3 in 2

Six Month Update, 2-1-2012

2012-02-14T07:08:00.050-08:00

Melina Mae and Carrie Annabelle turned six months old on the first of February.

Hooray!

The twins find so much more to do with life now than eating and sleeping. It's a great age for Mommy, too, because I spend so much less time entertaining them and more time just watching them enjoy floor time on their big fleece blanket.

While they play with toys, I stalk them like the paparazzi, iphone poised to capture a cute smile or a new gesture.

Both love rattles, rings, and anything that big brother Devon leaves in their reach.

They're starting to get moving! Both can roll each way and scoot across the floor. Sometimes my heart stops for a second because I leave the room for a second and return to find one baby where I thought I left two.

The best part about having six-month-old twin is that they're now fully aware of it! In the newborn phase, having a twin was the-reason-Mommy-puts-me-down. Now they smile at each other, tap each other on the arms, suck each others' fingers, and chase each others' toes.

(NB: the auto-orientation on my iphone isn't 100% and I get an error message when I try to flip them manually, so I'm sorry for the sideways shots)

I'm looking forward to what's ahead: them chattering to each other in a language that only they understand and crying when the other one feels hurt. I got a taste of it last week. I was with Devon when a sharp cry from Carrie brought me back into the room. I looked down at them to see Carrie very upset by Melina, who was projectile vomiting all over the carpet.

Yes, all the kids were sick last week. It wasn't fun. Enough said.

They also take one or two pretty good naps every day. I stalk their sleeping poses with my camera as well. The hand-and-foot.

The half-spoon.

The V-is-for-victory.

Carrie was so proud of herself when she tipped over the box of floor toys. She was the first with a confirmed back-to-front rollover, and the pediatrician thinks that she'll be the first to crawl. She pulls up on all fours in a crawling crouch, now. I've been stalking the pose for a week, but every time I frame a shot she drops down on her tummy and laughs at me.

She has the one-eyebrow-lifted thoughtful expression that Devon had.

She's cheerful in the early mornings, just like Mommy.

She's also my thumbsucker! I'm able to nurse her first in the early evenings. When I put her in the crib for the night, her eyes roll back, her thumb pops in, and her eyes flutter closed. She's usually able to fall asleep on her own, which gives me time to nurse Melina and get her to bed.

Melina Mae still has the wide-open-mouth grin she had at birth.

It makes it especially easy for Mommy. I just say "Hey, Melina Mae!", she smiles, and in goes a spoonful of pumpkin and applesauce.

Melina scoots across the floor, too. Only backwards.

She's fond of sleeping, too, but still has a flair for the dramatic.

Now that the girls are more interesting, Devon has much more to do as a big brother. I'm sure for a few months he thought of the twins as the-reason-Mommy-puts-me-in-the-pen. Now the doors of the pen are open for most of the day, and he can invite his sisters in with him to stare raptly at whatever he shows them.

When he was their age, he would scoot up to an object, grab it with one hand, and beat it enthusiastically with the other hand while his head bobbed up and down in time. We called the gesture "ride-the-pony" after the 80's dance move in Billy Idol's "Monay Monay". Now, the girls come up to him and ride-the-pony as he shows them his "bus" (the Alphabet Town pad that Devon has nicknamed because it plays the song "The Wheels on the Bus Go Round and Round").

At four months, both of the twins were "Cowie" to Devon. Now he calls the first one he sees "Cowie" and the second one "Ina-May". I wonder how old they'll be when he can consistently tell them apart. He loves his sisters. He chatters to me about them in long monologues:

"Oh-it's-a-Cowie-it's-a-Cowie-baby-Cowie-baby-Ina-May-Cowie-and-a-Ina-May!"

Devon turns two in March, and is a very busy guy. People say they don't know how I do it, but I honestly think it would be harder to be pregnant NOW, with a very active toddler that needs his mind occupied and his body exercised for 10-12 hours a day. I'm so glad I've recovered and can spend Carrie and Melina's morning nap with Devon.

Devon's finding more Big Boy things to do all the time. He loves Play-Doh. He likes to make smakes, pancakes, and especially balls. Of course.

My goal is to have Devon eating his oaties all by himself by the time Carrie and Melina have morning oaties, too. Devon started practicing with a spoon a week ago, and he gets better every day. He's in the phase where letting him feed himself is harder than just feeding him, but we're looking forward to the day he'll find his mouth without finding the wall, the floor, his shirt, or his hair first.

As you can see, most of the time he eats with his left hand. He still switches, though, so Uncle Tim's early pronouncements about another lefty in the family may be premature.

We tried decorating cookies, and it worked until Devon realized everything tasted good. The row of gumdrops on the train car disappeared faster than it went on. Oh well. I bought the kit on clearance to fill an empty afternoon, and it worked. Devon and I had fun. I've never seen a person coated in that much frosting before.

Yes, we are one of THOSE parents. Our son eats dessert. Here he is after krumkake (traditional cone-shaped Norwegian cookies filled with chocolate pudding).

He also eats a donut on the occasional Saturday. We want our kids to eat healthy, but we want them to learn that treats are fun in moderation and on special occasions. I don't want them gorging on Froot Loops and pizza their freshman year of college to make up for a vegan childhood where all junk food was forbidden.

It would be hypocritical to not allow them to eat junk if I indulge myself, and I have no desire to give up Bluebell ice cream and Mint M&M's to set a good example. So, now that Devon has learned to drink from a straw, he asks for a sip of my soda.

"Bubble-sippy-Mommy-oh-it's-a-Mommy-and-a-bubble-sippy!"

I give him one. Yes, an hour later I sometimes have to deal with the consequences, but Hyper Devon isn't really that different from Normal Devon. He's a little boy. What do you expect?

Not so little any more, though. His 18-month pants are getting a bit short, and he's sprouted two inches in the last month. As you can see, it hasn't changed his manly physique. He may be skinny, but he's all muscle. He's the only toddler I've ever seen with a six-pack.

All the kids love to play in the screened porch in the afternoons as we wait for Daddy to get home. The girls bob in their Bumbos as Devon rolls his trucks off the slide next to them. Melina stiffens her legs, pops her little rear out of the seat, and rolls off the top onto the rubber mat. Devon sees the opportunity and sits in the Bumbo. The girls are highly entertained by him. They ride-the-pony and laugh, which makes Devon, the center of attention, beam back at them.

It's a perfect moment, one that makes the craziness that occasionally overwhelms me all worthwhile. We wanted our kids to be close in age so they could play together as siblings and enjoy a close bond.

It looks like it's working.

New Year's Resolution, 1-20-2012

2012-01-20T11:06:00.000-08:00

Way back in my student teaching days the speech therapist at my school did a language evaluation for a third grader. The otherwise bright girl mumbled, mixed her words around, and used strange, seemingly made-up names for commonplace classroom objects and actions. She was observed for a week in clinic and classroom and the therapist documented all of these problems. This cheerful and intelligent little girl was having serious difficulty functioning normally at school. When my friend thought she had a diagnosis, she made a home visit to confirm.

The girl didn't have a speech impediment. She was being raised by her grandmother, who had difficulty communicating because of a stroke suffered when the girl was two. She learned to talk by repeating words she heard from a woman who could barely speak herself. This became apparent when my friend realized over coffee and cookies that the girl and her guardian sounded just like each other.

This stops me in my tracks.

I taught for eight years, and though I did my best for my students I knew that most of their training was going on at home. Many times I left a parent-teacher meeting thinking "Well, that explains a lot!" Most of the time it was for good reason: kind, thoughtful, intelligent parents were successfully raising a wonderful child.

Sometimes not.

Giggling over morning cereal and filling sippy cups is the easy part of parenting. The hard part is that to truly be successful I have to BE the kind of person I want my babies to become. That means getting up in the morning and doing battle with the parts of my personality I'm not happy about.

There are no secrets in a house with small children. If I think my children won't notice my flaws, and by noticing feel comfortable in accepting a lower standard I have modeled for them in my own life, I'm sadly mistaken.

This weekend Craig and I are sitting down and making THE LIST. On it go words that will not be allowed in our house. Some are profane, some are best left to private conversation and not trotted out in public, and some are best left to older people who can judge each situation and use words to help and not harm. However, THE LIST isn't for policing what our kids say. It's for monitoring what WE say.

It's about time. Devon's vocabulary has gone from 10 words to 500 words in three short weeks. He's putting the words into increasingly complex sentences. It's without a doubt the most fun I've had being a parent. It amazes me that I can say "read" once and find him rocking in his chair with book open saying "read...read...read" an hour later.

I have a choice to make. I can be stupid (a word on the list, actually) and think that I can continue to act any way I feel like and raise children that don't have my hangups. Or I can choose to learn my hard lessons quickly and not let any of the foolishness I struggle with become a part of them.

People already say my kids look and act like me. I want that to be a good thing.

I hope it's not too late in the year to make that New Year's resolution.

Only twenty days late is actually doing pretty good for me. All three kids are on a really good schedule, but only just. Bedtime routines are firmly established, but things don't always go according to plan. When I take this picture at 8 pm.,

chances are I'll be taking this one at 11:30,

and, finally, this one at midnight.

Mysteriously, Carrie's and Melina's day schedules have flipped. Melina used to keep me company in the afternoon as Carrie and Devon slept. Now for the past few days Melina has been taking the marathon-style naps of a much older baby

while Carrie and I enjoy floor time, do the afternoon chores, or sit at the kitchen table typing a blog and eating cereal.

I cherish every minute I have alone with Carrie. She doesn't have the high-energy needs of toddler Devon or the "all the world is a stage" personality of Melina. She's the one who could easily get lost in the shuffle of my day, the wheel-that-doesn't-squeak that therefore gets left alone. I have to make an effort each day to notice her, enjoying every minute of her serenely cheerful babyhood.

So I do. That's my other resolution, and I make that promise to all of my babies.

Before we had kids, I admired the attitude of a friend of mine who had one child at the time and now also has three. She said she made up her mind to treat her little boy like he was the only child she would ever have, and to give him all the attention and love that he needed without looking ahead to having more or back to when it was just her and her husband.

I want to do the same. Part of living the very public life of parent of three under two is fielding questions about our intentions:

"Are you done?"

"Did you plan this?"

"You're going to end up like the Duggars, you know!" (Interesting side note: they had their first three on our timeline.)

Most people are nice. Some, quite frankly, aren't.

"You just enjoy making things hard for yourself, don't you!"

"This isn't the 1800's! There are things you can do to prevent that!"

"I know the name of a good bankruptcy lawyer! You're going to need it!"

