  Frank never lived it down and was tickled when he saw his own chicks wearing these matching bibs.  The girls also gave Frank extra-long neckties, a sports massage at a local spa and brag book full of pictures that he can share with flight crews wherever he goes.  As an added bonus, the girls and I also had the car washed inside and out – nothing says “Happy Father’s Day” like a tidy baby-mobile!

how to date like Frank and Emily

/ emmykay / 2 Comments

You might be asking (although, probably not) how Frank and Emily keep the love alive after nearly 8 years of wedded bliss.  Although, you are more likely asking yourself what is for lunch, dinner or when the next season of Mad Men will start (sometime in 2012, sorry folks).  While I can only answer one of your other pressing questions, and I can suggest a myriad of restaurants and delicious recipes for your first two questions, I am able to give you a glimpse into a romantic interlude between my Romeo (Frank) and me.

First, let’s describe the setting.  While many of you are probably used to having dates that take place in the fading light of a romantic sunset (read: best lighting for making everyone look attractive), Frank and I enjoy seeing each other in the stark, raw honesty of late morning sunshine.  We scoff at all of you who fight for reservations to a hot restaurant on a Friday or Saturday night.  Fools!  You can get any table you please on a Thursday morning, as long as your desired restaurant serves breakfast items.

Surrounded by men in business suits having important breakfast meetings, catty middle-aged women gossiping about their non-present friends and elderly couples, Frank and I feel that the mood is ripe for romance.  And, oh, is it!  In between bites of hash browns smothered in onions and cheese and over-sized egg-beater omelettes stuffed with jalapeño peppers, we both come to terms with the fact that our food selections suggest that there will be a pious good-bye kiss at the front door.

But it is between being seated and paying the bill that the real magic happens. Dates are not just about having delicious food and wearing clothes sans spit up stains.  Dates are about the meaningful heart-to-heart conversations that, deep down, we all desire.

Me: So, yeah.  Not such a bad night with the girls, right?  I think this acid reflux thing is behind us.

Frank: Yeah, I think so too.  Thank goodness, I was tired of wearing a rain coat during feedings.

Me: So.  There’s that.  Hey, did you hear about the new animal that was born that is like half giraffe and half zebra? It’s called an okopi.

Frank: Really?  (Gets out his cell phone to verify that I am not pulling his chain.  We have a long history of telling each other things that aren’t true, just to see if the other one repeats it.)  Well, how about that.

Me:  Yeah, it even has the tongue of a giraffe, which is blue.  And super long.

Frank: A giraffe’s tongue is blue?

Me: Yep!  See?  (Now my cell phone is out and I’m showing him pictures of giraffe tongues.  He is impressed.)

If you really want to get hot and bothered, keep reading because our discussions about the logistics of taking care of twins are practically rated PG-13.

Me: OK, so you’re going to go running at 11 and then I’ll pick up the girls at the sitters and then I’ll go running and then you’ll watch the girls and then you’ll go up to the airport for work and then I’ll watch the girls.  But I need $30 (conveniently, I know that is all the cash that Frank has in his wallet at the moment).

Frank: That’s all the cash I have at the moment.

Me: I know.  (Sly smile)

Frank: OK.

(Ten minutes later Frank tries to hand me the $10)

Me: Um, you’re about $20 short.  Wait, why are you giving me the money?  Aren’t you picking up the girls?

Frank: No, you’re picking up the girls.

Me: I am?

Frank: YES!

Me: Oh, yes, you’re right.  You’re still $20 short.

Frank: Grrr.

And lastly, because every moment can become a fun game that annoys your partner to no end, I use these tactics (among many others) to keep our marriage fresh and exciting.  But, brace yourself, we’re getting into NC-17 territory

Scene: Getting ready for a mid-morning nap sans kiddos after our hot brunch date.

Me: … and so then in my dream last night the hotel wasn’t really a hotel after all, it was the house I grew up in and then there was…

Frank: uh huh…..

Me: (not missing a beat) a big picnic set up in the backyard but it wasn’t really a picnic because there wasn’t food there were PICTURES of food and my first grade teacher was there, or, at least I think it was my first grade teacher but she looked like my 7th grade English teacher with shorter hair.  You know, a pixie-type cut but a little shaggier in the back – kind of like a mullet, but not.  So yeah, my first grade teacher was there and she was like, “Um, Emily, you still didn’t turn in your homework.  You can’t graduate from college.” And then I was like, “What?” and then my mom was there and she was mad and my sister pulled my homework out of her MOUTH…

Frank: uh huh… are we almost done?  I really wanted to take a nap.

