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):

The Twins are Here!

Some of this will be repetitive for some of you. I hope, going forward, to consolidate the updates and steer everyone to this blog...

So, Brickley Trajan (4 lbs. 4 oz.) and Oswell Magnus (4 lbs. 2 oz.) were born on March 21, 2010 (first day of spring!) at 7:34 and 7:35pm, respectively. Brickley and Oswell are both family names (Oswell is Skye's Mom's maiden name and Brickley is my maternal grandmother's maiden name). Though Brickley is the "elder" son's given name, we expect to call him Trajan (pronounced TRAY-jun).

Though it did not end up being an emergency, it became necessary to perform a c-section last night. Skye's water broke last Monday (at 31 weeks pregnant) and she fought hard to keep the babies inside her for another 6 days, which proved to be very beneficial to the boys. Both boys came out crying and breathing on their own. And they were both much bigger than anyone expected.

Both boys needed breathing assistance (via CPAP) and required help to stabilize for the first few hours. But by this morning, Trajan was doing well enough that they removed the CPAP. Oswell still needs a little breathing assistance, but they expect he'll be off CPAP within the next day or two. They'll both need tube feeding for a couple of weeks until their natural suck/swallow/breath reflex kicks in. They will be eating Skye's breast milk pretty much right away. They also have IVs and little probes to monitor their heart rates.

Both boys are in isolettes (clear plastic shells that are temperature regulated), but they decided Trajan was doing well enough to pull him out this morning and let Skye hold him (skin to skin) against her chest for almost an hour. The boys may be able to stay in regular bassinets within a week or so.

Skye is recuperating well and overall, everything seems to be very good with everyone. Thanks for all the well wishes. We'll keep you posted here on the blog with any updates...

Saturday Afternoon update

So, I'm not into posting lots and lots of updates every day, but things have changed enough since this morning, that it's worth another update this afternoon. Basically, as of this morning, I thought for sure we'd have babies by this afternoon. But I don't feel that way now.

The doctor has had all kinds of restrictions and orders for Skye - like not eating food for the last 48 hours or so (I know it's to prevent the possibility of aspiration, but how can not eating for 2 days be helpful to anyone?!). After some discussion with the doctor (where she admitted that the hospital is not a prison and that they can't stop Skye from doing what she wants), Skye (with help from her mom) took it upon herself to do a bunch of things she wasn't supposed to do. She took a shower, she ate food (the doctor later gave her permission to eat) and now she's a completely different person. She's calm, relaxed and doesn't look like a woman about to go into labor. So, at this point, who knows - maybe she won't be having babies today. Only time will tell. But things are looking much better than they were this morning.

Saturday morning update

Skye started having pretty strong contractions last night. They put her on magnesium (via the IV) for the last 12 hours. There are a set of factors that determine whether you're a good candidate for a VBAC. The fact that she's had a previous c-section is actually only a very small factor. Current factors include her bag of membranes being broken, she's got an abruption (though small...they think), and she's having abnormally strong contractions without being dilated much at all. Those factors really put her in a high risk situation. So....everyone is recommending she have a c-section, perhaps as soon as this afternoon.

Obviously, this is NOT Skye's preference. But she's being a trooper about it. She's tender-hearted and wants badly to do things nature's way and be able to hold these babies right after they're born. These boys are going to have to spend time in the NICU, but we're going to make sure they're healthy and safe. Deep down, Skye knows that, but it's still going to be hard for her to see her boys connected to lots of tubes for the first few weeks.

But all things considered, I think things are going pretty well...

62 Hours and All is Well

I am still here and doing well. Contractions in the night got painful and woke me up frequently, but they have slowed and eased up. I was sent back to labor and delivery for a while this morning for monitoring, but everything looks good, the contractions are less severe, and they sent me back upstairs (to the comfier beds).

Blessedly, Seville is also doing better. She slept through the night last night and woke up walking, so she is now off to a friend's house to play and Jared will finally get some work done (not that work is the most important thing at the moment - we all realize that - but given that we are HOPING I will be here for a few weeks, we want to keep things as normal as possible until something noteworthy happens.)

I had hospital Cream of Wheat this morning, and it wasn't noticeably different than homemade Cream of Wheat. I can't decide whether that's good or bad. On the one hand, finally a hospital food that isn't either too soggy or too dry! On the other hand, it only emphasized the fact, in my brain, that Cream of Wheat is inherently bland and mushy and slimy, and I'm not sure I'll be able to eat it at home again without thinking of it as hospital food for the infirm. hm.

