6 Months

Bedtime Stories

That's right. They're officially 6 months old! Which means they're more like 4 month-olds, being 2 months premature. They're not the size of 4 month-olds, mind you - they're already busting out of all those cute fall clothes I bought in 3-6 month size (aargh!). Unlike Seville, they are little chunk-a-lunks, growing like weeds. But developmentally, they're more like 4 month-olds, which means they're starting to play with toys, chew on stuff, Oswell can roll over, and they're starting to get picky about where and when they sleep. Which means I'm officially on house-arrest until they drop a nap or two or seven. I'll catch you guys on the flip side - wish me luck as I descend into the depths of isolation and reclusiveness. If I start to act weird it's because I've forgotten how to socially interact with adult human beings, so I hope you'll cut me a little slack and still be my friend.

Sleeping Arrangements

Anyway, you'd think we'd take more pictures, given how cute multiple babies are, but cameras inconveniently require hands to operate (stupid camera-makers), and so there's actually not a lot of photography going on around here. Here are a few recent-ish pictures though.

Boys n' Grandma

And by the way, as long as we're talking about hands, or the lack thereof, I am in bewilderment over ANY piece of baby equipment that requires two hands to operate! Seriously Graco???!!  What are they thinking? I have a number of things (car seats, swings, baby carriers) that have these weird snap/lock/release/lever/clasp thingies that require BOTH HANDS!! Honestly, I just want to slap those designers, if not do something more severe that I shouldn't print here lest it be interpreted as a "threat." Especially since some of them seem to be designed as "safety" measures (so... you think that it's safer to dangle the baby precariously  by a combination of my teeth and my left knee while balancing on one foot in order to free up both hands to undo your clasp instead of just having single-handed operation? yeah, that's just brilliant.) Anyway, if any of you work for a baby-gear company, would you please hand them a real, crying baby and say, "here, now try." Cuz apparently the empty warehouses in Bangladesh which are full of nothing but able-bodied adults do not convey the ridiculousness of what they are asking parents to accomplish with their fancy 5-star rated piece of equipment that's purportedly making parents' lives easier (as if!).

First Day of (Pre) School

Jared's New Look

As for Seville, she started pre-school a couple of weeks ago. I was really nervous about her letting me leave her somewhere without me. After all, I can't even leave her at church nursery without her getting all clingy and momma's girl on me, and she knows those people. But as with most things, I was more nervous about it than she was. We spent lots of time preparing her in advance and talking about what was going to happen, even going so far as to role-play her first day of school, complete with me peacefully leaving with a kiss and then coming back to get her at the end. Much to my surprise and delight, our plan worked! I took her to her classroom, explored it a bit with her, and then got up the guts to say I had to leave and could I have a kiss goodbye. She kissed me and that was that! Then I paced the floors at my house for 2 hours. Amazingly, her teacher did not call me frantic to come get her, she did not cry for me for 2 hours, she did not get hit by a bus or fall and break anything. When I went to pick her up she was happy and told me about her day. Go figure. (and by the way, I know you're wondering how on earth I am planning to get Seville to preschool and back twice a week. SO WAS I! My saint of a neighbor, whose twin boys are Seville's age and in her class, and with whom I had arranged to carpool, said that her stomach turned thinking about me loading all our kids and taking them to school, even for my "share," and she'll just do the driving. Hallelujah! Did I mention she's a saint? yeah.)

Letting It All Go

The other morning I was getting dressed for an extended family event, and not having showered in a couple of days (as is often the case), and having worn the same shirt all week (as is also often the case: once you get baby vomit down both shoulders by 10am, why change only ruin every shirt in the closet by nightfall? Besides, I only have 2 nursing shirts, and I need so much constant, easy access to my equipment that I see no point in wearing anything else most of the time), anyway, I was pretty sure that I stank to an unsociable degree. I asked Jared about it, and he came to give me a test hug. After a few moments of hugging and whiffs at different angles, he concluded, in an encouraging tone, "well, this side isn't that bad," and we moved toward the door to leave.

A moment later I paused though. As I thought about the fact that I had decided it was good enough if only one side of me smelled like rancid yogurt and B.O. and I could just hug people on the other side, I stopped, put my head in my hands on the counter, and laughed a pathetic, tired chuckle.  Is it really come to this? My criteria for getting out of the house is if I can find a spot on my body that is not so stinky that you'd notice?