Me:  Oh, OK.  Fine.

Frank: Great.  Shhhh.  Sleepies.

Me: SHHHH.

Frank: Shhh.

Me: Sh.

Frank: Sh.

Me: (waiting a few seconds) sh.

Frank: (waiting a few more seconds) sh.

Me: (very, very quietly) sh.

Frank: (trying to be even quieter) sh.

Me: (even quieter than Frank) sh.

Frank: (laughing) OK!  C’mon!  Sleepies!

Me: (giggling) OK… (waiting a few seconds) Shhh.

Frank: ARGH!

Me: And then my DAD was in my dream yelling at my sister for eating my homework.  But it wasn’t my sister any more, it was Gwenyth Paltrow…

Frank: I can’t win.

So yeah, in a nutshell, that’s how you keep the love alive.

Smooches!

why I didn’t call Meghan back…

/ emmykay / 9 Comments

My dear friend Meghan called at about twenty minutes to five today.  Oh, the joys of receiving a phone call from an adult!  And, as luck would have it, I just finished changing and feeding the girls, so there was a happy calm over the entire house.  Ahh…. the calm before the storm.

At 4:50 p.m., Frank announced that dinner was ready and I told Meghan, “I’ll call you right back, we’re just going to have dinner.”  Yes, that’s right – it wasn’t even 5 p.m. yet and we were ready for dinner. To say that our biological clocks are a bit off would be an accurate assessment of the situation.

Carrigan was in the bouncy chair and I put Elliana in the swing.  About three seconds into eating, Elliana started squawking.  Frank picked her up to comfort her and discovered that she was all wet.

This was curious because she wasn’t wet when I put her down and she didn’t have any signs that she had spit up. Frank decided to check her diaper upstairs in the nursery.  Mistake number one.

While I was still seated at the kitchen table, I heard Frank discovering the horrors in our daughter’s diaper.

“Oh-oh-ohmygosh!  It’s a blow out!!”

“Do you need help?” I called up the stairs.

“No. But, ohmygoshohmygosh! Oh, ew… eww!!  Ellie! Oh, that is just – that is just EVERYWHERE!  You have got to be – ohmygosh – Ellie!  What did you do??”

“Are you sure you don’t need help?”

“Maybe.”  Silence. “Yeah, yeah, I need help.”

I thought I would feel differently about our first blow-out diaper.  You know how you imagine the romance of being proposed to, the joy of your wedding, the bliss of giving birth to your children, etc?  I thought that there would be mass hysteria on the streets below, a soundtrack of terror in the background and some sort of angry monster banging on our front door.  Instead, I could hear birds chirping outside the window, the sound of children laughing as they played soccer on the field behind our house and the roar of our neighbor’s engine as he peeled out of his driveway.  But in front of me was a nightmare of poop covering my child, her changing table, my husband and an escalating number of diapers.  Every time Frank attempted to put a new diaper on it, the stream of baby nastiness spewed forth.

“Ah, um, what can I do?”

“I don’t know – it’s everywhere!  It’s on her clothes!  It’s on my hands! EMILY! IT’S ON MY HANDS!”

And just then, as he was taking off her third diaper, Ellie stopped crying.  I cocked my head to the side.  Time slowed down.  When Ellie stops crying during a diaper change it usually means one thing…

“PEE!” I yelped.

And indeed, there was pee.

For. The. Win.

Frank and I looked at Ellie and she looked at us.  And she started crying again.

“Well,” said Frank slowly, “I think she’s going to need a bath.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah.”

Now, this is where I should’ve cut our losses and done what we knew worked.  I should’ve just given Ellie a sponge bath upstairs and thrown everything in the hamper.

But no, that is not what I did.

My mother-in-law suggested that we give the kids baths downstairs on the washing machine.  Initially I balked at the idea – I’d heard that washing the kids on a counter was dangerous because the tub could slip off the surface.  But after thinking about it, I figured that I could put towels over the washer and dryer and get a nice little bath system set up.

So, I lugged a bath tub, towels, soap, new clothes, a new diaper and a screaming, half-naked Ellie down to our finished basement.  I put Ellie in the pack’n’play and started getting the bath ready.

