This is the third time I've accompanied Chloé to her room, pulled down the blinds halfway and told her she could play a little but to go to sleep for a while. And it's worked! She played for about 3 minutes and then went to sleep. Wow. It makes me wonder if I could have spared myself all those times I held her in my arms in a dark room singing "Itsy Bitsy Spider" over and over - or did we have to go through that to get here?

Generally, though, Chloé is a good sleeper. The first year of her life she woke up every two hours in the night and only slept for brief intervals during the day, but once we established a single day nap, she slept, wherever we were. Even at a friend's house, much to the despair of the other mother whose son wouldn't sleep a wink and would kick and scream until let out of his room.

Mia and Aidyn seem to be following the same pattern: a few mini sleeps a day now. Unfortunately by the time they've established their afternoon nap time, Chloé won't be sleeping at all anymore. Luckily I don't need much sleep...

Mobilization

Mia has started rolling. Unfortunately she only rolls in one direction and so is a victim of Newton's First Law: an object will continue to move in the same direction unless acted upon by an outside force (the DVDs, the couch, Aidyn's head).

The two of them kick each other, steal each other's toys, hold hands, hug. But it all seems unintentional, good or bad. Either way I want to foster friendship. Right now they're looking at each other and cooing enthusiastically. That's encouraging.

Mia is also getting her first tooth. As I probably mentioned in posts about Chloé, this is VERY early for our family. But at any rate, I don't know whether to attribute her periodic discontent to teething or just general infant grouchiness. So I give her the homeopathic sugar balls [placebo??], a cuddle and her binky. She calms down for a few minutes and she's off again.

Interrupted

This was my night.

"Waah!" Baby #1. Alarm clock says 1:07.

Then "Waah!" Baby #2.

Milk all around.

Back to bed. All four of us (daddy included).

"oooaaaiiihhh." Baby #1 is...singing.

Love-love-love. Baby #1 is sleeping.

Baby #2 is coughing.

Into the baby room. Salt water in the nose. Seems better. No need for cough medicine.

Back to bed.

Sleep!

Am I asleep? Possibly.

Door slamming. Pitter-patter-pitter-patter. Our door opening. Slamming. Pitter-patter-pitter-patter. Toddler into the bed.

I am no longer sleeping.

I might be sleeping.

Scratch-scratch-scratch. On the bed. The cat.

Oh-my-fucking-Christ. Someone's gonna die. Felinicide (?) is probably not a crime, relatively speaking.

Instead the cat gets thrown out of the room. Door closed. No cat, no crime.

I might be sleeping.

"Wehn, wehn." Baby #1. Not a cry, just a whimper.

Binky to the rescue.

Baby #1 is sleeping.

I'm sleeping.

Scratch-scratch-scratch. On the door.

FUCKING CAT.

Cat is thrown into the hallway. Door closed.

Again. And again.

I am sleeping.

Scratch-scratch-scratch. On the door. Alarm clock says 5:45.

Daddy gets up.

I am sleeping. Until 6:15.

The day has begun again.

Now is Now, Part 2

I know what I'm talking about here. Two and a half years ago I tried to have my first baby "naturally" and she just wouldn't come out. Labor failed to progress.

Four months ago I experienced the same thing. After about twelve hours of what I felt were fairly uncomfortable contractions, the midwife and doctor told me again that labor wasn't progressing and we needed stronger contractions. My mind said, "Uuhhh, stronger?" My head nodded and my mouth smiled and said, "Okay." A few hours later we hadn't come very far (a centimeter?) and decided on an epidural. A few hours after that I had a fever of 40° C (104° F) and the doctor said, "Okay, let's take them out." So much for natural.

Not long after that I was lying on the operating table looking over at the two babies they had surgically removed from my body. Neither was moving or crying and they were pumping air into the first one and bouncing the other around. The first one had blue feet. I thought, "Yeah, blue is not right." But I had a high fever and was numb from the waist down, what could I do? After a few minutes they put the little girl on my chest so my attention was focussed on her. She seemed okay to me. But then they were both taken to children's intensive care and I went to operative intensive care because we all had an infection of some sort and they weren't breathing properly.

They let me go to the maternity ward later that day but the babies stayed in intensive care for two and a half weeks. Not because they were too small or too young like many twins; they were each three kilos and it was two days before the due date. Because they got sick in the womb. He breathed some baby shit [meconium] and needed a while to get it all out and get his lungs in shape. She needed a little care but mostly stayed because he stayed.

I was wheeled down to them the first few days and sauntered over the next few to bring pumped milk and visit for minutes or hours, depending on the state of things there. Then I moved into a room near the ward for a week and a half to easily visit and nurse. And bond, assumably.

But it was very difficult to find my place in their lives there. The nurses are the moms, making the decisions and giving the care. Like I said, I nursed. And not always. Half of the time they were fed before I got there. And nights were incredibly difficult since they were uneasy at night, eating often and not sleeping well, and I was so tired from the last months of twin pregnancy and the 24 hours of labor (not to mention the subsequent illness) that I fell asleep some nights at 7:30 and let them feed them until early morning.

Now four months later we're a big mostly happy family at home. One baby has slept through the night several times, the other sleeps in at least three hour intervals. We nursed well for two months. Then I got lazy (honestly nursing twins is not the picnic that it is with one baby...but more on that in another post) and now they're getting mostly industrial milk and some breast milk.

They smile and laugh. They kick and grab and roll. They only cry when they're hungry and when they're frustrated. They are good, happy babies. In spite of all the "unnatural" influences and the intervention of modern medicine.

The new me

Actually it's the same organizationally-challenged me as before, but with a goal. That's right, I've got a Goal. An Objective. A Plan.

