It was Groundhog Day and the morning started off quite warm but foggy. We had to be at the hospital very early for the c-section, which was scheduled for 8:30 (I think, the times and details of that day are a little foggy, kinda like the weather). I never did find out what the groundhog saw that day but I have a vague memory of watching Groundhog Day with Bill Murray while I was still on my high after having babies. I spent a couple hours in a tiny room getting prepped for surgery then I said goodbye to my mom and they wheeled me off. They parked my bed in the hall outside the operating room and I walked inside with great joy, knowing that was the last time I would ever have to walk with the enormous weight of that belly! My husband stayed outside while they got everything ready. I really wish they would have let him in for that part because I was TERRIFIED of getting the spinal block. I had a very bad experience from the spinal block with my first baby, which was actually one of the big motivators I had for having a home birth with my second baby. I really didn't want to have another c-section and get a spinal! I had an amazing nurse, named Jane, who let me lean on her while I did lamaze-type breathing to calm myself down. They knew about my history and the STUDENT anesthesiologist placed the spinal block with no complications at all. I felt the warmness starting to creep up my body and I was so relieved! Once they had me draped and they let my husband in, things seemed to happen pretty quickly. I felt a lot of movement and tugging and my doctor said, "Here comes Baby A!" He held her up for us to see and I felt the tears instantly starting to burn my eyes. Not even 30 seconds later they were holding Baby B up for us to see. I had worked SO HARD to bring those babies into the world and I felt an incredible mix of emotions listening to them cry. One thing that sticks out in my mind is how they didn't have those little newborn cries that you hear when you imagine your baby's first cry, but they SCREAMED like their big sister! "waAAAAAAH! waAAAAAAH!" They definitely didn't have any trouble breathing! They first brought Baby A over and said that she weighed 6lbs 4oz, which is an incredible weight for a twin. My husband held her and I was able to sort of wrap my arm around her. Then a nurse came with Baby B and said that she weighed 5lbs 12oz. She held her next to her sister and I saw them together for the first time- my little pumpkins!
After that it was time for my husband and the babies to go to the nursery and I stayed put while they sewed me up. My awesome doctor tried to keep me entertained by talking about the Super Bowl, which was the night before. I wasn't in the mood to talk about it though because my beloved Seahawks had lost, and they did it very poorly. Actually I am only an avid fan when they are doing really well and go to the Super Bowl but still, it was very disappointing! Then the doctor and his med student started talking about the half time show and I decided that was a good time for a little nap because I had no interest in the half time show. We watched I Love Lucy (Ricky's Home Movies) instead! Anyway, when it was time to go to recovery, I was pleasantly surprised to hear that I would be able to hold my babies and try to nurse them for the first time. The second most dreadful part of my first child's birth (the first being the spinal block) was having to go to recovery without knowing a single thing about my baby! I had to stay there for almost 2 hours without my husband and without my baby. They said to rest and take a nap but how can you when you know nothing about how your baby is doing?! Okay, back to the twins. So they brought B in first and I held her skin to skin and gave her a little nibble. Then A came in and we did the same. At some point my mom tried to come in, twice, and the nurse shooed her away, saying it was Mommy, Daddy, Baby time. I was so happy to have that time with our new little bundles.
The rest of the day really is a blur. In fact, the rest of the hospital stay is kind of a blur! I know that I was in a lot of pain, more than I was after my first c-section, and the pain meds just weren't cutting it even though we were staying on schedule. My doc made hearts come out of my head when he increased the doses without question even though the nurses had said that he probably wouldn't. The babies didn't nurse at all the first day and spent the night in the nursery and had to have a bottle due to low blood sugar. I was very disappointed and confused because I felt like a pro breastfeeder since I had already nursed both of my other children until they were a year old. We stayed in close contact with the nurses and a lactation consultant and I started pumping and we finger fed the babies while in the hospital. They never caught on to nursing. I kept telling myself that they would be just fine if they had to be formula babies. Many a great men and women were fed formula and turned out fantastic! But my heart hurt because I was supposed to be their source of nutrition. It was my job as their mother to feed them my liquid gold and no matter how many times I told myself and told other people that I was okay with it, I really wasn't! I have come to accept the fact that they may have to be on bottles but I am still working on it. More on that later...
