How to Make Friends...

I lost it yesterday – “it” being my shit. I totally went off on the nurses at the hospital. I don’t have a great reason, so I will blame it on hormones. The other night I was there getting ready to hold the monkeys and I noticed they were getting formula instead of breast milk. I was confused since I had just dropped off a lot of milk. I asked the nurse why she was giving them formula and I was told that she didn’t get the milk thawed in time and “well, I just had to throw out some breast milk because I forgot about it”. Ummmm….excuse me? I work my ass off to produce that crap and it is being forgotten about and then thrown out? What the fuck? I came home and announced that I was DONE pumping and that was final. Which of course irritated my husband.

So – the next morning I just went overboard. I lectured the physical therapist and the Neonatologist, along with the nursing staff listening in. Nice going huh?

Today I am less hormonal, but still irritated…however they are going to appease me and let me try breastfeeding the boys tomorrow. Must have made quite an impression.

Baby Updates

Bitch, bitch, bitch

Today I spent the better part of the day at the hospital with the boys. I swear (and this is NOT all in my head) those nurses think the babies belong to them. When I arrived this morning the Neonatologist on staff told me that Roark would start “nippling” on Friday. I assumed this meant breast feeding, but NO – it does not. They will not let them breast feed because it is too hard for them…nice.

Now how will they ever decide to choose the harder of the two options? Why would they? I wouldn’t. They won’t. But –that is not today’s bitch…that is for another time.
I told the nurses that I wanted to feed him and please let me know what time they plan to do this “nippling” – aka Bottle Feeding. They didn’t know, but said they would let me know how it goes if I miss it. Say what???? Miss it? The hell I will – I am DOING it. When I told her that nobody but me was to feed him, she gave me a deer-in-the-headlights look as if nobody has ever felt that way before. What kind of parents are out there anyway? Doesn’t anyone care to experience the “firsts”? I am in shock. If I show up Friday and Roark has already been fed, I will claim a nurses head as my own. I will place it on a stake and plant it firmly in front of the hospital as a warning to

Strange Days

I am amazed at how many people out there have had similar experiences with premature babies – you are all so sweet – encouraging and supportive…thank you.

It is still hard –because I don’t feel like I had babies. And I hate feeling like a third wheel in the NICU…it is like the babies belong to them and I am just a visitor – an outsider. I am not sure how to explain it, but I don’t feel like I belong there, and I don’t feel like I belong home without them. It is really hard to have no babies at home and I feel – well, lonely. Not so much in the sense that I have no friends or my husband isn’t supportive. I have great friends and my husband is wonderful. I just feel like the babies should be here and without them I am in limbo and feel incomplete.

I know that I will be tired and irritable and tired some more when the boys are home. I will wish for sleep and quiet. I know these things and yet I cannot be happy for the peace and quiet now. Why is that? I need these babies home to feel normal. So strange.

3 years

Dearest husband,

You are the light of my life. You are an icon of patience and understanding.

When I think of our time together, it feels like forever and yet at the same time as if we only met yesterday. I remember so many wonderful times we have had –

- watching lightening in the distance while at Joe’s
- drinking beer, hanging out on that old road in Ft. Worth by Bell Helicopter watching the storm start up
- long lunches downtown involving wine and long conversations about nothing
- Can I kiss you?
- I love you MORE
- The Italian Crab
- This Coke – she’s a so cold
- Long, long phone conversations when you were out of the country working
- Cow ice cream
- Offering the cop tequila after he brought us back the license plate…yikes
- Walking down the snowy street in Whistler in the night – everything blanketed in beautiful snow
- Papa Luigi’s
- Running up that nightmare of a hill in St. Sauveur
- The first time I knew I loved you – watching you walk down the hall at the Manoir Saint-Sauveur. You were wearing Levi’s, a long sleeved white polo shirt, and loafers. My god – you were stunning.
- Our first real vacation together with the girls – St. Croix… “this is hot sand, ooooh oooooh ooooh”
- Our mutual love of music and those fantastic anniversary CDs you make us each year
- Picking out Shiner and Zieggy
- The birth of our boys

I love you so much. I hope that I make you at least a fraction as happy as you do me. You are my reason for living – I cannot imagine my life without you.

I love you babe - Happy Anniversary.

Roar!

Do you know what they say about hormones raging after pregnancy? They are absolutely right – although I don’t really know who “they” is. I am out of control moody these days. Today was ONE OF THOSE DAYS. Everything hacked me off in a big way. I was moody, grumpy, sad, irritated, angry – all of these things rolled into one overweight middle-aged, hormonal woman. Sexy huh?

The boys are doing well. Roark has been the star pupil. Cole has had some set-backs, but is doing better after a blood transfusion Monday night. He was pretty sickly looking and having lots of breathing problems prior to the new blood. They had him back on oxygen, IV fluids, and separated them again – which felt like 10 steps back. He is now off of the oxygen and IV, and they should be back together in a day or two. Amazing what blood does for a body.

I am having a hard time leaving them at the hospital. I feel as if my life is on hold waiting for them to come home. I just don’t feel like I had babies at all. Once a day I get to hold one of the babies and it just isn’t enough to feel like a mom. Someone else feeds them, changes them – I even found out that they have already had their first bath. I couldn’t have been more sad. I missed it. Nurses are raising my boys. I am not part of their “firsts” and I know that because I am going back to work soon that I will miss most of their “firsts” that are upcoming. It makes me sad. How am I going to handle this better? How do you accept this? How can I? It is hard…so hard.

Ignore the giant chest.

