Here are a few photos of the day the twins were born compared to now:
How Far We’ve Come
Authentic Moment #5: My Friend, the Phlebotomist
As I’ve mentioned before, when I was pregnant with the twins I had to get my hormone levels checked every two weeks. Which means I had to get blood drawn every two weeks. And, as I’ve mentioned before, I hate needles. Hate, hate, hate. Mostly because I have bad veins. They are thin and deep and most times I have to be stuck repeatedly. And even when they do find a vein that works, usually my blood will clot and they have to stick me a few more times to find another vein.
Probably the most painful part of my labor and delivery with the twins was getting my IV put in by that first nurse. She tried at least four times, if not more. My arms were covered in bruises the next day from all the sticks.
Anyway, my point is, I have bad veins. Period. I have a hundred nurses/blood center workers to back me up.
Every time I walked into CPL to get my blood drawn I’d warn the phlebotomist about my veins and I’d ask for the baby needle (butterfly needle) because they usually have more luck with it.
One phlebotomist that I came to know from my frequent visits was such a character. She was loud and opinionated and hilarious. This is from the first time I met her and her reaction to my warnings:
You have veins the size of a sausage. You’re making me nervous. Are you always like this? Who have you gotten before? What was their name?
What is an “Authentic Moment”? Check it out.
Also, I had to look up how to spell phlebotomist. It would be an amazing Scrabble word.
52 Week Countdown
I have a real love/hate relationship with breastfeeding. More the latter than the former. It just really takes a lot out of me. My immune system cannot handle much while I’m breastfeeding. With Olivia I was coming down with a fever every two weeks. I was really prone to mastitis which I would get just about every month. Since then I’ve learned how to take care of myself better and I’ve figured out tricks to help myself stay healthy but it is still really hard on me.
When the twins were born, they were too premature to suck well so they couldn’t breastfeed. The nurses had me pumping every 3 hours around the clock to make sure my milk came in and was plentiful for when they did start nursing. I literally pumped buckets during those 11 days in the NICU. When they took all my milk out of the NICU fridge/freezer, they actually brought it to us in a bucket th
ere was so much. And they had to make more than one trip. We were sent home with instructions to keep pumping and feeding them bottles for two more weeks then start transitioning them to the breast.
Exclusively pumping and giving the babies bottles is really hard because you never get a chance to sleep. Pumping takes about 40 minutes between setting up, pumping for 20 minutes, then cleaning up. Then you have to feed the babies, burp them, and try to get them back to sleep. In three hours you’d have to start all over. It was so exhausting on top of having two babies to figure out. My point is, I could not wait to stop pumping. So I grabbed a dry erase marker and wrote 1 2 3 4 on my bathroom mirror. It was a countdown to when I would throw my breastpump out of the window.
Then when I started actually nursing the babies I started to have all my regular breastfeeding problems and I wanted so bad to give up. I wanted so bad to just give them formula. Every day I decided to. And of course that would have been fine if that was my decision but I kept reminding myself how expensive that would be, how good it would be for preemies to get the benefits that come with breastmilk. So I kept going. And I added to that countdown on my mirror. I wrote the numbers all the way to 52 that basically framed my mirror. And everytime I wanted to give up, I would just make it my goal to get to Saturday when I could tick off the next number.
This is the picture of the last of the countdown. We made it. I’m still nursing them. We just went to the pediatrician today and he said I could start them on whole milk. Thank the good, sweet Lord.
Twins’ Birth Story: Part III
Our twins just turned one year old. I guess it’s about time that I write down and process their birth and surrounding events. This is the next part in the series. Here is the link if you want to start at Part I or Part II. This part is a little more graphic than the rest. Fair warning.
It was about halfway through my pregnancy that my doctor started talking to me about delivering twins. Apparently really crazy things can go down. One can be born vaginally and then all of a sudden the second baby could be in trouble and need to be delivered through C-section. Sometimes, even if both babies are head down, the second baby can flip after the first is born because there is so much more room. In this case, my doctor said I shouldn’t worry because he could just reach in and turn the baby to get them head down again, or he could deliver the second one breech. Now I’m all for natural birth. I had both Lina and Teresa without any pain meds and Olivia I had with one dose of IV pain meds which didn’t do a darn thing. So I know the pros of natural child birth, but there was no freakin’ way he was going to “reach in and turn the baby” without me having an epidural.