I love my life with my husband and kids. It's amazing now to think of the time I wasted worrying about waiting too long bringing on infertility (HAH!). God gave us three kids before we even asked for two. How amazing! God knows what we want, but he gives us what we need. At this point, that's enough for us. More children would make for some interesting blog titles (6 in 4? 9 in 6?) but we're too busy loving our children like they're the only ones we're ever going to have.

It's easy for me to move through the day in a putting-out-fires state of mind, especially when a small crisis threatens to destroy the peaceful evening I planned. After an evening like last night when I changed eleven poopy diapers in two hours and gave two emergency baths, it's easy to wonder when I'll ever be able to plan an evening out or have late evening hobby time (if by "hobby time" I mean finally starting the girls' baby books). Then I stop, focus on my kids who need me, and make the decision to participate fully in this time of my life.

This morning Carrie woke up at an early 6:30, and after eating she laid on my chest in a blissful milk coma as I checked facebook and email and enjoyed the rhythm of her breath for two hours as Devon and Melina uncharacteristically slept in.

I have to make enough of those moments. Perfect strangers warn me of that all the time.

"They're so sweet! Enjoy them! They're going to grow up so fast!"

Outfit Lab, 1-14-12

2012-01-12T12:41:00.000-08:00

While Devon sleeps (yes, he sleeps like this),

the girls and I enjoy their new room. It's almost "done"; I just need to hang their name plaques.

Grandpa and Devon finished putting the crib together on the morning of Carrie and Melina's five-month checkup.

Melina weighed in at 12 lbs. 14 oz. and Carrie at 14 lbs. 2 oz. Not only are they still exactly a pound and four ounces different, but they've each gained exactly eight pounds since birth! Twenty-seven pounds of baby is way too much to sleep in one pack-and-play, so they've been in separate ones since four months when we split them up to help them sleep through the night. Carrie slept on her stomach and Melina on her back, looking like two halves of the same puzzle. Now that their nighttime sleep routines are well established and they both wake up smiling and cooing around 7 am...

... they can do it in the same crib! I was wondering how they would react to bedsharing again after a month alone. Last night I transferred them both asleep to separate sides of the crib so they could each have their space. An hour later, they had scooted to the middle and were spooning away just like they used to do when they were three days old.

I love the way the room turned out. Mommy and Grammy did the decorating.

It's a good mix of old and new. The new Summer Garden quilt (a special Christmas gift from Grammy and Grandpa) hangs over the old desk that Craig had in his childhood bedroom.

The artsy bug mobile from Devon's baby room is over the pooh pack-and-play with a new pink minkie sheet.

The new cutesy bug plaques match the old changing table with the moss green pad.

"Wow, it looks like we're finally ready to bring the babies home from the hospital!" I quipped to my mom.

The move really interfered with my nesting; I didn't want to fix and then dismantle a room in Lexington. Either way it wouldn't have mattered. New babies don't need monogrammed bedding and a color scheme; they need their parents close by. Carrie and Melina were always either in our room or right outside it.

Now they need a room for their clothes and toys as much as for their crib. Carrie's already in the second outfit of the day. She's developed a habit of grabbing onto anything I'm doing while I'm nursing her, and I was eating crackers spread with Nutella. Since I eat about half my daily calories while sitting with a baby and a Boppy curled around me, I'm not sure what to do about this. Nursing twins is giving me the metabolism and the concave backside of an eleven-year-old boy.

Today us girls are camped out on the floor sorting the laundry.

Away go the kitchen towels, the bibs, and the burp cloths. Devon's clothes go on his bed to put away later; that's how I caught him doing the sleep crawl with Poohbear and Christmasbear tagging along. There's also a small pile of clothes they've already outgrown that I will put into their closet bins with a nostalgic sniff. It still amazes me that people that tiny can actually outgrow things.

I start laying out clothes and soon the floor around the three of us is tiled in pairs of outfits. Most of Carrie and Melina's clothes are hand-me-downs from friends and older cousins. Dressing them in matchy-matchy is cute but expensive, so their matching outfits are usually gifts from friends and family. The rest of the time they wear outfits that complement each other in color and style that I cobble together from what they inherit.

Every few minutes I get up and file the finished sets away in their dresser drawers so that each morning I can grab two coordinating outfits without rooting around for a matching sweater or pair of pants.

I wish my own clothes were as organized. My personal sense of style is suffering right now. I moved from a cold climate to a warmer one where my favorite long sleeves and sweaters are out of place, and I've gained and lost forty pounds twice in the last two years. My weather appropriate clothes come in three different styles: saggy, baggy, or two sizes too big. My shirts start the day large and keep growing as I lift them up periodically to nurse. When I go out, I finish every outfit with a pair of Barney-purple Crocs I bought for $10 at the outlet.

The old wives' tale says that girls steal their mothers' beauty during pregnancy. I had a few people nod sagely and tell me that when I told them I was carrying two girls. They must have thought I looked TERRIBLE at the time. The expression makes no sense to me at all considering my situation. If both of the twins got their irresistible cuteness and universal appeal by taking it away from me, then I must have been indescribably hot to begin with. Really, I wasn't. They're so much cuter than I ever was that it's the highest flattery for me when people see them and compliment their sweetness.

I think fellow twin parent William Shakespeare felt this way, too, which is weird because he was the original deadbeat Dad. He, like me, had three kids in two years (Susanna, Hamnet, and Judith), but then left his family to live and work in London. His Sonnet #2 describes the way parental pride displaces personal pride. I've "translated" his original words below because I get my jollies out of using my otherwise fallow English degree to absorb something more cerebral than Moo, Baa, LaLaLa.

When forty winters shall beseige thy brow,
And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field,
Thy youth's proud livery, so gazed on now,
Will be a tatter'd weed, of small worth held:

When you're five months postpartum and you feel like a deflated sack of skin,
and you shake your head in the mirror and sigh "I'll never be a size two again!"
even though you were only a size two for, like, ten minutes in the fifth grade...

Then being ask'd where all thy beauty lies,
Where all the treasure of thy lusty days,
To say, within thine own deep-sunken eyes,
Were an all-eating shame and thriftless praise.

When you sidle up to your husband in the pew in church in the middle of the first song and he says "Did you go check on the kids? Where were you? I looked all over!" and you're horrified because you were sitting two rows back in plain sight the whole time and you wonder if having three kids in two years has aged you past all recognition...

How much more praise deserved thy beauty's use,
If thou couldst answer 'This fair child of mine
Shall sum my count and make my old excuse,'
Proving his beauty by succession thine!
This were to be new made when thou art old,
And see thy blood warm when thou feel'st it cold.

You'll push your girls in a cart around Target and know that the hushed whispers that always seem to be behind you are about them, beaming so animatedly in their brown polka-dotted pants and pink cardigans and the hairbows with little musical notes...

So precious!

Sweet!

How Lovely!

You'll gaze into their faces with the wide set eyes you know are yours and the curved cleft chins that are your husband's, and you'll see that children are a much more flattering mirror than the one above the sink at home.

Then you'll suck in your stomach and smile.

Fussy Morning, 1-6-12

2012-01-06T08:32:00.000-08:00

It's Friday morning, and it looks like this post is going to be typed with one hand (like many of my posts these days). I'm dividing my time between composing and holding a very fussy Melina.

Maybe she misses her Grammy and Grandpa, who boarded a plane for home yesterday and won't be back to hold her for several months. If the cascade of drool covering both little fists and running down her shirt is any indication, she's teething. She could even be reacting a little from her five month shots, with so many deadly childhood diseases waging their wars in miniature in order to build up antibodies in her little immune system.

Whatever the cause, if I put her down she's inconsolable. Melina's nasal, operatic scales radiate pure grief, unlike Carrie's drier, throatier mad wail. Since any of my kids crying is nails-down-the-chalkboard on my mommy hormones, Melina has been my morning companion as Carrie bobs her head in the Bumbo. We've made the coffee and oatmeal, shooed the cat off the master bed, and watched Devon play with his new cars on the screened porch.

I really need to get up and do battle with the two textures of childhood: Crunchy and Sticky. Devon enjoyed the chocolate Santa from his Christmas stocking little by little, but the crispy parts unsettled him so he spit them out and flicked them on the floor like peanut shells in a Texas Roadhouse. Then, he learned how to unscrew the cap on his sippy, making a round watermark of apple juice on the floor around his booster seat.

Since I didn't want him to walk on the tile until I could clean up, I relaxed my rules and let him take a toddler snack-catcher cup of goldfish crackers into the living room. I know they're supposed to be for mess-free feeding, but Devon uses his more for entertainment. He shakes it upside down until all the goldfish fall out into his lap, and then beams and picks them up one by one, holding them up to the light to inspect them before crunching down with mouth wide open. Since I was feeding Carrie and Melina their cereal, I shrugged helplessly and watched it happen. The carpet is now spread evenly with a thin layer of artificial cheesy yellow cracker dust. I'm usually a barefoot girl in warm weather, but I've taken to wearing slippers because walking on my own floor makes my feet feel dirty some days.

Toddlers do generate a lot of mess; the five second attention span is probably to blame. Carrie and Melina's socks need sorting after Devon dumped their bin last night. He loves their socks; his favorite thing to do is to pull them off their feet, go to the nearest doorway, and stand in the threshold tossing them up in the air again and again. Every doorway has five or six mismatched socks on the floor, lying there like they're part of the feng shui.

The tree needs to be taken down before one of the kids starts eating needles again. It was a great tree and the kids loved it, but I am so OVER it by now. Worse than that, every time I pass the pen I smell poo and I don't know where it's coming from. I've picked up each of the kids, the cat, and most of the toys to smell them, and I can't figure out what's to blame. That's not a good sign, seeing that yesterday I changed seven poopy diapers.

I better get started, but I look down at Melina and she's sleeping with that newborn open-mouth-breath that puffs on my neck and tickles a bit. If I move her, her face contracts into a grimace and she whines in protest.

"Oh, Melina, it would take a village to raise you," I raise an eyebrow and whisper. It's my favorite saying, the one I repeat to maintain my composure when I start to get tired. Carrie and Devon each have their fussy moments and things that set them off, but if I am ever diagnosed with permanent hearing damage it will be Melina's fault.

Not that she isn't a joy to parent. When I lean over her to pick her up, she arches her back and practically levitates into my hands, squealing with joy that I've finally noticed her. She's starting to stand in her exersaucer for a few minutes a day, bicycling her feet like she's ready to run across the floor. When I carry her around, her hand drifts up and traces my jawline lightly like she's trying to memorize the feel of me.

I suppose it's natural for me to feel most protective of my littlest one, the active but fragile one we almost lost when her heartbeat plummeted during the delivery. I feel like she needs me most of all, and it feels good to be needed even when I'd rather be pushing a mop. Most importantly, Melina reminds me that nothing is more important than sitting down and holding the baby.

