Today WM presents three videos. I’m calling this triptych “To pea, or not to pea: The birth of an aesthetic sensibility.”
Above is Doot’s introduction to sweet peas. Yes, they’re organic. No, we didn’t grow them; they’re handy single-serving packs from the big baby food conglomerate and, yeah, they’re about $0.70 a serving, pretty danged expensive when you’re on a frayed shoestring budget. However, they are very convenient, and to New Jerseyans, convenience is everything. (Cue the DKs reference “Give me convenience or give me death.” Yes, I understand the irony.) The other justification I have for my laziness is that while we’re trying out solid foods, I’m not going to buy a bunch of stuff and have it rot in the fridge when they only eat a little bit of it. Their parents already have that problem with the produce intended for adult consumption. I have utopian visions that eventually when all four of us eat the same produce we will eat our way through large heads of leafy green lettuce and buckets of succulent cucumbers. It may be on pizza with lotsa mozzarella, but a boy can dream.
Up to this point, the boys have taken to solids like wombats to sedgegrass. Other than an unfortunate episode with prunes (expelled from both ends in force), they eat rice cereal, sweet potatoes, oatmeal, and bananas. Based on facial expressions and enthusiasm, sweet potatoes and bananas are the favorites. Hello sweet teeth.
Doot is not into peas. Check out his expression. He had downed a bottle not all that long before when he was introduced to them, so we thought perhaps he just wasn’t that hungry. So I tried them again yesterday. He may be a sweet pea, but Doot is not into them.
The development of facial expressions and nonverbal communication at five months is impressive. You can really tell the difference, when, just a couple of minutes later I offer him some sweet potatoes. Yep, the kid is hungry, all right. Ixnay on the legumes, hello beta carotene.
A note of caution: If you are currently pregnant, this story is one you may want to wait and read after you’ve delivered. By reading further you agree that neither the author nor Wiser Mom nor anyone connected with the blog may be held liable for contact PTSD symptoms, nightmares, hysteria or other undesirable effects incurred from reading the following account.
There is a huge backstory leading up to this, some of it was documented in real time on this blog. But for those of you who need a refresher or are new to the story, this post drops into it when Myg was exactly 35 weeks pregnant. She had been in the hospital for a week with mild preeclampsia after a third trimester filled with ER visits and two other hospital stays—one overnight and one five days long. Unexpectedly—we had been told a few hours earlier that it would be another week—the OBGYN team decided on the morning of week 34 and 6 days that it would be best to induce labor immediately and not let Myg’s condition deteriorate. The babies were healthy in utero and would most likely be fine after delivery, whereas Myg would only get sicker and not begin to recover until afterward. We catch up with our protagonists at 4 a.m., January 22, 2009:
Myg is being rolled into the operating room for delivery and I am right behind her in disposable scrubs and surgical mask. Twins are considered high risk, so all twin deliveries are done in the OR, just in case. A Pitocin drip to induce labor was started about nine hours earlier, and she was given an epidural at 11:30 p.m. that worked just as you’d want—she has gone through transition smoothly with not too much discomfort and is now 9 cm dilated. She has also been given magnesium sulfate—known in the medical parlance as “mag”—to control her preeclampsia symptoms. Mag will keep her blood pressure, already high and spiky, from getting out of control. It also has a host of nasty side effects, including the possibility of hot flashes that some recipients have said feel as if you’re burning from the insides and your eyeballs are melting. The other effect is that it is a powerful muscle relaxant. Exactly what you don’t want when you’re about to deliver a couple of babies.
The last belly pic
My previous experience with operating rooms is that they are cold. But as Myg is wheeled into the OR to deliver our twins, I don’t notice the temperature. I notice the table. The scene is like something out of David Cronenberg’s Dead Ringers, which should put a chill into anyone who has seen the film and anyone who doesn’t get the reference should be thankful they don’t. The operating/delivery table has padded swivel legs and stirrups that my memory says are stainless steel, but that sounds unnecessarily cruel, maybe they were just worn leather. Like the straps you’d find on an electric chair in Texas. Overhead, a large array of klieg lights dangle at the end of an articulated arm looking oddly like a female mantis with the severed head of her lover held in the caress of her deadly mandibles. A wall made of monitors and other machines that go bing! stacked about twelve-high is teetering dangerously close to the table. The only man in the 11-person delivery team sits next to them in oversized glasses holding a clipboard or notebook or tablet computer. He is unmistakably Hell’s bookkeeper. Other odd apparatus are arranged about the room but my attention is focused on Myg as she is helped onto the table, still strapped in, and her feet are arranged in the stirrups and a flimsy sheet is arranged over her.
Once again, Myg explains to the doctor and the nurses that we’ve had no birthing classes, no Lamaze, nothing, because she’s been on bedrest since week 26 and no one at the hospital could find any resources that would come to the house, other than the midwife/dula team we can’t afford because I’m in grad school and Myg’s on disability and frankly, we’re as poor as we’ve ever been and thought that it was the best time to have twins because we plan everything and it always works out—just not how we plan it, or we would have gone to birth classes in the second trimester when Myg felt well enough to go on vacation—therefore, we’ve only read about delivery. Yes, in a book. Oh, and online, too. (This works for me, give me a book with instructions and I’m golden, not so much for Myg, and she’s the one that has to do it, so I’m nervous but keeping a good attitude.) No, Myg hasn’t watched A Baby Story, because she’s terrified. (Five months after delivery she still can’t bring herself to watch it.) We need some coaching, please. The staff says not to worry and explains that when she feels a contraction she needs to take a deep breath and hold it and when they tell her to push she needs to push like she’s shitting a watermelon and keep pushing as long as she can—they’ll count to ten—and then she can relax until she feels the next contraction or like she wants to push.
And that’s it. Ready for your skydive/bungee jump/moon launch? Good, me too.
I sit at my wife’s head, looking down at the part in her hair. I want to kiss it, but my mouth is covered by the mask. The delivery team sees a contraction begin on the monitors and they all say in disjointed unison like a girls’ rugby scrum: take a deep breath, now PUSH, hold it keep pushing don’t let it out one … two… three… four… don’t let it out keep pushing and Myg lets it out and stops pushing around seven.