A lot of things all go to pot when you have twins. Actually, I don't think this phenomenon is unique to twins. You hear this frequently about having subsequent children - that you are all persnickety with your first but by the time you get to your fourth or fifth you kinda figure nature will take care of itself. You'll almost go so far as to allow natural selection to do its business in your house if it has to. First babies always get the most careful and attentive care. A pacifier which falls out of the mouth will be promptly whisked away to a sanitizing station, complete with patented "Pacifier Wash" that you can buy from First Years for $11.95 (regular soap is not good enough for a first baby. First parents get suckered into all kinds of silly stuff. Case in point: "baby wash cloths." What, like regular washcloths don't work on babies?). Somewhere along the line with more children your standards loosen. With twins this is especially true, and at this point, when one kid drops a pacifier - unless there is a verifiable smear of dog poop on it - it's getting wiped on my jeans and popped back in there (ok, ok, I admit that's not entirely accurate. Women who just had babies don't get to wear jeans. We have to wear those soft knit stretchy pants, like "goucho pants." You know the ones I mean. Or maybe even yoga pants, which distract onlookers from our enormous hips by making them think that we did something akin to yoga this morning.)

Anyway, I was thinking about my loosening standards as I took a shower this morning (yes, the first in many days). When Seville was a baby, if I attempted a shower she came with me. She would sit in her new fancy bouncer on the bathroom floor just outside the shower door so I could hear her every sniffle and squeak. If she happened to be napping, I'd bring in the baby monitor and turn it on full blast so she wouldn't be drowned out by the roar of the running water. Several times during her babyhood I dashed across the house, dripping water and soapy froth onto our expensive rug, possibly ruining it forever, to attend to a whimper. This is how much I couldn't stand to have her try to communicate something to me only to be ignored. This morning, on the other hand, I got in the shower, fussing babies and all. I could hear them in the living room, over the rushing water, making all their exclamations of protest, and I sat there coldly thinking to myself, "hold on there, little guys, just need to finish shaving my legs!" (Shaving legs is a luxury I wouldn't ever have let Seville cry for. Of course, considering how long it had been since I last shaved my legs, this was no small task, and since I can't fit the mower in the shower with me, it was going to require several passes and enough razors that I should have just bought stock in Schick.) Much to my relief, Jared came home mid-shower and relieved the twins of their distress.  And actually, it's not that I'm really that callous. In fact, that's the reason it had been so long since I'd had a decent shower to begin with. There's nothing worse than trying to enjoy a shower knowing you've got a crying baby somewhere out there - the anxiety! But still, there are things that I really have relaxed about.

I think knowing how different the boys are, regardless of what I do, helps a lot. With Seville I very carefully followed particular parenting approaches and routines. I'm doing that to some extent with these guys too, but I realize that strict adherence to The Gospel of Whatever Baby Book is not going to make everything perfect. In fact, one of our babies (Trajan) is easily overwhelmed and requires an awful lot of finesse to get to sleep as the day goes on. Oswell, on the other hand, will cuddle up and drop off pretty much anytime, anywhere. I have used this as evidence in my discussions with Jared that my own insomniac tendencies may not be, as he believes, just a product of my own bad habits. I believe, of course, that my body has an inherently more difficult time falling asleep, and that a lifetime of that problem has affected my nocturnal routines. He has long argued that I just have really bad sleep habits - and I'll concede that I do have some, but not that they are the root of the problem, a position which I have evidence for finally in our boys (thanks Trajan and Oswell. I love to win.)

As for my loosening parenting standards, there are so far approximately... let's see...about ONE single thing the twins have gotten that Seville didn't: a birth announcement. I always regretted that I didn't get around to sending one when she was born. So this time I vowed I would do it - especially given the cuteness of twin pictures (I've decided that multiple babies are exponentially cute when viewed together. The way earthquake magnitudes go up by powers. So like if one baby is about a seven on the cuteness scale, two of those would be 7²=49. My babies are both tens (of course) and so they're cuteness equation is 10²=100. You'll all agree, I'm sure, that two cute babies together are about 10x cuter than any one single baby, right? Right? I'm not just trying to act all like we're all that, either. My brother has triplets, and since any relative of mine is also a ten (of course), his kids are 10³=1000. See? Way better than our score.). So given the extra cuteness potential of our pictures, I just had to send out baby announcements this time. It took me long enough to pull it off, but they're finally gone. For the record, I mostly managed to send them to addresses I had handy, and if I had to track yours down, you probably didn't get one. If you wanted one but I missed you, and if you're still speaking to me, let me know and I'd be glad to send one your way.

