I Heart You Forevah

Thanks to all y'all who said you would follow me to "And Baby Makes Four." You are the cream cheese to my bagel.

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That said, I'd like to say a sappy farewell to my beloved Fertility Project blog. You were there when I couldn't tell anyone about our IF troubles. And for the first time, words escape me. (This is why I don't do heartfelt)

I think of all you women still on the front lines of IF and I can't help but think how unfair things are and what a b*tch IF is. I got hella lucky and there's no rhyme or reason behind my blessings. With Mother's Day looming, I want you to know that I think of you. I think of you who try and wait and lose only to pick yourselves up and start all over again- month after month after month and I am in awe of your strength. When (not if!) you become mothers you will be able to tell your children how much they were wanted, how much they are loved, and the power of a woman's spirit. You inspire me.

Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

Hello?

Does anyone read my blog anymore? Sometimes blogging feels a little like using a homing pigeon. You send your message out into the universe and it's unclear whether or not anyone picks it up. This is why comments feel so satisfying...

I've been thinking very seriously about shutting down this blog and moving exclusively to what was a family-friendly version. Turns out my in-laws say "Fuck" so it's no longer edited and now I write the same post twice. And when you've got 2 babes, it's hard to justify that kind of busy work.

So I have to know. Is anyone out there? And if so, would you follow me to my other blog?


http://and-babymakesfour.blogspot.com/

Fatness Friday

I fell down on the job in the points department this week, I'm afraid. Curse you points and your accountability! I shake my fist at you!!!!

Buuut, I did manage to get my activity in as promised. Weee! I rule. Let it be known.

And the scale reflected the results of my half-assedness. Behold:

Pounds Lost: 37.5
Pounds Lost this Week: .6 (sigh...)
Pounds to Go: 16.5

So I'm recommiting to this whole points deal. If I slack-ass again on it I may have to revisit my diet of choice.

Other fatness goals include 4 days of 30 minute activity and eating at least 3 fruits or vegetables a day. See you next week!

3 Months Old!!!

These babies of mine are growing so fast, I can't stand it. I keep having these moments where I look at said nuggets and am horrified at their size. It always strikes me as funny when strangers say how small they are. Small? HA! You should have seen them when they were born or hell, yesterday. Because that's how fast these little beans are growing.

B keeps telling me they're going to go to college tomorrow and leave me. It would be funny if it didn't feel true.

I'm trying to get the babies on some kind of routine since the house is a little like a circus these days. Of course, Finn's reflux/colic/demon possession tends to thwart any well-intentioned schedule or routine. Time to feed Cassidy? Think again! It's time for Finn to scream, scream, scream until the walls rattle, my skin catches fire, or I walk him around the house. Whichever comes first.

Speaking of demon possession. My house was host to the Vomit Olympics today!

Exhibit A: Exorcist-like projectile vomit from Cassidy. I've never seen anything like it. She looked like a human fire hose. I was concerned about her until she started grinning ear to ear, vomit-face and all.

Then Finn got in on the action and puked on me no less than 4 times this afternoon. Awesome.

But here are some new baby pictures for your viewing pleasure!

Fatness Friday (4 days late)

I posted this on my other, family-friendly blog and then didn't post it here. Oops! Speaking of- I'm considering discontinuing this blog :(. The content on my other one is exactly the same and it's turning into busy work to double post. Would y'all follow me to my other blog or no? What if I say pretty please???

Anyway, here's Friday's post:

So apparently this here blogosphere is all about alliteration. Which, I can totally appreciate. Meal-Planning Mondays, Wordless Wednesdays, ad nauseum. They should, really, by the way, have a day of the week that starts with "B" or "C" so that I could start having a Beer Bursday or Cocktail Consday. I no longer carry fetuses in my belly so I can now drink!

ADD rant now complete, I will officially be starting Fatness Fridays!!! Yaaaay! I said I was going to be tracking my weight loss and I haven't really been on top of that so now you get a special day of the week. To date, here is my progress:

Pounds lost: 37
Pounds lost this week: .8 (sad...)
Pounds to go: 17

I'm sort of half-assing a weight watchers plan. Me and the points-counting don't so much get along although damn, if it doesn't work. My goal this past week of getting in 30 minutes of activity was way-layed by mother nature and snow. My lack of motivation only played a small role in this failure. I swear...

So for this week I will track every point of every bite and I will get in that stinkin physical activity, come rain or shine.

In other news:
I have pimped out some of your blogs (see sidebar). If you don't want to be broadcast to the masses (ahem- my parents and in-laws) then shoot me a note and I'll remove you. Ditto if you want to be added, mmkay?