Do you remember that I had to deliver the babies a little bit early because of my very mild pre-eclampsia? Well, in most cases the way to cure pre-eclampsia is to deliver the baby. But in my case, it got worse after! There were no signs of it in the hospital but over the first week my swelling increased and I felt lightheaded and had a very terrible headache, despite still being on my pain meds. One leg was significantly more swollen than the other so I had to go back to the hospital to get an ultrasound to check for a blood clot. That was negative but when we went to see my doctor after that, my blood pressure was higher than it's ever been. I don't think it was an incredibly dangerous blood pressure, but it was obvious that things weren't right. SOOOO, he put me on some blood pressure medicine, which I am still taking almost 2 months later. He still wasn't happy with my numbers at my post-partum check up last week so it looks like I'll be on it for a little while longer until I follow up with my family doctor in a couple months. He didn't really say why this is happening, I don't even know if he knows, but I am just going to blame it, like everything, on hormones and having twins!
The first week home was very overwhelming for me! I was terrified to be left alone with both babies. I didn't know how to feed them both and the thought of taking care of all four of my children at the same time was utterly terrifying! I made my husband take an extra couple of days off because I wasn't ready for him to go back to work but then something inside me snapped, and I suddenly decided that I could take care of the twins on my own. It was another week or so before I spent any significant amount of time alone with all four but because of our loving family and amazing friends, I was able to slowly work my way into being the mother of four. A few hours alone one week, then two days the next week, then three, then the time finally came when I had all four at home with me all week!! Now it feels completely normal and I hardly remember a time when I didn't have all of my little gifts from God at home with me.
When the babies were 2 weeks old they caught a cold. It wasn't too bad, but they were congested. At first it didn't affect their eating or sleeping but after about a week, Baby B was having a hard time getting all of her bottles in. When she projectile vomited all of the food she had taken in that day and I noticed that she had a very slight fever, I called our doctor, who told me to take her to the ER. I thought that they would just say she has a cold, suction her nose as often as you can, and send us home. However, the cold had caused her to get a little dehydrated and she had low muscle tone so they admitted her to the hospital. We stayed for about 30 hours, plus the 7 or 8 hours we had spent in the ER overnight. It was a very scary and exhausting time for us but we knew that things could be a lot worse. All she needed were some IV fluids and a little TLC and she was fine. They let us keep her sister in the room with us, which was a complete blessing. Again, I am so thankful for our wonderful family, who took care of everything at home for us, and for awesome, godly friends who prayed for us! They both had to be brought to the ER a week later because they were very congested and their chests were sucking in when they breathed, but that time they suctioned their little noses and told us to keep an eye on them but said they were fine and we brought them home. They are both over that dreadful cold and are doing very well!!
Big brother and sister are doing so well! There is nothing like having baby twin sisters to make a five year old grow up! He has taken on many responsibilities and I am so proud of him! He has been unloading the dishwasher, picking up his toys (and his sister's toys), running errands around the house for us, and taking care of his sister while I am tied to babies or a pump. He gets her food, water, plays with her, and comforts her when she is sad. He also helps her in and out of the van and unbuckles her from her carseat, which is a huge help because she is still rear-facing in the back seat. He has a new love of superheroes (which he really knows nothing about but enjoys making up facts) but I think that he has become something of a superhero himself in the last couple of months. Baby girl has really surprised us! Before the babies were born she was showing a lot of jealousy towards her brother spending time with mommy and daddy so she had us a little worried about what life would be like with two new babies but she has done amazingly well! She hasn't shown much jealousy towards them at all. In fact, she loves them so much! She showers them with affection, sometimes deadly affection! There have been a couple of instances when I had to pull her off of one of the babies because she fell on top of them trying to give hugs. She likes to lay her head on their heads and she LOVES to help us burp them. She enjoys being a big helper and often brings us diapers. They are usually her own diapers and she rarely brings fewer than four at a time, but she thinks she is helping and that's what counts. :-) We are starting to see a lot of little attitude issues arising and know that it is only the beginning. She is going to keep us on our toes for sure! At 19 months she now has a very vast vocabulary, consisting of words like, babies, mommy, dada, brother (bubba), no, yep, bye bye, cup (bup), right now, up, down, more, night night, I don't want to, I don't like that, water, more please, cheese (for pictures, not the food), and many more that I can't think of right now. She also says a lot of stuff that nobody can understand!
Okay, now back to feedings...
This has been the biggest struggle for us. We have been bottle feeding the girls since they were a week old when we realized that finger feeding was only meant as a very short-lived temporary solution and they were not catching on to nursing. We have tried a few different kinds of bottles, attempting to find a better fit for transitioning to nursing, all of which haven't helped. They tend to lift their tongues to the roof of their mouths, which makes nursing very difficult. Things got even more complicated when the girls were congested and at times we have gone through bad dry spells where we didn't even attempt to nurse for days due to scheduling conflicts and supply issues. However, I spent this last weekend doing a "nurse-in" of sorts. The kids went to their grandma and granddaddy's house and my husband and I hung out in our pjs all day with the babies constantly attached to me. When they weren't nursing, they were skin to skin with me so that they could learn to desire to be close to me. My amazing husband took care of diapers and kept me fed and hydrated the whole weekend. We made huge improvements! We are still a long way from exclusively breastfeeding and not needing to pump at all, but my supply almost doubled so they are at least only drinking breast milk and nursing MOST of the time. I know that the day might come when they will just figure it out and all of this pumping/bottle feeding/nursing routine will be a distant memory, but I also know that they may never catch on and I'm okay with that! I know that if they don't end up nursing I gave it my best shot and I didn't give up just because it was hard. I still have a few emotional issues to work out about this, but I know that we'll all by okay. Please pray for us as we continue on this exhausting nursing adventure!