Christmas Eve, 12-23-11

2011-12-23T12:37:00.001-08:00

These are the photos that make me pity everyone who doesn't have twins.

Even going to the grocery store is a public service these days. The twins are universally cute, smiling, and finally poseable enough to take some really good pictures.

Our house doesn't have a chimney on which to hang our stockings with care, so we make do. Grammy, Grandpa, Mommy, and Daddy have handmade stockings I made years ago, but my kids don't. Even Ally kitty has a stocking with her name on it, but not my kids. In January when all three kids will finally be on an afternoon nap schedule, I'm going to get my act together. I wanted their stockings to all be done for our first Christmas as a family of five, but I spent the three discretionary hours I had last month taking a bath and reading Dare to Discipline.

Our early fears of Devon tipping over the Christmas tree haven't been realized, although he has removed most of the ornaments he can reach. It's pretty much just a lit tree now, a hardy Fraser Fir that sheds needles profusely because it was trucked in from five states away.

Of course, what the area lacks in Christmas Tree Farms it certainly makes up in poinsettias. The one in our entry way is four feet wide. In Lexington I'd spy a nice one and buy it only to have the cold drive home almost kill it. This season I've already bought three and they're all blooming away in the warm weather. When Christmas is over, I'm thinking of planting them outside. Hah!

It's 84 degrees here, and when I complain to my friends about being too hot I get NO sympathy. All our Christmas decorations survived the move, although I spent a month looking for the Caucasian Holy Family. While in high school I received beautiful, fragile, and probably valuable china figurines of Mary, Joseph, and Baby Jesus. Every year when I set them up I marvel at their blonde-haired, blue-eyed, white-skinned perfection, and then wonder why their makers didn't have a creative vision that was, oh, EVEN JUST A BIT MIDDLE EASTERN!!!!! They were a gift from my Grandma Annabelle (yes, as in Carrie Annabelle), the kindest, least prejudiced person, and it was the kind of thing I'd like to pass down someday. I was relieved when Devon came out of the twins' closet one day holding aloft a reindeer tin that contained their intact, bone china selves. Now I need to find an out of reach place where we can safely enjoy their white-as-the-driven-snow radiance.

Our workaday manger scene is getting heavy use these days. It's a Fontanini, a brand I recommend not just because it's reassuringly culturally accurate. The figurines are made out of durable molded plastic, which can be very comforting when Devon rounds the corner with Gaspar in one hand and the camel in the other. Don't worry about the safety of the Baby Jesus; I'm following the Keathley tradition of putting Jesus in the manger for the first time while reading the Luke 2 story on Christmas Eve. Until then, he's enjoying our anticipation from a teacup on a high shelf.

Devon's having fun acting out the Christmas story as Mommy narrates using phrases from the King James. I know that we're all enlightened now and use NASB, NIV, or even the Southern Baptist favorite the Holman Christian Standard, but I prefer to recite the nostalgic words straight from my childhood.

Mommy: Those are the shepherds!

Devon: Sepperds! There! (pointing)

Mommy: They're abiding in the fields keeping watch over their flocks by night!

Devon: Seep! (picks up the Lambs to the Slaughter and puts one in his mouth)

Mommy: Lo! An ANGEL OF THE LORD came upon them, and the GLORY OF THE LORD shone around them, and then they were SORE AFRAID!

Devon: (tips over all the shepherds) Oh Noooooooooooooooo!

For weeks Devon would only take the sheep out of the creche; I aptly nicknamed them the Lambs to the Slaughter because their presence protected the peace and tranquility of the rest of the tableau.

No, Ally kitty has not seen his star in the East and come to worship the Baby Jesus. She's always been a little confused by the manger. It started when she was a kitten and we laid towels on the furniture to show here where she could lay so she could shed away on a towel and our couch could be hair-free. Every year we roll out a towel, arrange the creche and figures, and have to shoo Ally away every day or so.

Funny, this year it hasn't been so much of a problem!

Since we barely finished sending the twins' baby announcements out in November, we're probably skipping a picture mailer, but we did take a really nice picture.

For those of you wondering about the unfamiliar person, that's what my brother looks like when he smiles in pictures. Stoic Tim didn't make it this year, thanks to the other new person. He and his girlfriend Bojana Jovanovic were able to come out and spend last weekend with us. Uncle Tim and Auntie Bojana made quite a stir with the small set, taking Devon to Walmart and buying him a dozen balls and a Monster Truck that makes him turn purple and quiver with delight every time you turn it on.

There are many more pictures in this series that didn't make the post. Devon, not one to pass up a chance to perform, thought it was hilarious to lift his shirt and display his "Pufferfish Tummy" every time Daddy set the flash on the tripod and dashed for the picture. Mommy tried to keep him distracted by singing "Father Abraham Had Many Sons", an appropriate song because the "right arm-left arm" motions prevented the tummy shenanigans.

White Christmases, fir trees, chimneys, and reindeer are nice, but they're not spiritually significant. Why did Perry Como have to dream of a "White Christmas"? He lived for years on Jupiter Island, about thirty miles south of Vero Beach.

It's ironic to think that spending our first Christmas in Florida in our shorts and bare feet brings us closer in a way to the very first one. Christians don't know the time of year that Jesus was really born, and the Middle East probably doesn't get many feet of snow and subzero temperatures at any time of year. Baby Jesus came to parents who were hot and tired from travel, surrounded by sand, and far from home, all things we can identify with given our past year.

NOT that I'm comparing us to the Holy Family, but it makes me grateful for their journey and what it means to us. We share their story with our children, mostly too young to understand.

That's okay. There's always next year.

Payback: December 14, 2011

2011-12-14T04:59:00.000-08:00

I swear I remember this happening, although it may be one of those early memories that constructed themselves in my young mind because my parents told me about it over and over. When I was eighteen months old (around Devon's age now) my parents took me to Minneapolis for the weekend. I was usually a really good sleeper, but something about the drive from Sioux Falls, the hotel room, or the unfamiliar nighttime routine got me riled.

I started to sob loudly and refused to be consoled. My tired and bewildered parents tried holding me, walking me around, and letting me lay down. Hours ticked by as I wailed out my fury with the range and decibels of an ambulance siren and my parents contemplated staying awake during the morning's conference schedule.

Suddenly, in the middle of the night the room was filled with that thrumming, echoing silence that comes when a crying child has just calmed. My dad, lying still and hoping that I wouldn't start up again, felt me crawl on the bed next to him, bend over him, and stroke his forehead.

"Oh, Daddy, you're so tired. Daddy, you need to sleep. Go to sleep, Daddy," I repeated over and over, my face a picture of patience and concern. As you can imagine, my advice was not well received, seeing that I was the only one preventing just that.

Thankfully, my parents are forgiving people and let the retelling of that embarrassing story at family gatherings be its own punishment. Maybe they also looked forward to the day when I would have my own children: Their antics would surely pay me back for whatever shenanigans I made them endure.

Oh, yeah.

Craig and I looked forward to Thanksgiving week all through October and early November. He finally had a job with "real time off" and we'd be able to take a week long road trip to Tennessee to see his family and celebrate. We knew the first time we'd traveled as a family of five could have difficult moments, but didn't see a reason to put it off. We'd never go anywhere with three kids under two if we didn't open ourselves up to being flexible and having a good time no matter what. Knowing I needed to be prepared for anything, I went to Walmart the day before and spent $200, buying new leak-proof sippies, toddler snack-catcher cups, three kinds of crackers, two kinds of M&M's, and those bottled iced coffees that are so much better than the McDonalds drive thru coffees when you need a quick caffeine boost.

We got off to a slightly late start because Craig was up with an upset stomach the night before. I tried to stay calm during the loading the car phase, anxious to get on the road. I was also mentally mapping every mile of our drive to Atlanta, knowing we'd be on the road late if we didn't make early progress. Carrie and Melina napped in their car seats for the first several hours. Every two to three hours we'd park at a rest stop and spring into action like a pit crew: nursing, changing diapers, and letting Devon walk around and pick up things. Devon, the best toddler traveler, sang songs to himself and pointed raptly at cars. At 5 p.m. we crossed the border into Georgia.

I set cruise control to 70 mph and watched the billboards on Highway 75 whiz by. All advertised strip clubs and crisis pregnancy centers, making me wonder if the two businesses were somehow related. Craig and I smiled at each other, enjoying one of those moments where we feel like we have three happy children largely due to our parenting prowess.

Two hours later I sighed, thinking I'd given birth to the three unhappiest children on the planet. Devon's "intrepid adventurer" mood reached the end of its shelf life and he started banging his head rhythmically on the back of his car seat. Melina jerked awake with one of her trademark full body startles, opened her mouth, and wailed the opening bars of The William Tell Overture. Devon, suddenly interested in this new development, looked around the side of his car seat and his eyes fell on the round, green paci perched temptingly in sleeping Carrie's mouth. "A BALL!" he said wonderingly, and reached over to pull it out. Carrie's cries added the tympani part to Melina's soprano, achieving an effect exclusive to a pair of crying twins. Unsettled by all the noise, instigator Devon then decided to join in.

We tried stopping to nurse, Craig holding each in turn while I tried to use "the universal pacifiers" to get the twins calm again. Devon, upset at not being allowed to get out and run, fussed.

"Devon," I said in the perfectly calm voice that Dr. Dobson recommends for parental discipline. The face of innocence peeped out at me from around the car seat, lips fixed in the pouty smile of a Hummel figurine.

"Give Mommy the paci, honey," I cooed. I took the offered paci in my one free hand. When we were finally able to start up again, I took the driver's seat and sighed, mentally calculating the number of hours it would take to get to Atlanta, still 180 miles away.

"I don't feel so good," said Craig, holding his stomach. "I hope I'm not coming down with something."

The girls started crying again, apparently not impressed by the extra nursing stop as a show of my good faith. Devon fussed and begged for new car toys only to pitch them over his seat and whine for more. Craig grew sicker by the minute, sipping Coke weakly and grimacing. I concentrated on the road and tried to focus on the miles, not the hours, as the evening crept along.

When we finally reached Atlanta, Craig tried to read the map and my copied-from-Yahoo directions as I scanned road signs looking for the corresponding streets. This division of labor that usually serves us well failed miserably. Three lanes of traffic sprouted up on my right. I was unable to dart across all three without killing us, so I couldn't make our exit. Craig mumbled directions I wouldn't have been able to hear over the din even if he had a bullhorn. I got off at the next exit and found a place to ask for directions. Scantily clad women in high heels and drug dealers in hoodies turned to watch our minivan go by, I'm sure thinking we seemed out of place. I stopped at a gas station and was given competent directions by a clean cut Indian gentleman that also seemed out of place in the 'hood. I'm not given to Hallmark Channel flights of fancy, but I'm not sure he wasn't an angel sent to save us from our predicament (cue backlighting).

