the bewitching hour

Keep those prayers coming. Sylvia still loves to check out the house between midnight and 4. We now have the hernia under control, so this might be the dreaded colic. We are on night 5. Pray it's just a very short temporary phase... You can blame her for the lack of photos since it takes all day to catch up on sleep.

latest diagnosis

Went to the doc today and the latest diagnosis of Sylvia's malady is a hernia.  We will go see a surgeon mid-November.  She likely wouldn't have surgery until she's at least 6 months since there is a risk of complications with the anesthesia for infants.  Interestingly, both her parents had hernias, so I suppose it just runs in the family. 

Unfortunately, when she gets upset, her crying pushes harder on the hernia, which leads to more pain, which means more crying, and the cycle continues.  So, it seems that when she gets upset with anything, it will quickly escalate and we will be challenged to work on learning soothing techniques and how to press the hernia back into its place.  Just the latest challenge in our parenting adventure.

it's ba-ack

Whatever it is that is plaguing little miss doesn't want to be checked out by the doc because it conveniently goes away during business hours and reappears after hours. At least this time we knew what to do. Now if only it would quit reappearing or if it doesn't do that, then be present during the day so the doc can check it out...

malady update

The warm soak seems to have done the trick, so the doc said not an abscess, probably just a clogged gland. Not common in babies, but not as problematic as an abscess. Great news! Saved us a doc visit and potential antibiotics. After soaking Rafa's finger infection last weekend to fix that and now this, I might just start soaking both babies 2x a day as a preventative measure...

maladies

Well, we discovered why we think Miss Sylvia has been a challenge at night. Poor thing has an abscess in her (ahem). Acetaminophen and a warm bath and some quality dad time are helping her snooze a little tonight, just not dad.

little miss is at it again

No full moon last night, so that theory might be out the window. D and I were incapable of getting little miss to decide to sleep, she just wanted more time with mom and dad!

What I don't understand is how she can cry for hours and hours and not get worn out! It seems like at some point she would get tired and sleep, but no.

Here's hoping for a better night tonight. D and I did weather last night emotionally much better than the last really crazy night. I think we're getting better at this baby thing.

weekend in review

Good morning, Dad!  We love having D at home on his Fridays off.

Friday night babysitters loving on the twins while Mom and Dad go out for sushi and ice cream.

Our first attempt at the wrap carrier sling thing.  Supposedly, you can get both babies in there.  That sounds like a visit to the chiropractor.

We always enjoy visits from friends on the weekends.  We didn't take a pic of Jenny who was the target of Sylvia's projectile vomiting.  Sorry!!  One of the hazards of baby holding.

Rafael learning to sleep on his side and not swaddled.

you gotta love these guys

D's an amazing dad.

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Sylvia loves to rest her head on her hands, which Oma loves.

Gong-Gong is getting some man to man time with Rafael.

potential nanny

We had a lady come help out this afternoon that is interested in being our nanny when I go back to work.  Now we're trying to make the big decision between a nanny and daycare.  Any thoughts?

playtime

Checking each other out during tummy time.  Sylvia on the left, Rafael on the right.

 

Sylvia

Rafael

Rafael chillin' after playtime

This is why I have more pics of Rafael than Sylvia...

milestone

Happy 6 weeks yesterday!  To celebrate, for my doc appointment today, I wore my pre-pregnancy jeans.  Woo hoo!!  OK, so I wore a loose shirt over them and didn't button them, but close enough. 

the birth

It was brought to my attention that I didn't blog about the main event.  I'll spare you most of the gory details, but share some of the highlights. 

Here's the timeline:

2:10 pm - After having a sensation that I thought my water was going to break, it did.  My sis-in-law also had that sensation before her water breaking for her twins this spring.  Mother's intuition begins.

2:15 pm - Call D and tell him that I think we need to go the the hospital.  Without asking any questions he packs up to come home.

2:30 pm - D arrives at home and I tell him what happened and that I started bleeding and that I think we should call the doctor.  Obviously, D agrees.  Doc's nurse asks how soon we can be there, I tell her 10 minutes, she says come on in.

2:50 pm - We check in at the doc's office.  Okay, it took us a little more than 10 minutes.

3:30 pm - We see the doctor, everything looks good, still lots of fluid in both sacs, but he does a test and discovers that it is indeed amniotic fluid and that it's time to deliver the babies!

4:00 pm - We arrive at the hospital

4:30 pm - I'm ready for surgery.

5:00 pm - I get wheeled into the operating room.