Have Some Poop With Your Pellet

Stay with me here. I promise this is going somewhere.

In a former life I was a therapist.

Before that I was a "behavior modification interventionist" (and yes, I just made up that title. Because I can suckas). I utilized conditioning principles to shape the behavior of at-risk teens in residential programs.

And before that I was a debaucherous college student studying psychology and Skinner (who you may recall had the famous Skinner boxes- rat pulls lever, food pellet emerges).

I have to say my experience gave me a boost of confidence in this whole parenting gig. I know how to make people behave "appropriately" after years of fucked upedness, I know how to make a mammal with a pea-sized brain pull a lever, so bring on the human blank slate! I will mold you into homosapien epitomes of well-behavedness! (That's right- Not only do I make up job titles, I also make up words like a wizard!)

And then the babies were born and I learned they weren't going to play by the rules. Either that or my college GPA should have been MUCH lower because man, I didn't understand this whole behavior-shaping thing so well after all. Hmmm....

Last night I realized that one of the following was taking place:

a. I don't get behavior reinforcement principles (and I should never go back to being a therapist.)
b. The babies keep changing the rules on me, in which case- SHENANIGANS!

or

c. I have inadvertently created screaming, asshole babies

This last one got me thinking about those ole Skinner boxes and my college friend and fellow psychology major, Kim. Kim actually took an Animal Behavior course and used a Skinner Box with a rat. I visited her once while she was in Lab for this course. (Does anyone remember those days of yore when you would go to "Lab?" Man, I'm getting all nostalgic here. Where is my Southpaw beer?)


Anyhoo, I'm sitting there with Kim and her rat is NOT following the program. Instead of pulling the lever to get a food pellet, he keeps sidling up backwards to the pellet dish and sticking his hairy bottom into it. So, he's sitting with his giant rat's ass in a food bowl waiting for a food pellet to show up in it. I'm not sure if he thought he was pooping it out or if this was how it would magically appear. Kim was going bonkers saying, "I don't know how he started doing this!!!" She had unwittingly trained her rat to do this crazy behavior instead of the kosher lever-pulling mandated by the Psychology Gods.

So sometimes what you THINK you're doing is not what you're actually doing in the world of parenting. Sometimes you think that by giving your screaming child candy to stop the tantrum you were the one in control, when in fact- your kid was shaping YOUR behavior and you just whoopsed yourself into another tantrum on your next grocery run. And maybe that's what is happening here. Of course I recognize that there are confounding variables in this whole scenario- development, temperment, genetic code....And I hang onto the idea that all of this is normal and what's "supposed" to happen. Because frankly, I can't deal with the notion that my babes may have a case of the hairy bottom pellets. Damn.

Blog? What Blog?

Wowsa. It's been a long time since I updated this mother. It should really come as no surprise seeing as how every to-do list seems to just get longer and longer. In fact, I have turned into that mother who waltzes around in pajamas all day and can't even manage to get the dishwasher loaded. This is a distinct change from a month ago. I do not parent with any kind of finesse. It's all about survival.

Why the change, you might ask? I attribute it to the following 2 factors:

1. Acid Reflux
2. Colic (you bastard mother clucker)

This makes it so that our babes here like to be held ALL.THE.TIME. And screaming is a common soundtrack of this household. We call it "The Monster." As in, "Uh oh. Here comes the monster!"

Now I say to you-
One baby wanting to be held all the time = nuisance.
Two babies wanting to be held all the time = impossible

This is a truth, universally acknowledged. Or if it isn't, it should be.

So I basically spend most of the day on the couch where I can hold 2 babies at once or feed a baby while consoling another. Oh, and our babes have decided they like to nap at different times during the day leaving very little grown-up time. When I do get it, I basically run around the house and try to straighten up so that we don't look like we live in a hoarder's dumping ground and babies can get clean clothes. A shower is a luxury. This leaves very little time for the ole bloggity blog. OH, and I have a Thank You note list about a mile long qualifying me as the shittiest, least classiest friend alive.