Fifteen minutes later we were in our hotel room and things were finally peaceful, except for the sound of my three children crying and my husband being violently ill in the bathroom. The room was not the two-room suite I had reserved, so we would all have to quiet down and sleep in the same room. As I rushed around setting up the pack-and-plays and getting out pajamas, I muttered an incoherent monologue as a nightly prayer:

Lord, I didn't think you were given to sarcasm, but when you said in the Bible that women are "the weaker vessels" you couldn't possibly have had this evening in mind. What about Pastor's flowery, feel-good sermon of a few months ago about a woman being like a piece of fine china, delicate because we're set aside for a special purpose? Right now I don't even feel like a piece of earthenware. Try styrofoam! Pish tosh!!!

We expected our first road trip as a family of five to have some awkward moments, but nothing could've prepared us for that first night. It was my payback for that night in Minneapolis when I cried and cried so my parents couldn't get any sleep. I don't think I was truly capable of understanding how awful that night was for them until now. Children do have a way of making you look at your own memories with renewed perspective.

The rest of the trip went remarkably well considering the rough start. We enjoyed a recovery day at the Atlanta Botanical Gardens. Craig looks peaked in the pictures, but we still had a good time as a family.

My mom and dad arrived to spend the holidays last night. Before the kids and I drove to pick them up in Orlando, I tried to give Devon his second haircut. Devon, suspicious of everything from the plastic drape to the barber shears, refused to let me get anywhere near his head. He craned his neck around, presenting his face instead every time I tried to get a snip of hair. I gave up after fifteen minutes, resigning myself to Devon seeing Grammy and Grandpa for the first time in four months looking like a Hobbit.

I've GOT to cut Devon's hair soon. If it gets any longer, he's going to look like Justin Bieber. I think distracting Devon while I cut his hair is going to be Grandpa's job.

What Devon doesn't know is that Grandpa didn't like having his hair cut either when he was a little boy. I've seen a picture of a tearful two-year-old Jerry getting his first haircut. It took four of his much older brothers and sisters to distract him by talking to him and bouncing him on a bicycle seat.

I think it's time for some payback.

Our First Family Picture, Thanksgiving 2011

2011-12-09T12:37:00.000-08:00

Want to see our first family picture?

On Thanksgiving 2010, Devon was eight months old. We spent the holiday in Nashville with Craig's family and took photos together just after dinner. I like to think that sometime that day, perhaps between the stuffing and the pumpkin pie, a few cells split off the tiny embryo I didn't even know I was carrying and Carrie Melina Keathley became Carrie and Melina Keathley.

Of course, that single baby probably wouldn't have been named Carrie OR Melina. I had the name Verity picked out for a girl. We decided that since it meant "truth" it wouldn't work well for a twin. If one girl's name means that she's truthful, does the other one get to be a liar? What if the twin named Verity wasn't particularly truthful? Irony?

On the drive home from Nashville, I felt a twinge of nausea contemplating the turkey and cranberry sandwich my mother-in-law had packed for me. The next clue that I might be pregnant came almost a month later when the belt on the dress I had bought for a Christmas party was mysteriously tighter and I was in a serious romantic relationship with The Gingerbread Man.

Now I'm spending the day with three times as many kids as I thought I had back then. If you've wondered why I haven't posted in a while, it's because sometimes I can either be a parent or write about being a parent. I can't do both at once.

This has been a busy time for me because the girls are starting to take a little cereal twice a day. Like any parenting decision, this one was difficult, particularly because the Breastfeeding Mafia recommends ebf (exclusively breastfed) from birth to at least six months.

I caved at four months. I love nursing, but it was taking over my life. One night I was eating a bowl of Raisin Bran at 9:30 and realized that I had skipped dinner every night that week. What did I do instead? Tandem nurse, and not just at 6 pm, but every hour all day except for a short break in the afternoon. Tandem nursing was closing in on showering, taking care of Devon, eating three meals a day, keeping up with the laundry, and checking in with my patient and neglected husband.

The worst thing about spending so much time on the couch is not the backaches. It's that I had hours a day to surf the Internet with my one free hand and learn about all the things I should be doing for my kids. Making my own vegan organic formula from ingredients I buy from a health food store in New Zealand. Pureeing my own cereal from whole grains I cook myself. Wearing my babies on my body until they're old enough to drive a car.

Oh well. Twice a day the twins get 15 ml. of liquid cereal mixed with formula dropped into their mouths with a supplementing syringe. We'll transition to a spoon as soon as they get a little more practice moving a little squirt of cereal from the front of their mouths to the back. Right now it's cute to watch them stick out their tongues as if for a communion wafer, swallow, smile, and open for more. The cereal comes from a box with a smiling baby on it. The formula comes from a canister. The Breastfeeding Mafia says that you might as well feed the packing materials to the baby for all the nutrition they're getting, but the Mythbusters debunked that suburban legend last year before they turned their attention to sending cannonballs through peaceful Dublin homes.

I feel a little like I've gone over to the dark side, but the girls don't. They take a good morning nap, a good afternoon nap, and still nurse 6-8 times a day. What matters most is that they're much happier now...

...which means Mommy is, too.

The girls enjoy spending time in the "baby gym", which works better than a bouncy seat because they can lay side-by-side, or enjoy some tummy time. Melina just dropped her head, twitched her right leg, and became the first twin with a confirmed front-to-back rollover!

Last Saturday morning, we read in the paper about the Vero Beach Christmas Parade. "How quaint! A small-town parade. Let's go!" we cried, and packed up the kids for a rare evening outing.

As it turns out, five thousand people line Ocean Drive (a stone's throw from the coast) to watch handcrafted floats covered in Christmas lights amble down the street. It was part Main Street Electrical Parade, part Almond Blossom Festival, and the event of Devon's young life. When he was handed a flag by a passing walker, he gripped it firmly and waved it for two hours.

On the way back to the car, we ignored passing strangers who ironically hummed "Everyone Loves A Parade" while watching us file by with the twins in the double stroller and Devon still waving his flag in the single. I heard a voice call after us: "Wow, you guys make THAT look easy!"

It's NOT always easy, as you can imagine, but there are other words I would use to describe it: fun, exciting, rewarding. Of course, it's also time consuming. Why shouldn't it be?

It's the one thing in my life that, more than anything, I want to do well.

And blog about it if I have the time.

Countdown to Christmas, 11-17-11

2011-11-12T07:12:00.001-08:00

Devon is in his Reindeerjamms already.

I guess he takes after his Daddy, who listens to Christmas music from November to March. Either that or his practical Mommy puts him in whatever jamms are clean if the laundry is late. You decide.

Either way, these two pictures are so precious to me because we came to the end of this era only days later. Frustrated and tired after another three-feeding-night, I made the difficult decision to split the twins up in hopes that their sleeping in separate rooms would keep them from waking each other up. It's working so far. The twins turn into pumpkins every night around 10 and are sleeping in 'till 6 or 7. This could be "just a phase" where they need to be apart to stay asleep longer, and future attempts to let them co-sleep could be more successful.

I hope so. Grandpa is coming in a few short weeks. The twins' crib arrived from Amazon two weeks ago, and is still in its box in the girls' room. I'm hoping that Grandpa and Devon will put it together...

...seeing that they did a pretty good job on our other crib.

But, wait! Doesn't each twin merit her own crib? Of course they do, but one of the cribs is still occupied!

Again, practical Mommy was reluctant to buy three cribs (THREE CRIBS!) if she could get by with two. So, when the twins move into their room and their crib sometime in December, they can hopefully co-sleep for a few more months until Devon is ready for his Big Boy Bed. Then we'll have one toddler in a twin, two babies in matching convertible cribs, and no more beds to buy until the girls are out of toddler beds.

Thanks to a visit from the kids' Auntie Amy, the twins' room is the only oasis of chaos in the house. We also enjoyed visits to McKee Botanical Gardens here in Vero, the beach, and the uber-upscale outdoor mall City Place in West Palm Beach.

We didn't always go out, though. Sometimes we'd just hang out.

Devon enjoyed having someone to play with him while the girls are eating, which would otherwise be "pen time" for him.

Melina had a very photogenic week. Here she is in her "pinup girl pose". Somebody watch out for this kid in sixteen years!

So, to start the season off, I'm thankful for visits from family and friends, Christmas music playing on Pandora (yes, already), and Bumbos...

...or whatever the plural is. Bumboes?

First Halloween, 11-10-11

2011-11-10T04:43:00.000-08:00

My friend Karen has a great sense of humor. When I was in high school, I wondered where she got it from.

Evidently from her mom, who sent the novelty paci's for the girls to enjoy this Halloween. This shot was hard to get, because the girls are in a phase where any eye contact results in a face-cracking smile that makes a paci drop right out.

And yes, we will celebrate Halloween. I don't want my kids to grow up thinking that being a Christian exempts you from celebrating everything, especially a fun holiday where you dress up as something imaginative, eat yummy candy, and spend time with friends. In childhood I occasionally marked the holiday with squeaky clean events like a church "Harvest Party" where we all got down dressed as Bible characters. Believe me, no matter if you're Ruth, David, or King Ahab, everybody came in a bathrobe with towels on their heads. All the adults walked around with goofy smiles pasted on their faces, saying "Isn't this just as fun as trick-or-treating?"

Ummm... Nope, it wasn't.

Yes, the origins of Halloween aren't anything to laugh at. People used to dress up to "fool the evil spirits" and be defiant in the face of evil on All Hallow's Eve.
Obviously, it would be silly to believe that fake blood and bandages are real insurance against bad the things that happen to good people.

Let's face it, evil exists in this world, and it has nothing to do with mummies, slasher movies, or Team Edward and Team Jacob. If you have kids, the things that truly scare you can't be found in the holiday section of Target.

Separation...

Sickness...

Death.

The night before I had the twins, I was flush with pregnancy hormones and suddenly totally overcome with the gravity of the dangerous birth I was to go through the next morning. Odds were everything was going to be fine, but when I came face-to-face with the very real possibility that one or both of the twins could die, odds didn't matter. I couldn't keep it together. So, I locked myself in my bedroom and begged God on my face to spare the lives of my children.

He did.

Don't I love my God who overcomes evil? I think the worst way to honor him would be to stay inside with the porch light off and listen to choir music all night. I want to dress my kids up, give out the good candy, meet my neighbors, go to the party, and be happy and grateful because I'm on the side of good (and good wins).