Babies in Bulk

The boys are 4 months old now. 4 and a half, actually, though their "corrected" age is closer to 2 1/2 months, so we've had double the amount of "little baby infant time." Which is both a blessing and a curse, I'm sure you realize.

It's been a while since we've updated here, and there is too much and too little to say at the same time. We feed and change babies, put them various places around our living room to keep them happy to mix it up now and again. But other than feeding, changing, rocking, pumping, washing bottles, washing clothes, there's not much else that happens around here.  We took them to Costco the other day, put the carseats on a flat cart and went around the store that way, adding our purchases to the cart with them. At the checkout line the guy behind us said, "which aisle'd you get those on?" We all joked about how you can buy anything in bulk at Costco, and these come in a 2-pack, etc. It was the highlight of our week. Actually, almost any adult conversation is the highlight of my week, but I think that isn't much different from other young mothers.

I'm doing pretty ok with the whole twin situation. I was telling a friend today that I've adjusted to having twins probably better than I adjusted to having my first baby. I think with twins you expect that your life will be sucked right out from under you and that you'll need nannies, prozac, and therapy to get you through. And so when you miraculously survive on less than that, you feel really good about yourself. When you have one baby (girls, you can back me up on this), you imagine all the blissful baby moments at home: You will hold and rock this baby, nurse it effortlessly to sleep, and while it is slumbering peacefully all afternoon you will do sewing projects and start scrapbooking and paint your bathroom and plant 27 varieties of tomatoes in your garden and you'll work out every day and be just as tiny as you were pre-pregnancy within 3 weeks and you'll start cooking organic meals and your husband will come home every night to a tidy home and a warm dinner and he'll kiss you and scoop up your darling little blessing and cuddle it while you leisurely eat your delicious cooking, after which you'll put the little pumpkin to bed and then you and hubby will spend a quiet evening together watching a movie, cuddling, and going to bed before the sun rises another blissful day of New Motherhood.

So when you find yourself robbed of your body, your time, your sleep, your hair, your food, when you wake up 50 times a night to a baby who wants to suck violently on your scabbed and raw nipples and have to function the next day heaving around that extra 30 pounds and spend the rest of your day elbow deep in poop and laundry and spit up during those spare moments between trying to feed and/or settle a baby who is completely unpredictable and upset whenever you don't immediately read its mind and attend to its every whim and you're starving but can't find a minute to eat a half a grapefruit until 5:00 in the evening (this happened to me. I'm not exaggerating), and then when your also-tired husband comes home from work to find you haggard and weary heating up leftover hotdogs in the microwave for a dinner you can barely bring yourself to swallow, despite the fact that you're ravenous, and then you spend your evening disagreeing on whether to let the baby "cry it out" or not and your husband eventually collapses into bed and falls asleep before you have any "quality time" only to start the night over again... for SOME reason... I don't know why... this is difficult for a new mom. So, yeah, twins has been a piece of cake in that respect. I never imagined I would have a life. I don't. It's all good.

Meanwhile the boys are growing like weeds (something Seville never managed. She still weighs about as much as your average 12-month old). They have officially started to laugh and "talk" to us. They do everything different from each other. You know all those things your baby did that you thought was a result of your parenting style and choices? Wrong! Those had nothing to do with you. Babies just each have their own way of doing things. Think their pacifier preferences are because of how you handled it? no. Think they slept well because of your careful parenting planning? no way. These guys have been treated identically, and they are completely different.  They need different things, they respond to different things, they like different things. It's impossible not to compare twins to each other. I know. You are always told that babies develop at their own pace and in different ways, but holy cow when it's right in front of you you can't help but compare.

Brickley is much more observant, alert and wakeful. He was the first to smile, the first to laugh. He can hold his head up pretty well and generally seems to have better physical control than Oswell. He's really charismatic and will interact with and smile at anyone on command.

Oswell is sleepier and more cuddly and baby-ish. He probably sleeps more because he's growing faster. He's a big juicy baby with jowls dangling to his shoulders and a cute little knob of a chin poking out of his luscious little face. Despite the fact that he sleeps more and doesn't hold his huge noggin up well yet, he's more of a talker and his sounds are more developed than Brickley's so far. It's so cute to see him smile, like his tiny face muscles have to lift his huge cheeks to pull it off.

