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...