So, here's a month's update of our super exciting lives:

* Finn is now in Size 1 diapers and has outgrown his newborn clothes
* Cassidy outgrew her preemie clothes and is filling out the newbs quite nicely
* Finn officially has Acid Reflux and it makes him kind of an asshole. If he's not sleeping or eating, he's screaming into his bottle or my breast, or just plain screaming
* Cassidy has decided that being held after eating is a must and will cry if she doesn't get it. Is this the baby equivalent of being held after sex?
* Finn has turned into quite the chunk at 9 lbs, 5 oz. Cassidy's holding strong at the 10th percentile at 7 lbs, 13 oz.
* The babies are breastfeeding! They latch on every time now. It's just a matter of whether they get enough. I supplement a lot but whatevs.
* Cassidy got taken off oxygen. Halle-fuckin-lujah
* The babes have decided they don't so much like the pacifiers anymore. This makes my life way suckier (no pun intended). Trust.
* The babies smile. Like, real, honest-to-goodness, non-gassy smiles

And in the grown-up camp:

* I have lost 34 pounds so far and have 20 to go! I've actually seen the scale tell me I have 18 to go but if I so much as look at salt, I gain 2 pounds.
* Our car was hit by a stop sign-running soccer mom a couple weeks ago and we went from being a one-car family to a no-car family. We have since gotten a Honda Pilot and love it! But this whole car accident, car shopping business really was a time- and energy-suck.
* I have stopped obsessing about my milk production. FINALLY! This has been one serious benefit of breastfeeding. If I can't measure it, I can't obsess. This has lead to a whole laissez-faire attitude about formula supplementation in general.
* We are interviewing nannies. We posted an ad on care.com and got 60 responses in a just a few days. So we narrowed it down to a top 10 and have been doing phone interviews to start.

And that's the shiz around here. Sorry for the wham-bam style of this blog. Trust me, I would have loved to sit down, type out some internet poetry, and then slam my laptop closed, and slap my knee with a satisfied, "Done!" Alas, life and acid reflux have other plans...

And now here are some pictures of the babes for your viewing pleasure!

Sleeping Cassidy


Sleeping Finn


2 Babes (they're so stinkin cute. I can't get over it)


Finn With Attitude. I think he's saying, "Put down the effing camera and feed me!"


Cassidy rocks the tummy time while Finn watches, fascinated and horrified.


And the obligatory 2 month picture. Finn slept through it but Cassidy tried to strike a pose. Which, it turns out, is really hard when you can't control your body.



And, finally, proof that my babies do more than scream:

Beat This Threesome!

No you dirty pervs, I don't mean threesome as in the fanciful "menage et." I'm talking about the holy grail of breastfeeding. Tandem Baby! Yeeeee haaaaaa!

So I've been thinking about giving up the bpa-free baby feeder (the bosom, my friends, the bosom- stay with me here). Trying to breastfeed was sucking my will to live. It looked a little like this:

11:45- Try to coax a baby to be au natural. Crying, screaming, clawing, and wiggling often commenced. Sometimes we'd get an alternate scenario where said baby would clamp its mouth shut in protest and refuse to open or fake being asleep and do nothing despite all singing, tickling, and comedy routines performed by yours truly.

11:55- Give up with Baby #1. Move on to Baby #2.

12:00- Change Baby #2 and repeat 11:45 while trying to ignore Baby #1 screaming & hollering for milk.

And that's NOTHING compared to a "successful" feed. Try feeding one baby for a sufficient amount of time while Baby #2 screams. Then you stop with Baby #1 and Baby #2 starts acting the fool because he or she didn't get enough milk and needs a bottle to supplement.

When one of my kiddos wants to do it natural style, they can be latched on for up to an hour. ONE. HOUR.

Oh yeah, and when all this is over, I have to pump. We're looking at a ridiculous amount of time here. Whereas, I could simultaneously pump and tandem bottle feed and be done in 30 minutes.

So, I was done....almost. I was *this* close to giving it up and exclusively pumping. But I kept hearing that my supply would tank with pumping in a few weeks or months and I hadn't quite gotten over the picture of breastfeeding them in my head. So I made a few half-hearted attempts here and there and realized that my babies had all of a sudden developed the ability to breastfeed. Not always. But I could get them on at least once a day.

So, I started getting crafty. I started outsmarting my little babies. I would bottle feed one early and then try to get the other to breastfeed. And this started to work. (Of course, it was still taking forever and a day to do all this but I was feeling like HELLO! I AM DOING THIS).

And today I was so confident that I was like, "What the hell. Let's give this tandem feeding a shot." So, I gathered up my boppies and couch throw pillows, put a movie on, and stuck those babies on as best I could. And they ate, suckas! They may not have had the perfect latches (it's a little hard to follow protocol without bonking a baby in the head with your elbow), but they ate for 40 minutes, fell off on their own, and proceeded to sleep like the dead for an hour and half. And then we did it again 3 hours later.

I'd say, overall, we were pretty satisfied with ourselves. Go team!

Tweener

So I braved the second scariest shopping expedition a woman can take yesterday.

JEANS SHOPPING

This, of course, is second only to swimsuit shopping.

For the last 6 weeks I've been wearing my fat maternity jeans. I still can't fit into my skinny maternity jeans (HORRIFYING). Let me ammend that statement. I can squeeze myself into them but they look painted on. And after looking at some of my belly pictures you can see where I wore them LONG past their prime. I figure B may never have sex with me again at this point, why add to the ammunition?

Anyhoo, said chunky monkey maternity jeans are more than a little loose on me. I'm constantly having to pull them up since they're always trying to make a great escape off my body. And when you're carrying two little bambinos around, the last thing you want to do is trip over your pant leg.

So, I needed new jeans. Stat. Of course, I didn't want to spend much since I hope to be too small for them in a few weeks. Target hoooo!!!!

Finding jeans that fit in Target, it turns out, is a lot like finding a man. You're looking for the RIGHT FIT and there sure is a lot of junk to sort through. And in my case, I wasn't even sure what I needed since I hadn't dressed my body in months.

So Target's jeans fall into the following categories:

TEEN- These jeans were horribly skinny and I felt like I was shopping in the children's section. Even looking at their largest size felt like I was looking at doll clothes. And most of their selection fell into this category. PASS.

WOMEN- (Mom Jeans). Nuff said. Do you want bright shiny brass buttons on your ass cheeks? DONE! Because nothing says "Hot Mama" like some glittery band geek buttons shimmering off your buttocks.

PLUS SIZE- Okay, I spent a while contemplating getting jeans in this area, remembering Stacey & Clinton's motto, "Don't pay attention to size!" only to realize that their smallest jeans looked like my too-big maternity jeans. PASS

MATERNITY- I landed back in the maternity department and was seriously considering getting some when I had to remind myself that I'M NOT PREGNANT ANYMORE. Buying maternity jeans seemed like a backslide. Not to mention these suckers looked a lot like the teen jeans. WTF?

So, I'm a tweener. I fall in between. Lucky for me I was able to find 1 pair. One. No glittery buttons. No skinny leg. No elastic waist band. Now I just have to hem these mo-fos because they were built for an amazon.

And with the end of my shopping tale, I will regale you with pictures of my little nuggety nuggets. 6 WEEKS OLD! AND we're finally full-term. Halle-effing-lujah. I can't believe how big they're getting. Finn is now 7 lbs 1 oz. Cassidy is 6 lbs 1 oz.

Does this baby make me look fat?

So after much deliberation about the direction I would take on this blog, I've decided to talk about one of my favorite subjects- MEEEEEEEEEE!

Don't worry your pretty little heads. I will continue to provide diaper updates and keep you apprised of how many boogers Cassidy shnockered out her nose today (8) and how many massive poos Finn spewed out of his diaper (2). And chances are, I will likely talk about my boobs....a lot...because well, they sort of take up my life when I'm not cleaning up boogers and poops.

So, I've got this mirror. Apparently, it's a magic mirror. Because when I look at myself in it I'm like, "Dayum! I am sooo hawt!!!" And then I see a picture of myself or catch my reflection in a window unexpectedly and I'm like, "What the...??? Who put the padded sumo suit on me?!"

So, we're going to have some chatting and confession time about my body and its new...er...shape and size.

I'm home. A lot. By myself with babies. A lot. Alone with chocolate cake.

And this means I can eat entire said chocolate cake and nobody is the wiser. Except maybe Brendan. I don't think he believed my story about the wildabeast who came to the door and wouldn't leave until I gave him cake. But c'est la vie! Truth be told, being home alone means you really can eat non-stop without anybody knowing your secret shame. Finn & Cassidy are silent conspirators, so I know I'm safe there.

So due to the following reasons, I will be tracking my weight and weight-loss endeavors for your reading pleasure:

1. I always want to know how much people weigh. I'm kind of a voyeur like that. I also like to look in people's windows. (Although I SWEAR I just want to know how they decorated or what their house looks like). So if people are like me, they might want to know how big my rear end is and whether or not it's getting smaller or bigger.

2. I always like to hear about people's weight-loss- whether it be successes or failures. Oh, and I'm interested in REAL stories. To clarify- If you lost all your pregnancy weight in 1 week and were prancing around in your size 4s, I do NOT want to know about it as I will disown you from my life.

3. I need to be accountable to somebody for my weight. Why not the internetz??? Hell, I tracked my stratospheric weight gain, why not the painfully arduous task of losing it? And I get to negotiate the hellfire gauntlet that is losing weight while still trying to produce enough breastmilk to feed 2 human beings...Hm....Tricky...

So, here are the cold, hard facts:

Grand total of pregnancy poundage- 54? - I didn't get weighed the last couple days so it is likely more :0

Pounds lost thus far by sheer luck and mother nature reclaiming her bucket of water: 30

Pounds to go: 24- le sigh... And this doesn't count the 10 pounds I gained before we got pregnant. But I'm not thinking about those 10 right now...

So join me on my journey! Feel free to share your own weight-loss struggles & successes (unless of course you're that stick-bug wearing size 4s referenced above).

Paging Doctor Lamesauce

My super swank blog has officially crossed over into the realm of "Lame Mommy Blog." I have a confession: I loved pregnancy blogs- especially SAIF blogs but once the little ones were born I was like- "Um....booring!" Yeah, now that's me. I have to look at my unwashed reflection every morning and come to terms with how lame I've become.

Babies make you boring.

So far, here's what I can come up with to talk about:

1. My breasts- their size, the crazy green squiggly veins all over them, and Hello? Their size!!!

2. In a related topic to #1- Breast pumping, breast milk, milk neuroses, and my complete failure to breastfeed my young.

3. My baby's ginormous boogers

4. My post-baby body. Hello? Huge Ta Tas! Oh yeah, and other super-sized bodily changes.

5. I guess I could also talk about the fruit of my loins, but I'm kind of self-involved like that. ME! ME! ME! When I was first training to be a psychotherapist I would always interrupt my clients with an "enough about you, let's talk about me!"


But here are some pictures of my tiny nuggets anyway. ONE MONTH OLD. Jesus...



Here's Finn with his grandpa. Please note the baby mullet. Male pattern baldness in the front, party in the back. Awesome.



And here's Cassidy living it up.

Under Pressure

Here is a short list (I hope) of things that are stressing me out about this whole parenthood gig:

1. My posse is leaving this week. The grandparents (aka- Angels From Heaven or Baby Saviors) will be departing to their respective long-distance homes this week. This means that B & I will have to juggle all of the following by ourselves: laundry, dinners, household cleaning, oh yeah- and the feeding, changing, burping of 2 young ones every 3 hours while I try to pump about that often.

Now, if that doesn't scar the bejesus out of you, then continue on a tour of my anxiety-induced ruminations:

2. My babies hate my breasts. It's true. I try to stick them on and they want none of it. Finn often thrashes around like a 90's Headbanger and once I get him on, he pushes me off. It reminds me of the Borderline Personality patients I used to work with- "I hate you! Don't leave me! I need you! Why aren't you FIXING THIS NOW!!!" I hated those patients. Nowadays, if I get a hint of a "personality disordered" aftertaste from somebody I avoid them like the plague...

3. Childcare (or- you want to do unspeakable acts to my wallet). Nuf said

Babies in the Hizouse!

Also titled: "No Sleep! Til Brooklyn!" or "Why is my font so big?"

I have an announcement that y'all have been waiting for-

Les Babies are Home!!!! Weeee!!!!! They have been paroled from the NICU and I can't believe somebody actually thought I am capable enough to have left the hospital with them (I suspect the nurses were taking hits off Cassidy's oxygen tank). That's right- Cassidy's on oxygen (sucks a big one), but they still let her come home. Weeeee!!!

Let me give you a run-down of the past 24 hours:

DISCHARGE:
We had the slowest....talking....nurse...ever....zzzzzzzzzz

B and I are pretty sure it took her about an hour and a half to review 4 topics, none of which involved rocket science. To me, this is an unforgivable offense. My time is precious, people. I sat there alternating between thoughts of,

"Shut up and let me take my babies home!",
"I haven't pumped in 4 hours and my boobs are going to explode!"
"I could really use a sandwich", and
"Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Oops. I think I just drooled myself."

B said it was pretty evident that my ADHD had kicked in. Oh well...




GETTING HOME:
So since Nurse Slow Talker, had taken so.....long.... to get through our discharge, we had some pump timing and eat-timing issues. (For those of you who know me well, I tend to wind up on the floor if I don't eat regularly). So our homecoming was characterized by me dumping the babies in my parents' arms and running upstairs, banana in hand, for some sweet mammory relief.

Finn started screaming bloody murder about 2 minutes later and Noah the Dog was slobbering all over the babies' heads. I came downstairs to a whole new world- Baby Paraphenalia EVERYWHERE. Where did my house go? Me thinks it went the way of my bar-hopping, sleep-filled life...Ah, sweet chaos....




Speaking of, this brings us to-

THE FIRST NIGHT:
9pm- feeding & putting the babies down- We had 4 grandparents help with feeding, burping, and changing. We settled our precious nuggets of genetic legacy into a co-sleeper and kept visiting them to "ooh" and "aw" over how cute they looked. Confidence in this parenting gig abounded.



12am- B, Grandpa, and I changed the babies. B & Grandpa fed them while I hooked myself up to the milking machine. We put them back into the co-sleeper and climbed into bed. Babies were a little fussy but it seemed manageable.

3am- and 0 hours of slumber later...B & I stumbled downstairs to get bottles. Mr. Finn had been groaning, grunting, and crying for all 3 hours. Repeat 12am tasks but without any finesse. B kept tripping over Cassidy's oxygen tube and cursing. Noah kept trying to slobber over the baby's heads, and I tried (unsuccessfully) to help while attached to my effing machine.

5:30am- and 5 minutes of slumber later...Finn's grunts turned into full-on Upset Baby FEED ME NOW OR I WILL DIE! screaming. I brought him downstairs and tried to console him while heating up a bottle. My confidence- Gone. Somewhere between crying fits (mine and his), I finally got him fed and started to change him downstairs. And "OH MY GOD! I NEED MY DIAPER CHANGED NOW OR I WILL DIE! But wait- there's time to pee on my head while screaming bloody effing murder!" B woke up and I told him, "I think Finn might be an asshole." That's right people- I called my baby an asshole... And then I started to cry inconsolably.

7am- (still no sleep- I had to pump milk after all this drama people). My mother walked into our room and offered to take over- YES PLEASE!!! B and I finally got some sleep and woke up at about 11am when OH MY GOD! MY BOOBS MIGHT EXPLODE!

And I basically felt like death warmed over the rest of the day.... People weren't joking about this whole parenthood business.

Jesus Loves Winners

This week's post is dedicated to the people of Haiti and even moreso, Mr. Pat Robertson, Satan's own notary public.

I spent a few days this week boo hooing into my pillow, cereal, you name it, over my babies. Let me tell you, having babies in the NICU is no picnic. And if it were a picnic, it would be the kind overrun by ants and then rained out while a squirrel pees on your head (BTW, this happened to a friend of mine. Trust). So, when the earthquake hit this week, it really put things into perspective for me.

My babies are growing.

My babies are healthy.

My babies are getting the care they need.

Hello? I have TWO BABIES!!! How fucking lucky could I be???

Time to stash the tissues away and focus on the up and up.

So, while I might miss my babies like CRAZY person and contemplate a Code Pink Maneuver (hospital speak for babynapping), I know I have been ridiculously blessed. And it's not like I even did anything to deserve it. I just got lucky. Plain old lucky. Bad things happen to good people. Good things happen to bad people. And it doesn't make any sense at all.... Me? I think I'm an okay person who has had a mixed bag with a heavy emphasis on the good and great.

And so, on a final note, here is a link to a letter written from "Satan" to Pat Robertson. Enjoy!

Worship at the Boob Altar

My boobs have taken over my life.

If you think that not having babies at home leaves me time to get my nails done and write the great American novel, you are sorely mistaken. Chances are I am attached to my breast pump cheering those mammories on.

M-I-L-K!

Apparently, I'm supposed to massage (read- squeeze the shit out of) my ta-tas until they are dry every 2-3 hours. That looks a little like this:

10:45pm- Commence milkage
11:15pm- Terminate milkage and measure how much was produced. This number dictates my mood for the next hour and a half
11:20pm- Spill milk and commence hormonal break-down in kitchen. "Don't cry over spilled milk" may have initially been intended for a breast-pumping mother of a NICU baby.
1:15am- Wake up and start all over again.

Yes, the 2-3 hours does not dictate the time between feedings but rather the time between starts. This.is.miserable.

On the baby front (yay! I luuuurv babies!)

Finnegan is kicking ass in the temperature department and graduated into a crib today. Yes! Yes! Yes! That leaves one hoop left before he comes home. Ole boy needs to get it together and start feeding like there's no tomorrow. That means no gavage and lots of nipple time (mostly bottle- breastfeeding is a bitch for a preemie). Finn is suuuper laid back and mellow. He sleeps a ton and often has a hard time waking up long enough to feed.

Cassidy is still our little feisty girl. She is much more alert than her brother and the doctors have said she is "advanced." She eats like a champ but is still not nippling all her milk. And because she's the size of a little peanut, she still can't regulate her body temperature enough to move our of her isolette. Le sigh....2 hoops for our little girl before she can come home with us.

Oh yeah, and in a move of parental brilliance or incompetence (you choose), we decided to change the spelling of Finn's name to "Finnegan" over "Finnigan." This has really fucked with the NICU nurses who made him a name sign with "eg" and then changed it to "ig" so it would be correct. I think they might be plotting against me now that we changed it....Oops.

34 Weeks, 1 Day, and 2 Babies Later...

Hi People! I'M BACK!

Sorry to be out of the loop for so stinkin long! Thank you everyone for your kind thoughts and I'm sorry to have made people worry! I'm afraid I couldn't access blogger from the hospital (WTF is up with that?) and B could only be counted upon to update one blog (I have a family-friendly version of this blog where I don't say "fuck" nearly as much). There's a lot to catch up on! Quick run-down of the past month:

12/1/09- Yup...hospitalized bed rest reared its ugly head
12/28/09- Met the 34 Week mark!
12/31/09- My planned discharge date for PTL or the "Go With God" plan
12/29/09- The morning I woke up to a very swollen version of me (Think Blueberry Girl in Willy Wonka and you'll be close to reality). Blood work was drawn which revealed Pre-Eclampsia and HELLP syndrome. Doctors told me everything was "extremely abnormal" and asked how long it would take B to get to the hospital as the babies needed to come out right away.

My birthing story? Pretty much the exact opposite of what I wanted when I first got pregnant. Gone was the granola, family-loving birth I envisioned. Instead, I got LOTS of pokes & prods, an emergency c-section, and I wasn't able to see our precious babies for more than 24 hours after their birth (unless you count the fly-by immediately post-op "Look at your babies! Gotta go! Byee!"). This was due to the degree of drugs I needed after the c-section which meant I wasn't able to get out of my bed for a day. I'm still pretty angry and upset with the universe about how things went down. But I know it was needed for all parties to be healthy.

Our babies weren't named for more than 48 hours since we planned on naming them once we were able to hold them and get acquainted. But...here are our beautiful babes!

Finnigan (Finn) Joseph
4 lbs, 13 oz
Born 12/29/09 1:35pm

Cassidy Mary

3 lbs, 8 oz
Born 12/29/09 at 1:36pm

They're each spending a couple of weeks in the NICU and doing beautifully. Finn was on a respirator for the first day and Cassidy, while smaller, has proven to be feisty. They're both breathing on their own, eating from bottles, and have had their IV's removed. We're working on consistent feeding without having to be gaveged-fed (BTW, a horrible site where they stick a tube down baby's throat), gaining weight, and maintaining body temp.

I was released Saturday, Jan 2, which was great since I HATED the post-natal unit and missed my peri-natal nurses like crazy.

So, that's our status! I've added the updates that y'all missed from the past 4 weeks. Thanks again for thinking about us. I had no idea that I had so many internet friends! Y'all are the cream cheese to my bagel!

33 Weeks!

Four days, two bottles of pee, and a partridge in a pear tree. Still in the hospital, still pregnant and I have holiday spirit oozing out my pours.

THis week was marked by a pre-eclampcia scare and conscious avoidance of all crap christmas movies on TV and there are a lot of them. Due to my level of Pillsbury doughboyness, sudden weight gain and my blood pressure creeping higher, the Docs thought I might have pre-eclampcia. This lead to a sudden interest in my giant ankles and hobbit feet and of course my urine. Let me tell you if you haven't spent 24 hours collecting your urine on ice and putting it on display like a raw bar then you're missing out. Good news is I am pre-eclampcia free and the babies get to bake a little longer.

Here is this weeks update. It is crazy to think there will only be a couple of these entries left! To everyone writing replies on the blog page, I don't have access to the internet in the hospital and Brendan has to post all my entries. I promise I will get back to all of you once I am home.

How far along? 33 Weeks and 3 days.

Total weight gain/loss: Up 51 lbs. I suspect some of this is from the water weight around my ankles, wrist and face. Hell, everywhere!

Maternity clothes? Yes. I might be progressing to a big burlap sack.

Sleep: Thanks to the sweet kiss of Ambien I am lucky to get any sleep at all.

Movement: Yes. Constantly. No wonder my uterus is exhausted.

Food cravings: None.

Gender: A boy and a girl

Labor Signs: When the barametric pressure drops all the women on my unit contract at the same time. It like a chorus line of naughty uts.