Planning on having an epidural really changed my mindset throughout the whole labor. Labor with an epidural is still hard and is still work but it’s completely different. When you go in planning on a natural childbirth you basically are walking in ready to do war. Or at least that’s how I feel. You’ve got to be prepared mentally for the pain and you really have to bring your A game when it comes to concentration. It just takes a lot of getting yourself psyched up and ready.
I found I spent most of those first hours in the hospital wondering when I should get the epidural. I’m not in that much pain, should I do it now? Should I wait until I’m further along? What if I’m in too much pain to sit still when they’re putting it in?
I waited until I was about 6cm dilated. I asked the nurse to call the anesthesiologist. He was really great and friendly and put me at ease. I am terrified of needles so I told him under no circumstance whatsoever could he show me that needle. He laughed and complied. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be. It was strange feeling but it was fine. One leg pretty much went dead and I wouldn’t be able to lift it at all for the next 24 hours but the rest of me was numb enough. I could feel the contractions a little bit but no pain at all.
We probably still had about 4 more hours to go before the babies came and I found myself not knowing what to do. I may have slept a bit. I kept wondering if we should just turn on the tv to pass the time but that seemed wrong for some reason. Kraft and I started ordering all the things we needed on Amazon and he passed the time reading me things from Facebook. It almost felt like we were on a date sitting around talking after a meal or something. Except for the constant beeping of the monitors and the nurse coming in and out.
Because the twins were going to be born at 34 weeks and 5 days, this earned them a pass straight to the NICU. A NICU nurse had come down earlier to talk to us about what we should be ready for. I honestly can’t remember anything that woman said. I was still in denial that these babies were coming so early. Our nurse tried to gauge whether or not I understood what they were telling us but I didn’t want to talk about it. I just wanted to hold my babies. I didn’t want to think of them being taken away from me.
Every one of our kids has been born in 12 hours from the time my water breaks. My body is amazingly predictable in this way. Kraft says he remembers looking at the clock and thinking that 12 hours would be here in half an hour so he was sure it wasn’t going to happen with the twins. Wrong. I alerted the nurse that I was pretty sure I wanted to push. She said ok and started getting everything ready. I had to deliver in the OR so she let the surgical staff know I was coming. The doctor had been hanging around for the last couple hours knowing that when these babies came, they were going to come quick.
They wheeled my bed over to the OR. It was bright and scary. It was exactly like TV. Like in ER when they are shooting from the patient’s perspective. That is dead on. You’re blinded by the lights and everyone is moving around you fast and you don’t really know what is happening. Modesty is out the window because you have to be in a surgical gown and they have to scrub you down. At this point I couldn’t have cared less how many people were in that room, I was just getting more and more nervous. Kraft was standing by in scrubs squeezing my hand.
My doctor is one of the most gentle and kind souls I’ve ever met. Very patient and a good listener. I’d never seen the side of him I saw in that room. He was in control of that room. You could tell he took this very seriously and wanted to be ready for anything. It was really amazing to see him command the room. It made me feel safe and confident in his abilities. Not that I wasn’t before but I was scared and that made me less so.
Both babies were head down. Baby A came. One of the nurses told me when to push, or maybe it was my doctor. Someone did. And so I pushed and everyone was like, Whoa! Hey, slow down, not so fast. I guess delivering small babies doesn’t take as much pushing as an 8 lb baby. Ana was born after one push. I didn’t hear her cry. I don’t remember holding her. Both twins each had a full neonatal team in the room ready to check them out. Ana got whisked away to another room so they could check her vitals. It was only minutes between the babies being born but I remember I started to panic. Where is she? Why isn’t she crying? Why can’t I hear her? I can’t see her. I’m sure the doctor and nurses were reassuring but I was having a hard time concentrating. Then they told me to start pushing again. Baby B was still head down (thank God!). Again, I pushed too fast and when Dorothy came out she kicked the clamp off of Ana’s umbilical cord. The doctor delivered Dorothy and immediately placed her on my chest. She was covered in blood which did not seem right. I really started to panic and asked if she was ok. Why was there so much blood? For the few seconds it took them to figure out where the blood was coming from, everyone thought I was hemorrhaging. It was just the umbilical cord and everyone breathed a sigh of relief. Then Dorothy’s team took her away.
I know I was on the table for a while after that. I’m pretty sure they were telling me what was happening with the babies but I can’t remember much of it. They told me they were 5lbs and 5lbs 9oz. I could hear myself asking, begging really, if they could please just let the babies stay with me. They are 5lbs. That’s big. Please let them stay. Just let us try. If there are any problems then we can take them to the NICU. I’m sure I sounded crazy. The babbling of an exhausted mother but it seemed so logical to me at the time.
