Julia

Muchness

After an absolutely great night (I love it when Caroline and Edward just wake up to eat and then fall promptly asleep again) I was all ready to go on an excursion today. The library maybe or even the Y. I had somehow forgotten that we belong to the Y until someone here suggested using the indoor track at a university and I thought, hey! indoor track! I wonder if we're still... and we are. Very good suggestion.

Which brings me to the subject of unsolicited advice and the apologies that almost always accompany it. Please don't. I mean, please don't apologize if you think of something and want to put it up here. Although I get the concept of assvice, I don't really. It seems to me that if I mention Edward's weak latch and you think oh! the nipple shield helped me with that and leave this fact in the comment section there are only a few possibilities: I have never heard of a nipple shield and I try it; I have heard of it and do not want to try it for some reason; or I have already tried it and it did not work for me. In any case it was a nice thought and if it is not relevant to me, personally,it probably can help someone else here (I did by the way try a nipple shield with Edward as a result of a comment [plus the lactation consultant had said it might be a good option] and it did help - so many thanks. Colicmommy, for another example, left two thoughtful and much appreciated comments recently in which she talked about general baby behavior around six weeks and what helps them to fall sleep or be soothed. In theory I have done this all before but in reality I never figured out how to get Patrick to sleep so I have no idea what the hell I am doing this time around either. When she mentioned that babies around this age can no longer just fall asleep without a little help it was like someone turned on the lights for me. I moved naps out of the living room and into the bedroom and as a result things are much calmer here during the day. Granted some days are spent going back and forth into one room or another to rock somebody, but it is better. So thank you and any time you want to make a suggestion about something feel free.

Where was I? Oh right, not going to the Y today because it is -4 degrees outside. You know what sucks? The only thing I did any research on whatsoever before having Caroline and Edward was infant car seats. Since Patrick is still in his big ol' side-impact-safe-booster-seat we needed to find baby seats that were slim enough to fit in the back seat with it. Two bog standard Graco's, for example, were too wide. So I looked online and discovered that the Chicco Keyfit 30 was narrower than other seats and bought two and they all do squeeze in back there, barely (we have a mid-size SUV, by the way, if you are trying to proactively deal with something similar). What I completely failed to consider, however, is that hauling two car seats around is painful. On my first and last trip to Target (just before the pediatrician appointment from hell, actually) I learned that you cannot fit two car seats into one shopping basket. Further, I learned that the Keyfit does not snap into the elevated part of a shopping basket at all. So I put heavy Edward's seat in the basket, the stuff I wanted to buy under the basket, and I carried Caroline around. I have not chosen to repeat this experiment because it hurt. My shoulder ached and I got bruises on the back of my leg where I kept hitting the seat against myself as I walked. The alternative to this is to take the babies out of the seats and put them into the stroller in the parking lot, but when it is this cold out that is simply insane if it is not absolutely necessary. I brooded on this dilemma for a while and finally remembered the snap n' go stroller base thing into which you can snap infant seats. It arrived yesterday and I was quite pleased until we discovered that the Keyfit does not work with it. So that was that and I continue to be stuck here. Unless you can think of something.

Edward is definitely seeing more. I dug the box of Patrick's baby stuff out of the basement and decided to try his old mobile on Edward's crib (nobody ever actually sleeps in the cribs but I like to keep sticking them in there for variety). Patrick never cared for it but Edward was entranced. He lay there with his head going back and forth as the mobile went around, watching for a very long time while the dangling things spun. He also seems to like the baby mirror I pulled out, so clearly he has some vision. Oh, and two days ago he looked directly at Caroline and smiled at her. This would have been an awwwww hand on your heart moment but for the fact that Caroline was screaming her head off at the time. Edward's first actual smile and it was malicious. At least we have identified which one is the sinister twin.