So now that things are calming down a bit and life is beginning to get back to normal, well a new normal anyway, I am hoping to post on here more frequently. I still have a post waiting to be published about making home made ice cream at Christmas time! Life is never boring with four children so I should have some things to say. As the title of my blog says, I might have my hands full but they are full of blessings and I am so excited to see where God is leading our family!
After that it was time for my husband and the babies to go to the nursery and I stayed put while they sewed me up. My awesome doctor tried to keep me entertained by talking about the Super Bowl, which was the night before. I wasn't in the mood to talk about it though because my beloved Seahawks had lost, and they did it very poorly. Actually I am only an avid fan when they are doing really well and go to the Super Bowl but still, it was very disappointing! Then the doctor and his med student started talking about the half time show and I decided that was a good time for a little nap because I had no interest in the half time show. We watched I Love Lucy (Ricky's Home Movies) instead! Anyway, when it was time to go to recovery, I was pleasantly surprised to hear that I would be able to hold my babies and try to nurse them for the first time. The second most dreadful part of my first child's birth (the first being the spinal block) was having to go to recovery without knowing a single thing about my baby! I had to stay there for almost 2 hours without my husband and without my baby. They said to rest and take a nap but how can you when you know nothing about how your baby is doing?! Okay, back to the twins. So they brought B in first and I held her skin to skin and gave her a little nibble. Then A came in and we did the same. At some point my mom tried to come in, twice, and the nurse shooed her away, saying it was Mommy, Daddy, Baby time. I was so happy to have that time with our new little bundles.
The rest of the day really is a blur. In fact, the rest of the hospital stay is kind of a blur! I know that I was in a lot of pain, more than I was after my first c-section, and the pain meds just weren't cutting it even though we were staying on schedule. My doc made hearts come out of my head when he increased the doses without question even though the nurses had said that he probably wouldn't. The babies didn't nurse at all the first day and spent the night in the nursery and had to have a bottle due to low blood sugar. I was very disappointed and confused because I felt like a pro breastfeeder since I had already nursed both of my other children until they were a year old. We stayed in close contact with the nurses and a lactation consultant and I started pumping and we finger fed the babies while in the hospital. They never caught on to nursing. I kept telling myself that they would be just fine if they had to be formula babies. Many a great men and women were fed formula and turned out fantastic! But my heart hurt because I was supposed to be their source of nutrition. It was my job as their mother to feed them my liquid gold and no matter how many times I told myself and told other people that I was okay with it, I really wasn't! I have come to accept the fact that they may have to be on bottles but I am still working on it. More on that later...
Do you remember that I had to deliver the babies a little bit early because of my very mild pre-eclampsia? Well, in most cases the way to cure pre-eclampsia is to deliver the baby. But in my case, it got worse after! There were no signs of it in the hospital but over the first week my swelling increased and I felt lightheaded and had a very terrible headache, despite still being on my pain meds. One leg was significantly more swollen than the other so I had to go back to the hospital to get an ultrasound to check for a blood clot. That was negative but when we went to see my doctor after that, my blood pressure was higher than it's ever been. I don't think it was an incredibly dangerous blood pressure, but it was obvious that things weren't right. SOOOO, he put me on some blood pressure medicine, which I am still taking almost 2 months later. He still wasn't happy with my numbers at my post-partum check up last week so it looks like I'll be on it for a little while longer until I follow up with my family doctor in a couple months. He didn't really say why this is happening, I don't even know if he knows, but I am just going to blame it, like everything, on hormones and having twins!
The first week home was very overwhelming for me! I was terrified to be left alone with both babies. I didn't know how to feed them both and the thought of taking care of all four of my children at the same time was utterly terrifying! I made my husband take an extra couple of days off because I wasn't ready for him to go back to work but then something inside me snapped, and I suddenly decided that I could take care of the twins on my own. It was another week or so before I spent any significant amount of time alone with all four but because of our loving family and amazing friends, I was able to slowly work my way into being the mother of four. A few hours alone one week, then two days the next week, then three, then the time finally came when I had all four at home with me all week!! Now it feels completely normal and I hardly remember a time when I didn't have all of my little gifts from God at home with me.
