twins

fuzzy logic…

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Anyone who tells you that they operate just fine on less than five hours of non-consecutive sleep for days at a time is a liar.

But there is a remedy for the no-sleep baby blues: Diet Coke.

For anyone who knows me at all, you know that have had a love/hate relationship with Diet Coke.

I hate all of the nasty stuff in it.  I am positively certain that Diet Coke is probably one of the worst things I can put in my body.

But!

I LOVE how much work I get done while drinking Diet Coke.  I love how zippy I feel.

I’m not addicted, though.  I can quit whenever I want to.

Sure, you might snort at me and say, “Sure, Em, I believe ya.”

But really, I can stop whenever I want.  I don’t get headaches when I am off The Sauce (my pet name for Diet Coke).

And I’ve stopped before.

Cold turkey.

But for now, I am worshiping at the alter of The Sauce.

For as cute as the twins are, these sisters are not fond of long stretches of sleep in any consistent pattern. So if I’m going to be useful during a work day, I need Diet Coke.  Preferably in a 32 ounce container.  And, if I’m being picky, I like a wider straw – it gets the Diet Coke in faster.

I’d do an IV drip, but the IV accessories don’t really go with my outfits.

I have my priorities.

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 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…

twinpocalypse

/ emmykay / 1 Comment

If you drive by our home right now, you’ll see a white flag waving in the front yard.

We’ve succumbed to the twinpocalypse.

It was only a matter of time.

To be sure, I’ve managed to shower nearly every day.  I’ve put on make-up every day.  Maybe not a lot of make-up, but just enough to feel human.

We’ve ventured out into the world for things like a new cell phone, groceries and doctor’s visits.

We were actually in a wedding this weekend, which was only possible thanks to my mom, my sister (Caitlin), my sister-in-law (K1), and my aunt and uncle.  To thank all of those wonderful sitters, each of the girls puked mightily.  Because the K family’s motto is “Go big or go home,” the girls decided that simply spitting up was too… quaint? … for their liking.  Instead, they sprayed vomit in excess of 18 inches from their little selves, coating the couch, the carpet, various family members and, of course, themselves.  As a fellow projectile vomiter, I was proud of my girls.  Well done, sweethearts… well done.

In spite of our efforts to make our beds, keep the house somewhat orderly and keep ourselves fresh(ish), there are signs around the house that it is a losing battle.  Crusty stains on the couch (no matter how much we blot and spray and clean) and a never ending pile of burp rags by the basement steps headed to the washing machine tell the tale of two parents fighting the good fight.

If you were to drive by our house in the middle of the night, not only would you see a crisp white flag of surrender fluttering neatly in the breeze, but you’d also see various lights on throughout our house.  If the light is only on in the girls’ room, it is a calm night.  If the lights are on in the girls’ room, our room, the family room and the kitchen, well – game over.

I find myself feeding the girls in the middle of the night thinking of how easy it would be to have only one baby.  Feedings would take half the time.  While feeding the second baby, I think jealously: I could be in bed right now.

I also find myself thinking of my coworker’s daughter who had triplets and thanking my lucky stars that I have an equal number of hands to the number of children in our house.

Thankfully, we are mostly sleeping at night and awake during the day, which is very helpful in feeling like a normal human being.  We are still keeping up on some of our favorite TV shows (um, hello – FRINGE??  So good!) – even if there are quite a few interruptions to make bottles and change out the laundry.

And even though I am sure that it is only gas, the girls are smiling and cooing and “singing” in their sleep, which makes this all seem worth it in the end.

three things: birthing humans

/ emmykay / 3 Comments

In the middle of the night, when I am trying to feed two babies bottles and pump and watch Food Network before it goes to horrible paid programming at 3 a.m., I often think back on my time in pre-term labor (PTL) and delivering my little girls.  I thought it would be good to expose the truth about child birth (without grossing everyone out).  Here goes:

#1: lying liars!  the epidural DOES hurt!