She looks at me with a holy shit expression that says this is not fun I do not want to do this but I have no choice oh fuck…
I whisper sweetly into her ear and she tries to relax for the brief couple of minutes before the next contraction. I try to say encouraging things. I hold her hand. I feed her ice chips. And it goes on and on and on. Myg gets tireder and tireder but continues to labor. Labor. The word in its most radical form. She labors.
Of all the things I am in relationship to Myg, at this moment I am nothing but an ice machine.
I am an ice machine.
I am the best ice machine.
That is all.
The iceman. I’m good with a Styrofoam cup and chips of ice. See? I can get them out of the cup and put them into your mouth where they melt and soothe and if I knew where the crushed ice machine was I could refill the cup all by myself. And when you stop to think about it, what else does one need in life but some ice chips? All your needs can be met with a foam cup full of ice.
With every contraction the routine is the same. It goes on and on. The mag has made it next to impossible. Myg gets tired. I just want to sleep, she says. Can someone else take over for a bit? She tries not to think about the fact that this is Baby A, nicknamed “Doot” in utero, and that after she gets this done she has to do it all over again for Baby B, “Bing.” She’s ready to be a mother. Or, she really wants to be done with pregnancy and wants these kids out of her, at least.
The team all cheer her on with every contraction and it’s annoying. If it’s annoying to me, I know it has to be irritating her. Myg, amazingly diplomatic, says, okay, I only want one of you to count. She points to the resident. You. You get to count. Everyone else has to be quiet.
I know inside she is thinking along the lines of: Shut up, you dumb fucks, I know the routine now. It’s not complicated. I hold my breath, I push for an eternity, the kid doesn’t budge. I do it again. You had to go to med school for this? If you have any suggestions besides “push” and demonstrating that you watched enough Sesame Street to count to ten as a group, then please enlighten me. Otherwise, I’m coming off this table and there will be carnage that will require a SWAT team and weeks of forensic analysis.
The diplomatic tack works for about two more contractions. But now it’s clear that Doot is moving, they can see his head, everyone is more excited and seems certain that he is about to come out on the next push. Everyone but the bookkeeper starts shouting “encouragement” again. Myg looks at me and says, we’re done with this. I nod and agree. If we want more children, adoption, as we have often discussed, will be the way to go. We’re finished with the biological imperative. The Team tells me to come around to look from their angle. Doot is nearly here.
I walk around and look up between my wife’s legs at the mystery of mysteries, the holy of holies, the place I like to think is my playground and not anything that involves spectators. I’m a guy, I love sex. But I’m also a pretty waspy guy who was brought up right and went to church as a kid. Sex works best in the bedroom. Without a team of specialists with instruments and years of expensive training. And I know, I know, this is not sex—this is the end result of sex when all the pieces of the biological Rube Goldberg contraption fall into place. And we’re in a hospital. Everything is sterile and clinical and has nothing to do with my sex life with my wife and OHMYGODWHATTHEFUCKISTHATTHING? An angry red maw of engorged flesh has replaced Myg’s lady parts, and it’s being stretched wide by a red playground ball with wet black hair that I can just see a crescent of—no way is that thing coming out of that hole. It’s not happening. Meanwhile, the Team is grinning at me like they’ve just shown me the fountain of youth.
I admit, the miracle of life and childbirth are beautiful things, perhaps the essence of beauty—but it’s this as a concept, as an abstract. All the great and mysterious things about the universe, they are summed up by these moments but only metaphorically. In reality, it’s a gruesome visceral experience. It’s difficult, painful, and fraught with a lot of danger that modern hygiene and medical technology have mitigated but not eliminated. Sure, I love the primality. Put someone else’s spouse there and I’ll come in with a camera crew and wax eloquent like David Attenborough and win the Palme d’Or. But when it’s my beloved and my immanent offspring, I’d take no pain, no blood, and no risk if it were offered. Something antiseptic and external—stork delivery, even. I back away from the Team trying to appear nonchalant and not like I’m retreating from the mob at Bedlam.
Back around at Myg’s head, I smile and hold her hand. I lie. Just a couple of more pushes, babe. He’s almost here.
Myg pushes again. She has stopped paying attention to the cheering section. They’re doing it wrong. She has figured out that when she lets her breath out during the contractions and pushes not just with her stomach and bowel muscles, but even with her chest and neck, that they scream more encouragement and the baby moves better.
And I am also happily wrong. In just a few pushes, Doot arrives at 6:52 a.m. and gives a little cry as they hold him up and I look at my son—a weird red lizard dripping stringy white mucous, with what appears to be a version of Winston Churchill’s head run through a Play-Doh Fun Factory. They put him on the heat table and begin wiping him off and sticking his feet onto ink pads and making footprints. They put him in Myg’s arms for just a second and she is overjoyed and I’m choked up and she cries a little and then they take him back to the table where they swaddle him up and at the same time the doc is telling Myg she needs to get ready for round two.
Doot chilling on the warming table, 30 minutes old
They break Bing’s water and ask Myg to give a push just to get him down into position. Myg is in a daze. She has successfully delivered a baby. She knows she can do it again, how about in 18 months? It’s about 7 a.m. The doc has her hand inside Myg, a contraction comes and Myg pushes and I see a slight look of surprise on the doctor’s face. I felt the cord, she says. She looks up at the monitor and says, okay, Myg just give me one more push, and I’m going to see if I can get his head into position. Myg pushes. No, I feel the cord. The doctor shakes her head and she gives some unseen unheard command.
The operating room, already burgeoning with attention to Doot’s birth, blossoms. The 11-person team moves in complex synchronous harmony about twice as fast as they had been. What’s going on? Myg asks. The anesthesiologist begins turning dials and jams a mask over her face. Are we doing a C? There is worry in her voice and I realize something has happened, something with Bing and they’re going to do an emergency C-section.