Seville is starting to adjust and she loves her little babies. She's very proud of her Big Sister role and sometimes gets mad if I help a baby before she does (she's good at popping pacifiers back in mouths, which is good because there is much pacifier popping going on around here.) She also wears ballerina clothes on a daily basis. She loves to help mommy and has started to get a little devious. Today we put a popsicle in the freezer for her to save for after dinner, to which she protested loudly and with much crying. She ran into the kitchen and yelled at daddy to "go away!"  When he asked her why she wanted him to leave she said because he might see her getting the popsicle out of the freezer. We both laughed so hard. Nice try, honey. You're getting there. We eventually set a timer for the popsicle and it all worked out.

More pics of our summer:

Summer 2010

Schedule

A friend of mine recently asked about my schedule, making the assumption that it was probably unpredictable. He's right, of course, mostly (though, contrary to my personal nature and instincts, we feed the boys on a pretty tight schedule. It seems to be the only way not to have an unraveling free-for-all of chaos). Rather than just tell him that, I had to go and make a snide response and detailed the essence of my schedule:

My schedule is probably more predictable than you might think. It goes like this: 7am: get bottles ready, 7:05am, change babies' diapers, 7:15am figure out a way to feed two babies simultaneously, 7:35am: take bottles out of mouths so you can burp the baby that is about to spit up all over everything, say uselessly soothing words to the other baby who is screaming because you took his bottle out of his mouth, 7:36am: put bottle back in screaming baby's mouth, try to jiggle one half of body to burp one baby without choking/drowning the other, 7:37am: give up on this, put other baby back down and put bottle back in its mouth, 7:39am: pick up other baby to burp, catch remaining baby before accidentally dumping him on the floor during unsuccessful one-handed pick up maneuver, 7:40am: try to reposition babies using only one hand each, try not to damage heads or other floppy appendages in the process. 7:41am, put bottles back in mouths, 7:45am: frantically reach for burp-cloth to wipe up the first half of baby's breakfast which he just spat up all over pants, 7:45am: abort! abort burp-cloth grab to rescue falling babies who were dumped off your lap in hurried maneuver, 7:46am: pick up bottles from wherever they landed, without dumping babies on the floor this time, 7:47am: take a deep breath, chant to self, "it's ok to have baby vomit all over my pants, it's ok to have baby vomit all over my pants," 7:48am: notice spit-up all over expensive couch, take another deep breath, chant to self, "babies' safety is more important than couch, babies' safety is more important than couch," 7:50am: finish first bottle, pick up crying baby to bounce, pat, and burp with one half of body while miraculously holding the other half of body motionless. 7:52am: ignore warm sticky stream of spit-up trickling down the inside of shirt. 7:55am: finish second bottle, pick up second baby and do the double-baby-bouncing-burping routine. 8:00am: pick up and hold babies like a litter of puppies and find a way to rock self into standing position, go to nursery and put litter of babies on changing table. 8:01am: begin changing first baby's diaper, 8:02am: try to keep other baby from kicking first baby in the face, reposition babies and continue to wipe up poop, 8:04am: wipe face and front of body of projectile pee, also wipe down baby's brother. 8:06am: untangle babies' appendages and reposition again, begin changing second baby's diaper, 8:07am: sooth baby whose face got bonked by other baby's head. Remove everyone's wet, pee-soaked clothes and dress in something dry and hopefully "cute," 8:15am: swaddle babies and try to settle them into sleeping or other satisfied state, 8:20am: continue bouncing and swaying and shhhing, 8:30am: continue pacing house and trading babies back and forth to get them settled, 8:40am continue efforts, 9:00am continue efforts, 9:30am: babies are sleeping. go to bathroom, change out of milk and pee soaked shirt, put bagel in toaster for nutritious breakfast, start pumping milk for next feeding, look at facebook and enjoy moment of respite, 9:35am: moment over. listen in despair as babies fuss while you are hooked up to pump and unable to respond to cries. 9:40am: have a good cry yourself, 9:50am finish pumping, go put pacifiers in babies' mouths, notice that one of them is poopy, 9:55am: change poopy baby's diaper, lament that I'm still wearing pajama pants, 9:58am: look longingly at bagel in toaster, start preparing bottles for 10am feeding, 9:59am, take single bite of cold, dry, toasted bagel, take bottles to feeding station and retrieve babies, 10:00am: repeat. 1:00pm: repeat, 3:00pm: repeat, 7:00pm repeat, 10:00pm repeat, 1:00am repeat, 4:00am: repeat, ...