The whole time I was in labor I kept praying they would be at least 5lbs. I thought that it would be our golden ticket. They would for sure let us keep them in our postpartum room if they were just that big. I remember I kept telling my L&D nurse that and she kept telling me it wouldn’t happen. These kids are going to the NICU no matter what. It’s policy. Any baby born before 35 weeks is sent there immediately. But I was convinced I could reason with the neonatologists. I was sure they would see I was right.
Nope. The babies were taken straight to the NICU. Kraft got to go with them. I was wheeled back into my L&D room where I sat for hours. Apparently when you deliver twins there is a much greater likelihood of bleeding too much. My nurse was there with me, but like I said before, she wasn’t chatty and I had long since stopped trying to get her to chitchat. I asked a question every now and again but I was in shock that my babies were now in the NICU. I knew they were early and my whole labor was full of medical professionals trying to prep me for that reality but it didn’t sink in until I sat in that room alone knowing that even when I was taken to my postpartum room, I still wouldn’t be with my babies. I felt really numb. I was back in that surreal world I was in when we left our house. But I wouldn’t be able to stay there too long. Pretty soon I would have to jump into the postpartum world of NICU babies with all the pumping and talking to doctors and nurses that comes with it.
That is how Ana and Dorothy came into this world 3:32 and 3:37pm. I’ve read this over and over and tried to make it sound more happy and upbeat. Or at least draw some meaning from the sadness and numbness that overcame me for a good long while after the babies were born. But I can’t. That just wasn’t my experience. And while we never ever lost perspective and knew we were so so lucky to have babies that really were never in any danger and were really low-needs NICU patients, it was still hard. It was hard to wrap my mind around how different this was from my previous pregnancies and births.
My parents were superstars and took care of our three older girls for weeks while we were lucky enough to stay at Seton. Our friends were so lovely and supportive and brought us food and came to visit and keep us company. We had an amazing support network that I will always be eternally grateful for. But that’s another story for another day that I’ll write soon.
For now, I am grateful for the amazing care we received from the Seton staff and my OBGYN during labor and delivery. And I’m grateful for the year we’ve spent with our fiesty twins who, although on the small side and a little behind, amaze me everyday and add more joy to our life than I thought would ever be possible during those dark days we spent in the NICU.
Thanks for reading.
The Twins’ Birth Story: Part II
Our twins just turned one year old. I guess it’s about time that I write down and process their birth and surrounding events. This is the next part in the series. Here is the link if you want to start at Part I.
So Thanksgiving happened. Then my birthday was on Friday so Kraft took me to watch Mockingjay: Part I at Alamo Drafthouse and we enjoyed a nice little afternoon just the two of us. I had been feeling pretty run down and I was definitely huge but I warded off those end-of-pregnancy-misery feelings. I was sure I still had many weeks left so I wasn’t allowing myself to slip into that almost-depression right before babies are born.
We had prepared nothing. Zero. Nada. And while on our lunch/movie date we had come up with a plan for how we were going to tackle the get-baby-stuff-ready tasks. In fact, we were going to start the very next day. Saturday.
“Yeah, sure,” God said.
That night seemed like any other. I got as comfortable as I could in my pillow fort. Then, like clockwork, like every one of my other pregnancy’s, almost to the minute, my water broke at 3am. I immediately shot awake and knew exactly what it was. I shook Kraft awake and then proceeded to remain paralyzed with fear for the next few hours. Kraft jumped up and started packing a bag (no, I didn’t have the hospital bag packed). He called the doctor and handed me the phone to talk to him. He buzzed around doing everything he needed to do. The camera, his laptop, some clothes, some snacks. He kept asking me what I wanted to pack and I’m pretty sure I never answered him. He just did his best. I remember sitting on the edge of our bed saying over and over that it was too early. They were too early. This couldn’t be happening. This shouldn’t be happening.
My parents live about 50 minutes away with no traffic. My dad was at our house in 35 minutes flat. I don’t even want to think about how fast he was driving. My mom followed at a more reasonable speed. It was really surreal going into labor prematurely. I felt like I was floating. I was having some contractions but I honestly couldn’t even feel the pain because I kept trying to remember where the babies were at. “I think weeks ago the doctor said if they were born they would not have to be on ventilators. How big are they going to be? Is everything formed? Will they be missing anything?” It was as if my mind had been filled with cotton. I couldn’t remember what the latest BabyCenter email said. Would they be the size of a cantaloupe or a butternut squash or was it spaghetti squash? I just kept letting people lead me around because I couldn’t quite comprehend what was going on.
On the way to the hospital the contractions started to get a bit stronger. Just enough to snap me into some sense of myself. The pain pulled me out of the surreal. I think the cold helped, too. The walk from the car to the hospital was freezing. As we walked, I remember a man walking in the opposite direction as us wishing us luck and telling us that he had just had a baby. Kraft is a champ and knows that I don’t want to talk to anyone while I’m in labor and he takes over all small talk of well-meaning strangers and nurses.
We went up to L&D and got settled into our room. I was immediately hooked up to the monitors just about an hour before shift change. We really liked the nurse we got. She was so kind and patient and funny and talkative. But she was a wreck and kept making mistakes. (I completely understand how hard her job is and I’m sure it was just a bad day but we all really needed it to be shift change.) It hit 7am and we got a new nurse who was definitely a seasoned L&D nurse. Not so chatty but she knew her stuff and was quick and efficient and confident. I was good with that. And so we sat. And waited.
The Twins’ Birth Story: Part I
Our twins just turned one year old. I guess it’s about time that I write down and process their birth and surrounding events.
I feel like I have to start this story way back from the beginning.
When we did the home pregnancy test and found out we were pregnant, my response (after the appropriate ‘oh sh*t’) was something like, “Well, this ain’t our first rodeo.” Of course we marveled at the miraculousness of new life and were excited but the idea of a new baby was a comfortable one. One that seemed within our control and within our ability to handle. Something safe. Another baby? Great! We’ve done this before. We’re old pros.
I went in to see my OBGYN to confirm the pregnancy. Kraft hadn’t been to an ultrasound with me since Olivia, so, as usual, I was alone at this ultrasound (6/4). The doctor was asking the standard questions and then the ultrasound started. This is pretty much verbatim how the conversation went:
Dr: Hmm, I think I see two.
Me: Two of what? (I was sure he meant ovaries or something)
Dr: Two babies.
Me: Shut up.
I immediately remembered our good friend, Desiree, had sent me an email just recently (5/24) that ended with:
“Also…what if you have twins???”
And even though it was surprising, it kinda wasn’t. It was like hearing a story you had heard as a child but forgotten and now were only able to recall the fuzzy outline of the memory. Which was a strange feeling.
Actually, D was the first person I called when I got in the car to tell her it was all her fault. She had spoken the words and, thus, had willed it. Then I called Kraft who really took some convincing. We spent at least ten minutes of me saying I was dead serious and him saying that I was joking.
At the ultrasound we found out that the kind of twins we had were mono/di and required pretty close monitoring. I had to get blood draws every two weeks to check hormone levels, and an ultrasound every month for a while, and then every two weeks, and then, at the end, every week. Not to mention the monthly checkups with the OB.
Everything went along perfectly. No problems. I mean, I don’t think I had ever been so hungry and exhausted in my whole life, but all tests were coming back that all of us were fine. They were due on January 5th but we were expecting them just shy of Christmas (twins usually come early) .
I felt well taken care of through my pregnancy but it was hard not to feel a little unsettled. I didn’t have the air of confidence I did when we had taken the home pregnancy test. Twins are scary. There are lots of risks. One twin can take more fluid than the other, you have to deliver in the OR (operating room) in case an emergency C-section has to happen, I had decided to get an epidural for the first time which was terrifying because I hate needles. While having so many ultrasounds was nice to confirm that everything was ok, it was also a constant reason for me to worry that something was not ok. It really was a whole new world in pregnancy that I had never experienced.
The babies were growing big. Our babies are usually in the 8 lb range and it seemed like both twins were on this trajectory. No one told them they were supposed to grow like twins, not singletons. (That’s the term. Weird, I know.) I didn’t at all realize the value of this at the time.
I went in for my 34 week checkup the week of Thanksgiving and I specifically remember asking the doctor, “So lots of twin moms have been telling me they delivered at 35 weeks. Am I going to have these babies next week??” And the doctor said something to the effect that no one ever really knows but looking at the twins’ progress there are no indications that they need to come early but you never know.
So, of course, I didn’t have the babies the next week, I had them that very same week on Saturday. But that’s for tomorrow.
Here’s Kraft’s take on this first part.
If you’d like to continue reading, here is Part II.