For Devon, his definition of good meant being a ball. We recently figured out that he says "ball" to mean "good." It must be easier on his language skills. If I go get him up in the morning and ask how his night was and he says "A BALL," that means he had a really good night. It's how he asks for blueberries, his favorite food, in his Big Boy Booster we got for him this week. In the car on trips, he amuses himself by singing "Ballll-eeeee-alllll-eeeee-alllll..."

Unfortunately, they don't make ball costumes for toddlers. All the costumes at the store were ultra-commercial, which is one of my complaints about modern Halloween. If my son has never watched television, he doesn't want to be Elmo, Lightning McQueen, Spiderman, or any of the other characters that he will easily recognize when he's, like, 10. Type in "baseball costume" on Amazon and you'll find a uniform from whatever team you want with everything from the cap to the stirrups, but it wasn't what we wanted.

"Grrrr," I growled at the computer. "What if you don't want to be a ball PLAYER? Isn't there a costume you can buy to just be the BALL?" There wasn't, so my first Halloween with three children was marked by a time-honored rite of passage for crafty moms: locking myself in a room and frantically sewing on a costume three hours before the party started.

Devon's ball costume turned out pretty cute, though. He enjoyed running around and then flopping down hard on the soft tummy. I was afraid that, like many toddlers, he wouldn't enjoy dressing up, but he loved it. It turned him into a perpetual motion machine.

Here he is trying to put a paci in the twins' mouths. He did this once about six weeks ago and has been trying to repeat it despite the lack of the necessary fine motor skills. Sometimes he misses the point and tries for a paci in the eye.

I wanted to get all three kids in a cute First Halloween pose.

We got this close. Not very. Next year, I suppose.

Here's Little-Melina-Bumble-Bee! When they are old enough, the girls can be Disney-cat-fairy-pink-and-purple-ballet-princesses like I was in third grade, but until they're old enough to have opinions I can make them be whatever I want. Goody!

Here's Little-Carrie-Pretty-Flower in her costume. Before I had kids, I thought that parents who dressed their babies up for Halloween were foolish. If this was you and I made a comment about it, I apologize now. I was misguided.

Here's why we dress the babies up: it's ADORABLE! It doesn't matter if they will never remember their first Halloween, or even two or three more. Someday we can show them a picture and smile and say "Look how cute you were!"

We went to a Halloween party at the church we've just started attending. Nobody had to come dressed as Bible characters. They asked that nobody come as a Warrior of the Coming Zombie Apocalypse either, but that was okay. It was fun, and we lasted an hour and fifteen minutes. In terms of an outing with three small children, it's long enough. At home, we gave out candy and showed off our cute kids in their costumes as trick-or-treaters continued to trickle by much later than we thought they would.

It was a good day.

10-29-11, When this Barge is Rockin'...

2011-10-19T14:51:00.001-07:00

Carrie and Melina came home from the hospital at 5 lbs. 14 oz. (4 oz. down) and 4 lbs. 12 oz. (2 oz. down), largely due to competent and caring support from the UK Hospital Lactation staff. Giving birth to multiples meant that I wasn't just first on everyone's list: I had pager numbers! Everyone was amazed how well they were nursing for being so small. As you can see, I barely needed a pillow to prop them up; I could practically tuck them into my t-shirt! Melina, especially, still enjoyed skin-to-skin Mommy time to make sure she kept an even body temperature.

While in the hospital, I supported the decision to feed them formula to keep their weights up since they were premature by normal standards. A half-pound drop in birth weight, perfectly normal for a full-term baby, could have sent them straight to the NICU. On the second day in the hospital, they took a few meals of 5 ml. through a cannula syringe. By evening they were nursing for 20 minutes at a time and getting a 5 ml. formula chaser afterwards.

At home, feeding the twins became what my Dad called a "high tech small-scale dairy operation", thanks to a Symphony hospital-grade pump. I'm not sure why they called it a "symphony" other than it's a nice name and calls to mind a pleasant noise. Of course, when you plug it in and put it on yourself it makes the noise you get in any milking shed. Giving suck gets you in touch with your inner mammal, but it takes a milking machine to really make you feel like a heifer. I think a better name for a pump would be The Milk-O-Matic 2000. The best part about having a pump is you can use it to estimate how many ounces you're producing daily and brag about it to friends and family. While I'd never top the gallons-a-day production of a Guernsey, within the first two weeks I was putting goats everywhere to shame.

I hadn't really pumped with Devon, preferring the natural approach and not having work or other distractions to keep me away for hours at a time. The twins, however, needed to take some pumped milk. Premature babies can have problems getting enough to eat because their little mouths have underdeveloped muscles. When they're tired of sucking, they stop whether they've had enough or not. With pumping, they could have all the milk they could drink "on tap" with an extra few ml. afterward to increase their stomach capacity and add crucial ounces to their weights.

I look back on Carrie and Melina's first month of life and mostly remember being busy with the upcoming move, but just feeding two babies was pretty daunting as well. Newborns need to eat 8-12 times a day, or at least every three hours. That means I was nursing, giving supplement, and pumping constantly, sometimes only to finish a feeding cycle and then do it all over again. If one twin was having trouble maintaining a latch, on the next feeding I'd give the other twin a whole pumped meal so I could concentrate on nursing the twin who was having difficulties.

As with all babies, it was never obvious how much Carrie and Melina had eaten and so it was hard to know how much to supplement them. Since they were born by c-section, they didn't get the mucus squeezed out of their systems and had a few more upset tummy issues. Carrie's problem was hiccups, which would rattle her tiny body and cause her milk meal to slosh around her tiny tummy like a shaken up can of soda. Melina was a champion projectile spitter, able to produce a foot-long arc of regurgitated food that could miss me completely and douse the person next to me.

Even when they ate well, I was amazed at the unladylike sounds that would emanate from my sweet little girls. I remember Devon finishing a feeding, curling up on my shoulder, closing his eyes, and emitting a soft-as-a-sigh little uurp like he was trying to whisper something in my ear. The twins' deafening burps would be more at home in a fraternity's beer drinking contest.

You'd think that nights would be the hardest part, but amazingly I found I could nurse two babies twice as efficiently as one. Devon was a sipper in his early months, enjoying an hour-long feeding twice or three times every night. The twins didn't have the luxury of enjoying both sides, so I could complete a feeding and have everyone burped and back in bed in a half hour! I measure the quality of my sleep in REM cycles, or the number of hour-and-a-half increments I stay asleep each night. Carrie and Melina usually only woke up once, so by their second week of life I could get 4 or 5 REM cycles if I worked in a nap in the afternoon.

This was assuming they both woke up. If not, I had to nurse one baby, supplement the other baby with pumped milk, pump, preserve the fresh milk, get everybody back to bed and put the pump away so Devon wouldn't get up in the morning and think the Symphony was a $1600 toddler toy. This two-hour midnight marathon really did me in, and I'm thankful that it didn't happen often.

The tricky thing about supplementing was that it couldn't come from a bottle, which made them gassy and interfered with their sucking practice. My trusted technique was to stick a finger in a baby's mouth, nail-side down like they showed me in the hospital. Then, when the sucking reflex engaged I would slip the cannula in beside my finger and let the milk trickle out. The cannula syringe doesn't have a needle, but the plastic end is still too pointy to stick in a baby's mouth by itself.

Grammy had the twins and a vial of milk when I went to my two-week checkup.

Grandpa got this picture of Carrie holding Grammy's finger as she delivered the good stuff. We came to call the technique Baby Bird, after the way the twins would stretch their necks out to receive a fast trickle of milk. It was quite a parlor trick for visitors, too, who could wash their hands and experience a newborn vigorously sucking on their finger as I pipetted milk in alongside, a sensation that reverberates all the way to the bottoms of your feet. Then I'd jump up and say "Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go milk myself," grab my pump dishes from the cookie pan by the sink, and head to the back bedroom for some privacy. Public nursing is pretty well accepted nowadays, but I don't think public pumping will ever catch on.

About two weeks into nursing, I found I couldn't support twelve pounds of baby on my remaining tummy pooch and a Boppy. Enter My Brest Friend.

The Twins Deluxe Nursing Pillow had arrived by special order when I was still pregnant. It made quite a stir with Devon, who enjoyed playing peek-a-boo with Grandpa through the hole in the middle.

As with many household items, Devon seemed to consider it made just for his entertainment. Poor kid. I probably don't buy him enough toys. I was less enthusiastic about the bigger pillow at first, eyeing the picture of a rail-thin woman excitedly yet discreetly tandem nursing twins on the bag with skepticism. For one thing, it's huge. Here it is compared to the more traditional Boppy. There was no question of bringing it to the hospital with us. It wouldn't just have filled my suitcase. It was bigger than my suitcase.

I think it's funny when women say "breastfeeding" like it's a sacred word, trilling the r's reverently like they are just looking for an excuse to say "breast" a lot. For me, "nursing" does the job just fine. This pillow didn't just trot out the word, it didn't even have the decency to spell it correctly. It went for the cutesy-wootsey pun on Best Friend, as if it wasn't obvious enough. The non-practicing English teacher in me was seriously offended by this pillow. Brest is a city in Belarus, I believe. Every time I looked at it, I thought about the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, one of the sophomore history class random details that pop into my head at odd times.

Well, like the Russians and the Central Powers, the pillow and I needed each other and soon came to an uneasy truce. Craig helped facilitate the accord by renaming the pillow.

"That thing is huge! It looks like a Party Barge!" he exclaimed as I curled it around myself and fastened the strap in back. Indeed, it turned me into a portable flotilla of pleasant beverages, so the name stuck. More often, it's just The Barge. True to its manufacturer's name, it is pretty indispensable if you're going to give tandem twin nursing a serious try, but in order to really be my friend it would have to change diapers and hold up one end of a conversation.

The twins were five weeks old when we left Lexington for Florida. The Milk-O-Matic went back to the rental store, and the twins turned into marathon nursers as they adjusted to the lack of supplement. It was difficult at first, but by the time we were done with the move I thought they had transitioned well enough to go pumpless (or, to borrow a term from the MTV generation, "unplugged").

I still tandem nurse them most of the time, which requires concentration, muscle control, posture reminiscent of typing on a keyboard, and privacy. I don't disapprove of public nursing, but if I waltzed into Panera with The Barge and reached for the twins I'm sure a crowd of curious onlookers would form and the management would ask if they could sell tickets. Usually nursing exposes much less skin than you see at the beach, but tandem pretty much requires full-frontal and is too complicated to cover.

At home, I often get both twins situated, achieve a tricky double-latch, and then sigh and realize that I really have to go to the bathroom and can't do anything about it for twenty minutes. Craig has learned to support me by saying the phrase that makes my heart sing: "What can I get you?" So often I've just become immobile and I realize I want my bedroom slippers, my ipod, or a large glass of half orange juice and half water (my substitute for the soda craving I haven't been able to shake months after delivery).