I was most concerned about getting an epidural.  I know several people with botched epidurals and the dreaded spinal headache.  I hate headaches.  Of all the stuff that happened to me in the hospital over the course of the 12 days I was there, the headache and neck pain I had from lying in the horrible hospital bed was what made me cry.  Yeah, that’s right, pushing babies out was less upsetting to me than the headache from the hospital bed.  That says a lot about the hospital beds, right?

Anyway, I digress.  The anesthesiologist was annoyed that I was concerned about his skillz putting huge needles/catheters into people’s backs.  I think he would’ve given himself an epidural to show me that it was “no big deal, yo” – except that since it is hard enough to scratch your own back, much less stick arm-length long needles in your back.  (Note: I do not know the exact length of the needle… but I’m pretty sure it was arm-length).  Let me tell y’all, I felt everything.  I felt the numbing shot.  I felt the catheter going in.  I even told the nurse, “OH my gosh!! PAIN! Shooting down my legs/back!”

But once it was in, I had about an hour or two where I was pretty comfortable and didn’t feel anything. Until I felt EVERYTHING.  After about 2 hours on the epidural, I started saying, “I think that’s a contraction.” and Frank would look at the screen and say, “Oh, yeah, that was a contraction.”  And then I started breathing to get through the contractions.  I told the nurse that I was feeling the contractions.  That I knew where my cervix was.  OH-Heavens to Betsy-I knew exactly where my cervix was and what it was doing and it WAS NOT PRETTY! I emphatically told the nurse: THE EPIDURAL WAS A LIE!!!

Which is when the anesthesiologist returned, annoyed, to up the meds.  He left and I looked at the nurse and told her that THE EPIDURAL IS NOT WORKING!!!  She looked confused and concerned – how could this magic medication not work?? Now, as someone who would have foregone the epidural with a single baby delivery, I wasn’t as upset about the pain as I was concerned that if something went wrong in the delivery, they were planning to use the same catheter line to deliver the pain medication for the c-section. And if I felt a contraction, I was pretty sure I would feel the knife cutting for the c-section!!

Turns out, the epidural stopped working because Ellie’s head was in my cervix, blocking the medication from getting to me.  Her head was in my cervix because it was time to push!  And no, I did not need a c-section.  Phew!

#2: lying liars!  that is not pressure – that is PAIN!!

Thing one really bleeds into thing two: the problem of pain in a hospital full of pain medication.  I found that in the hospital they try to treat all of your pain – no matter what it is – to make you as comfortable as possible.  This is done mostly so that while in the throes of transition (the really painful part of labor), that you do not scream like a demon and scare the poor girl in PTL down the hall.  When pain cannot be addressed with narcotic pain medication, an epidural or some other such pain relief medication, you are actually experiencing pressure.  For example, when I was feeling pain in my cervix, I was actually experiencing intense pressure.  When I felt the epidural catheter being inserted into my spine?  You guessed it – that was just pressure.

#3: wait, how many gauze pads did we use?

Once our sweet baby girls were born, swaddled and whisked off to the NICU for evaluation and admittance, I was left on the operating table to get put back together.  I will not bore (or scare) you with the details, except to say that I remember listening to the doctor counting off ten clean, sterile gauze pads.  He used them to… um, do stuff… and then he counted eight used gauze pads.

He counted the gauze pads again…. and again… And then a nurse frantically started ripping through all of the linens in the soiled linens container.  And another nurse started shuffling through the items on the tray.  And the doctor started looking through a pile of sheets at the end of the operating table.

“Everything OK?” I asked.

“MMmhmmm,” said the doctor absently, counting  the gauze pads again.

“Missing a few pads?” I asked.

“MMmhmmm,” replied the doctor.

“Cool.”

Not to worry, they found the missing two gauze pads.

I’m just glad they counted.

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!