This, of course, represents the easy days, when Seville is not around...

As the author of "Juggling Twins" noted, you have to have the "whack-a-mole" mentality 24/7 (you know, that arcade game you can play at Chuck E Cheese and other places, where different moles pop up out of a bunch of holes and you have a mallet and you're trying to whack as many as you can by just staying on your toes all the time? that one). One of the most astounding parts of twin-momdom is just how constantly repetitive everything is. As soon as you finish any task, you have another one to do, and you can't put your guard down for a second. Certainly you can't expect down time, because if you do you'll be frustrated to tears by its absence.  But it's all kinds of fun, too (I can only say that because I'm well rested, thanks to our shift-sleeping plan. Heaven help parents of twins who don't get sleep at night, which is the other 99% of them).


In other news, we had a photoshoot done recently. Here are some pictures captured with much effort and photoshopping to deceive you into thinking that twins do things like... say... sleep peacefully simultaneously (ha!). They're cute, though, ain't they?

Happy Birthday Babes

So these guys finally reached their birthday. The day there were SUPPOSED to be born, that is. Yesterday. Every time I get frustrated with their lack of eating skills or lack of pooping skills or lack of head-maneuvering skills, I get all kinds of attitude and say things like, "why can't you figure out how to eat you nitwit! It's not like you were born yesterd.... oh, wait, it IS like you were born yesterday. nevermind." A close variation on this sentence has come out of my mouth several times today. Okay, minus the "nitwit" part. What do you think I am, verbally abusive?

Anyway, as such their lives really should start counting from now. Pretend I had a coupla babies yesterday, and they will start moving and laughing and batting at objects all in due time. And unfortunately sleeping more than 2 hours in a row at night will take that much longer too.

Speaking of which, Jared and I have this brilliant shift-sleeping plan that is making all this quite do-able. He goes to bed around 10pm, but I stay up until 2 or 3am. I handle the feedings/burpings/cryings/poopings during that time, and after that I get to go to bed. Jared wakes for the 4am-ish feeding, but goes back to bed for a couple of hours before he gets up for the day (he doesn't have to do things like nurse and pump when he feeds them, so it's pretty quick. Nothing like the 2 hours I spend at every feeding, only to eat a snack, put on some clothes, go to the bathroom and figure out how I get to spend the next 15 minutes before it's time to start over.). Anyway, I sleep until about 10am (a million thanks to the folks who are coming over in the morning to let me do that!). And so far there are some great things about this. Mostly I find that as long as I get sleep I can deal with just about anything else. I may have 3 people screeching bloody-murder at me during the day, but if I'm well rested, I can tell myself that, in fact, no one is dying and we're all going to be fine. eventually. And furthermore, I'm not fighting my natural night-owl nature, and there's something soul-recharging about that. I just go ahead and stay awake during my creative time (late at night) instead of squashing it trying to force myself to fall asleep at a decent hour. Even though I have little time for actually DOING anything creative, just being awake for it and having creative thoughts is more than I've had in ages (you wouldn't believe all the really great blog posts you've been missing. I've thought them though! Does that count?). Jared even claims that he gets more sleep now than he did before because I'm not keeping him up with my tossing and turning and reading and fiddling with tea cups and chapstick and iPhones and magazines next to him in bed. If this new plan didn't mean that we spend virtually zero time together we'd probably keep it forever. That and the fact that we need to have someone over here in the morning so I can sleep, which works while people are taking pity on us, but probably won't last for long.

By the way, if you'd like to be one of those great folks that helps us out, you can sign up! We have this "Care Calendar" thing, where you can sign up for meals and baby shifts and things like that: www.CareCalendar.org. Our calendar ID is 36494 and our password is "engstrom." We are SO grateful to all the generous people are making sure we are fed and rested, which makes this twin experience actually enjoyable, instead of harrowing. Thank you!

Here are some pictures from our at-home adventures:

Seville meets her brothers for the first time.

Checkin' out Brickley

Now that they're home, we can snuggle them up like this.

....aaaaaaand the excitement starts to wear off. :)

Actually, Seville is being quite sweet with them, holding them all the time, shoving pacifiers into their little mouths every time they whine. She's had a tough adjustment, and she's being a doll, all things considered (at least she takes out her anger at being de-throned on people like Grandma. And Daddy. Not her brothers. so far).