Here's Carrie on the barge, Melina discarded on the side, and me wild-eyed on too little sleep. Those bat-wings look a little wild, too. One of these days I need to address the arm flab issue (either that or, as my brother's girlfriend likes to say, "If you can't tone it, tan it!"). You'd think just handling the twins would be enough strength training to give me upper arms like Michelle Obama. I can make it all the way back to the pack-and-play by supporting the barge with my arms and keeping it level around my waist as I walk. Sometimes I've changed and bedded two babies, gotten Devon out of his crib, and am making his oatmeal when I look down and notice the barge swinging on my hips like a forgotten hula hoop.

I still have the Boppy for lazy afternoons when Devon is napping well and I have the luxury of nursing on demand. Most days "nursing on demand" for twins usually means "I demand that you nurse because your sister is hungry and if you don't eat now you'll be ready in a half hour and I'll have to listen to you cry while getting Devon ready for his nap." Thankfully, identicals are supposed to be attuned to each others' schedules, so most of the time they are both getting ready to eat at the same time. It's almost intimidating to put them on The Barge and have two babies tossing their heads from side to side and sucking loudly and desperately on their fingers inches away from my face. If I can't get ready fast enough, Carrie will latch onto any part of Melina that gets close enough, usually her head or her elbow. I have to put a burp cloth between them to keep one from jerking and giving the other a concussion.

Before having kids, breastfeeding appealed to me because it sounded easy. Spending hours cuddled up in the recliner with a warm little baby next to me and Lost reruns on TV was preferable to scooping formula powder into a bottle and heating the water to a backdrop of hungry cries. There are no dishes to wash and no hundreds to shell out for canisters of formula. Best of all, it suctions the fat out of the post-preggo muffin top faster than lipo!

With the twins, I made a conscious decision to do what I think is best for them even if it's still difficult, expensive, and exhausting. Just lactating can be an odd experience, like when the checker at the grocery store gives me a worried expression and I look down to see that one boob has overcome the hook on my nursing bra and is flying at half mast. Nursing twins adds a bit more strangeness. Sometimes I would get up at night to quiet a fussy baby, giving in and delivering a ten-minute "bonus boob" snack so she could fall back asleep. When I returned to bed, Craig would ask who was fussing and I'd realize that I had no idea which one I'd just been spending time with.

There was a beautiful moment about ten weeks in when I realized the bizarre and complicated relationship had become manageable and almost routine. Right now I am also enjoying that golden and magical week when the twins are sleeping through the night consistently for the very first time. They need me just a bit less, maybe even enough so that I can grab a minute sometime and redo the polish on my jagged toenails. There have also been many rewarding milestones along the way, like when I weigh the twins and exclaim to myself "Wow, I made another five pounds of baby last month!"

10-19-2011, Nursing School Dropout

2011-10-19T05:14:00.000-07:00

It's 8:30 a.m. and I just finished eating breakfast with both hands! I've put off cleaning the kitchen and am sitting in the living room with a cup of coffee (half milk) enjoying a moment so delicious it's almost fictional: I have three kids and they've ALL slept in.

Carrie is snoozing away in the cradle swing and Melina is still in the pack-and-play where she spent the night just outside our room. I feel a little like going and getting one of them, just to have that warm, sweet baby softness next to me. Sadly, if I did the quiet would be lost: she'd wake up, stretch so hard her butt almost taps the back of her head, and then make enthusiastic porky noises while bobbing her head up and down my arm.

I envy others sometimes for the length of time they're able to hold my twins. My aunt's visit last week was marked by long stretches of blissed out quiet as the twins reveled in the attention. Even Craig can sit with a newspaper and a twin and enjoy a lengthy cuddle. Not me. It kind of hurt me until I started looking at it from their perspective:

Why go to a restaurant if you're not going to sit down and order a meal?

At ten weeks old Carrie and Melina are still exclusively breastfed. Below is my favorite picture of us: the twins just shy of four weeks old and snoozing after an afternoon snack. Everything down to the Zen Mother expression on my face makes nursing twins look easy.

Before the birth I checked out stacks of books about breastfeeding, hoping for a few chapters of strategies for multiples. I was disappointed to find in each a paragraph at most. Just think: the whole sum of human collective knowledge about how to feed the children of 3 out of every 100 births for the first year of life in a paragraph! Books on twins didn't help much either. References to nursing ran more like one sentence: If you try to breastfeed, you will stop after what you will always look back on as the worst six weeks of your life!!!

I had wonderful memories of nursing Devon, who stopped at 10 1/2 months because... well... I was pregnant again. I knew I wanted to do the same for Carrie and Melina, but it was going to be harder. I committed to trying to make it work for as long as possible, and to not feeling guilty if I needed extra help or had to supplement with formula. Even now I don't consider myself an expert, but if breastfeeding one baby earns you a BA in nursing, twins is definitely more like a PhD.

Not that breastfeeding didn't have a rocky start. In the hospital, I was almost not allowed to breastfeed. I always thought it was a parental right, not a privilege. Apparently, at UK Hospital it's kind of like those cleaning their plates being the only ones who get dessert.

Months earlier, I had decided to decline routine prenatal HIV and Hepatitis testing. I didn't care if the CDC recommended it. If my extremely boring life thus far had not afforded me any possible exposure risk, I couldn't see the point of spending hundreds of dollars on tests that would just come back negative (or worse, a costly and confusing false positive, like an estimated 5 out of every 1000). My doctor and pediatrician said that though my decision was unorthodox, it wouldn't be a problem.

Fast forward to recovery, where I was dumped unceremoniously after the c-section and left in great pain. My husband was taken from my side by a pediatric resident and told that Carrie and Melina were at risk because of my "unestablished disease status" and would be kept away from me and not allowed to breastfeed until they had tested me.

So, all pretense of making me comfortable or letting me meet my babies for the first time was put off in favor of drawing two vials of blood to rush to the lab for tests I couldn't possibly fail. One problem: I'm a difficult blood draw even when I haven't lost significant blood volume to an emergency surgery. Four nurses paraded through my room and stuck both arms in various places without being able to find a vein. I was too dehydrated. I watched the minutes tick by, knowing that the twins would get formula in the baby nursery against my wishes if they couldn't be brought to me in the first two hours. For irony, I stared at the poster hung at the foot of my hospital bed.

I think it's a pretty sad commentary on our society that I was deprived of a patient's right to refuse treatment and my babies were literally held hostage so I would get the tests done. I am again grateful to have had a gifted mother-baby nurse, who finally had the idea of getting a NICU IV, a device that can literally suck the blood out of a very small vein. This they did for twenty minutes, mining a tiny vein in my arm and creating a bruise the size of an apricot. Away went the vials, and suddenly everyone got cooperative. I was now "allowed" to nurse my babies.

(Translation: Mama, you've got the only two I need!)

Christi the Perky Lactation Specialist popped into the room. "Hi! Congratulations on your beautiful twins! I was wondering when you'd like to get started with feeding your babies for the first time! The sooner the better!"

"Well," I shot back, "it's kind of a sore subject. For the past hour I've been staring at a smiley face made out of crayoned blue boobies that is supposed to make me feel happy about nursing, while my babies get formula in the nursery because I'm supposedly a danger to them." As I explained the past hour, I really let the angry Mommy in me come out to play. I'd had enough!

Poor Christi disappeared, and a few minutes later the babies were wheeled into my room in a train of hospital bassinets and the torrent of protective hormones eased up just a bit. Melina, especially, needed me because she was just shy of the 5 lb. threshold and had a hard time regulating her body temperature. She camped out in my hospital gown and immediately her temperature stabilized.

When she went back to the bassinet, she cuddled up next to her sister instead of sleeping alone. I don't think we used the second bassinet again, stepping around it awkwardly and always returning the girls to their accustomed places. Just like when they were inside of me, we always put Carrie on the right and Melina on the left.

Christi returned later, finding me much more amenable to a discussion about nursing two babies at once. Born at 37 1/2 weeks (considered late term for mono-di twins), Carrie and Melina were still premature by normal standards. We could face challenges with their sucking and swallowing reflexes, or find it hard to maintain a latch because their mouths were just so tiny. To demonstrate, Christi popped her finger in Melina's mouth, nail-side down to check the latch. Still fast asleep, Melina untucked her chin and started sucking like she'd just been given Coke through a straw. That was a really good sign.

The other challenge was going to be milk supply. Although I had successfully nursed one baby before, I was worried about producing enough milk for two. I was told that the best way to increase my Prolactin, the hormone responsible for milk production, was to nurse tandem.

If you're wondering what that looks like, think of the scene with Ginnifer Goodwin where someone happens in on her nursing two rather old children at work in the movie Away We Go. I saw that movie after Devon was born, and I remember thinking: "Wow, that looks weird! I'd never, ever do that!" Well, it's amazing how being a mom shifts your perspective. If nursing tandem was best for the girls, I thought I'd try it. After all, I didn't have triplets. At least the math worked out.

I started singing softly to Carrie and Melina, who were brought to my bed:

It's time to nurse, nurse, it's getting worse,
It's time to suck, suck, and you're in luck!
You don't wanna watch no Scooby Doo-by,
You just want to nurse on a...

I'm sure you can tell where that rhyme was going. It bothered me that all my children's CD's had songs about eating and not about nursing, so Craig and I wrote our own nursing song to sing to our first child. Yes, it's embarassingly silly. We don't care. If I can sing "Oh, Where is my Hairbrush" along with Bob and Larry, I can sing about my babies nursing.

You don't wanna do no Cube of Rubix,
You just want to have your nursing boob fix,
It's time to nurse, nurse, NURSE!

Well, one child is awake now, and it tends to have a domino effect. I'll write more about the subject next week.

October 10, 2011, How Else Could Two Months' Salary Last Forever?

2011-10-15T04:45:00.000-07:00

I had a tough week last week. It’s the reason this blog post is so late. Even writing about it was hard. I’d write a paragraph, stare at it for a few minutes, and then press backspace, watching the cursor eat everything on the page so I could start fresh.

It all goes back to Amber the student anesthesiologist. She placed my epidural in August when I was in labor, shortly before things unraveled and I ended up in the operating room with an emergency c-section. Problem was, she couldn’t find where to put the needle, and moving it around in my back caused fork-in-the-electrical-socket jolts to radiate through the right side of my body.

In the OR, when the doctors saw me close my eyes, I wasn’t “finding my happy place” as they assumed. I was going into shock. The mother/baby nurse who came to wheel me to my room after recovery was the first to believe me when I said that I was in pain. The epidural had been botched, as I suspected, and was only taking the sharpest little edge off my sensations.