 

13 weeks

/ emmykay / 1 Comment

Today I am 13 weeks pregnant.  I thought it might be fun to start documenting what’s going on each week.  I’ll try to use the same format each week.  I will also try to include pictures – I actually have a little bump going already!

What’s new with the babies: The babies are 3 inches head to tush.  If we’re having a girl or girls, she already has 2 million eggs in her ovaries.  The babies now have finger prints.

How I feel: Great, but tired.  I still have some weird aversions to herbs and spicy foods, which is killing Frank.  I haven’t gained any weight, but I definitely have a bump starting.  It’s especially noticeable when I lie down.  Frank likes to talk to the babies, usually just saying, “Helllllloooo???”

Other thoughts: It’s still very surreal to me that I’m pregnant.  I go through waves of acceptance and disbelief.  Most of the time I am able to say, “OK, I am pregnant, this is really going to happen for us!”  But then there are times where it’s just more than my little brain can fathom.

Our experiences with fertility treatments has made me abundantly aware of the fact that life is fragile.  I know far too many women who have lost babies at various stages of their pregnancy, even well into the “safe” period.  I don’t take for granted the fact that we are 13 weeks along. I treasure that we have seen our babies on five separate occasions and they were always developmentally where they should be (or measuring big… which is another post for another day).  I love that Baby A was super active, propelling himself (or herself) across the sac, flipping over and sucking his thumb.  I love that Baby B was chill – stretching out, waving his arms over his head and relaxing.  I hope these sweet babies keep growing and thriving – we are looking forward to meeting them in person in less than 6 months!

Changes 2 & 3…

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Are also known affectionately as Baby A and Baby B!

Yes, that’s right, the K-Fam will be doubling in March with the introduction of twins to the mix!  We are obviously very excited and very nervous.  We are 12 weeks along today, which seems miraculous to both of us.

While we are elated at where we are at, we are also very mindful of the long, hard road we traveled.  I am acutely aware that while it seemed like an eternity (18 months+), it was a far shorter experience than what many people I know have endured.  Life is a fragile, delicate thing.  The creation and continuation of it is in the hands of a creator far greater than ourselves.  Why some people struggle and why others don’t, is something that I cannot begin to fathom or explain.

Why it was now, why it was us, why we’re having twins – I really don’t know.  I am glad, of course, but still aching for all of the couples that are longing to bring home their baby from the hospital.

Over the course of my twenties, I’ve heard nearly every miraculous pregnancy story and practically every tragic fertility experience.  I have had friends and families lose babies late in pregnancies and I’ve had friends and family that seem to have no problem getting and staying pregnant.

Fertility was a major struggle for us.  We’ve experienced other struggles in our 7 year marriage, but this was the biggest.  Infertility caused us to pause and wonder about the legacy that we are leaving behind – biologically and otherwise.  It made me think about the people that have come before us – the giants whose shoulders we stand on, as my father in law would say – and wonder at the future generations that might not ever exist to look back at us.

I think about that a lot because we truly live in a culture that is so self-focused.  I am intrigued by the generations before us who thought of us, knowing they would never meet us, but were so driven by the determination to make the world better for a future time that they would never experience.  I wanted to influence future generations – provide another building block to the foundation.

I struggled a lot with the ideas of God having a plan and “everything happening for a reason.”  In the midst of such heartache and sadness, it seemed unfathomable that such trite-sounding concepts could be true. I did not doubt God’s ability or greatness, but I wondered a lot at why this was such a hard road and why He seemed to be so silent so often.  And maybe I just have to be content with the idea that this is the road He gave us and this is the road we had to go down to become the people we are supposed to be.

I look at these two little miracles and am amazed that they even exist.  I am hopeful that this is just the beginning of a new great chapter in our lives.  A difficult chapter I am sure.  A chapter that does not involve a lot of sleep.  A chapter that does involve a lot of crying… from all of us…  Many people have reminded us that it will be hard, but many more have reminded us that it will also be worth it.

So yes, big changes in store for the K-Fam!