5:59 pm - Sylvia is born.

6:00 pm - Rafael is born.  D got to watch the doc burst Rafael's sac and the fluid gush everywhere.  He also watched the doctors wrestle Rafael out of me, which was no easy thing.  That boy was happy where he was! 

6:30 pm - I'm in recovery where my parents came to stay with me while D was with the babies.

8:30 pm - I get moved to my private room for the duration of my stay at St. Luke's.
 
It was an amazingly quick process after months and months of waiting.  I really wanted to make it until week 36 for the health of the babies, but I was also very ready to not be pregnant anymore.  Here are a few pics from the big day.

The last pic of the giant belly.

D sporting his fly OR duds.

Sylvia greets the world!

Rafael is here!

It's fun to see them at birth as a reminder of how much they've grown.  Since I see them every day, I don't notice that often, but this is a good reminder.

moon power?

Last week we really thought Sylvia was moving from gas to colic.  Starting on Monday, she would cry during and after the afternoon and evening feedings, which seemed like classic colic symptoms.  It culminated Wednesday, when she cried all night long except for two 20-minute periods of calm when she slept.  D went to work on Thursday and a colleague told him that he might laugh, but her boys never slept when there was a full moon.  Since I had been thinking we were in for months of colic and crying (by both Sylvia and her parents), I was pretty pleased to hear another theory that would only mean one bad spell per month.  Sure enough, we haven't had a night like Wednesday since.  I hesitate to admit it here, for fear of jinxing our run.  Sure, it could be something I ate, or a host of other reasons, but we might just have a werewolf on our hands.  Maybe we should have named her Sylvia Luna Vassar instead of Sylvia Mar Vassar. 

doc update

We went to see the pedi again on Thursday, so the official stats are in.

Rafael - 8 lb. 6 oz. & 21"
Sylvia - 7 lb. 6 oz. & 20"

Rafael testing out the bouncer

Sylvia during morning play time

Rafael doing what he does best

Mom trying to get everything done at once between feedings

tummy time

5 weeks - happy birthday dad!

The kiddos are 5 weeks old today!  And noticeably more awake during the day.  So far, they don't seem to have their days and nights confused.  So far. 

They now sleep in these fun thrones that elevate their heads to try to help their gas/reflux fussiness.

Today is D's actual birthday.  He spent the first few hours of his birthday trying to console Miss Sylvia who was not a happy camper last night.  Happy birthday, Dad!! 

I managed to complete a solo feed today around lunch time and it didn't take 2 hours!!  Success came at 1:20 when I was burping both babies at once, imagine that! and one burped and the other tooted.  Hopefully, that buys me an extra 5 minutes of calm between feeds since they have less gas to expel...  Failure came at 1:22 when Rafael decided to show me how inadequate my diapering job was and a wet spot grew out of his left hip.  Good thing we have ample supply of newborn diapers because that was diaper number 3 for Rafael for that feeding.  Pretty soon I'll be able to change a diaper with my left hand and my eyes closed.

we're due!

Today is the twins' "due date". We celebrated with a walk with Oma.

burping

Funny how we spend so much time every day trying to get our kids to burp after meals when for the rest of their lives, we'll try to get them to stop.

Karen W., we finally got Rafael's eyes for you!  Well, one anyway.

Happy birthday, dad!

D's birthday is Tuesday and we had planned on going out to dinner then, but since we lost our nanny, decided to go out tonight, while his sis-in-law is here helping out. Thanks, Karen!! Tomorrow I might think a nap would have been preferable, but it was really nice to be out. Of course, it's not about me and I know D had a great time. I don't think it's quite hit us how life altering having kiddos is and how hard it will be to have these evenings out. Now that I've reflected, maybe I am cherishing the time out more than a nap. After all, I'll get to nap off and on all night and some tomorrow.

they're 1! (month)

And perhaps more importantly, they're sleeping!! Smiles all around.

it takes a village

I know I'm going to leave about 20 people out, but we are so incredibly grateful for all of the help that we have received from so many wonderful, generous friends and family members that I want to try to give thanks where thanks are due.  If I forgot you, go ahead and leave a shout out to yourself in the comments.  :)

We are incredibly grateful for our families and the support they've given from middle of the night feeds covered by D's mom, meals prepared by Aunt Diane, grocery shopping by Karen, help with feeds and general sanity from my mom, wisdom from afar from Sonja, encouragement and supplies from Andrew and J, a cheery attitude and conversation about something other than babies from our dads, and just plain old love and tolerance while we're a little crazy from all of our family.