But her bath tub didn’t fit under the faucet of our slop sink very well.  I thought about using our floor-washing buckets to fill up the tub, but I felt that sent the wrong message to Ellie.  I went upstairs and grabbed our extra-large red tupperware salad bowl.

Frank, who was attempting to finish his dinner, saw me with the red salad bowl.

“What are you doing with that?” he asked mid-bite.

“I’m using it to give Ellie a bath.”

“What?”

“I’m using it to give Ellie a bath,” I repeated.

“Why?  Don’t you have her tub downstairs?”

“Yeah.”

“So what are you doing with the salad bowl?”

“I’m using it to give Ellie a bath.”

“In the salad bowl?”

“NO!  I can’t fit her tub under the faucet so I’m using the bowl to fill up the tub.”

“Oh. Okay.”

I went downstairs with the red salad bowl, filled up the bath tub, undressed Ellie and put her in the tub.

Ellie looked at me and I looked at her and then I heard the ominous sound of farting in a bath tub.

I looked down and saw that Miss Ellie had pooped in her bath water.

“CRAP.”

She cocked her head to the side as though to say, “Well, now what?”

“FRANK!  She pooped in the bath tub.”

Now, it’s worth saying that Frank does not like giving the girls tub baths.  He feels like he can give them a more thorough sponge bath than a tub bath.

He came downstairs and saw Ellie cold and screaming in her bath towel and me looking at the bath tub and announced he was going to give Ellie a spa sponge bath.

“Whatever.”

I cleaned up the bath tub (lots of antibacterial spray) and started the laundry.

When I made it upstairs, I found Frank and Ellie in the nursery.  Frank had turned on zen spa music and was carefully cleaning Ellie.

And Ellie was not crying.

“See?  Zen baby,” said Frank.

Frank taking care of our zen baby!

Zen baby, indeed.

Meanwhile, sweet Carrie was sitting quietly in her bouncy seat, staring out the window and plotting.  I’m sure she will not let herself be outdone by her sister.

Carrie staring out the window and plotting ways to out-do her sister.

Send help.

Even the stuffed animals in the nursery were appalled by the diaper disaster!

And that is why I didn’t call Meghan back.  Or answer Sue’s phone call.

Sorry ladies!

the one about “The Entity”

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Haunted house, much?

Oh, where to even begin?

I suppose that first of all I should preface this post with a warning that my family is just a few bananas short of a full bunch.

That being said, we think our house might be haunted.  Or maybe we’re crazy.  Or maybe it’s a little bit of both.

I submit the following items to you as evidence:

Evidence A: For a long time, I’ve said to Frank that I think we have electrical issues in our house.  I’ve changed the same light bulbs multiple times in a few short months – and then haven’t changed them since in over a year.  Our dishwasher started on fire.  Our built-in microwave stopped working the first two weeks we lived here (and is now the happy home for our tortilla chips and breakfast cereals – don’t judge – we make due with what we have!).  We have light switches that go no where.  Well, that last one is probably more of “user error” than anything else.  Whatever.  Is it electrical or is it… a haunting??

Evidence B: The night I came home from the hospital, but while the girls were still in NICU, Frank had a very strange dream.  In his dream, he heard the bells on our front door jangle, which means that someone opened the door.  Still dreaming, he thought it was me coming home, but then he became aware that I was still in bed with him.  Starting to get concerned, he heard footsteps climb our stairs, walk through our bedroom door and stop at the foot of our bed.  Frank says that in his dream, he felt like someone was menacingly standing over our bed, staring at us.   Before Frank could do anything in his dream, he heard the ice-maker in our freezer start producing ice.  In his dream, he went downstairs and there was ice pouring out of our freezer and filling the kitchen.

Evidence C: My mother-in-law and my mom have been staying with us to help with the girls when Frank is on trips.  One of the first times my mom stayed here, she had a vivid dream of someone standing over her bed, watching her.  I’m not sure whether the “someone” was evil or not – but it doesn’t matter.  It’s always creepy to have someone staring at you while you sleep!

Evidence D: We had a chandelier installed in our kitchen about a year ago.  Within a week, four of the six bulbs burned out.  Sure, this is more of an addendum to Evidence A, but the lights didn’t start burning out until I came home from the hospital.  Perhaps I brought an entity home with me from the hospital?  Never you mind that I was staying in a brand new wing of the hospital, but hey, you never know.