And Now, to Really Gross You Out...

Brickley and Oswell will be 6 weeks old tomorrow, and will have been home for 2 weeks.  Last time I brought a baby home (Seville, obviously), 2 weeks into it was getting pretty difficult for me personally. I struggled mightily with deep postpartum depression and had an extremely difficult recovery from a C-Section to boot. Since I had another unavoidable C-Section this time, and since I was warned that pregnancy and post-pregnancy hormones are twice as severe with twins, we wanted to do everything we could to avoid the dark days of last time. We were better prepared in lots of ways, but there's one thing I really honestly think made a huge difference.

It's like this... every mammal on the planet eats its own placenta after birth - except humans, for obvious reasons (like, the fact that we would barf all over ourselves even attempting such a feat, completely defeating the purpose, for example).  But there are rumors about eating the placenta and what it does for you. Like that it eases and speeds your recovery. And that it stabilizes your hormones keeping postpartum depression in check.

I had heard these things, but since the babies were born 2 months early - at least a month before we expected to have to think of any immediate post-birth needs - I hadn't had time to look into what is called "placenta encapsulation," - where they put your placenta in capsules for you to take, like any other benign, un-disgusting supplement, with your daily vitamins.

In the recovery room, one of the doctors brought my placenta for me to see. Its rupturing was the cause of the emergent C-Section. She knew I was extremely disappointed at not having a vaginal birth, and came to show me the signs of rupture so I could see, with my own eyes, why my baby needed to come out asap and why he might not have survived a vaginal birth). You could see the signs of distress and hemorhagging on the one placenta. The whole "eating your own placenta" thing came up then, and I mentioned to Jared that it was a bummer we hadn't had time to look into it.

The nurse looked at us and told us it was easy to do yourself.  "What?" She was from Russia or something, and I don't know whether this is more common in Easter Europe or she was just a hippie at heart, but she walked us through how to do it yourself. And bless Jared's heart, he actually did this for me (that is serious dedication!).

Step 1: Wash thoroughly (there's a video at the bottom of this post of Jared washing the placentas. There were two of them, in my case.)

Step 2: Freeze until you have time to do something with it (and/or so you can slice it later) (you could skip this step, actually, if you had time to work with it right away and planned the "blender" method).

Step 3: Slice thinly and/or puree' (Here is where it gets a little confusing. Russian Hippie Nurse told us to freeze it and then slice it very very thin, and then dry on a dehydrator, not unlike jerky. Jared tried this and it just wasn't drying fast enough and he was afraid it would go rancid, so he looked up how to do it on our "friend," the Internet. The folks he Googled were putting it right in the blender and drying it like fruit leather, so he switched methods and went with that.

Step 4: Spread blended placenta on a fruit dehydrator and dry.

Step 5: pull or chip dried placenta off the dryer, and pulverize it into a powder (blender, magic bullet, mortar & pestle. whatever works. I think Jared used our magic bullet).

Step 6: borrow capsule-making thingy from brother in law (Thanks Bryce!) (or get one at local Natures/Wild Oats/New Seasons/hippie food store), and put powder in capsules.

Voila! Placenta Pills.

These have been my friends these last 6 weeks, and oh what a difference they've made. Unless it's all in my head, which is ok too. Whatever works.

(WARNING:)If you're a glutton for punishment, and you have a strong stomach, here's a video of Jared getting the placenta out and washing it...

Homeward Bound

They never want to tell you, in the NICU, when your babies are coming home. Nobody wants to make a projection because nobody wants to be wrong, and because everything just "depends" on the babies and what they do or don't do and when. So when they come home it's really sudden. We've known for the last week that they were getting close, but it looked like the end of the week, then the middle, then the beginning, and then we got the call yesterday that they are coming home TODAY!

Brickley managed to suddenly fast-track everything by yanking his own feeding tube out a few days ago. He'd been eating well enough that his nurse decided to take mercy on him and not put it back in, unless he needed it. He proved himself able to eat all his food by mouth for a few days, and so the staff tried to get his brother up to speed. Since they're taking everything by mouth (from a bottle - nursing is a different story), and meeting the other criteria like not having temperature regulation issues or apnea that requires intervention, they get to come home.