A nurse flags my attention calling me “Dad” and it seems strange but I know it’s me. Follow me, Dad. She leads me out into the hallway with some rehearsed reason for why I can no longer stay in the room with Myg. You might faint, she says. Wait here. She points to a spot on the carpet in front of the delivery OR doors and leaves me there. I do as I’m told. After five minutes I begin pacing. I am worried but have faith in the Team that the C-section will go smoothly. I call my mother and tell her about the arrival of her grandson and let her know that the second is on his way. The doors slide apart and someone notices me as he moves past carrying arcane medical devices. The second baby is out, he says. I am relieved. He doesn’t say anything about Bing’s condition. I assume everything is fine. A manx cat appears pushing a small cart bearing Doot. The cat speaks. Do you want to come with me to the nursery? Apparently, it’s a nurse.
It’s not until hours later that I understand that when Myg pushed and the doctor felt Bing’s umbilical cord that it was a fairly rare and serious situation known as a prolapsed cord. The monitors showed his heart rate had dramatically dropped to 80 bpm when Myg had pushed. He would not have survived a vaginal delivery. Now I go cold when I write those words. On that day, I was supremely confident and ecstatic.
What they did not tell me and part of the reason I was in the hall during the emergency C-section is that because Bing’s heartrate was dropping they had to open Myg up immediately. As in before the anesthesia was in full effect. Myg apologized later to the surgical team for all the screaming. I didn’t hear a thing two sets of doors away in the hallway. Are you numb? The doc asked. You’re numb enough. Myg says the cut wasn’t painful, but that having her guts moved out of the way in a hurry was like having a wild animal pawing at her insides. The doctor knew she’d survive that trauma okay—the important thing was to get the baby out.
Bing joins his brother in the nursery after escaping the womb via a window
Both of our sons arrived healthy and whole. Neither required any time in the NICU. They even made it through the bilirubin spike without needing light table treatment. As of this writing, they’ve quadrupled their birth weights. They smile and laugh and roll over. They grab hold of fingers and toys and eat solid-er food. They’re delighted to see me every time I enter the room. Because of my wonderful sons, these five sleepless months full of diaper changes and spit up and two babies crying in tandem at a 4 a.m. that lasts forever have been the greatest five months of my life.
This is a blog with a mission, being, to take some of the GAHfuckdamnohnoisthisokay? out of becoming a mom when you’re over 35, or in my case now, over 40. I had infertility issues that kept me from getting pregnant when I was younger, and I was one of those hand wringers who would Google “pregnant over 35″ and just be dejected with the search results. Hardly anyone has anything good to say on the matter, or encouraging, or even maybe celebrating women who start their families later. It was all risk and warnings and that shit is just depressing.
But that’s not to say it isn’t real. Indeed, pregnancy for me was nearly every bit as hard and scary as they say it can be for women my age, especially bearing twins. I had pre-term contractions, pre-eclampsia, borderline anemia, a very tough delivery (which had nothing to do with my age, ahem). What they don’t tell you is, so fucking what?
See, I’m trying to cultivate a new and improved attitude about risk. Now that I’ve taken certain risks and have gotten a certain unbelievably awesome payoff, I’m here to say that if your heart truly longs for a baby and you’re over 35, go on and get pregnant. DO IT. I could have had a worse result, yes. But you know what? I didn’t, and most women my age having babies don’t either. And look what I got to show for it:
Two beautiful kids, born totally healthy.
So here’s the whole truth about my over 39 year old twin-pregnancy experience. First, the bad.
My pregnancy was great until the third trimester, when my back started to hurt so bad I could hardly walk from my car to the house without pain, and when pre-term contractions and then pre-eclampsia kicked in. That period of time involved total bedrest, three hospitalizations and a lot of unfortunate Google searches.
Being pregnant with twins caused more of that than my age. That said, women over 35 have a greater chance of multiple pregnancy. That’s not a bad thing, but it is harder.
I delivered five weeks early, due to pre-eclampsia. My delivery was tough, tough, tough. I delivered Doot vaginally and had to have an emergency C-Section for Bing. That had nothing to do with my age, or the pre-eclampsia. He had cord pro-lapse, which can be catastrophic. We were thankfully in good hands. If you’re a high-risk pregnancy, make sure you are too.
Speaking of high-risk pregnancy, if you get labeled this know it’s a blessing. You get much better prenatal care.
My recovery from delivery took awhile, and to be honest I thought I’d never feel right again. I was wrong, and knew it within about four weeks. Two weeks after giving birth I was much, much better. By a month, I was back to normal except for my weight and my tendonitis.
Oh, by the way, did you know you can get mindbendingly painful tendonitis in both wrists while pregnant, just from your hormones? I didn’t, and believe me, this was the most painful and inconvenient part of being pregnant and a new mother – worse than the sleep deprivation. No, there’s not much you can do for it but wait it out. It’s much better now at the five month mark, but it’s not gone.
Not a day goes by where I don’t do the math. When they’re 18 I’ll be 58. When they’re 25 I’ll be 65. When they’re 30 I’ll be 70. And so on. Every day I worry about being too old. Not now, of course. I feel young now. I daresay I look young, even younger than I am. But I don’t take terribly great care of myself and that has to change so I can age well and enjoy my kids well into their adult years. I don’t want them to have the worries of caring for older parents, well, ever. But then, I don’t want to die on them when they’re too young. And then, what’s too young? I’ll never, ever, ever be ready to let my parents go. In any case, I don’t get to decide any of these things, and so they are not worth the worry. But I must tell you, I worry anyway.
Now for the good stuff that waiting got me, and may get you too.
Some things that would have really rattled my 30 year old self really don’t rattle me now. I have been called a very calm, confident parent, and I have to admit that I am.
I don’t ever wish I was out doing something else that I can’t do now because I have small kids. At my age, I’ve really spent a lot of time doing exactly what I wanted. I’m not worried about my career because it’s so well established I can pretty much write my ticket now.
Even though the economy is bad and money is tough, I know I can always make money if need be (see above).
My kids live in a nice home, in a great neighborhood with an excellent school district.
In my neighborhood, many, if not most of my friends are mothers and fathers who started their families after the age of 35 or at least continue to have kids over the age of 35.
I savor every moment I have with them, even at 3am, because at 40 I really know how fast it’s all going to go. I just didn’t have that perspective yet when I was 30.