Do I think we have a ghost living in our house?  Eh, probably not.  I think we have some electrical issues and some family members with vivid imaginations.  But just for fun, we’ve named this creepy people-watcher “The Entity” thus ensuring that no one will ever want to babysit our children.

So, who wants to sleep over and find out if I’m right??

the shortcomings of the interwebz

/ emmykay / 1 Comment

The interwebz is a great tool for communicating sight and sound.

The girls at 2 weeks.

You can see our twins and observe how cute they are (I’m biased, I know).

You could hear the twins, too.  If I was cruel, I would record all of the twins grunting and crying so that you could enjoy their vocal stylings.

But I am not cruel.

But, oh, how sad I am that the interwebz is not a great tool for sharing smells.

Frank bathed the girls tonight and put on some yummy nighttime lotion on their tummies and legs.  He brought them down to me, all fresh and swaddled and smelling like delicious little babies.  And I thought, I wish I could post this glorious fragrance on Facebook.  People would check my status just to enjoy it.

Side note, I wish that the TV had smells, too.  I’ve been watching copious amounts of the Food Network (and by copious amounts, I mean, I haven’t changed the channel except to watch E!) and have often lamented that I cannot smell the dishes that are being created.  Even worse, I cannot taste them.  But I digress…

Alas, I cannot post smells on Facebook.

Although, it’s better this way.  While my girls smell fantastic right now, these young ladies can toot with the best of ’em.  Toots are not something that you would probably enjoy smelling as my Facebook status.

Maybe the interwebz is smarter than I thought…

the twins’ birthday: a day in pictures

/ emmykay / 25 Comments

About a week before the twins were born, Frank snapped my last pregnancy pictures in my super fancy, extra-large hospital gown.  What can I say?  I’m a trend setter!  For anyone wondering why most of my smiles look so pained, all you need to know is that I had a scary cervix.  A very, very scary cervix.

 

 

Then there was the morning of the twins’ birth.  The first picture is of my mom and me and the second is of my mother-in-law and me.

Grandma Mary Kay and me

Grandma Sandy and me

Then, after wondering if Frank was going to make it to the birth – he arrived!!  Hurrah! (note to self: pictures of me lying down are not the most flattering…)

Baby Daddy and me

After sitting around for about 90 minutes, the doctor determined that it was go-time!

Ready to have some bebez!

After pushing for about 20-30 minutes, sweet baby Elliana was born:

Baby Ellie

And then just three or four short minutes later, sweet little Carrigan made her way into the world:

Dad and Carrigan

In just under an hour, our little family of two became a family of four!  Mom holding Elliana and Dad holding Carrigan:

Our first family photo!

 

Yo’ Mama’s Got a Scary Cervix

/ emmykay / 7 Comments

… and other tales of child-birthing.

At some point last week, all of the maternal fetal medicine doctors (MFM), OBs at my practice and neonatal intensive care doctors were monitoring my condition from the sidelines.  One MFM doc told a NICU nurse that I was the patient with “the scary cervix”.

Sure, I knew that things didn’t look all rosy from a cervical standpoint, but in my fight to stay positive about the situation, I didn’t really think that my hooha was “scary”.  Well, not scarier than usual.

Anywho.

On Friday I had some visitors and I started to feel badly by the end of their visit.  My blood pressure was rising, which is not typical for me, and I was just feeling “off”.  I tried to get some sleep before the 1 a.m. nurse shift change when they conveniently wake up all of the sleeping patients and get their vitals.

After the 1 a.m. check-in, I stayed up to wait for Frank to land in Denver.  Oh, did I not mention that Frank was flying?  We decided that since it seemed like I could stay in my current condition for a long time, it didn’t make sense for Frank to take time off just to watch me sit (not patiently) in a hospital bed.  So Frank was flying into Denver and landing at about 2 a.m. CST.

During our conversation I mentioned to him that I just didn’t think I would make it until Monday to give birth.  I just had a feeling.

I tried to sleep after talking to Frank, but I felt like I had to go to the bathroom a lot.  I kept getting up to go, and then didn’t feel like going.  Finally I realized that  I might be having contractions again (what can I say?  My contractions just didn’t feel like contractions).  I called my nurse, she started monitoring me on the fetal heart rate monitor and saw that I was having contractions every 3 minutes.  She stepped out of the room to call my doctor and the hospital OB.  The hospital OB made it upstairs and assessed the situation.  I was at 5 cm and the amniotic sac was definitely bulging.

