My Story Pre-Miami

Kari asked a whole ton of questions about "how I did it" with the twins in the newborn stage. So I thought I'd write out my story for anyone who was curious.

Warning: I have been told when I have recounted this story, to those who have asked, it comes of overly negative and it sounds like I'm convincing people to never have children. That is not true. It was freaking hard and it deserves an accurate account rather than some glossed over version. That's like saying that for my thesis, I ran a few experiments, stayed in a lab a bit, and wrote a little book, but it was no big deal really.

The very beginning. We wanted babies, doctors said "no can have babies" because I have what is called non-obese polycystic ovarian syndrome. Choices, roll the dice on mother nature and hope I get knocked up before I'm 40, try fertility treatments starting with the easiest and work my way up, do in vitro, adopt. I decided to take door #2. Started with the treatments. They sucked, big time. Almost 2 years of these sadistic pills (I had mutliple different cocktails over the time period), we decided to up the level and start with the injectables. This required me to shoot myself in the stomach with a needle and do all other sorts of stuff, including going to the doctor every other day (oh and by the way, my insurance covered none of this). Low and behold, the first time I did the injectables, it worked. I got preggo and found out there were twins. I was shocked at first but then relieved there were only 2 and not 10. So, almost 3 years and about 10k later, we had our babies.

Babies came out, my daughter was too small and had low blood sugar so she went to the NICU. My son came out a full pound heavier than estimated and drank 2 ounces of formula an hour after birth. The nurses could not believe it and one of them even took a picture of him with the empty bottle, they had never seen it before.

After they cut my babies out of me, I lost a tremendous amount of blood and according to my OB, my insides were pretty banged up from the whole heck of a lot of baby I was carrying in there for 37.5 weeks. During recovery, my temperature plummeted and I passed out (I had no blood). I don't remember much but I remember waking up with heating blankets on top of me, nurses around me, and monitors beeping. Apparently I was a few seconds away from a tranfusion but I stablized in time.

In days following their recovery, I was in bad shape. Very bad shape. I was very weak, grey-ish pale, and was having a reaction to the pain killers. I was told that all I could take was Rx Motrin because of my reaction to the narcotics. Might as well have taken sugar pills. I also had terrible gas pains, not like the kind coming out of my rear, but the kind that localizes in your shoulders and chest causing not stop stabbing sensations.

For 3 nights in the hospital, I slept only 4 hours because I was crying in pain or my heart was racing so fast from all the stupid narcotics I was coming off of. While in the hospital I only held my babies about 5 or 6 times. Totally my fault. We had guests, and I mean guests. At one point in time there were over 20 people in my hospital room. Everyone wanted to hold them, everyone wanted to feed them, I just laid in my bed too weak to stand up and watched. I tried breast feeding, my son wouldn't latch because he was pissed there wasn't anything coming out, My daughter latched right away and was textbook breastfeeding. I pumped once every 2 hours around the clock trying to convince my milk to come in.

We got home and the parade didn't end. People people people. First grandchildren on both sides of our family, everyone wanted to see. I thought I wanted that, I didn't. My milk finally came in the 4th day home from the hospital so a full week after they had been born. I attempted breast feeding again but had visitors all the time. I put away my breast feeding goals because I was too afraid to ask people to leave the room so I could work on it. I was going to breast feed the twins, I went to classes, I learned how to tandem feed. My daughter had a great latch, but none of it ever happened how I wanted it to. Which is why, to this day my favorite piece of advice for new mom's "Lower your expectations" (thanks Trish).

Then the hormones hit. No one tells you how hard the hormones are post-birth, no one told me how hard TWIN hormones would be, two placentas equal double hormone loss and swells. They are devestating. I couldn't talk, I cried when I was finally left alone, I was in constant pain. I didn't even know who my babies were because I rarely got to hold them. I thought I had to keep the grandparents and relatives happy. I loved the nights because no one was around but me and my husband and I would flick on my cell phone light so I could actually see what my babies looked like.

During the day, I sat in bed, supplied the milk and watched some more. I pumped and fed breast milk from bottles but had to supplement with formula also. I couldn't make enough for both and my son was unbelievably hungry. But, I did it for 3.5 weeks. Every 2-3 hours, I'd get out the machine, hook it up and pump for 20-30 minutes (while people waited upstairs and I got to close the door). Then I'd take the milk, pour it into bottles, add formula on top, the troops would come back down and feed the babies, which took about 30 minutes for them to eat (had to burp about every 0.5 to 1 ounce). Then, change diapers, play for 5 minutes during the day, and put them back into bed.

For 2 full weeks, I never left our downstairs bedroom. I couldn't walk up the stairs and was too weak to go out. I was trapped in that room, sleeping only about 2 or 3 hours a day. I couldn't go anywhere even if I had the strength, I was their source of food. At 2 weeks I went to my doctors appointment. She was worried, I weighed less then my pre-pregnancy weight and was very swollen. I was frail because the babies took everything from me, I had been eaten alive. I went back to my room, and made it up the stairs for the first time 4 weeks after I had had the babies. After my 2 week checkup, the next time I left the house was for my 6 week check up and I almost passed out in the parking lot and then again in the waiting room, stupid blood still hadn't recovered.