In every other way except trying to lose weight, being 40 pretty much kicks ass. My head is clear. I feel powerful. I don’t take shit from anyone. I know what’s important. I thoroughly enjoy everything I have. So really, in that sense, it’s the perfect time in my life to bring my kids into the world.
Not because of the economy or the war or the environment or any external thing. It’s a good time because it’s the time it was possible, and really, it’s as good as any and better than some.
The author, born in 1969, but shown here somewhere around late 1970.
Can it be? I don’t know how it happened, but according to my calendar you’ve been out five months now. Five months! Why, that’s nearly half a year, isn’t it? The nice thing about this year is that, unlike most years when it gets to be June and I say, ”Wow, I’ve really pissed this year away,” I know exactly why time is flying. This year I can say, yes, I’ve actually done something productive. And that productive thing would be keeping the two of you in fresh diapers and food around the clock.
Speaking of diapers and food, you’re both now eating solids! Seriously, those Sweet Potatoes are fairly rad, as evidenced not only by our tasting them but by Doot’s squealing during a meal, or Bing’s earnest grunting as he hurls his adorable little face onto the spoon as it’s headed towards his mouth.
From what I can tell, rice cereal is alright too, but we’re a little concerned it may be the culprit behind our latest baby adventure: terds. I was all cool with the baby terds until Bing went and launched a couple in the bath tub. I wasn’t expecting such a quick disintegration, but then it’s all a learning experience.
Your father, however, is not so cool with baby terds and is insisting we start prunes next week to help keep things, shall we say, loose. I really dunno about that, but I suppose we’ll see what the reaction is and let history judge. Oh, the stories we’ll tell at your 13th birthday party!
Now there has been more to this past month than eating and pooping, not that the formation of solid stools isn’t enough on its own. You guys have also been working so hard at doing stuff. For example, each of you can roll over half way. Doot can roll from belly to back, and Bing from back to belly. (Um, seems you two need to share some information there.) But that’s not all you know how to do now. Here, observe Bing at his desk:
Someday, my boy, I am certain there will be an iPhone app that can identify and taste all of those plush objects for you. But until then, keep up the good work.
Not to be outdone, here’s Doot in his command chair:
Doot, right about here you are wondering why I’m holding a camera, and not a bowl of Sweet Potatoes. Right after this was taken, no doubt a memo of protest was drafted and landed in my inbox, but it’s all fuzzy now because this is my fifth month straight of pulling triple shifts with my colleague in this Doot and Bing Raising enterprise, your father.
Darlings, that’s to say I love you with all that I am but I’m not thinking particularly straight these days. This may explain the near miss in exchanging the Neosporin with the A&D butt ointment.
You got to go back to the farm in Virginia this month and visit with Granny and Grandpa and all of your extended Italian relatives! Not once were you stained with tomato sauce, and nor were you the loudest people in the room, not even when you were screaming! Which did happen, by the way. Here’s a photo of us. Some details have been changed to protect the innocent:
We would be the details. You would be the innocent.
Something wonderful has begun to happen in the last few weeks. You’re going to bed at 6:30pm! Gone now are the evenings of your discontent, replaced by evenings where your father and I can Twitter side by side, muttering to each other about #iranelection and taking turns playing Stone Loops on my iPod. I know it doesn’t sound sexy, but kids, the meteor showers are NOT to be missed!
Hmmm. I wonder if by the time you’re in high school terms like iPod and Twitter and hashtag will still mean anything.
Last night Doot, you slept an entire 12 hours. I wept with joy. Bing, I won’t dance around the issue, son, you’ve GOT to start sleeping for more than two hours a shot, okay pal? I think you may be having a growth spurt, or rather, I PRAY TO GOD you’re having a growth spurt and this isn’t some sort of “accidental parenting™” or “night waking habit™.” I want you to know that I read and read and read about how to help you sleep at night, and it seems I’m going to have to let you “cry it out™ ” which some folks who adhere fervently to “attachment parenting™” would think might make you a serial killer some day.
Bing, a mother can go a little nuts trying to sort out all of the expert opinions out there. It seems like expert opinions on child rearing are like assholes. Or maybe, experts with opinions on child rearing are just assholes. I’m not sure anymore.
All I can say is this. Whoever you are, whatever you do, I am your mother and I will always love you. That said, sleeping more than two hours at a stretch overnight will only improve upon the matter.
In any case, my sons, let me end the matter this way. If one day you’re looking back and there’s still an internet and you can still read a blog post that was written when you were five months old, know that those were very good days indeed. Because they were days when you and your mom and your dad and your dog Mason and your two cats and your entire extended family all lived, sometimes happily and sometimes not, but we were all here and all of us in our own way marvelled at the joy you brought to our corner of the world.
So thanks for that, kids. For that, we’ll forget the sleep deprivation AND the terds in the bathtub.
Hello. I am a (relatively) new sleep-deprived mother of twins, and this is my tale.
As of today my boys are 21 weeks old, soon to hit the five month mark, though they were born five weeks early, and being born five weeks premature DOES matter, don’t let your pediatrician tell you it doesn’t. I waited five extra weeks for smiles, for cooing, and for rolling over and fretted needlessly. If only I really understood that yes, you must calculate these early milestones using your babies’ due date, I could have turned my attention to the REAL important shit, like worrying about whether my dog could give my newborns Kennel Cough. (He can’t, by the way.)
My last good night of sleep was probably last September, when I was pregnant but before I was waking up 6 times a night to pee. Oh dear, I just teared up writing that sentence because you’ve got to understand how much I love to sleep. LOVE. it. And need it too. If there was an Olympic Sleep Team, I’m telling you I’d be its star player and likely Captain. I can sleep 10 hours a night without any trouble. Or rather, once upon a time I could.
My boys are not necessarily bad sleepers themselves. It’s just that there happens to be two of them, and like many fraternal twin babies, they are very different kids with different sleep behavior. Doot has always been the sleepy baby. He takes after mama in many ways, including his delight in sleep (giddy, smiling, sometimes happily squealing when put in bed). Bing will fight sleep like a UFC champ because he is so engrossed in the teddy bear or the cat or the carpet that he can’t rest until he really, truly gets what it’s all about. Just like his Dad.