I was going to Labor and Delivery.

But no one would say for sure that I was going to have the babies for sure.  So after asking multiple times if I should call my husband in Denver and not getting an answer, I finally just called him.  Within minutes, he was up and getting dressed and racing for a flight.

The doctor did a quick ultrasound and determined that the babies were both head-down (how did the second twin flip around again in such tight quarters???).  I asked for an epidural both because I had to have one since we were delivering twins and because I knew it would slow down labor and give Frank a chance to make it to the hospital.

My mom and Frank’s mom arrived and sat with me while the epidural set in.  Note: epidural pain meds are not fun.  I was pretty pain free for the next hour or two while we waited for Frank.  He landed in Milwaukee at 9:30 a.m. and ran from the airport to the car.  Once he was in the car, we talked about delivering vaginally or via c-section.  He told me he thought that I would regret not trying it vaginally and I knew he was right.  I let the doctor know that we were going to do a vaginal delivery.

At 11 a.m., Frank arrived at the hospital.

Once Frank was there, they decided to administer pitocin to kick start the labor since the epidural had slowed down contractions.  After getting the pitocin started, I started to feel all of the contractions in my cervix.

Before that moment, I couldn’t tell you where my cervix really was.  I could vaguely say, “my cervix is down there.”  But once the pitocin started in, I realized exactly where my cervix was and what it was doing.  I complained to the nurse, as I breathed through the contractions, that this epidural business was a farce.  She said, “Are you feeling pressure?” and I said, “NO.  I am feeling pain.”

In the hospital, they often call painful things they can’t do anything about “pressure” because then you are not in pain.  If you were in pain, then they’d have to find something to do about it.  But pressure, well, that’s just too bad.

The anesthesiologist came back in, increased the pain medication and looked at me like I was crazy.  After he left, I told the nurse that I was still feeling a lot of pain.  Not pressure.  Pain.  In my cervix.

The nurse looked at me with the same confused look – how could I be in pain while on so much epidural medication.  She called the doctor in and after a quick check, he announced that I was complete.

What in the world does complete mean?  It means you are ready to push.

They gave Frank scrubs and started prepping me to go to the Operating Room because twins are never typically delivered without easy access to surgical equipment.

They wheeled me into the operating room and then told me I needed to scoot myself over to the operating table.  Excuse me?? I thought I hadn’t heard them right.  But I did.  So, me and my numb legs and giant pregnant belly scooted across the labor bed onto the operating table.

After everything was in position, I pushed for about 20 minutes and delivered Elliana and then 3 minutes later I delivered Carrigan.  Both babies were born screaming and generally ticked off.

Elliana was 5 lbs 10 oz, 19 inches long with tons of fuzz on her head.

Carrigan was 5 lbs 6 oz, 18 1/2 inches long with a little bit of black hair.

And they are doing awesomely well for being born at 32 weeks 5 days gestation.  No oxygen, no warmers and they are eating like crazy.

We are madly in love with them.

 

wait, what?

/ emmykay / 6 Comments

Some of you may know that I am currently hanging out at the hospital, trying to keep my legs crossed and keep the babies from spraying out alien-style.  For those of you who do not know that – I am in the hospital on bed rest and trying NOT to give birth.

And here is how this came to be.

I’ve been warned against trying to find all of the things that I could’ve, would’ve or should’ve done to avoid finding myself in this current situation.  It’s hard, as the primary care giver for your little ones, to not go down that path.  So hopefully, without too much self-blame, I can relate the story of how I came to be sitting in the mother-baby unit, still attached to both of my babies.

Since last Sunday, I’d been getting up way more frequently in the middle of the night, noticing that my stomach was very hard.  A few times, I was even up every 30 to 45 minutes, which was kind of concerning.  I realized by Tuesday night that the reason I was waking up so much was not necessarily to use the facilities as much as it was because I was experiencing abdominal discomfort.

Wednesday at work was fine – I put my feet up at my desk and cranked on some projects.  By Wednesday night when I arrived home, I was noticing that same tightness in my abdomen.  I told Frank to feel my stomach and he noticed it was really tight too.  So we sat on the couch for an hour and counted about 4 or 5 “contractions”.  They didn’t hurt, so I figured it was normal – after all, my uterus was measuring full term for a singleton baby.