What I miss: Since I was hospitalized right after Thanksgiving I missed the whole Christmas season. I'll be glad when tomorrow is over because I won't feel like I am missing out on so much, outside of life of course. :(

Milestones: According to Dr Luke, guru of all things multiples, 33 weeks was a developmental touchdown. I would do a touchdown dance but the babies might fall out. I am hopefully going to be released from the hospital on my own recognizance on New Years Eve. We hope to make it all the way home before I start going into labor.

32 Weeks!

Getting to 32 weeks is a lot like New Years Eve. You look forward to the day, full of promises of bacchanalian exuberance only to find yourself lying in a pool of your own vomit. Getting to 32 weeks had been such a fixation, it felt like by the time Monday came that I half expected to see a team of nurses break out into spontaneous song to commemorate this fertile benchmark. Alas, my cupcakes and streamers were replaced by anti-contraction meds at midnight, 2am, 4am, 6am, so on and so on for the remainder of each day. Good news: babies are still baking; bad news: no musical extravaganza.

How far along? 32 Weeks! Hell yeeeeeahh!

Total weight gain/loss: 52 e-fing lbs! I guess a diet of cheese quesadillas and a workout routine of walking to the bathroom doesn't promote a slender pregnancy.

Maternity clothes? I have graduated to monster sized panties this week!

Sleep: Is great if I can get to sleep by 10pm as the medical crew starts their daily parade at 6am.

Movement: Baby gladiators dukin' it out for space.

Food cravings: Anything not from the hospital

Gender: A boy and a girl

Labor Signs: Tons o' contractions and they seem to escalate in frequency and intensity every 3 days. No standing up pictures because we were on contraction monitor time too often.

What I miss: Doing stuff and when my best friends weren't nurses.

12/7- 31 Weeks!

So I was re-committed to the hospital on Tuesday. My sucktastic cervix was down to 1cm! Yikes! I can't blog from the hospital because their internet hates certain sites, blogger.com included. Up yours hospital internet....

My solution to all this forced Amish-style living? Write down my bloggity thoughts and force my husband to post them for me. So, here are some rambling thoughts I have come up with in the last week (sorry for the crazy long post):

* I've been granted 30 minutes of pool therapy. And let me tell you, the hospital-issued swimsuits are sexy as hell. Swimsuit Illustrated had better watch out because when I squeeze myself into one of those checkered XXL plastic beauties, I don't just look like a table at your local BBQ bistro, I may just make you drool... The best part? When I get out of the pool and the butt of my suit is full of water, just like a giant full diaper, and I have to squeeze it empty, regardless of how many onlookers there are.

* I love most of the nurses with one notable exception. This would be the woman who asked Brendan if we believed in Jesus and then later told me (repeatedly) how swollen my face was, called my legs "sausages," and then said, "I don't know you so maybe you always look like this." Bite me Nurse Ugly. I also don't like the dietician. I have nicknamed her "Captain Obvious" but not to her face. The other nurses who work here? They rule. I've got one who calls me sweetie, honey, and calls the babies "love muffins" and "doll babies." Usually this would make me nuts but she does it in a way that makes her positively huggable. I also have a french nurse whom I love but I haven't seen much of her...sigh...

* I've noticed there's a weird smell whenever I get up from bed. This happens regardless of when my sheets were changed and the smell is always a little like onions. There's not a lot to say about this. It's just weird.

And now for your update! Here's hoping for at least 3 more!

How far along? 31 Weeks! Word

Total weight gain/loss: I haven't weighed myself since last Tuesday morning when I was 40 pounds.

Maternity clothes? Pajama city. But I love my maternity lounge wear (Thanks Mom!)Stretch marks? I am still proud of my shiny stretch mark-free belly

Sleep: Muh. The hospital staff wake me up every 2 hours to take medication. It does not make for restful evenings.

Movement: A ton. The nurses always act surprised at how much the babies move and kick.

Food cravings: Nope. Hospital food kind of sucks. I'd love a home-cooked meal right bout now.

Gender: A boy and a girl

Labor Signs: Contractions. I'm now alternating between 2 different kinds of medications every 2 hours. It definitely helps a lot and I'll go several hours without a contraction (I think). But they tend to pick up in the evening, regardless.

What I miss: Seriously? My husband. I see him for a couple of hours every day but I am most homesick for him.

Milestones: Getting to week 31. Being told I looked thin by a resident (I love a good liar!)

On and I saw a fourth woman on "I Didn't Know I Was Pregnant" give birth in the toilet. What the hell?