Until I reached my room and was effectively medicated for the first time that day, I managed the pain by clenching my teeth so hard I felt one break. This Wednesday it needed a root canal. It wasn’t how I imagined spending my week (or the year of Kentucky Public Schools retirement I had decided to cash out, either). Once again I find myself in pain and trying to stay off medication for the sake of the twins. It’s not fun. I knew that UK is a teaching hospital, and things like that happen at teaching hospitals. I suppose every anesthesiologist has to botch a few easy procedures on their way to becoming a competent doctor. I just wish it hadn’t been mine.

Thankfully, the location of the crack meant that only a fourth of the tooth was bad, and the long term prognosis is hopeful. I should be able to keep it another thirty years. After what I'm going through, I hope so.

Amber the student anesthesiologist, I hope you have a long and fruitful career in which you place many effective epidurals and relieve much pain. It wouldn’t make my experience worth it, but here’s what does:

Carrie and Melina are thriving ten weeks after their birth. Sometimes I remind myself that it very nearly wasn't that way. I'm thankful that my surgeon was the kind of uberqualified individual that heads a program at a research hospital.

This wasn't really our first family trip to the beach. It's more like what happens when I want a family beach photo to include with the twins' baby announcements, scheduled to go out (better late than never) this week. Thankfully, my aunt and uncle were there to hold the camera and help carry the kids down the boardwalk.

Devon was more impressed with the sand than the water. We took turns carrying him nearer and nearer the waves so he could get his feet wet. The waves at Wabasso Beach are very unpredictable, and so his first wading experience included him getting snatched up to outrun an unexpected wave, and then accidentally dropped on his tummy in the sand. A warm Atlantic wave rushed right up to him, surprising him and soaking his clothes. It'll be an interesting memory to tell him about when he gets older.

Devon also had his first haircut. This took three people: one to hold the camera, one to distract Devon by feeding him blueberries (his favorite food: he calls them his "balls") and one to cut the straggly curls that were building up along his collar.

Devon was too excited about the camera shoot to turn around and let us see the back, but here it is.

Speaking of excited, Devon is finally getting to the point where I can let him interact with the girls a bit. I would never have let him sit by them while I held a camera up until now, but when the girls turned two months old and Devon eighteen months, I needed a picture of all three of my children. Melina looks a little overwhelmed by big brother's energy, doesn't she?

She looks much happier here. Yes, we have SMILES!!!

Smiles in the jungle swing.

Smiles on the changing table. Carrie this time. Can you still tell them apart? It's getting harder!

Who is this? Yep, it's still Carrie.

It's easier when they are side-by-side. I have the edge because I usually dress them, so if I remember what outfits I put them in I can tell very easily.

Devon has learned how to kiss.

He has two very available subjects on which to bestow his affection. It's very photogenic. Up until now, a request for a kiss has been met with a giant wet lick that starts at your chin and stops at eyebrow level.

I'm so glad he's happy to be their big brother.

Just like I'm happy to be their mom. I know some women tell their kids in great detail the pain they endured bringing them into the world, especially when the kids aren't acting their best. When those moments come, I hope I have the strength to clench my teeth again and just let the moment pass. I don't mean to sound trite, but the pain really is worth it.

10-1-2011, Mom's Day Out

2011-10-01T11:54:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I wonder what it's like to have two kids.

People say that adjusting to the second child is a bigger deal than adjusting to the first. Suddenly, when you're alone with the kids you have to choose which one needs your attention more. Occasionally, that means attending to the needs of one while the other one is crying and calling your name.

Ditto with going from one to three kids in two minutes, only more so. Remember the old-fashioned arcade game Whac-a-mole? You stand holding a padded mallet in front of a horizontal board full of holes. When you put in a token, little furry animatronic creatures start popping out of the holes at random intervals, and your job is to whack them on the head with the mallet as fast as you can. It tests your agility, strength, and reaction time.

A difficult day of parenting three very small children is a bit like playing Whac-a-mole. The hours fly by as you run from one child to another, taking care of their immediate needs and averting a small crisis only to have one rise up to take its place. I had just one such day this week. The twins spent the middle of the day Tag-Teaming-- what I call it when they are both fussy and as soon as I am holding one calm baby the other one starts wailing and I have to put the quiet baby down. This time they had it down to a science. It got so automatic that I caught myself walking over to Carrie's swing as soon as I tight-swaddled Melina because I knew she would start crying in fifteen more seconds. And she did.

A few minutes earlier I had opened up the Diaper Genie to empty it and found a red plastic ball, a pacifier, and a bulb nasal aspirator in the bag mixed in with thirty stinky diapers. Apparently, Devon had discovered the fun little cup on top and the lever to pull to make things disappear. This was not his only transgression of the day. He experimented with throwing things out of The Pen and then whining to see if I would fetch them. I gave it ten minutes, then calmly explained to him that Weeble (or Tractor or Farm Puzzle) was going into Toy Time Out because he was not being played with correctly and Devon would have to wait until after nap to play with it again. This, of course, devastated Devon, adding his occasional wail to the din the twins were making.

When I'm holding crying Carrie and Devon is crying in the high chair next to me, I call out "Come on, Melina, let's make it unanimous!" I hate listening to all my children cry at once, but it happens. I try to take it in stride.

Or, better yet, I decide on an outing. As soon as I go for Devon's shoes, he starts in on a deep, throaty chuckle of excitement as he realizes we're going somewhere. Then he "helps" me get the twins ready to go.

I buckle all three into the middle seat of the van, and back out of the garage. One block later, something magical happens. The van is quiet. None of my children are upset. Many people say they enjoy a respite from the demands of parenting small children by running errands by themselves. For me, it's enough of a treat just to leave the house. I'm sure you'll agree with me when I say that I won the parenting lottery by giving birth to three children that are perfectly behaved in public.

I enjoy the stares of others in the parking lot when I grab a cart and start pulling babies out of the car like a magician spooling silk scarves out of a sleeve. Then the comments start:

"You've got your hands full!"

"You got a wide-load sign for that cart?"

"You're a real woman, girl, you know that?"

"Are ALL those kids yours?"

"Where you gonna put the groceries?"

All three kids seem to revel in the attention, but especially Devon the Original Social Baby. I fix my Zen Mother Smile on my face: one part Mona Lisa and two parts Virgin Mary. Then I sashay up the aisle as the twins sleep so soundly they look like dolls and Devon points sweetly and beams at things.

I can feel people staring at me, and it's okay. I have to admit I get a little frisson of sadistic pleasure every time we pass a tantrumming child being pushed along by a harried-looking mother. Take notes, lady: I rock the Mom thing.

I knew from the first twins sonogram that their birth would mark the end of anonymity. I was right. People come out of the aisles to tell us about their twins, their daughter who has twins, or the eight sets of twins that run in their families and made them think that they would have twins. I've discussed my c-section among the frozen foods and told a stocker I wasn't on Clomid while waiting for the sweet potato fries to be unpacked.

It's amazing what some people will ask total strangers. I'm inundated with questions about my past and present birth control options and whether the girls were "planned." Really? Is any child ever planned? You can't just order a baby like you order a pizza. Lots of people want to know if twins run in our family. No, I say, they're identical, giving a mini biology lesson about the genetic factors that make fraternal twins not being necessary for my twins. Sometimes I get back, "Oh, so they're not the kind you get when you have sex twice in the same day!"

Umm...

Then I have to give another little biology lesson. Even that little nugget can lift my spirits when I'm having a hard day. When you have twins, the world is your support group. People marvel at the good job you're doing. They compliment your parenting skills, your genetics, or the fact that you've managed to lose even so much as a pound after having them. It's hard to buy a gallon of milk in less than an hour and a half.

The sweetest people are the ones who say "Oh, look at your beautiful family. How fortunate you are!" I am. And as I load the groceries and kids back into the van, I'm glad to reflect on that again.

Live from the Pen, September 25, 2011

2011-09-25T19:24:00.001-07:00

Craig just finished his second week at his new job. Every afternoon he comes home at 4:45 to hold the twins and play with Devon. It's an amazing schedule after so many years of 60+ hours a week. We marvelled last weekend at the fact that Craig couldn't do any work even if he wanted to; the building is locked on weekends and nobody really goes in.

What do we do all day while Craig is at work?

Not much.

The twins eat when they want to and Devon plays with his toys. Our house here is open plan, so I sit on the loveseat in the large living room.

Our decorating theme is "Baby." I love that the huge entry way can accommodate both the triple stroller and Devon's single so we never have to fold them up and stow them away.

As you can see, Devon's play room is separated from the rest of the space by a huge gate. I like to call his space "the pen", but not to be confused with him being penned in like an animal. More like "I spent ten years in the State Pen." There are two doors that can swing open for Devon to go in and out freely, but at certain times of the day they are shut. Sometimes when I have to take care of the girls, I feel a stab of guilt for putting him in Baby Jail. I know some people are very anti-gate, because children need to be taught to stay away from dangerous areas of the house. I agree with this logic.

But tell me this: how do I teach Devon not to drag Melina out of her swing and dump her on the floor while I'm changing Carrie's diaper? Devon loves his sisters. He's never acted upset, jealous, or angry around them. He points and beams "Baybeeee" several times a day. When they are older and less fragile, I'm sure they'll make a formidable trio, but for right now he needs to be kept away to keep them safe. His hugs could cause brain damage.

It's like the old farmer riddle:

A farmer has a goat, a wolf, and a sheaf of grain to take to the market. He has to cross a river in a boat that can take him and only two of the others. If he takes the wolf and the goat over and then goes back for the grain, the wolf will eat the goat while he is away. If he leaves the goat with the grain, the goat will eat....

No, The Pen is a necessary way for me to keep all three of my children supervised and safe at the same time.

Really, a jail cell would hardly be cutely outfitted with Devon's shelves full of his "toyeeees," as he calls them. This is what The Pen looks like in the morning, just waiting for Devon to finish his oaties and come play.

This is what it looks like twenty minutes later.

Sometimes it's enough of an accomplishment just to handle both the girls at once. Just getting up from the couch requires me to roll one off onto something with one hand while supporting the other with the other half of my body. I had to snap this shot of Carrie sliding off the bouncy seat after I finished tight-swaddling Melina. We do a lot of tight-swaddling right now. The twins are going through a phase where their arms need to be tied down to keep them from hitting themselves. It's sort of funny to see them flailing and crying as if to say "HOW CAN I GET ANY SLEEP WITH SOMEBODY HITTING ME IN THE FACE ALL THE TIME!!!!!!"

So, basically my son is in Baby Jail and my daughters are in straitjackets.