The thing with the cysts (for what it is worth but if my eye doctor sources are correct it is unlikely that any of you will deal with anything similar - iris cysts are rare, I hear) is this: they will not ever go away but they should also not get any bigger. The eyes, however, do get bigger so as the eye grows the impact of the cysts diminishes. Right now the cysts in Edward's eyes are blocking light to the retina but as he grows more and more light gets through. Our follow-up appointment in a month is to see (ahem) if he is getting enough light through on his own or if we will need to dilate his pupils with daily drops to widen them artificially. The absolute worst case scenario is that they would have to aspirate them at some point, which really is not that bad. So, I am not worried about it. And... how to say... you just have to deal with what you get. If Edward has vision problems then Edward will learn how to live with that. You have a baby and you want everything about them and for them and around them to be perfect perfect perfect but that isn't reality. He'll be fine, regardless.

Patrick starts FULL DAY KINDERGARTEN tomorrow (clang clang clang, as the steeple bells ring and the villagers cheer) so I am going to go appreciate his afternooness while I still can.

Baby pictures:

Caroline is amused

Edward is sleepy

Hope you are well.

   

Trickier

In the past week Caroline and Edward have woken up, so to speak, and while it is a lot of fun to see them suddenly realize that there is a whole world out here; it is time consuming to be the wizard of that world. It is not as if they are suddenly hideously difficult or I am now doing that much more for them - they have just started needing to be relocated every few minutes when they are awake or they sort of... cruss (not quite crying but more aggressive than fussing - nice coinage, eh? EH? oh well). And while I know that they do sleep I cannot seem to pinpoint an hour or so during the day that they actually are sleeping. So that's what I have been up to lately - nothing; but it is a nothing that shifts with a baby or two in my arms from the living room to the kitchen to the laundry room ad infinitum.  

While Caroline was still in the NICU being fattened and Edward and I were maternity ward squatters, I would eat almonds and watch him sleeping peacefully in his hospital bassinet and wonder why in the bloody hell I had never just put the Infant Patrick DOWN. For some reason that I could no longer understand I carried Patrick everywhere with me. Seeing that Edward was perfectly content and yet not touching me in any way, I concluded that I must've been a moron, back in the day, not to realize how much easier it is to decant the baby every now and then. The first five weeks with C&E only served to cement this impression. I could wrap them tightly (or not! they weren't particular) in a stolen hospital blanket (the first textile manufacturer to make blankets of this size and weight available through retail will make a fortune - in the interim, hospital blankets will get taken by the cognoscenti who realize so-called receiving blankets are too small to be useful. necessity makes criminals of us all) and just walk away. They would stare or sleep or... I don't even know what they would do. That was the point. They were in the Pack n' Play and I was online ordering groceries. I got a lot done and I contemplated the outline for a book I clearly had time to write, working title - Parenting Twins: My God, How Easy It Is.

These past several days, though... wow. I am willing to cut the 2002 me a little slack. I probably carried Patrick around all the time because if I put him down he would cry. It was like his newborn brain constructed a flowchart in which every activity path except breastfeeding defaulted to misery. Edward and Caroline are a little more tolerant (so far) in that they do not need to be nursing twenty-four hours a day but they certainly have developed a preference for being pressed to my body. Or, failing that, for being shifted from the swing to the floor to a Boppy to the Day-Glo playmat to the etc. Well, Caroline likes the mat. Edward does not care for it so much, probably because he cannot see. At all, possibly, we think, if his follow-up appointment with the pediatric ophthalmologist is to be believed.

Is there a word that means "blind" but conveys that the blindness is a condition caused by iris cysts crowding the pupil and blocking the path of light going to the optic nerve but that it should resolve itself soon and that it might not even be blindness so much as an intense fuzziness?

I would be more concerned but for the fact that when I was rolling around on the floor with Patrick a few weeks ago we wound up in a beam of sunlight which caused Patrick's pupil to contract just at a moment when I was quite close to him. I realized that the margin between his iris and pupil is weird looking in both eyes - like Edward's although much less obvious. I brought him with me to Edward's appointment and casually mentioned this to the doctor who whipped out her whaddyacallit flashlight eye scope thing and checked him.

"No," she said, "no cysts."

"Really?" I asked. "Six o'clock in the right eye?"