48 Hours Update

I'm still here and still pregnant. I'm still being monitored (though not as closely as before), still having contractions, and still losing fluid. But so far no labor. If I make it until morning, our outlook will be much better than it has been.

Meanwhile (as if we need more complications) Seville is having a problem with her left hip. She was up most of the night crying apparently (grandma reports) and wouldn't walk today until evening, at which point she started limping around a bit. We've had this problem before, and I'm pretty sure it's something called Toxic Synovitis. If her symptoms stay under control, it's probably ok and will eventual resolve, but there is a point at which we'd need to take her to the hospital. We've been through a Toxic Synovitis hospital stay with her before and it was no fun at all. They did lots and lots of tests and put her through a lot of miserable stuff. So we'd like to spare her that if she seems to be doing ok and improving. However, she really needs a parent right now, so Jared has gone home to be with her and have her sleep in her own bed and such.  The problem with that, of course, is that things with me could happen in an instant, and he might have to rush down here in his PJs in order to catch the birth of his babies. That's a worse case scenario, of course, but it's not an unlikely one. So we really are crossing our fingers and praying that nothing will happen with either me or Seville tonight, since Jared can't be two places at once.

Thanks so much to all of you who are wishing us well, including us in your prayers, and offering help.  I'm sure we'll need lots of help, we just don't know exactly what and when yet. We'll try to keep you posted. Thanks!

Back at the Hospital

So Skye went back into the hospital last night. Her water broke at about 9:30pm. Apparently - contrary to popular belief - having your water break does NOT necessarily mean you're going to have babies right away. They say it's 50/50 that she'll go into labor within 48 hours. It is possible that we can keep the babies inside Skye for another 3 weeks or so. At 34 weeks, they deem the risk of infection greater than the risk of prematurity, so I guess they would induce at 34 weeks if she makes it that far.

But...(this is just my opinion)...there's a good chance we'll have babies here in the next few days. This would mean a stint (perhaps several weeks) in the NICU for the babies (probably some breathing assistance, tube feeding, etc.). For those of you who know Skye well, you know that NICU is not a place Skye wants her babies to be. But...ultimately, safe and healthy babies are what we want and, personally, I feel fortunate that we have top-flight NICU care available to make sure our boys make it into the world safely. I feel quite confident that everything is going to work out.

On a slightly different note, despite having made a good bit of progress in our preparations over the last few weeks, we're totally not ready to bring the boys back to our house. We do have car seats - so we can at least get them home. But we may have to make a bed for them in the bathtub and swaddle them in old t-shirts. I find the whole thing kind of amusing because, obviously, we'll work it out. We tried to get ahead of the game with our preparation, but no matter how prepared you try to be, this baby stuff is just unpredictable!

Anyhow, we'll try to keep people posted on the blog. I ain't gonna be doing any Twitter-style updates every other minute, but when there is something news-worthy, I'll try to let you know. Skye may post some smaller micro-updates on Facebook, if you're of that ilk.

Thanks for checking in and thinking of us...

Back At 'Em

After a week of extreme caution and virtual bedrest, trying to get my contractions to slow down, I had a doctor appointment on Friday and they checked "things" out. Everything is looking good! I've had no dilation to speak of since I left the hospital, so nobody is worried anymore. It looks like the pre-term labor of last week was an isolated incident due to the stomach flu (or whatever), and I'm back to being a normal 3rd trimester twin pregnant person. Which means I'm not very mobile and it hurts to walk around, but there's no danger in it, which is awesome.

I celebrated the good news this morning by prepping a couple of garden beds for planting. I had assumed before that I might not be able to plant a garden this year, which would be so tragic! So I got all stoked at the idea of putting peas in the ground. I admit, after about 5 minutes of shoveling dirt and turning it with a pitchfork I realized how ridiculous this idea was (I mean, come on. I can hardly walk by now, danger to fetuses or not). But Jared helped me out and we got a couple beds mulched and ready to go. I spent the next loooooong time sitting in a reclining lawn chair gasping for breath while my hip joints trembled and attempted to relax.

Seville climbed all over me, bounced around, sang songs, and peed on the lawn while I lay there (with my permission, nay, even at my suggestion, because I didn't think I could walk up the deck and into the house with her. Am I a bad parent?). The chickens got a little break from their coop and scratched and pecked in our yard for a while. It was a great day.