When they were first born they were under 5lbs and it was a cold, cold winter. We kept them in long sleeve sleep-n-plays (with legs and feets – screw baby sleeper gowns. I hate them because I always seem to strangle my kids with that stupid elastic bottom when I’m putting them on) and we double swaddled them in two receiving blankets as per the nursery’s directive. We kept them together in a bassinet in our family room, and we took turns camping out on the couch with them 24/7. The boys were eating constantly then, like anywhere from every hour to every 2 and a half hours, and often not at the same time. I was trying to build a milk supply too so I nursed them a lot, but they got bottles of formula as well. (My boys had bottles of formula from the beginning because the hospital was incredibly shitty when it came to things like NOT FEEDING YOUR BABY FORMULA unless you, in your pre-eclamptic induced panic remembered to order them not to. Because they sure as hell will NOT bother to ask you this before doing it. So, my boys were given bottles of formula before I even met them. Suckass hospital.)
Once they passed their due date, things began to shift. They were still sleeping a lot, but they started waking up a lot, too. It was a sort of nightmare of short periods of sleep and short periods of wakefulness, 24 hours a day. Which meant there were no decent stretches – not even say a three hour stretch – where someone could sleep while the babies were sleeping. It was like you’d just finish a diaper change and then wash some bottles so you’d be ready for the next feed, and then you’d lay down and one of them would start crying and you’d start the feeding/changing cycle all over again. 3o minute breaks (or less sometimes) between feeding/changing all night and all day long were typical for the first three months.
I’m telling you now, if Alex wasn’t home with me during that period, I would have really lost my shit. With two of us going full steam and breaking each other for 6 hour stretches of sleep, we were still getting our assess kicked up and down the block again. And neither of us were working yet.
Now before the boys were born, I really thought we could impose a structure, just like all the twin books and not fewer than several sets of twin parents recommended to us. But we just couldn’t do it. Because I swear, we’d put out that memo that said, “In RE: Twin Boys’ Schedule…boys will eat every three hours and then sleep” but the kids, they kept telling us, “Hey, we never got that stupid memo. What memo? We’re calling in our union.”
Eating/Sleeping Routine Memo FAIL.
I was doing it wrong. Because had I been doing it right, my kids would eat and sleep with some kind of regularity, just like all those parenting twins books say, right? My twins had the audacity to get hungry whenever the hell they wanted. You just ate an hour ago, I’d tell whichever one was complaining. It must be something else. And he’d scream and scream and scream and after trying everything else from pacing to rocking to singing kumbaya to swaddling, I’d make a bottle or nurse him and hey! Guess what? THE KID WAS STARVING.
And I’d worry I was overfeeding or being an Italian mama who wants to solve all problems with food. But you know what? Looking back on it now, I can see my boys were just plain hungry, and most likely their little bodies were working to compensate for that prematurity because by their 4 month well baby visit they were 50th percentile in weight on a non-adjusted scale (not adjusted for prematurity), so yeah.
The first three months were harder than I can tell you. If you’ve got twins, then you may know. Or, if you’ve got twins that check their inboxes for the routine memo and naturally take to structure, then you may not know.
But if you’re about to have twins, or just had them, then this is the only advice I have for you: GET HELP NOW.
Because you won’t know whether your twins are the memo reading routine abiding type, or the creative free thinker show up to work whenever I damn well feel like it type.
Well, there’s one way you can guess which type you’re gonna get.
Look in the mirror. What you see is probably what you’re getting. In any case, that’s what we got. One like him, and one like me. And neither of us are the routine type.
That said, things are much better now at the 5 month (4 month from due date) mark. It’s easier than it was, partly because they’re older and eat every 3-4 hours now, and sleep longer stretches at night. And it’s better partly because we’ve learned how to structure their evenings in a way that works for all of us.
Next time I blog, I’m going to blog about that. But for now, I’m going to go crawl under a table and nap and hope their father doesn’t find me for a few hours.
I am talking about badass babies with attitude. In this photo it’s like they’re saying, “Dude, we’ll sleep through the night when we’re ready. Until then, you and Dad can suck it.”
I still try to think of them as 18 weeks old instead of 4 months. I don’t know why. I think it makes me feel like time is moving more slowly, even though there’s no logic to this. But I just can’t bare to think about how fast it’s all going.
I know I continue to complain about the lack of sleep, but in truth, soon they will sleep all through the night. Won’t cry out for me. Won’t need my cuddling and nursing at 3am. And while I’ll be better rested and happy for that, I’ll also be missing those late night/early morning snuggles, where it was all warm and close and we were all here together in some total kind of way.
So 18 weeks is 4 months and 7 days which is over one third of their first year. And when I think of it like that, I think, whoa.
I swear there were about three different great ideas I had for posts today. But it was one of those days. Maybe you know the kind I’m talking about.
It’s 9 am and you’ve just fed both babies and you think to yourself, ok, maybe I can go brush my teeth but no, one starts vomiting, the other starts to wail – could it be in sympathy? You decide to console the vomiting baby by walking him around the room, and he starts smiling and screeching (ahem, Doot) and his brother (you know who you are, Bing) continues to scream and cry and wail. So you put the first baby down and then pick up his brother, who starts hammering his head against your shoulder so hard you’re sure he’s going to give himself whiplash, and as you go to steady his head, he slams it into your lip. You check to make sure that the blood is yours, not his, and all the while the first baby is watching you, smiling, cooing adorably, and then you think okay, they’re going to mellow out now so you put his brother down who is semi-calm, and the first baby, the vomiting cooing baby, starts to wail again because his pacifier dropped onto the floor while he was smiling at you.
You swoop down and pick it up only to realize it’s covered in dog hair and pizza crumbs, and you have no more clean pacifiers because of course you haven’t had time to wash any dishes. Baby continues screaming while you hastily wash off a couple of pacifiers in cold water since you don’t bother to give the water any time to heat up because, hey, there’s a baby screaming. Then you hear your husband, who just went to bed four hours ago, trod off to the toilet and you think, damn, I really wanted to let him get a little sleep since I’m home today. He comes downstairs and picks up baby 1 and as soon as he does, baby 2 begins to scream again. You pick up baby 2 and try to nurse him – it always seems to soothe him – but he latches, lets go, latches, lets go, latches, lets go and then starts to groan and flail in frustration. Okay he isn’t hungry then. You give him the other sort of clean pacifier and he mellows for a second, then spits his pacifier out, which rolls right onto the floor. He starts to scream again.
Suddenly, it’s 10pm and this is what you’ve done ALL DAY.
Two of us, two of them. And we’re still outnumbered.
Accomplishment #2: Points for individuality, since despite being twins, you both came into the world quite differently. Doot, my brave little astronaut, you ventured out first, taking the more traditional route. “PUSH!!!!! LIKE YOU’RE TAKING THE BIGGEST CRAP OF YOUR LIFE!” the doctor, no kidding, screamed at me moments before you made your entrance. I did, and felt that otherworldly POP and then the most enormous relief I’ve ever known. Your head – who knew it was so pliable? Good thing, too because the few stitches I did need, well, the memory of them still makes me itch sometimes.
Bing, my clever little man, it was though you saw what your brother endured on his trip into the world and said, “Screw it. I am NOT squeezing my shit through there!” They cut a quick slice in my belly to get to you before, well let’s just say before the unimaginable because I don’t even want to imagine, not for a second, what could have happened had we not been in totally competent hands in the OR. But once the decision for the C-Section was made, you arrived quickly, safely and you were perfect from head to toe. No elongated head for you, no sir! I can see years ahead of you finding your own path in this world. Let’s hope most of them don’t lead to emergency surgery.
Accomplishment #3: Steady hearts, steady breaths. No NICU time. Not even for a few hours of observation. You were both under 5 lbs, but breathing and sucking superbly right away. When they said you could go to the regular nursery it was about the thousandth time that day your father and I counted ourselves among the very, very lucky.
Accomplishment #4: How about the adorable factor? Both of you, either separately or snuggled together exude enough cuteness to shame the entire baby animal kingdom. No kittens, puppies, baby seals, infant capybaras or what have you can touch the “AWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWesomeness” that you two have going on. I thought maybe I was biased in my judgment of your attractiveness, but NO, definitely not. I am totally unbiased and you two are without doubt the most adorable creatures that have ever been or will ever be born. (*The author reserves the right to revoke this statement on the occasion of grandchildren. AND during the years 13-17.)
Accomplishment #5: You came home the same day I did. I began to understand how amazing this was when everywhere we went, or I went, people said, “Oh twins! How long did they have to stay in the hospital for?” But you didn’t have to stay in the hospital any longer than I did. And by nearly every measure, one could argue you were in better shape than I was when we got home.
Accomplishment #6: You grew. And grew. And grew. I have one photo, which I promise to never post, in which I am tandem breastfeeding you. And I swear your heads are not even half the size of my boobs. Now, your heads are much larger than my boobs, sadly, and I can say largely due to the service said body parts have done you. Well done, all of us.
Accomplishment #7: You taught me the very meaning of FEAR. I was never truly afraid until I had children. This coming from someone who’s had remnants of an anxiety disorder since the 1980′s. Yet my anxiety since you’ve arrived has crested peaks I’d never dare imagine.
When I first got you two home, every little tiny new thing scared the pants off me, when I bothered to put any on. Bing had a marble sized lump in his left breast. WTF was that? (Turned out to be a common nothing thing that went away on its own). Doot had an umbilical hernia. Oh, and yes, I had a massive herpes outbreak (on my mouth – fever blisters), which manifested itself two days after you were born, and hours after I dared to bestow my first kiss to you Doot. I was TERRIFIED I would give you the Herpes 1 virus, which is quite dangerous in infants. I didn’t, THANK GOD. But I cried and cried and cried and obsessed over it, and many other things in those first weeks.
I did realize the absolute need to get over it, all that fear. So while I’ve still got plenty of it I’ve been dealing with it better, yes. Because I either get over it or I am miserable and if I’m miserable, how can I bask in your awesomeness (see #4 above)?
Accomplishment #8: Smiles. Oh Godddddd, the smiles. Your father and I fall apart whenever you smile at us.
The other day, Graham, Dad heard you laugh in your sleep! He was so excited he called me at work, and after I teared and snuffled a few times, we congratulated ourselves, thinking we must be doing a great job as parents for you to have such funny dreams. And by the way guys, I’m sure this trend of us taking credit for your accomplishments is something you’ll need to discuss with your therapist sometime in your early adulthood, if not sooner.
And Liam, holy cow, you are the smiliest baby I’ve ever known. You wake up smiling. You smile at anyone you meet. You smile at the dog. You smile at the wall. You screech, squeal, coo, belch, spit up 300 oz and then smile at the pool of spit up. You really crack us up.
Accomplishment a gabazillion: I just realized the futility of numbering your accomplishments in this way. It’s not that there are too many to list. It’s that your birth and your lives so far are so enormous a factor in my universe that breaking out the individual things like this does not come close to conveying the complete transformation of our lives.
I want you to know, I was happy before you were born. I really was. I had a sense of purpose, a creative mission, a sense of the meaning of it all. Granted, I was not so happy when I wanted to have you and couldn’t, but I knew deep in my heart that if I could never have you, I would grieve and then find a way to move on in my life and make peace with it. So when I tell you, I’ve never known happiness like this, I’m not saying this from the point of an unhappy, unfulfilled person. I’m saying that you have brought to my life a depth, a sense of purpose – the perfect mission. The reason to live at all, and the way forward.
You changed everything. Everything. Every thought I have, every hope for the future, the very meaning of life itself. My world, my body, my concept of family and my notion of priorities. All different now. I have to tell you though, your father and I were counting on that.
They sprung me last night when one of my doctors, another high-risk Maternal Fetal Medicine (MFM doctor) decided to do another Fetal Fibronectin (fFN) test. “Let’s just see,” he said. He was curious if my last test could have been a false positive. I was curious too because you know, I just had this feeling. I don’t know what it was. Something about the look on the resident’s face as he wielded the swab. I didn’t quite trust it.
Last night at around 6:30 the new fFN test came back negative, which is a 98% insurance policy against preterm labor in the next 7-14 days.