So she pulled down the, um, thing that looks like a parking meter sort of, and looked again.

"Leave it to mom," she said. "Both eyes. But much fewer than Edward has."

A few days later I finally pinned Steve down in good light and studied his eyes to confirm my suspicion that all inherited problems stem from him. And guess what? Three for three.

As Patrick said, "The boys in our family all have cool eyes."

So I am not too worried that Edward will stay this Magoo'ish forever, but I do tend to look at him looking at things and wonder: what does he see? Color? Light vs. dark? Anything? Can he tell that I am smiling at him? Does he know that I think he is so cute I want to inhale him with my nose, my nose right here? You think I would have asked the ophthalmologist what she thinks the extent of his vision is right now but I was so busy doing my I Was Right About Patrick's Cysts dance that I forgot.                  

In other news, Edward is a total fatty and Caroline smiled at me for the very first time this morning, a big gummy grin. My heart pooled onto the floor.   

Hospitalized No More

I think what I felt so guilty about was not the fact that Caroline was sick, but that she was SO sick and I did not realize it and I felt like I should have. In the span of about three hours I answered questions about her condition from: the pediatrician's assistant, his nurse, the pediatrician, one of his partners, the paramedic, the ER nurse, the ER respiratory doctor, ditto that nurse, the ER admitting physician, the floor nurse, a third year med student, the resident and the attending physician. When I confessed for the tenth time that yes, she was wheezing; yes, she was lethargic; yes I suppose her suddenly copious spitting up could indeed be called "vomiting"; yes I DO see the way her ribcage is retracting now that you point it out... I felt like a two inch moron. I would, I swear it, I WOULD have brought her in to the doctor that day if we did not have her one month already scheduled, but it was hard to ignore the fact that I clearly should have brought her in the day before.

So I felt terrible about it until I read your comments sharing similar stories. Why I should find comfort in the fact that we are all neglectful bastards I do not know, but I truly did. So thank you. I was particularly relieved to see that I am not the first person to leave the doctor's office in an ambulance. That dramatic element had really been bothering me.

Hey speaking of thanks, I no longer remember who urged me to read "To Say Nothing of the Dog" but a big WOW! to you. I have had this book in my purse since before I had the babies and I finally started it in the emergency room. Love it, completely charming. Thank you. PS What in the bloody hell is a bird stump?

Edward is squawking again. Poor thing, he feels really lousy. I should go, REDBOOK post up if you want to read it.

Oh, and this is my public apology to Eli Manning for all the mean things I have ever said or thought about him since he refused to go to the Chargers: well played, young Manning, well played.

I think somehow the entire Giants Defense should have been MVP instead (maybe just Strahan?) but when Eli needed to get a touchdown he managed to do it; and even as Steve and I were predicting an interception on that last drive we were cheering him on. What a great Superbowl that was - hard not to love an upset. Steve kept listlessly saying "Go Packers" during the first three quarters - rather pathetic, actually.

Back later.   

PS Awww, I love it when you guys try to cheer me up with the gift of laughter. Just to clarify, though, in response to this "you're an idiot..bring your other child and exposing him to germs...no wonder God made it so difficult for you to have a baby, he realized what a loser you are": my unsupported theory has always been that Steve's translocation was caused by Marrakesh. But I suppose the God's Loser Punishment proponents might have their point, too.

Honestly, bringing Edward to the hospital was not ideal. But when you have two primarily breastfed newborns and one is hospitalized, what is ideal?    

Sick Baby

Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition. Nobody expects to leave their one-month Well Baby check in an ambulance. Post up (such as it is) at REDBOOK but the short version is that Caroline has something akin to RSV and has been hospitalized. Also, I am quite possibly the worst mother in the entire fucking world.

The good news is Steve brought me some much needed stuff this morning so that I am no longer wearing those pre-pregnancy jeans that don't quite fit but were adequate for a quick trip to the pediatrician's office when I wanted to briefly fake svelte. And the toothbrush was nice. Did I learn nothing from all those third trimester OB visit? Always pack for the doctor as if you were going on a weekend trip. Always. Steve also brought me Edward as I decided that I would rather risk having him exposed to god knows what here than go three days without him.  Besides, we are "isolated" so no one is allowed into Caroline's room without a gown and mask. In theory this is to protect them from her but it works both ways.

Will update when I can. Good wishes for a speedy recovery appreciated if offered.

So Far

Hmmm, maybe it isn't yeast after all.

White-coated tongues - check.

Lighter under nipples sensation - not so much.

Based upon your comments re. thrush I think I might have been mistaken about my own state of infection. The right side just stings; it is not making me contemplate suicide. In light of the fact that Edward is such a rotten nurser (not that I blame the poor kid. faults on both sides, no doubt) it is possible I am just sore. I don't know. How do you tell? I guess I can ask the pediatrician what he thinks at their one month appointment on Tuesday. In the meantime I am upping acidophilus consumption (although I already live on yogurt so I am not sure what the deal is there) and pouring vinegar in/on everything. Thanks for the advice.

Steve and I, by unspoken agreement, have broken childcare down thusly: he gets Patrick and I get Caroline and Edward. It is not a bad arrangement, although he understandably looks a whole hell of a lot better than I do - all fit and rested and full of fresh air from sledding and carpools. He came into Edward's room (which I am using as baby central; Caroline's room is where I put the car seats and store packs of diapers) this morning and asked "How are you?"

"I am DYING," I said. And I was. Last night was hideous. Hideously hideous. Caroline and Edward tag-teamed being awake and fractious all night long. Three minutes after one would finally finally pass out the other would start. My goal every night is to quickly get the babies to sleep after feeding them so that I can return to the electric blanketed embrace of my own bed, but most nights I eventually wind up just grabbing a baby (or two) and collapsing on the bed I have set up in Edward's room. The very nicest thing about these two is their current willingness to sleep as long as they are pressed up against me. They are usually good about going to sleep in their own space, too, but when all else fails it is nice to know I can snuggle them into unconsciousness while going back to sleep myself. Baby Patrick, in contrast, did neither. He would not sleep alone and he would not sleep on me. Every night was a struggle until he would finally fall asleep nursing but then I would be unable to move or he would wake up again. Gak. But nevermind... I highly recommend having a bed if there is space. Hmmm, here, while I am thinking about it, my list of a few things for a baby's room that make life easier:

1. a bed - ours is an old futon loveseat thing. not amazingly comfortable but not terrible

2. a good sized chair, preferably with an ottoman or foot rest. I am using an armchair from the living room. I added this terrific bed sitting cushion from the Acacia catalog and that setup really is amazingly comfortable. The cushion even has these side pockets that the breast pump bottles fit into nicely

3. lamps with dimmer switches - one where you change diapers, one near the chair. can't go wrong with dimmer switches

That is all I can think of right now, but feel free to add your own suggestions

So apart from last night the first month has been like a tropical vacation, all things considered. After the horrible time I had with Patrick I was seriously terrified that two babies would be a living nightmare but they have been very easy. I feed them around 11, they wake up around 3 and then they sleep until 7 and are back asleep until 10. Not every night, of course, and if they wake up at 3 I do not go back to sleep until about 4:30 because it takes me that long to change feed burp and settle them both but still... not fucking bad. Steve does not do anything during the night, but he gets Patrick up and fed and to school every day while I sleep in with Caroline and Edward. Right now he is starting work on another basement improvement project (I don't even ask anymore, I just hear hammering) and Patrick is acting as his subcontractor. Earlier he and Patrick ran errands while I fed Caroline and Edward and dealt with the laundry. During the day the babies sleep together in a pack n' play in the living room or look around at things. They are quite easy-going, so far - happy to be held and happy to be wedged into a Boppy. It is all remarkably pleasant, which is good because I was so determined to have this family that I would be bummed if it sucked.

And of course it helps that they are cute and soft and smell like clean new rain.

Edward, by the way, looks EXACTLY like Patrick as a newborn. EXACTLY. The last time I said this Patrick channeled his inner preteen and said, "I KNOW! You have said that ABOUT A BILLION TIMES."

Jeez, sorrrrry.

Steve was holding Caroline the other day and I looked over and gasped and said, "My God she looks just like you!" Then I thought about it and amended, "I mean, she looks like you in that you both have a ridiculous amount of black hair. And sideburns. I guess I could say: my God she looks just like Burt Reynolds!"

Steve was offended. For both of them.

I have subsequently decided that Caroline actually looks like Audrey Hepburn. And despite being so weensy in general she has ridiculously long legs such that she is now wearing the newborn sized sleepers. They are voluminous around her middle but the preemie clothes were too short in the arms and legs. So long limbs plus the big eyes and a nicely shaped head that can wear a short sleek cut - pure gamine. Lucky kid. Better Gigi* than the Bandit, non?

Patrick calls Edward - Dreadward, combining the Drake and Edward you see. Personally I like it, especially since his original suggestion was... Fredward. How awful would that be? Little Fredward. He calls Caroline Sweet Girl and Pretty GIrl and Sweet Little Caroline and uses the same sing-song with her that he uses with our crazy closet cat. I suppose I should be discouraging this obvious gender bias (what? no Pretty Dreadward or Sweet Little Dreadward?) but I dunno. It's really adorable.   

*Wasn't Colette inspired by Audrey Hepburn? Am I remembering that correctly?

PS Widget fixed. New post up at REDBOOK.

Yeasty

I just love Caroline's eyes.

My mother's blanket collection continues - this is the gender neutral pink one she created. As you can tell - very masculine. She did the blue one you admired, by the way, and was very flattered by your compliments, so thank you.

Edward is nursing so this is a one-handed effort. I think I (we) have thrush. Is that a pediatric call or an OB one, do you think? Bear in mind that my OB has a nurse line and a cheerful obliging staff who would willing take one's word for white coated tongues and newly burning nipples; unlike the pediatrician who has no such phone-able nurse and a perverse desire to bring small babies into their germy offices in 0 degree weather.

I'm just saying. 

And I CANNOT BELIEVE that the Giants beat Green Bay at home. I CANNOT BELIEVE that Eli Manning (ELI MANNING. You KNOW how I feel about him) is going to the Superbowl. I take small consolation from the fact that the Patriots will use his bones to floss their teeth. I just can't like the Patriots. I suppose there is something admirable in perfection but they leave me cold.

PS Actually the patronage was not blog-oriented. I always think ya'll are helpful. I mean, except for those of you who are clearly whackaloons and post comments that are the written equivalent of wearing clown shoes. I just smile tolerantly in those cases and am grateful for the diversity of humankind. And the fact that you are not my neighbor. When I mentioned being patronized I was thinking about the post-hospital call nurse who asked if I was breastfeeding, wrote down my response and then proceeded to state five painfully obvious things very. very. slowly.

PPS I know that the widget is not working. Julie looked at it for me and declared it hopeless. Utterly utterly hopeless. Something about RSS feeds. If it continues I will ask the good people there to investigate.

Eat

New photo plus post up at REDBOOK.

See that? I zig, I zag. Post here, post there... you never know.

Caroline (pronounced to rhyme with wine but I am not all tweaked about that. I mean, if you want to rhyme it with win it doesn't bother me. also, the Kennedys? like Rose and Ethel and whatshisname P? THOSE Kennedys? man, that NEVER occurred to us. I suppose Edward Caroline and Patrick must just be names that appeal to the post-generation Irish with conflicted aspirations to both heritage and WASPdom. or something) had a feeding tube for the first couple of days. A thin blue tube that ran into her nose and then down into her stomach. It reminded me of my terbutaline pump in that it was made of the exact same stuff and I was similarly terrified of accidentally ripping it out. The logic behind the gavage was that she was too weak and sleepy to eat and they did not want her weight dropping much below four pounds as that would make her even weaker and sleepier. It took a few days for her to actually take a bottle and we cheered when she got through 3 cc's before collapsing in exhaustion. At intervals during her hospital stay we experimented with breastfeeding, enough to conclude that the spirit was willing but the flesh was... well you know. She would latch and suck but 1) she never got anything out and 2) she would then be so tired from trying that she failed to take a bottle for hours afterwards. We focused on getting her weight up (with formula. and minuscule quantities of expressed breast milk. from a bottle) and I would only let her fool around with nursing a little. I figured we could sort it out after she was able to stay awake for more than a few minutes at a time. In the meantime I tried to breastfeed Edward as much as possible.

Edward was bigger at birth but still, let's be honest, something of a runt. He dropped to just over five pounds by day two and he had some nursing issues. Like Caroline he was willing, but like Caroline he was not particularly effective. The lactation consultant and I experimented over the course of the week with him and breastfeeding and the scale and bottles and the supplemental nursing system and eventually concluded that he has a weak latch and not a whole lot of stamina. He would get some breast milk (maybe half an ounce) and then tended to pass out or just pacify himself. So he was being supplemented as well (with formula. from a bottle.)

Gradually, as they both get bigger and are able to effectively nurse for longer periods of time, I am breastfeeding them more and bottle-feeding less. Last night, for example, they just nursed all night. This morning Caroline just breastfed but Edward was still hungry after nursing so he got some formula when he was done with the breast. Tra la la la la.

It is all completely different from how I handled the first few weeks with Patrick (exclusively breastfed, sheer misery, urgent care at 6 days for dehydration as I did not realize that a) my milk had not come in because b) his latch was all wrong, breastfed for a year regardless, so fucking stressful that first month though) that it feels like cheating. I nurse, I pump, they get formula, expressed breast milk, whatever... why, I even give one or the other a pacifier when I am feeding A and B realizes that s/he is so hungry that they will DIE if they are not fed THAT SECOND scream scream.      

I know this is all completely wrong and in theory I have messed up both babies so that neither will ever eat again but... it's working. They are both growing like small weeds (Steve just bought me a scale. I cannot wait to see how big they actually are but Edward is out of preemie and into Newborn and Caroline has graduated from the TEENY preemie clothes into the tiny preemie clothes. also the little hats no longer fit her) and I expect they will breastfeed exclusively at some point in the not so distant future. Or not. I am not stressing about it.

My milk supply, by the by, is still kinda crappy and I am just glad that I do not have to keep anybody alive via pumping. I get about two ounces every two-three hours. Since this is a 900% improvement (yes I smell like maple syrup) over last week I think it is a victory but I am not particularly optimistic that it will ever skyrocket from there.

Oh and I loathe being patronized (who doesn't?) It makes me cranky.

Patrick walking in the door... now. Yes! Peanut butter and jelly is so easy.   

Pictures

Caroline

and

Edward

And I put a couple of posts up at REDBOOK this week.

Hope you are well.

2008

I have two new children, no internet access, 500 stitches in my, um, well anyway but I wanted to check in and say hi and thank you for the good wishes and oh WOW, I have two new children.

Caroline Jane and Edward Drake are here and in general good health and high spirits. Caroline was 4lb 2oz and is still in the NICU (well "special care nursery" - nothing critical and she is their only patient) regulating her body temperature and gaining weight. Edward was 5lb 15oz and other than some jaundice (which worked out beautifully as it bought him a night in the nursery as well) he is fine. They are both remarkably hairy, hers is black and his is a medium brown. Eyes newborn color. Both cute, of course, particularly if one is partial to babies or monkeys or baby monkeys. 

I am camping at the hospital with him as a border. No internet but I will check in as I can. I hope to be home with them both by this weekend but we'll see. Jumbo birth story post going up soon at REDBOOK, so check the sidebar for that if you like. My mother tells me that if you click from that handy widget that Julie made me it will take you right to the post without making you watch Citizen Kane first. Not sure if that is true, but why would my mom lie?   

The babies are here!

Julie here, posting for Julia.  Two new babies, a boy and a girl!  Julia expects to return home Sunday and will post details soonest.