Back to the breast feeding. At 3.5 weeks, I stopped giving them breast milk (in this mean time, when no one was around (except the husband), I would get a latch. If I had only been more alone and had a son that wasn't starving all the time, breast feeding would have been easier, but my son would never latch, he was just too impatient for food)). I developed both mastitis and thrush. I had a fever of 102.8 and was not keeping much down. The thrush felt like piano wires were being inserted into my breasts and I just couldn't put the pumps on any longer. I suffered through engorgment cold turkey by laying in a tub of warm water with frozen bags of pees on my chest 5 times a day for 4 days and nights. [short answer, most of the time pumped breast milk and formula for 3.5 weeks, then all formula after that]

After 3.5 weeks, the babies got all formula on a 3 hour schedule 24 hours a day. During the day, if someone I trusted was at the house, we fed them together to keep them on the same schedule, if I was alone, I would either prop them up with towels and a boppie and put a bottle in each hand, feeding them on either side of me or I would stagger their feeding schedule by 30 minutes. My son was always hungry though and would often eat on a 2 hour schedule while my daughter would eat on a perfect 3 hour schedule. During the nights, my wonderful husband and I slept on the fold out couch in that bottom bedroom and fed every 3 hours during the night. It would take 1 hour to heat up the bottles, feed, burp, change diapers, swaddle and get them back in bed. So then we would all sleep for 2 hours and start over.

Then colic started. One night, out of the blue, my daughter curled up in a ball and just started screaming. We both panicked and didn't know what to do. In about 2 hours, she finally stopped and fell asleep. 3 days later, our son started doing the same thing. I knew what it was but I would not admit it. I knew it was colic but thought no God on this earth would be that cruel to give me twins with colic. He was. At their 8 week, doctors appointment, I brought my cry log sheet and our doctor diagnosed them with colic. An actual diagnosis yippee.

She gave me some drops to try to sedate them and all it did was make them vomit. So, until they were 11.5 weeks old, my husband and I endured colic. Hours of screaming and doing the 5 S's from Happiest Baby on the Block. I sat upstairs in our bathroom with our daughter, swaddled on her side with a pacifier in and a hair dryer (the only noise that would stop her from screaming). My husband was down stairs doing his best with our son until 8:20pm. For some reason, at 8:20pm, all the madness would stop. We'd put them in their cribs for 40 minutes run upstairs and do chores and then we'd feed them at 9:00pm, 12am, 3am, 6am......

Then at around 12 weeks, God said, ok, sorry about that, I just gave you infertility, twins, a difficult surgery and recovery, mastitis, thrush, a ripped stitch and colic. For your patience, Job, I will let your babies sleep through the night. And then there was bliss. Or Baby Wise really worked. Who knows.

When I went back to work, I was a zombie. I couldn't function. I was still weak and my head was foggy. The whole time I was at work my mind was constantly thinking about the babies, phone calls got missed, I booked a meeting in a very wrong room, I missed a deadline, important emails wouldn't get answered, it was bad. Even with all of that I still was barely working. After starting daycare, the babies were constantly sick. So I would work 1 day, get a call saying that one of them had a fever and have to miss the next day. Go back to work, the other one would now have a fever, miss the next day. I only went back to work 6 weeks and in those 6 weeks I worked a total of 14 days. Then, I learned we were moving to Miami, Florida.

Mid-October both babies got really sick as well as my husband and I. Fever, coughing, tons of snot, it was terrible. My daughter slowly recovered but my son just wouldn't seem to get better. I had quit work and was staying at home taking care of him b/c he was just so lethargic and ill, he'd have good days and bad days, but I figured he was just recovering. We found a house in Miami in 2 days, had a goodbye party, life was a whirlwind, but my son just never seemed to get well.

After a week, bad went to worse and he wasn't keeping any food down. I'm sure most of you know the story already but here it is again. I took him to the doctor on Tuesday. The doctor I saw told me it was just a bad cold and when I mentioned it might be RSV, she actually told me that I was spending too much time on the internet and he'd be fine. Took him home, he got worse, a lot worse.

Took him back on Thursday, our regular pediatrician saw him and was concerned. He had a double ear infection and she said she could hear some wheezing but it may just be left over from the cold. We did some breathing treatments and she sent us home and said to keep an eye on him. Friday, I brought him back, he was bad, he could barely hold his head up and hadn't kept anything down in days. The minute she walked in the door our pediatrican's eyes doubled in size. She examined him for about 2 minutes and ordered chest x-rays. Diagnosis, bronchiolitis and pneumonia. Antibiotics, breathing treatments and a machine we took home with us.

That night, halloween night, in his crib, my son stopped breathing. I heard whimpering over the monitor that stopped abruptly. I went to check on him and he was just laying there, eyes fixed open. I grabbed him, slapped his back and he took a rattley breath finally and I rushed him to the emergency room. His pulse ox was 89 and his new x-rays showed that part of his lung had collapsed. He got oxygen and was on Q3. The next day, Nov. 1, my husband left us to start his new job in Miami. I was alone, but thanks to my mama who came in, my daughter, who was sick too, was being taken care of at home while I was in the hospital. 4 days in the hospital, 4.5 lbs lighter, and a mom who hadn't showered, we finally came home.

A week later, movers and packers came to our house. I moved out to my mother in law's house where the babies slept in pack & plays and recovered from their illnesses. 3 weeks later, we flew to Miami and started life here.

The first 5-6 months were a bit rough on this ol' gal...

As I look back, I can't believe it's about to be October again. That month (well the last 2 and the first 2 of November) will always be stuck in my mind as one of the worst months of our lives. We got through it but I never ever ever, want to go through any of that again.