Oh, and the OTHER great news is that Baby "A" turned around and got his head down last week. Not that I needed them to tell me that - it was quite an event. It happened Thursday night and it sent me grasping myself and lying on the couch to recuperate. Afterward I could tell by the types of movement I felt in which places that he had turned around. Anyway, this means I'm officially in the game of being able to attempt a VBAC (Vaginal Birth After Cesarean). I chose my doctor, hospital, and everything based on NOT wanting another C-Section, which is what 99% of doctors will automatically do if you have both a previous C-Section AND twins in there.  But there are criteria, and the first is that the first baby needs to be head down. So I was happy about that too (now, if Baby "B" could only turn around, it would makes things easier still).

Hospital Stay

Well, I suppose it's time to start using this thing again (as in, this blog), now that we have lots of people wanting updates on our situation. I just looked back and was semi-surprised to see that I've included a few pictures and some drivel, but little of consequence for the last few months.

Here's the nutshell update:

We are pregnant - and with TWINS, no less. (now let's just get these next couple questions out o f the way: no they're not identical (fraternal), and no that doesn't run in my family. If you'll recall, Jared had cancer and chemotherapy a couple years ago, and that left our situation... shall we say... somewhat compromosed. We were so fortunate to have an oncologist who was cognisant of and sensitive to cancer-life-related issues for younger people, and who made time for us to get some of Jared's "boyz" on ice before he started chemo. So... despite our efforts at having one baby at a time, fertility treatments are unpredictable, and here we are).

The babies are both BOYS, and Jared is about as stoked as can be. He's resisting all kinds of urges to buy little basketballs, I'm sure.

So we're excited, and life is changing fast. The pregnancy hasn't been without complications - I was on bedrest for several weeks at the beginning, and have some other complications that make me pretty uncomfortable pretty much most of the time. I have several "indications" that put me at risk for pre-term labor, but things have been looking great lately. I hit the 28-week pregnancy mark a couple of days ago. I was excited to reach that benchmark (a big one for twins).

Of course, as fate would have it, the instant I was excited about reaching week 28, I started having some pre-term labor symptoms. The next night I was sent to the hospital and have been here since (3 days). I'm one of those contraction-ey pregnant women - I get 'em all the time - and this is pretty normal for a twin pregnancy in the 3rd trimester, so it's nothing to be alarmed about usually. But when the contractions wouldn't slow down with rest or water, and especially when they were only 3 minutes apart, it was looking a little scary. At the hospital we determined that I was starting to dilate with all the contractions, so they put me on medication to stop them and IV fluids to keep me hydrated. We also figured out, as the night wore on, that I had the stomach flu.

I hate the stomach flu. HATE. THE. STOMACH. FLU. I'm one of those people that just doesn't deal with nausea very well, and I can't throw up, so I'm just miserable the whole time. BUT, believe it or not this is good news, in a way. It's probable that the stomach flu is what was actually causing the contractions and pre-term labor symptoms, and once I got over that, they were able to take me off the medications and things have been ok since.

So today I get to go home! I have to take it easy and watch closely what happens over the next couple of days, but I don't think I will even need to go on any kind of long-term strict bedrest at this point, which is great news. I will probably need to have pretty limited activity for the next couple of months, so we'll try to find a way to work that out, but that's not nearly as bad as I was thinking it would be.

The pictures, by the way, were taken here in my room during my stay. Seville came to visit me yesterday. Apparently she dressed herself, and arrived completely decked out in poofy pink princess attire with matching shoes and tiara with fuzzy pink embellishments. While she was here, Grandma helped me untangle and braid my hair. She wanted matching braids, so I tried to put little ones in her hair. I couldn't get over how cute they were, so we took pics.

Also, the view from OHSU windows is pretty fun. There are lots of cool cloud things that go on up here, and I've been watching them from my bed (I guess you can see Mt. Hood from other places in my room. Just not the bed).

3!

Seville turned 3 last Sunday! We had a birthday tea party for her on Saturday with family and a few of her little friends. It was so cute. Here are a few pics of the big event:

The happy 3-year old.

Playing with cousin Ashlynn

Wrapped up in her new fairy blanket that Mommy made

The spread: tea, little cookies, scones of various types, Devonshire cream and jam, egg & cress sandwiches, cake.

The rest of the pics can be seen here: