Two vs. One: Part 1

When I announced that I was expecting for the second time, everyone's first question was, "is it twins again?!" to which I answered a very relieved "no!" Their next comment to me was always something along the lines of, "well, one baby will seem so easy compared to twins!" And that's what I was hoping, too. I didn't want to jinx myself and end up with a colicky baby so I tried to keep hush about it. Now that Matteo is here (and more than 3 months old!) I no longer have to worry about that. He's no longer a newborn and I can now compare notes from his first 12 weeks with the twins' newborn days.

As expected, having one baby is way easier than having two. For me, it's so much more than just a question of two vs. one. I always said that I was grateful to have two (mostly) happy newborns and not one very fussy one. So, here is what really stands out to me as the difference makers in my own two vs. one experience.

Preemie vs. Full-term:

Sebastian and Collette came nearly 6 weeks early and that impacted a lot of what we had to do for them as parents. Going back and forth to the NICU, measuring their every ml of formula-enhanced breast milk, lots and lots of doctor visits. It was the main reason I pumped instead of nursed. Having two preemies was scary and stressful, for the most part.

But, as new parents, I must say that there were nice things about it, too. The nurses taught us so much about how to care for a newborn and they got the twins on a wonderful eating schedule that made sleep very possible for both of us. With Matteo, the nurses didn't show me anything with the baby. I got no CPR training, no lesson on how to bathe the baby. Hardly any free stuff. And then two days after giving birth, they kicked us out. Of course, I left the hospital with an 8lb. baby who could nurse without any issues so it was fine. I would take a full-term baby over a preemie any day but there were a few benefits (for us) to the latter.

Overall, I worry much less about Matteo and a lot of it has to do with how he started his little life. Some of it has to do with now being an experienced parent, which I'll get into in a separate post, but mostly I trust nature to take its course with him. With Sebastian and Collette, I still find myself using their adjusted age in my head sometimes. Not sure when that will go away...

(Of course, not all twins are preemies so this experience is certainly not universal for twins and their moms. And there are lots of singletons born prematurely, as well.)

Stay tuned for Part 2. I gotta spread this one out if I'm going to make through my mini-NaBloPoMo.

Fight For Preemies!

The blogosphere is taking today to bring awareness to premature birth and all that comes with it. As a mom to preemies, I am joining to share a bit of what it was what like to have preemies and why it's important an issue.

Up until 34 weeks and 2 days, I had a picture perfect twin pregnancy. I had appropriate weight gain, mild symptoms, no high blood pressure, no swelling, no gestational diabetes. My babies were growing and developing well inside me. All was good in the world. And then I was diagnosed with preeclampsia. They admitted me to the hospital and shortly discovered that my kidneys and liver were under a lot of stress and very close to failing. 2 days later, at 34 weeks, 4 days, I had an emergency c-section and delivered two healthy, yet premature, babies. One boy and one girl, as you already know.


All in all, our experience was not so scary our harrowing. Both Sebastian and Collette could breathe on their own and regulate their own body temperature. They didn't need light therapy for jaundice. But they were small. And lazy. They just weren't ready to be born. So, dubbed "feeders and growers" they stayed in the NICU for almost 2 weeks, learning how to eat without dozing off. They came home and did great but their prematurity and time in the NICU taught us to deal with parenting in a way we wouldn't have done otherwise. It impacted my ability to breastfeed, it still makes me nervous about eating enough and affects how we look at (and worry about) milestones.


Additionally, I have still not recovered from that fact that my body betrayed me. I truly thought I would be one of those moms who made it to 37 or 38 weeks. I was walking around, working, driving - I had no signs that I would have this happen to me. And worse yet, no one knows what exactly causes preeclampsia - although there are many theories out there. They know the risk factors (multiple pregnancy being one of them) but they can't tell you why it happens. And sadly, this disease causes a lot of premature births, as the only "cure" is delivery. I hope that the research they are doing will help shed some light on this disease but for now, the best medicine is regular prenatal care. You never know when your blood pressure will spike, as mine did, or when protein will show up in your urine, like mine did. That OB visit probably saved my life, and my babies' lives - just one example of how vital prenatal care is.

Please visit the March of Dimes to learn more about the wonderful work they do!

Reunion

The other day, as I was packing up the babies into the car after a walk, I saw this woman that looked so familiar getting out of her car. For a while, I couldn't place her. She had a baby, but just the one, so I knew she wasn't in my twin moms group. Then, it dawned on me that she was one of the moms "living" in the NICU when Sebastian and Collette were in the hospital. I wasn't 100% sure it was her, not fully trusting my sleep deprived, post-partum memory but asked her how old her baby was, to see if it made sense. Turns out, her baby is now almost a year old, after spending 2 months in the Special Care Nursery. At the time, I didn't realize how long that little baby girl had been there but now it makes sense, remembering how well her mom knew the nurses.

We chatted for a bit, got to see each others babies, big and strong and nothing like the premature little newborns they once were. She asked me if I was going to the NICU reunion, which I had totally spaced on. It's this Sunday and I figured, what are the odds that after all this time I would bump into her this week? I guess that means I should go. I have a bunch of preemie clothes to return to them anyway and it will be nice to see some of the nurses that cared so well for our little ones.

After seeing her, it got me remembering our time in the hospital - short, in comparison, but to us it felt like an eternity. Collette was in the hospital for 12 days, Sebastian 13. To this day, that NICU time has really impacted me as a mother. I get very anxious and stressed when the babies do not finish their bottle/food. There was a time when this was reasonable, like when they weighed 5 lbs and were yet to make it on the growth chart. Now, however, its just insane. Collette weighs over 21 lbs! Big deal if she doesn't finish her bottle. I'm getting better about it but there are times where I get so worked up and frustrated that I have talk myself out it, because those days are long gone now. Its like PTSD, I swear. Their NICU time also made me a bit of a schedule fanatic, but that has been a blessing and a lifesaver and I am so thankful to those nurses for getting us off to a good start.

Of course, I do have other hang ups and regrets about their NICU time that I have alluded to in the past but don't want to get into here. Mostly just about their approach to fattening up babies and how that lead to no BFing for us (and my aforementioned PTSD vis a vis feeding). But all in all, it was not a horrible experience (as I dreamed it would be before I had the twins) and I'll be happy to show off my almost 10 month olds at the reunion this weekend. Since my camera still isn't connecting to my computer, here is photo of the twins from their hospital days - this is the very first one of them together, so its near and dear to me.

If It Ain't Broke...

I've always believed that life was as hard as you make it. To be sure, people get dealt raw deals but in general, I think we have a lot of control over our lives. With that in mind, I feel many people make their lives more difficult than they need to be. I always wondered why people do this, until I found myself doing that very same thing.

A few months ago, my emotions got the better of me. I was still upset about not breastfeeding that I figured I would try, just one last time, to make it work. I had been stressing about it for so long, pretty much since the day the twins came home from the hospital. They had been in the Special Care Nursery for nearly 2 weeks, but it seemed like an eternity. And the only thing keeping them there was eating. Well, not eating, really.

Their prematurity (34 weekers) didn't have any huge "health" impacts on them when they were born but they were small and tired and didn't really know how to suck and eat. My C-section kept me in the hospital for 4 days but then I had to go home. I had been "nursing" them at almost every feeding and some days we had a bit of success and other times we didn't. But when I went home, I could only go to the hospital once a day for a few hours because my blood pressure was still quite high and I was basically on bed rest. That left very little opportunity to breastfeed - at most, 2 feedings per day. And usually we just tried once because we didn't want to wear them out.

The last few days they were in the hospital, we had a lot of success with the breastfeeding. But still, the lactation consultant said in the first week at home we should still just do it once a day, since that is what they were used to. And then work our way up from there. I think that was the beginning of the end for us. When your babies have only been alive for 11 days, a week seems like an eternity! I had no idea what to make of that advice. Do I do it twice a day for the second week? Or do I just do it all the time after that? There was no road map for transitioning to all breastfeeding.

The second blow came when we had our first visit with the pediatrician. The babies had been eating pumped breast milk with high calorie formula powder added to bulk them up. Now, it doesn't take a genius to realize that if they need these extra calories, then breastfeeding isn't really an option. It's not like I can inject my breasts with formula powder. So, I was hoping that she would say we could stop the extra calories or at least cut back. No such luck. I was crushed. How would I ever do this if I had to keep giving them these extra calories??

And that's how we ended up here. I'm pumping exclusively for my twins. A while back, I tried to get them back on the breast. And I did, sort of. I bought the nipple shields which make real nipples more like bottle nipples. The babies sometimes accepted it, other times not so much. But I was a day late and a dollar short, so to speak. They were already 4 months old. I was on my own with them for the better part of the week. I had already established a very smooth routine around pumping and feeding and, with the exception of my lingering guilt/sadness/longing, everyone was happy. And when you are outnumbered by infants, changing your routine (especially one that is working!) is beyond difficult.

It's obvious to me why I tried to make my life so much more difficult. I felt like a failure. Scratch that: I feel like a failure. And for those of you who know me, you know I don't fail. I ace tests, I get into the best schools, I get job offers. Heck, I even get boy/girl twins! But I can't breastfeed. I fail.

And the guilt and disappointment in myself is what propelled me to try and recapture my goal, even though everything was going so well. And that was stupid. It's not like me to make my life harder than it needs to be. But I simply could not reconcile those feelings. I have since given up on that goal and realized the error of my ways. That certainly doesn't mean I am over all these emotions - it just means I have decided to not let them interfere with our daily life as I had been. Our life is good, the twins are so happy and healthy - there is no reason to screw around with a good thing. If it ain't broke, don't fix it! I can put this in the "lessons learned the hard way" column.

Whew. I feel better now. Thanks.

Way Back When-esday: Pilgrim Twins

Twinfatuation's Way Back When-esday is here and the Sotorrific Twins are going all the way back to...November! :)

When: November 26th, 2008

Billy and I were back home but the twins were still in the Special Care Nursery, chunking up. Because of my blood pressure, I could only leave the house once a day so our time with the babies was limited. Being away from them when they were so small was really hard - especially with all those post-partum hormones ruling my body. So, you can imagine my reaction when I get to the hospital and see a little gift for me in each bassinet. One of the nurses has little costumes for each holiday and dresses up all the babies and does a holiday photo shoot. Here is what we got, all wrapped up in a little diaper:

I SWEAR that these are not photo-shopped - she really put them in these costumes, complete with Thanksgiving blanket as a background and turkey stuffed animal as a prop. I was a wreck - a happy wreck, but a wreck nonetheless. Even looking at them now, I tear up...I'm such a softie for these two!