Wednesday night was horrible.  I was up very frequently and had a hard time sleeping.  I eventually gave up and took a shower at 4:30 ish in the morning, with the intent of going into work early.  The shower seemed to calm things down, though, and I took a little bit of a nap.  Considering the tightness and how much I was up, I decided it was probably appropriate to see the doctor just to be sure that everything was OK.

I called the doctor, expecting an afternoon appointment, but instead, they wanted to see me as soon as I could get in.  Completely believing that it was just the usual case of neurosis for me, I decided to wait until 10 a.m. to go in so that I could get a few things taken care of at work.

The visit to the doctor’s office was pretty uneventful.  They hooked me up to the monitors and naturally, I didn’t have any contractions while I was sitting there (not surprising – mornings have been pretty quiet for me) and the babies seemed to be having a grand old time bouncing around.  The doctor did a fetal fibronectin test which predicts with 99% accuracy whether or not a patient will go into pre-term labor within the next two weeks.  She also checked my cervix and noted that while it was still long, I was dilated to 1 cm.  Hrm, I thought.  That’s kind of surprising.

Back to work I went.  I decided earlier that week to do all of my maternity leave debriefs a bit early, just because I am having twins.  Who knew that Thursday afternoon would be my last day in the office??

While I was sitting in my office, I noticed a few more “hard stomach” moments, but nothing crazy.  I went home to Frank and had some dinner.  Then he went out to visit with a friend and I settled down on the couch to write thank-you notes and watch TV.

Within a few minutes of writing the notes, I noticed that my stomach was getting hard at regular intervals.  I logged on to contraction master and decided to just keep track of how many times I was contracting and for how long.  After two hours of writing thank-you notes and watching HGTV, I had a very consistent pattern of contractions/tightness every 4-5 minutes, with a few instances of less than 3 minutes.  The tightness was lasting 30-45 seconds, sometimes longer.  My doctor had told me if it went on for longer than an hour, to call… at two hours of contracting, I figured I finally had to face the music.

See, I hate calling my doctor.  Loathe it.  It seems like every time something like this happens, it’s after hours.  Blah.  I told the nurse about the situation and she said she would talk to the doctor and get back to me.

Thinking it would be a while, I called Frank to tell him the scoop and advise him that he should probably start coming home.  By the time I hung up with him, the nurse already called back and told me to head to Labor and Delivery immediately.

And of course, the only thing I hate more than calling my doctor is actually going to the hospital, especially when I’m not 100% sure that this “tightness” I was feeling was really “contractions” or just “typical twin pregnancy stuff.”  Ugh.  I mean, my uterus was measuring full term for just one baby – perhaps this was just all part of the joy of twins!

We didn’t pack anything because, really, I didn’t think I had to pack for an overnight stay.  I figured I’d go in, they’d tell me I was nuts, and we’d be home in time for the 10 p.m. news.

On the way to the hospital, I had a few more “tightness” situations.  We got to the hospital and of course, just like when you take your car to the mechanic, everything started feeling better.  By the time they sat me down in the bed in Labor in Delivery (in the ridiculous gown that opens in the back) and hooked me up to the fetal monitors, I was 100% sure that they were going to tell me not to come back until the babies were crowning.

I actually said that to Frank: “They aren’t going to let me come back until the babies are crowning.”

Funny story.

While I was sitting in the bed, feeling ridiculous, I was having contractions 3 minutes apart.  The OB on staff came in and did a cervical exam and announced that I was 3 cm dilated with a bulging sac.

I looked over at Frank and just said, “Well, that’s not very good.”  And Frank knew that wasn’t very good because we already took the class and because he’s a good husband, he remembered what effacement was and what dilation meant and well, a bulging sac just never sounds good.  So he looked back at me with wide eyes and nodded and we just sort of sat there, taking it in.

And then that’s when the craziness started.  IVs were brought in, I was unceremoniously turned over and given a steroid shot in my tush.  Then they started the magnesium and the contractions got worse.  They were, at some points less than 2 minutes apart.  The doctors wanted me to try to sleep and let the magnesium drip take affect, so they gave me an ambien, but the pain was pretty bad still and I definitely couldn’t sleep through it, so they gave me some pain medication.

I don’t remember sleeping a lot, but I think I got a few hours in.  At 7 a.m., the contractions were still 5 minutes apart.  We were getting nervous and still had four more hours until the next steroid shot could be administered to help mature the babies’ lungs.

Around 8 a.m., the contractions finally started to space out and we were able to breathe a sigh of relief for the moment.  They kept the magnesium going and finally, everything seemed to be moving in the right direction.

So let me tell you about magnesium sulfate.  It works because it relaxes your uterus – and everything else, too.  Also fondly referred to as “mag”, this delightful concoction makes it harder to breathe, blocks up your sinuses and generally makes you feel like a wet noodle.  Oh, and when mixed with Ambien, it causes hallucinations.

At 10 a.m., the perinatologist and OB came in to assess the damage.  They wanted to keep me on the mag drip until I had my second round of steroids to mature the babies’ lungs.  Then things kind of get foggy and blurry.  At some point, I tried to go to sleep for the night, but was having a hard time sleeping because I was so hot (another mag side effect) and I couldn’t breathe.  So they brought me a cool wash cloth and an Ambien.  Hello, hallucinations. I woke up several times that night trying to get out of my bed, unsure if I was pregnant and wondering if the monitors I was wearing were guns or … monitors?  I doused myself with a washcloth full of water, threw pillows on the floor and asked the nurse if I broke my water.  I also asked the nurse if I was having triplets.

The nurse thought I was hilarious.

On Saturday morning, the perinatologist and OB had a pow-wow and determined the side effects of the mag were far worse than going into pre-term labor and so they stopped the drip.  And then we started waiting again.  Over the course of the next few hours, the nurses slowly disconnected me from the catheter, IV drips, etc.  By Sunday, I was completely wireless and essentially contraction-free!

Since then, it’s just been a waiting game.  The doctors feel that we’ve cleared a major hurdle and probably have at least another week before the babies make their grand entrance.  This will let the babies’ mature further and spend less time in the neo-natal intensive care unit (NICU).

We’ve been so blessed with so many of our friends and family praying for us and thinking about us – it’s been such a boost!  While this whole situation isn’t ideal and has both of us a little bit ragged, we are both keeping positive attitudes.  Our doctors and nurses have been great and everyone has been very impressed with the babies’ activity levels and heart rates.  And if these babies miraculously stay in until 34 weeks, I’ll get to go home because the doctors will no longer try to stop labor if it starts again.

three things: my fabulous hubz (winter edition)

/ emmykay / 1 Comment

I’m sure some of you out there are saying, “Barf.  It’s going to be one of those blogs where you’re all like ‘I love Frank’ wah wah wah. I want dish on how freakishly huge your belly is and when those kids are going to burst forth out of your belly all Alien-like.”  The babies update will come in due time.

And a few of you are probably asking, “What’s a hubz?  Where do I get one?  Nordstrom’s?”

While many a fine item can be purchased at a Nordstrom’s (ie. super big girl sized shoes that are also somehow still a little stylish), a hubz cannot be purchased at a Nordstrom’s.  A hubz (aka, a husband) can usually be found sitting in front of a TV playing a video game or watching a football game.

But not this hubz.

1. thing one: the hubz that cooks

For realz.  My sweet hubz is downstairs making chicken in a red wine reduction, steamed spinach and cooked carrots. And he is a manly cook.  He uses lots of spice, lots of fire, and real ingredients (none of my mamby-pamby splenda  and low-fat sour cream cr@p).  Gentlemen, if you are still looking for a good woman, ask Frank to teach you a few of his cooking tricks and you’ll be hitched in no time.

2. thing two: the hubz that shovels

I’m sure a lot of you have hubzes that shovel.  But until you’ve had to shovel 6″+ of snow in Wisconsin by yourself after working a full day – with the tears that are streaming down your face freezing on the end of your nose – you simply cannot appreciate the amazingness that is having your hubz home from work when the slushiest, iciest, heaviest wintry mix coats your driveway, front walk and steps.  And then when your hubz goes outside for 40 minutes and valiantly tackles this wintry mix (both with shovel and snow plow) without saying a peep about it – that is hotness right there!

3. thing three: tumz

After casually mentioning to the hubz that pretty much every night I want to vomit when I lay down thanks to this thing called acid reflux (thanks baby a and baby b for parking your cute selves on my stomach!), it was a joy to come home to a container of TUMS! While Frank is thoughtful, this particular maneuver might also stem from self-preservation: after hearing all of the middle-of-the-night projectile vomiting stories from my parents (and there are many), I’m sure it’s occurred to Frank that he could be my next victim.  The Hubz is wise and knows his wife well.