Well, "plan" is going a little overboard. Just ask Gaetan; he thinks the words "plan" and "I," spoken by me, don't belong in the same sentence.

But I digress.

In our writers' group a couple of weeks ago, we set goals. It was great. Little goals, big goals, near goals, far goals. Realistic goals, unrealistic goals. You get the picture.

So a few of my goals were about blogging. This blog. Writing something, ANYTHING, in this blog.

Thank goodness someone has taken charge and kicked me in the butt.

Thank goodness that person was me.

Again, digression. But really, as the title states, this post is about ME so we'll all just have to get through the digression and babbling.

My first goal is to inform you, Reader, that I will be posting regularly. Of course, "regularly" could be once a year, but I'm going for at least every two weeks, hopefully every week. Really I have enough stuff to write every day, but my organization and time-management dysfunction restricts me.

I'll be writing quite a bit about my family life with three children, two cats and one husband. I'll try to get some cultural commentary in. And I'll try not to be too positive, too negative, too hostile or too kind. Or I'll be all of those.

I look forward to sharing with you! So much has happened recently, I hardly know where to start. Probably in the middle. I'm sure it will be soul searching and soul soothing for all of us.

If you should feel compelled to comment at any time, please do! We'll interact. It'll be great.

Til next time...

Now is now

I've been reading a lot about giving birth lately, and I find it funny to hear again and again how disappointed women are to not be able to give birth "naturally" (and this refers to everything from painkillers or epidural to induction to c-section). A new opportunity for disappointment with twins is to not have the chance to bond with the first baby before the second one comes (or even if the second one isn't imminently on the way, and the doctor takes the first quickly to do all the necessary health checks).

And I have to say, "Huh?!" I'm sure it's lovely to have that first bonding session, to attempt nursing, to just check each other out, but isn't the health and safety of the baby priority? I had my first by c-section and although they were so thoughtful as to put her up next to my head for about 10 seconds, I didn't see her again for 2 hours. And we seem to have bonded alright. Nursing went fine. So I have to say that although those first few minutes can be an emotional and relaxing time, they are a luxury that you may not get depending on the circumstances.

Women should be careful of disappointment because it can easily lead to depression. If the birth hasn't gone as you expected, it's important to accept the outcome and enjoy your baby as you would if you'd pushed him out yourself. It's not "unnatural" birth. It's modern. Live in the now. We're lucky to have so many possibilities to get through this extreme situation without (or with very limited) danger to us and our babies.

Nine months ago

Nine months ago we thought, "Hey, let's have another baby. It's what we want. We can do it." Chloé was a year and a half old, that would make the age difference two years and three months, the same as between my sister and me. Chloé was a good baby: happy, healthy, more or less agreeable.

So we did what we had to do to instigate this plan, and low and behold, we were instantly (well, within one month) successful! I pretty much knew I was pregnant when I didn't get my period, and a pregnancy text confirmed it, albeit with a weak positive. I also started to feel other common symptoms. But one didn't strike me until later: I was incredibly hungry, and I had to eat all the time, or else collapse in energylessness. They say, though, that every pregnancy is different, and you can't compare the second to the first. So I figured, that's how it is this time. Okey-dokey.

So I made an appointment with my gynecologist, for two weeks later. During those two weeks I somehow managed to instill in myself the fear that I wasn't pregnant at all (recalling the home pregnancy test) and was just having a freak month. Looking back, I have no idea how I did this. I was so nervous at that appointment that I checked the pregnancy test in the garbage in the lab to make sure that my doctor wasn't going to laugh at me in the next few minutes. Alas I saw a firm positive. Whew!

So into the doctor's office I went, was congratulated and then brought to the dignity-eradicating stirrupped chair to allow the doctor to search for a tiny embryo implanted in my uterus. I have to say: my doctor LOVES ultrasounds. In the books I read, they try to document pregnancy without ultrasound unless there's some problem they don't understand. Not so for me. I'm ultrasounded every time I walk into the exam room. Maybe it's because I have private rather than state health insurance..?

At any rate, on we went to the ultrasound - internal, of course. Still relatively innocuous compared with some of the stuff done in a gynecologist's office. She's maneuvering her wand around (yikes) and we're both watching the screen. As a layman I don't feel particularly comfortable reading and commenting on what appears on that screen, and I know that with every movement of the wand, what you see changes. So when I saw two darker areas about a centimeter in diameter, I thought, oh, shit, two?! and then, no, it's just the same one twice. Until I saw her looking at me with a funny little smile as she asked, "Are you seeing what I'm seeing?" and I thought again, shit.

Apparently it was two. At that point I started to feel a little suffocated. But I was stuck on that table fixed by a wand attached to the machine with the screen displaying those two dark areas. Trapped. So I tried to breathe. "There are two. Congratulations," my ever-considerate doctor said.

Breathe, I reminded myself.

"This is good - here you see they each have their own amniotic sac and Dudelsack," she tells me. Dudelsack? Did she say "Dudelsack?" German for "bagpipe?" My two new dark spots have their own bagpipes? So I can expect some hardcore Scottish tunes in the next months?

"Is it okay that the white areas are different sizes?" I asked. They were. I was trying to concentrate. Surely she didn't say "Dudelsack."

"Yes - you can see the Dudelsacks are the same size, so I think that won't have any effect on the embryo." It still sounded a lot like Dudelsack. Focus. "This is good. They both have their own environment and their own placenta, she continued. "So there are fewer complications and a better chance for survival for both."

So definitely two sets of bagpipes?

Later I had the chance to look up this word. It's "Dottersack," or yolk sac. Pretty close to Dudelsack.

And now we're 39 weeks pregnant with twins, waiting for them to make their move.