“Pack up – you’re going home,” they said. I so wasn’t expecting that. Luckily Alex had just brought me sweat pants or I would have been leaving the hospital in my bird jammies. But I would have left just the same.
Monday night I started a different medication called Indomethacin. It’s sort of like strong Advil. You can only use it for about 48 hours or else you start to have risks for the babies, but this medication actually seems to work – a lot better than Procardia. And I haven’t had any side effects from it. So my contractions stopped. Two hours at different times of day, on the monitor, with nada, zip, nothing from my cranky uterus.
“Have you been feeling any contractions?” they asked.
See, here’s where it starts to get frustrating. What I thought I’d been feeling as contractions were often not picked up in monitoring. Or, I’d feel nothing at all, and they’d tell me they’d picked a few contractions up. So now I don’t really know what I’m feeling. That doesn’t help.
My plan? Do NOT to over think this. Last time my body was acting in a troubling way I knew it and I called the doctor. This is me, trying to learn to trust my intuition – something I’m normally really bad at. But I think my intuition has been pretty spot on during this pregnancy. So I’m not going to obsess over every little twitch. Not with a 98% assurance that things are okay for now.
So, this was quite the tricky pregnancy diary update. I tried starting it a number of times in the hospital and as you can see it’s a late getting here. Not that I couldn’t blog, mind you. But blogging specifically about the boys’ development and my wait for labor was so close to the epicenter of my fear for the last several days, it wasn’t a real go-to blogging topic.
But we’re alright now.
And hey guess what? I’ve been calculating my weeks wrong, so when I was writing these updates all along I thought I was a week behind where I was. As of today we have finished 27 weeks worth of gestation. That means last week was week 27 and now we are crawling to that magical 28 number – the point in time when 90% of babies born prematurely survive. This is key given the last couple of weeks.
Here’s the package as of last night:
Funny, for a month’s worth of growth it doesn’t seem so dramatically bigger than week 23, does it? But it is bigger, that I can tell you. And so are they.
In the past couple of weeks, the boys have:
grown to about just over 2 lbs each, according to our last ultrasound on 11/20. Not too bad for twins, if I do say so myself.
been flipping around in there like two-pounder circus fish, if there was such a thing as circus fish (there isn’t, right?)
fully developed hands, which I am certain they’re using to spar with each other in utero
fingerprints and foot prints
begun to recognize my voice. Too bad it’s not giving them something more compelling to listen to besides “Alex?!?! Can you ________ ? (get me some water, let the dog out, throw this in the laundry, etc, etc, etc.“
And what’s important to note, according to Mayo, if babies are born at 27 weeks they have about an 85% survival rate. I don’t like to think morbidly but after 5 days in the hospital worried about such possibilities, I couldn’t escape it. So there it is.
As for me, well you probably know all that’s needed about the last few weeks from the previous few entries, but I’ll share some belated wisdom:
I KNEW I should have been out of work earlier. I knew it because of my back pain, which I bitched about endlessly here from week 21 on. I really thought the degree of pain I was having was not right, and I am kicking myself that I wasn’t more assertive about going out of work sooner. On the weekends when I could lay down every time I started to feel uncomfortable I had little back pain. Every day I had to stand or sit for longer than an hour I had problems. The contractions both times started the day after I’d been to work. I explained this to one of the doctors after the first hospitalization, but still she said, “Let’s put you out at 28 or 30 weeks.” I should have said, “Uh, no dear, I know how I feel and I’m not going back.” Let that be a lesson to me. Especially since work didn’t care one iota about me coming back.
I didn’t mention it, but I am on strict bedrest now. And after less than 24 hours of being home, I’m staring at the walls of my bedroom going, “Damn, this room needs to be painted.” Nesting instincts are a piss poor match for strict bedrest. I can get up to go to the bathroom, take a quick shower and downstairs once a day. Not going to get a lot of nesting done in this context. “Alex, can you please paint the bedroom?” No, seriously, he’s got enough to do.
Thanksgiving will now be here. Everyone wants to visit, which is really nice. But I will be horizontal and Alex will be frantically putting the house in order today to receive said guests on short notice. I am not sure but I think he gets the raw end of the bedrest deal. I think a nice invite for him out somewhere tomorrow with a plate of leftovers for me might have worked a little better, but oh well. Thank god he’s a good sport and has a better sense of humor.
And anyway, I’m still totally psyched for turkey, and all the more so with my dog at my feet drooling at the chance for dropped crumbs. (Okay I admit, not all of them are accidental.) But I’ll have to work on Alex to get the whole “afternoon tea” thing down.
Ed.’s Warning: This post is epic and contains varying amounts of bitching, moaning and gratuitous hospital footage.
Me, Bing, Doot, circa 23 weeks
Included in this extra special week was one historic election and one trip to the emergency room. On the same day, even.
Last Saturday I was suddenly feeling much worse. I’d been trying to get a grip on some debilitating back pain for weeks and had restricted a lot of my activities to reduce pain. Remember, no pain meds allowed and Tylenol, I’m sorry, doesn’t do it for me. Not that I mind being a couch spore. My remedy for back pain has meant spending most of my time between my bed, the dog’s couch, and the kitchen table. I’ve become furniture for the cats, basically.
On Saturday I became incredibly out of breath and was having heart palpitations over even the smallest activity – like walking up six stairs to go to the bathroom or taking a shower. Sunday night I woke up in the middle of the night, went to the bathroom and when I came back to bed my heart was thumping in my chest like I had a 12 pound freshly caught Tilapia flipping around in there. It was kind of, you know, scary.
I called the Doc’s office on Monday. They didn’t seem terribly concerned about it, but they did push my regular appointment up to Tuesday morning. That would be…
Election Day.
Coolest f'in president ever, k?
Now, I have been wringing my hands, biting my nails, on the edge of my seat, anxiously pouring over every bit of political text I can find for months and months. I did some canvassing for Obama in PA during the primary, but given my physical circumstances I wasn’t inclined to do much more than give a lot of money I didn’t have and argue with people in my family. (That arguing politics with family while pregnant thing – not recommended, really.)
Suffice to say, I’d waited a long damn time for election day.