When the babies were 2 weeks old they caught a cold. It wasn't too bad, but they were congested. At first it didn't affect their eating or sleeping but after about a week, Baby B was having a hard time getting all of her bottles in. When she projectile vomited all of the food she had taken in that day and I noticed that she had a very slight fever, I called our doctor, who told me to take her to the ER. I thought that they would just say she has a cold, suction her nose as often as you can, and send us home. However, the cold had caused her to get a little dehydrated and she had low muscle tone so they admitted her to the hospital. We stayed for about 30 hours, plus the 7 or 8 hours we had spent in the ER overnight. It was a very scary and exhausting time for us but we knew that things could be a lot worse. All she needed were some IV fluids and a little TLC and she was fine. They let us keep her sister in the room with us, which was a complete blessing. Again, I am so thankful for our wonderful family, who took care of everything at home for us, and for awesome, godly friends who prayed for us! They both had to be brought to the ER a week later because they were very congested and their chests were sucking in when they breathed, but that time they suctioned their little noses and told us to keep an eye on them but said they were fine and we brought them home. They are both over that dreadful cold and are doing very well!!
Big brother and sister are doing so well! There is nothing like having baby twin sisters to make a five year old grow up! He has taken on many responsibilities and I am so proud of him! He has been unloading the dishwasher, picking up his toys (and his sister's toys), running errands around the house for us, and taking care of his sister while I am tied to babies or a pump. He gets her food, water, plays with her, and comforts her when she is sad. He also helps her in and out of the van and unbuckles her from her carseat, which is a huge help because she is still rear-facing in the back seat. He has a new love of superheroes (which he really knows nothing about but enjoys making up facts) but I think that he has become something of a superhero himself in the last couple of months. Baby girl has really surprised us! Before the babies were born she was showing a lot of jealousy towards her brother spending time with mommy and daddy so she had us a little worried about what life would be like with two new babies but she has done amazingly well! She hasn't shown much jealousy towards them at all. In fact, she loves them so much! She showers them with affection, sometimes deadly affection! There have been a couple of instances when I had to pull her off of one of the babies because she fell on top of them trying to give hugs. She likes to lay her head on their heads and she LOVES to help us burp them. She enjoys being a big helper and often brings us diapers. They are usually her own diapers and she rarely brings fewer than four at a time, but she thinks she is helping and that's what counts. :-) We are starting to see a lot of little attitude issues arising and know that it is only the beginning. She is going to keep us on our toes for sure! At 19 months she now has a very vast vocabulary, consisting of words like, babies, mommy, dada, brother (bubba), no, yep, bye bye, cup (bup), right now, up, down, more, night night, I don't want to, I don't like that, water, more please, cheese (for pictures, not the food), and many more that I can't think of right now. She also says a lot of stuff that nobody can understand!
Okay, now back to feedings...
This has been the biggest struggle for us. We have been bottle feeding the girls since they were a week old when we realized that finger feeding was only meant as a very short-lived temporary solution and they were not catching on to nursing. We have tried a few different kinds of bottles, attempting to find a better fit for transitioning to nursing, all of which haven't helped. They tend to lift their tongues to the roof of their mouths, which makes nursing very difficult. Things got even more complicated when the girls were congested and at times we have gone through bad dry spells where we didn't even attempt to nurse for days due to scheduling conflicts and supply issues. However, I spent this last weekend doing a "nurse-in" of sorts. The kids went to their grandma and granddaddy's house and my husband and I hung out in our pjs all day with the babies constantly attached to me. When they weren't nursing, they were skin to skin with me so that they could learn to desire to be close to me. My amazing husband took care of diapers and kept me fed and hydrated the whole weekend. We made huge improvements! We are still a long way from exclusively breastfeeding and not needing to pump at all, but my supply almost doubled so they are at least only drinking breast milk and nursing MOST of the time. I know that the day might come when they will just figure it out and all of this pumping/bottle feeding/nursing routine will be a distant memory, but I also know that they may never catch on and I'm okay with that! I know that if they don't end up nursing I gave it my best shot and I didn't give up just because it was hard. I still have a few emotional issues to work out about this, but I know that we'll all by okay. Please pray for us as we continue on this exhausting nursing adventure!
So now that things are calming down a bit and life is beginning to get back to normal, well a new normal anyway, I am hoping to post on here more frequently. I still have a post waiting to be published about making home made ice cream at Christmas time! Life is never boring with four children so I should have some things to say. As the title of my blog says, I might have my hands full but they are full of blessings and I am so excited to see where God is leading our family!