Thanks to all the twins moms who have been inspirational and great resources for all my 1,000,000,001 questions, not to mention suppliers of lots of gear: Heather, J, and Cheryl.

Thanks to Karen W. for setting up the meals calendar and coordinating our spectacular church family.  Also to Suzie for getting choir members involved.

Thanks to EVERYONE who has kept us fed.

Thanks to my feeding helpers: D, D's mom, my mom, Candy, Cathy, Karen.

Thanks to Katie for helping with parking at TCH and NICU encouragement and wisdom.

Thanks to all the moms who have gone before me and supplied endless advice, gear, and answers to crazy first time mom questions: Kathleen, Krista, Heather, Ronda, J, Laura, Elana, Cheryl, Sonja, and Larissa.  Please keep answering my phone calls!

Thanks to our excellent pediatrician, Sari, who patiently puts up with me as both a friend and the patient who probably does every single annoying thing that first time moms do to their kids' doc.

Thanks to all of you for reading along and submitting advice and encouragement through your comments.  A special thanks for the sage and particularly uplifting comments from Anonymous.

And I have to say the biggest thanks to D for loving my babies with all his heart, balancing work with his family, and most of all for loving me unconditionally, keeping me sane, and bringing me endless joy.

no more night nanny

We had another not great night with Sylvia last night, which included my spending 30 minutes calming her when the night nanny didn't do anything to try to make her feel better about her tummy problems.  So, this morning when I asked the nanny what we should do differently to make her feel better, it sparked our nanny to offer to quit and refund our money.  So, I accepted.  She then went on a tirade about what a great nanny she is, about how my doctor is terrible, blah, blah, blah, solidifying my feeling good about accepting her offer.  I've struggled with her since the day she started because I've felt like she did everything to cut corners and lied to me about it.  I decided to keep her on because I didn't think she was doing anything to harm my babies, but I also never fully felt like I could trust her or felt like she was doing what was best for my babies.  I know I'll never find nannies who will do everything just the way I want, but I guess I never got over the fact that she lied to me about what she was doing with my babies.  In any case, now the fun REALLY begins!  Somehow, I'm not really stressed about it, so I guess that means it was the right decision.

The moment that was most irritating, was her parting blow.  Let me recap the morning.  I went in to ask her how we should address Sylvia's tummy pain and crying and fussiness because I don't want to go in every night and calm her down.  Nanny then criticized me and my doctor because she has all the experience in the world and knows exactly what's wrong with Sylvia (and why she doesn't do anything to make it better, I don't understand).  Nanny then offered to quit and I accepted.  Nanny then went on a tirade about all the things that she didn't like about working for me (mostly that I get different advice from my doctor than what she's doing, that she's doing her best, and how dare I WATCH her on the video monitor) she ended with: "And I thought you were a Christian, I really did."  Why do people say that?  First, yes I'm a Christian, which means that I recognize that I'm not perfect.  Second, what exactly did I do that was not-Christainlike, even if you're holding me to Jesus' standard?  Would he have not accepted your resignation?  It was your offer?  If you don't want to work for me, why would I talk you into working for me?  So I can have a nanny who doesn't really want to be here?

So, here we go!  Thank goodness David's sister-in-law, Karen is coming for a few days!!  God knew we'd need her tonight.

family pic

This was taken on the 1st, but since it was on our camera and not my phone, it takes a little more effort to download and then upload.

You can see that I've still got the carpal tunnel going, but it seems to be getting a little better.  Doc said that they don't recommend any intervention until after 6 weeks post delivery, which means to me that for most people it probably goes away by 6 weeks.  We are at 4 weeks today, so hopefully in a couple more, it'll be all gone. 

one week in

We have now had both kiddos home for a week. We have improved our game and are moving slightly past survival mode and into some semblance of a routine. I am only calling friends and family about once a day to ask if I should be worried about this or that or how I should handle the latest conundrum.

The biggest excitement of the day was our first family outing. Since I was on bed rest for 2 months, it was especially nice to be outside. I haven't been outside (except for going to and from the car) since July 4 weekend. The sunshine felt spectacular. Fortunately, the weather was probably the best this morning it has been since July 4, too.





We might need to work a walk into our daily routine. Even if it means giving up on doing dishes and eating on paper plates.

And for Karen, we managed to get Sylvia's eyes. They still are premies and aren't awake much, but we catch glimpses here and there.