With early reports of lines in NYC being as long as 2 hours, I worried about how I was going to handle a long wait to vote as right now, it’s too painful for me to stand in line for 10 minutes at the grocery store. But I’d worried for no reason because in my very liberal little town, the polling place at 8am had no lines – just a bunch of happy voters, smiling and milling about. We voted, grabbed a couple of coffee rolls to celebrate, and went home to sweat it out as we waited for the results.
At 10:45 am we had the distraction of my doctor’s appointment, and the walk from the parking deck to the OB/GYN’s office just sucked. I felt like I was sprinting the whole way. “Can this be normal?” I reported everything to my doctor. She checked the heartbeats of Bing and Doot and they were fine. Mine? A little off.
“Your heart’s skipping around, jumping all over the place.” She decided to send me to the ER. “You’re carrying twins, so this probably isn’t the last time you’ll be over there.” Words of comfort, to be sure.
When I got there they bumped me to the front of a long line of assorted disheveled, pissed off sick folks. Hooked up to the pulse monitor I could hear my heart jumping all over the place. Man did that suck. You really count on certain things in your life to be steady and predictable. The beating of your own heart would rank about #1 on that list, even if you don’t consciously think of it. When it’s as erratic as a McCain campaign stunt, the whole world starts to feel a little shaky.
They put me on a stretcher in the back, popped an IV into me, took oh about 17 quarts of blood, stuck a heart monitor on me. I couldn’t look at it though. I got an EKG and the doctor came back and explained I had some extra hearbeats – PVCs he said. Premature Ventricular Contractions.
Well thank heavens I had the presence of mind to bring my new little camcorder – the Flip. I love this thing with all my heart and I’ll blog it another time. But in any case, it’s the size of an iPod and here’s what you can do with it:
Not the most flattering video of me, but hey, it’s totally real!
So anyway, were the PVCs anything serious? In and of themselves, no. But could they be a sign of something really bad? Combined with the shortness of breath and fatigue, yeah. So the testing commenced. An ultrasound of my legs showed no blood clots or anything, which was good. But now, here’s where I get upset.
I had to get a chest x-ray and a CT-scan of my lungs. No direct radiation to my boys but there could be a little “scatter” and SHIT FUCK DAMN YOU ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO GET ANY RADIATION WHEN YOU ARE PREGNANT!
So, why did I agree to do it?
The doctors were concerned I might have had a pulmonary embolism. You know, that blood clot thing in your lungs that can kill you.
Here’s where I invoke my right to smack the shit out of the resident assigned that day. My hospital is a teaching hospital, affiliated with the medical university that I’ve worked for since 1999. I’ve helped train my share of residents when I was clinical staff on the psych unit. So guess what? I have a right to SMACK THE SHIT out of the residents when they annoy me.
What was annoying me? I asked, calmly – logically, responsibly – “Can you tell me the risks this test poses to my unborn children?” And you know what I got in response?
“The risk of this test is to them is a lot smaller than the risk to you if we don’t do this test, trust me.”
Hello? Is that what I asked you, bitch? NO. I asked “WHAT is the risk to MY UNBORN.” Not, “What’s the bigger risk?” or “Should I really have this test done?” I was quite the perturbed.
With more reasonable prompting, he did go over some of the risks, which include really great things like an increase in childhood cancer rates from 1 in 10,000 to 1 in 7,000. Is that risk still relatively small? Yes. Is it smaller than the risk of pulmonary embolism? Yeah, of course. Did it make sense to have the testing if the doctors were really concerned? Of course it did.
But I still felt god awful for having exposed my kids to even that much risk. Really god damned awful.
Guess what? I didn’t have a pulmonary embolism. Thank God. Seriously, thank God. All of my labs were normal. I was fine, other than my heart jumping all over the place. Verdict? Gosh we dunno. Plan? Outpatient follow-up with cardiology for more thorough evaluation. Go home now. It was 7:30pm.
I went home to begin watching the election results, though I almost couldn’t do it as the day had been so emotional. But I did anyway, because, seriously, how could I not watch one of the greatest moments in the history of the modern world?
I was glad I did. At 11pm when Keith Olberman announced Obama was our new president-elect, I cried. Man, did I cry. Then during Obama’s speech I cried. Hard.
But I felt good. And you know what? My heart felt good. Because I knew then that I’d be bringing my boys into a world where we have a chance of making the world a better place. And as I gradually start to move into my new role as a mother, I realize there’s nothing I care more about than that.
So how are Doot and Bing doing in week 23? They are:
Kicking, kicking, kicking. In fact, last night I had my first experience of actually seeing a well placed kick by Doot lift a paperback off my belly. Whoa! Sometimes it’s adorable. Sometimes, not so much. Like that kick to the bladder this morning.
Able to hear me and Alex, for sure. Do they think it’s weird how much we talk to and/or about the dog? Do they like that Kings of Leon song I keep blasting over and over? How do they like the Rachel Maddow show? The things you wonder about.
Developing their lungs and the blood vessels to the lungs, which is all kinds of important right now. Statistically speaking, when they get to 24 weeks old they’ve got a 50/50 chance at viability outside of me if their lungs grow enough. But…here’s to praying there’s no need for that.
And as for me? Well, if the long entry above the bullets wasn’t enough for you, let me recap:
I’ve got some physical stuff going on right now that’s not exactly what I’d hoped and dreamed my long wished for pregnancy would be. But you know what? So far it’s nothing so dreadful that I can’t sleep at night worrying. I can deal with it.
I am always, always, always worried about money. I don’t know if this will ever stop now that I’m about to be a mom, but God I hope so. My strategy so far is to try not to think about it. Good plan, eh?
I’m trying to figure out how to salvage the rest of my work responsibilities from now until D-Day given the stuff going on. But for some reason, I don’t care all that much. Changing priorities, anyone?
Doot, right about here you are wondering why I’m holding a camera, and not a bowl of Sweet Potatoes. Right after this was taken, no doubt a memo of protest was drafted and landed in my inbox, but it’s all fuzzy now because this is my fifth month straight of pulling triple shifts with my colleague in this Doot and Bing Raising enterprise, your father.