We're super excited. It's like having babies all over again - all the excitement and adrenaline and joy of babies. And we're also frantically trying to get our house ready. We've spent the last day doing things we thought we had a little longer to do - cleaning out the nursery-to-be, moving furniture, buying diapers. We even had to buy Seville a bed off craigslist so we can put her convertible toddler bed/crib in the boys' room. I tried to buy homecoming outfits, but couldn't get to a store that sells preemie clothes yesterday, so they'll have to come home in whatever we have (the same thing happened with Seville, and I always wished I'd managed to buy her something. I guess we'll live.)

The babies are both over 5lbs now, so they almost look like regular babies. Almost. Here are a couple final pics of us holding babies in the NICU.

In other news, Jared came in this morning and announced that he had sunk to a new low. Seville, who has eaten nothing but goldfish crackers for a few days, was being inflexible about breakfast (surprise). Jared actually made her "goldfish pancakes," complete with goldfish crackers embedded therein. Gross.

Casualties of Daddy-Time

Seville has had a lot of "Daddy-Time" lately. Daddies don't do as much coloring or crafty stuff, like mommies do...
Daddies are more likely to do something like... say... play with remote controlled helicopters...

...indoors...

...and near their daughters' heads.

(If a brother did this, not only would he be chastised by mom but Seville would no doubt be upset about it. But since Daddy did it, it's all funny and adventurous. sigh.)

Super Short Update

I noticed that it's been over a week since we've posted any updates. In short, here's a bullet list of recent progress:

1) The boys are out of the isolettes and have moved to regular bassinets;
2) They're taking the full recommended volume of breast milk for their age/size;
3) They're receiving a little extra calorie fortification in their milk;
4) Both boys started bottle feeding and nursing on Sunday! they're actually a little ahead of the game on developing their suck/swallow/breath reflex. Oswell drank 20mL (out of 38mL) on his first bottle attempt; Trajan drank 33mL (of 38); and apparently, Oswell did some real nursing last night. Good work, boys!
5) Skye is certainly not 100% yet, but she's making good progress on her own recovery;
6) Seville has her moments, but continues to be a really sweet girl in the midst of all this madness; she's also started talking with excitement about taking care of HER baby brothers when they get home from the hospital;
6) Me - I'm good.

What's in a Name

Frequently Asked Question #1:

Q: Where did you get their names?

A: Yes, there is a rhyme and reason to their names. Brickley and Oswell are both maternal family names: Brickley is Jared's grandmother's maiden name, and Oswell is my mother's maiden name - both of these names had no male heirs to carry them on, so the boys each got one in honor of those ancestors.

Magnus is Jared's paternal great great grandfather's first name, and a name that has been used in his Swedish heritage quite a bit. We figured it would be nice for one of them to have a Swedish given name to match our last name. Trajan is a name that Jared just really really likes a lot. And has the potential for really cool nicknames down the road.

Brickley Trajan
Born on the first day of Spring, March 21st, at 7:34pm, weighing 4 lbs 4 oz.

Oswell Magnus
Born the first day of Spring, March 21st at 7:35pm, weighing 4 lbs 2 oz.

Speaking of their size, we were all thrilled that they topped 4 pounds at birth (ultrasounds and doctor estimates were under 3.5 lbs). Still, it's hard to fathom what a 4 pound baby is like until you see one. Everyone who has visited says they are so much smaller in person than you imagine from pictures. Tiffany (Jared's sister) suggested we take pictures of them next to something so you get a sense of how big they really are. I get her point - these pictures look even to me as if I'm holding my hand closer to the camera than the baby is to makes him look small. But no - my hand is resting on the pillow right next to his head. They're really just that little. And, by the way, since babies lose weight at first, they are both in the 3's now. But they'll climb back up over 4 soon enough.

Introducing Seville

Since Seville is not allowed into the NICU, we have a challenge including her in our new family and introducing her to her new baby brothers. It broke my heart to learn they wouldn't allow her in - she had been so excited to meet them.  In any case, we decided we'd have a challenge either way, because it would be difficult to explain to her where they are and why they have tubes and things, even if she was allowed in. None of this is what a 3 year old might expect. Thankfully, she doesn't really know any different, and so when we explained that the babies came out a little bit too soon and they're in a place where they are still pretending to be inside a tummy, she took it at face value.

We introduced her to them for the first time with pictures, in my hospital room, and I caught a little of it on my iPhone. It's cute, you can see her little mind churning, trying to process what's going on in the pictures.