Look at all the feet!

Baby, Come Home!

The boys are back together in a crib again – whooohooo! They are so incredibly cute when they are together. Hopefully they will be able to maintain their body temperatures and stay together. They certainly enjoy poking each other’s eyes out! The second the nurse had them together they were all hands and feet all over each other – so cute.

Not much other news for them – they continue to grow and eat and poop and sleep…pretty much all the news we expect over the next month. Not much else for them to do right now…they just need to get bigger and learn to eat on their own so they can come home. I want them home so badly.

12

Twelve. Come on say it with me….TWELVE. That – the number twelve – is the size of freaking jeans that I wear! Holy shit – when did that happen? Only 8 months ago I was in a size 4. Four. FOUR people – four. Again – feel free to join in – HOLY SHIT! Pregnancy is hard on a person. So hard. So big. So much weight to lose.

So – as you can see, I went to buy the first pair of post-pregnancy jeans. I am not quite three weeks post-babies, and am tired of elastic waist everything. So I have now been forced to face the inevitable – the massive amount of weight to be lost. And, I would like to say that it is frightening.

If you are reading this – and you are pregnant, put back that cookie – it WILL catch up with you and you WILL wish you had not eaten it. I am living proof!

No Comfort

I miss my boys.

No amount of time with them is enough.

My heart breaks when I leave them. My heart breaks when they cry, or their alarms sound. My heart breaks when I wake in the night and there are no babies here.

I know that my heart will break when they are home – when they cry, when they are sick, when they are hurt. And yet, there is no comfort in that.

The only comfort I find is when they are in my arms.

Babies!!!!!!

Cole and Roark

When It Rains, It Pours

Saturday I was up at the hospital visiting the most beautiful babies in the world…yes – mine. The nurses in the post-op ward wanted to know how I was feeling since the C-Section, and I mentioned that I was more sore than right after surgery…which they of course thought made no sense. They took a quick look at my incision and freaked the F out. It was swollen – which I thought was normal. It was red – which I thought was normal. And – they thought it was infected. Bummer. So they paged my doctor’s office and his partner called back. He said that I should either go to the emergency room or wait until Monday and see my doctor. Hmmm – lazy doctor? I thought so. Anyway, I didn’t think it was an emergency so we went home.

At 11:00, after pumping, I got up and went into the bathroom and the incision sort of exploded and began leaking red fluid all over the freaking place. It was like my water had again broken! I was a little shocked, scared, and freaked out. So, we went to the emergency room where they again paged my doctor’s office. The same lazy partner called back and said to start me on antibiotics and sent me home with instructions to return if I got a fever or the drainage turned yellow or green and thick.

Sunday morning brought with it fever and yellow nasty drainage out of this little hole in my stomach. So gross. So, so gross. We again returned to the emergency room, where the infamous lazy doctor – hereby named Dr. Death, finally decided to make his grand entrance. He stuffed a cotton swab in the incision and instructed me to do the same every four hours. He wanted me to: take a 12 inch long cotton swab covered in hydrogen peroxide and stick it in my incision every four hours. So we went home and followed directions. OHMYGOD the pain.

Monday I went in for a follow up with Dr. Death at 2:15pm. One look at the incision and he announced that I needed surgery. NOW. I was sent to the hospital, checked in, and at 5:30 was in surgery to clean out the abscessed mess. I woke up to an open wound, cut hip to hip, stuffed full of gauze. That is correct – they DID NOT SEW IT SHUT. I was totally drugged up and still hurting. I went to take a shower Tuesday morning (so much pain) and when I looked in the mirror I almost passed out from the grossness of the open, gaping wound.

Yesterday they put a Freedom V.A.C wound pump that covers the mess and applies negative pressure to suck out all the grossness. It then puts all the drainage in a little pump thing that I carry around with me, like a walkman. Odd looking thing…but it beats them shoving gauze inside my wound every four hours. And it doesn’t hurt as much as the open incision. And the best part – they let me go home. So, I am now home and quite happy to be here.

The Most Wonderful Father in the World

I watch you sleeping. Eyebrows raise, skin wrinkles, and muscles strain as you try to open your never-before-opened tiny eyes. Your legs are outstretched – long, skinny, covered in old-man skin. Your knees, your feet, are so small that they are hidden by a mere adult finger. Your tiny chest moves up and down as you concentrate on breathing. At times, it is still. These are the times when the alarms sound and the nurses hurry to remind you to breathe before your heart slows down. Something we all take for granted.

My boys are so small. They are so fragile. Their heads, their hands, their whole bodies are the tiniest little parts I have seen. I am amazed and frozen scared all in the same moment – every moment in their presence. Their tiny little behinds are so cute that I could pinch them. Their toes so sweet that I could gobble them up. No – my husband won’t let me eat the babies. He says they need all their parts. I suppose he is right – but MY GOD, THE CUTENESS!

The hospital has a program called Kangaroo Care. This is when the parents unbutton their shirts and hold the baby skin-to-skin for at least an hour. It is the most wonderful hour imaginable to any parent. Holding our babies makes us hopeful and happy and feel so close to them that it makes it unbearable to think of leaving them there and going home for the evening. Yesterday while Kangarooing my wonderful husband read the boys their first book – The Cat in the Hat. I almost cried. OK – I cried…but quietly. It was amazing to see him so content, to watch him hold his son and shut out the whole world to everything but the two of them. He could not have looked happier. I was in awe and cannot imagine loving him one ounce more than I did at that moment. As we left the hospital he said that it is so hard leaving them. I certainly have that feeling down.