Happy Moments

Brickley holding Daddy's Finger. Though they sleep almost all the time, the boys always tend to wake up when Daddy comes around. When Mommy comes around they just continue sleeping - which is, I suppose, typical of Mommy/Daddy relationships in general. Daddies are for playtime and Mommies are for snuggling.

Oswell's Feet (that's an Oxygen Saturation Monitor strapped to his foot. It somehow tells The Machine how much Oxygen is in his bloodstream. It's one of the things that determines whether or not he needs breathing support of some kind or not. If the saturation gets a little low, The Machine starts beeping)

Brickley holding Mommy's finger. This is the arm with the PICC line - an IV- type line that runs a catheter all the way up his arm toward his heart (his veins were too fragile to tolerate regular IVs) - and thus all the tape holding things together.

 Me and Brickley doing "Kangaroo Care" - a widely adopted NICU practice where the Mommy and Baby spend time skin to skin. It has been shown to help babies stabilize, grow, and develop faster, and to help Mom's establish better breastmilk supplies sooner.

This picture makes my heart want to explode :)

1/3 Home

I was discharged from the hospital today. It's amazingly difficult to leave a hospital when your babies are still there. As much as I hate being in the hospital, I kept trying to think of ways to get them to keep me. And actually, my pain level increased a lot overnight (perhaps my psychosomatic attempt to manipulate the system). I think I almost had my doctor convinced at one point, but he was concerned that insurance might not pay for it if there's no REALLY obvious reason to keep me, and he'd hate for me to get stuck with that hefty bill. Anyway, I couldn't delay it forever, so here I am now in my own bed.

As for the boys, they are obviously staying for a while. A lot of people have asked how long they will be there. No one knows the answer really - it just depends on how they do - but babies born this early are typically ready to go home around 36 or 37 weeks' gestational age. So about a month, give or take.

The last few days have been quite a roller coaster. I think that is likely to be the nature of things. As with just about every child's development, the babies make progress and then seem to backslide, and then make more progress and then seem to backslide.

A few people are interested in lots of details about the ups and downs of the boys' progress, so here are those:

Yesterday was a particularly stressful day. Both babies had some issues that were causing them a fair amount of distress, if only because the nurses kept having to poke them with needles. Poor Brickley's little veins have not been tolerating IVs very well. They try to do them as few and far between as possible, but a preemie's veins are so fragile that sometimes they just don't work well. Brickley had been getting at least one IV per day (they try to keep it to no more than 2 per week normally). Yesterday he had to have 4 put in, which just broke my heart beyond belief. The doctor came and talked to us about putting in a picc line, which is a more robust IV-type line, but instead of a tiny spot in your arm, they thread a catheter up your vein all the way to your heart. It is much more complicated than an IV and has some additional risks, but apparently is not more painful than getting an IV (the initial poke is the same) and is much more stable. I'll spare you more details about it, but we decided to go ahead to spare him getting IVs over and over, which would probably stress him out too much. The picc line took just about all day to do (it's a sterile procedure done in phases with Xrays inbetween to monitor things and place the line correctly). They started around noon, and were finished by about 11pm.

Oswell also lost his IV and had to get another. The nurse told me how difficult it had been for him (why did she tell me that? Why? Seriously, I didn't need a description of them having to hold him down and how much he fought and hated it). By evening he was also stressed out and needed to go back on oxygen (he had been completely off not only oxygen, but even air flow before that).

I spent a long long time holding Brickley last night. Oswell was too fragile at the time.

Today they are both doing fine. Brickley's picc line is doing well so he's much happier. Oswell is still on oxygen a little since yesterday I held each one for about an hour. Jared even got to hold Oswell. Bless his heart - the babies can only be held so much right now, and Jared tries to let me have most of that time.

My mom has Seville for the night, so we are planning to return later. Can't wait!

NICU photos

Here's some photos I took of the boys today (the picture of Seville is from last night):

Trajan and Oswell Pictures

Here are a few pictures from last night - taken through the plastic pods they're in, so they're not all that great. My camera battery was dead this morning, so I haven't had a chance to take any good photos yet. The first two (on top) are of Oswell and the last two are of Trajan. As you can see, Trajan was awake for one of the pictures. The second one of Trajan shows him after they removed the CPAP breathing apparatus (he still has little tubes in his nose for air flow but not for oxygen):