Devon's recent accomplishment is holding his own sippy. He's had the arm strength and motor control to do it for months, but every time I came at him with a full sippy he'd open his mouth and his whole body would go limp as he concentrated on drinking. He's so proud of his accomplishment and enjoys practicing this new skill several times a day. It's a matter of pride that he won't let a sippy go before draining it fully, then setting it carefully down on his tray without spilling a drop.

So, why are we in Florida again?

Well, if anyone's noticed the price of oranges increasing in the past few years, it's because the Florida citrus industry has been hit hard by several new challenges in addition to the occasional freeze. A disease called Citrus Canker has been decimating entire orchards, turning acres of Indian River greenery into dried stumps. The disease is exacerbated by an insect called Citrus Leafminer, which creates wounds on the leaves that become possible infection sites.

Craig's research with the USDA will determine whether a new product will reduce Leafminer populations in orchards. No, it's not a pesticide, it's a pheromone that should disrupt the natural mating cycle of the insect. The research is funded by the growers, who are faced with losing their livelihoods if Citrus Canker and another new disease with the naughty-sounding name of Huanglongbing (the "H" is pronounced with a "W" sound) can't be controlled. We're so proud of Craig for taking on this new challenge.

Devon, Carrie, and Melina are going to grow up thinking that Daddy is a very important man. After all, a green highway sign on the 95 South advertises the location of his office at the USDA Horticultural Research station.

It's a pretty big deal.

Welcome to Florida, September 5-6, 2011

2011-09-18T04:31:00.000-07:00

"Florida State Line," read the sign.

Maybe a little neutral, I thought. After all, we are still in the South, the land of hospitality. About six hundred miles ago, we had been welcomed to Georgia with a big swirly sign, welcomed back to Tennessee when the highway dog-legged backward, and then welcomed back into Georgia five minutes later.

The welcome sign came a few miles later, the "O" a big Florida orange. It just happens to be the reason we are in Florida, for Craig's job doing citrus research with the USDA. As the miles continued to fly by, I watched the terrain and felt that I was welcome. It was green like Kentucky (California is brown all year round in comparison) but a different green: more vibrant, springy, yellow-green crayon. I was also surprised to see pine trees growing along the highway interspersed with the expected palm trees.

Driving east on Highway 60 about thirty miles from the coast, we saw a rainbow in the clouds right over Vero Beach, our new home.

"If our lives were a movie, it would be pretty lame right now. This is such a cliche!" I exclaimed.

"Yep," Craig shot back. Now all we need is little woodland creatures to surround our car and cavort and gambole along with us as we make our way there!"

The mood of expectation and promise was not exactly fulfilled by our first night in Vero Beach. Driving into the garage of our Internet-selected rental house, we were met by the realtor.

"I'm sorry, but it's really hot inside," she apologized.

"That's okay!" I chimed sanguinely, thinking she had just come by to turn things on.

"No, it's not. The air conditioner isn't working." And it WAS hot inside, a steamy 85 degrees of Welcome to Florida weather. We did the walkthrough and an emergency diaper change on the kitchen counter, all the while marveling at the thrumming presence of the heat. The situation was complicated by the fact that we arrived on Labor Day. An emergency service call was not put through until evening, late enough only to conform that the unit was too iced up to diagnose.

The temperature inside was still climbing, and the realtor informed us the heat index that day was 103 degrees. We were all sweating and exhausted, the babies worst of all. So, after unpacking the car and making a few cursory overtures towards furniture placement, we repacked the crew and headed to an America's Best Value Inn a few miles away. It was not the first night in our new city we had meticulously prepared for, squirreling away bedding and towels in the back of our van. Devon, the original Social Child, doesn't shut down unless he's alone in his own bed, so it was after midnight when he finally stopped making faces at us and laid down to sleep in his pack-and-play.

Wide awake the next morning, I headed to breakfast at the stroke of six with Carrie in her carseat. I later found out that the hotel clock was set a half hour late (to convince guests to check out sooner?) and it was really 5:30. Craig and I then scrambled to get back to the house for the promised first visit from the HVAC guy, only to find out that they had scheduled us for four that afternoon. So, in an effort to keep cool we took a drive around town, and I once again got to experience the fun of nursing two babies in the driver's seat of the van with the engine running while Craig and Devon visited a park.

While the movers stumbled in and out of our house with boxes and furniture, we didn't have to worry about leaving the doors closed. It was the same relentless dampen-the-carpets moist heat inside and out, not really helpful in the already stressful situation. The crew leader came in and arranged our inventory on the counter, telling us to check off each numbered item as the unloaders read the numbers on the red tags. We soon wondered why there were so many items that didn't match the inventory, and so many duplicates.

Our move to Kentucky was tagged in green four years ago, many tiny tags remained because they are virtually impossible to remove. One of the movers was reading the numbers on the first tag he saw, green or red. We explained to him that he needed to read the red tags, and he cheerfully agreed and kept on making the same mistake.

He was obviously red-green colorblind. Oops!

"Well, I just feel sorry for him," said my compassionate mother-in-law. "He's obviously got some sort of mild cerebral palsy. You can tell by the way he walks."

I watched him closely as he headed out the door to get another stack of boxes. He held his head crooked, regarding us always out of his sunglassed right eye. His gait featured a swivel that turned one foot inward, left shoulder four inches higher than the right. With each step, he swung and curled his left arm around as if to tap his crotch.

"That's not a motor disorder. He's doing that on purpose. It's a wannabe gangster walk," I said. Six years teaching public school and I have that one down.

"No!" her eyebrows flew up to her hairline in surprise.

"Yes! The colorblind mover thinks he's P. Diddy!"

Devon handled the chaos better than we did. He beamed at each of our belongings as if receiving the item for the very first time. He gestured wildly at each round light fixture, exclaiming "A BALL"! Since his toys were packed and he had little to do, he compensated by playing with the shelf paper...

and helping Daddy put things together. I tried not to miss the oddest things about our old house: the rabbit that lived under our deck stairs, my yellow living room, my trash-can drawer in the kitchen. Instead, I focused on the new and handy features of our new house: the soaker tub in the master bathroom and the formal dining room we're outfitting as a play room.

Not everybody's day was as busy. The twins sweated out the day in their new bedroom, which remains completely empty because we haven't bought them any furniture yet. The HVAC guy eventually came and fixed the AC, and it was hard to even notice the addition of one more person popping in and out.

Things finally started to calm down. A few woodland creatures even showed up to welcome us. Imagine seeing that in your back yard. It's a sandhill crane, I found out later. It wasn't the only wildlife of the day. Craig picked a dried leaf off our bathroom floor.

It wasn't a leaf. It was a dessicated frog.

At the end of the day, Craig and I decided to take another drive to unwind, made peaceful by his parents offering to stay at home with the kids. I told him I was "so not in the mood" to wade for the first time in the Atlantic Ocean, but he took me anyway.

It turns out, you don't have to be in the mood. As the bathtub-warm waves lapped in and out, surprising us with their unpredictability and intensity, I felt something inside of me unclench. It hadn't been the easiest day, but more tranquil days would follow. We walked down the beach, passing the Disney resort and several other posh hotels. I wanted one of the strangers we met to ask us where we were staying so I could reply:

"We live here!"

One Month Birthday, September 1, 2011

2011-09-03T07:43:00.000-07:00

Craig is a little miffed with me because I left a huge pile of dirty diapers on his nightstand. The logic of my comeback was unassailable: should I have just left them in the bed?

This is the nightstand in his parents' guest bedroom in Nashville that is currently sleeping us and the twins. We were thankful to have a few days in between to rest. Monday's moving day was crazy busy. The movers showed up at 3:30, opened the back of their truck, glanced sheepishly at each other, and then set about sorting other people's belongings that had settled on the drive over. When at 4:45 they finally turned their attention to loading our stuff, they seemed to do a good job. I hope everything gets to our destination all right, but the fact remains that they finished at 9 pm and we didn't get to Nashville until 1, so I'm a little underwhelmed by their service so far. It was too late and we were too tired to summon the requisite nostalgic emotions for leaving Lexington for the last time. I didn't even look back at our house as we drove away.

Carrie and Melina celebrated their one month birthday on Thursday. Carrie now weighs in at 8.2 pounds, and Melina is 7 pounds. Most identicals have a discrepancy in birth weight, and most keep it throughout childhood. It just grows less noticeable with time to, say, have a 20 pounder and a 21 pounder.

Carrie is still the contemplative twin, and still the bellwether twin. When she wakes up to eat, we put her beside Melina so she'll wake her up, too. Then they both eat at the same time, and we credit their healthy weight gain to Carrie's healthy appetite.

Melina is still the party girl, quick to respond to the feelings of others. When they are both crying and I move Carrie away, I often return only seconds later to find Melina fast asleep. Once she turns her mind to it, she often decides that there wasn't really anything to cry about after all.

The kids had some time with the cousins, and we got a first family picture.

Actually, this was the first family picture. I have to admit, I'm partial to it.

Who rocks, Devon? That's right! We got to celebrate Craig's graduation, too. Poor guy, his major accomplishment could easily become overshadowed by the move, the new job, and the new babies. Laura put it best when she said the only way we could have crammed more life milestones into one month is to have gotten married this month, too.

Craig's graduation party/gift was tickets to the UK season opener in Nashville.

In the words of Jeremy (striped shirt), it was AWESOME!

Ally kitty gets the worst end of the deal this week, being kenneled in her Porta Pet most of the day. We're just thankful that she seems content. During the move from California to Lexington four years ago, she didn't stop squalling for the first 208 miles. We were more worried about moving with the cat than all three kids put together.

So tomorrow we'll leave for Florida, and get there midday Monday. I am looking forward to having things I've taken for granted, like a place to put the dirty diapers. Also: uninterrupted Internet access. Before we left, I placed a free Craigslist ad offering our old couch as a freebie to the first taker. It was gone in two hours. The only problem is, later we took our computer down before I went back through the email and deleted the ad, which listed my cell number.

Who knew? My wildly unfashionable yellow-and-mauve couch is apparently a must-have for UK fall dorm fashion. I've used the opportunity to educate a few dewy young freshman on the virtues of cell phone etiquette.

Word to the wise: if you want to score my free couch, don't wake me and my twins up by calling at midnight.

Not cool.

Moving Week, August 26, 2011

2011-08-26T19:09:00.000-07:00

It’s 6:37 am. Friday, August 26, 2011.

Carrie’s in the bouncy seat, stirring every few minutes to signal that she’s fixing to wake and eat soon. Melina just ate and is working out an insidious case of hiccups by hanging onto me.

It’s been a hectic few days. Endless phone conversations with utilities companies, the title company, and gap health insurance (Need insurance? We can cover you! No, we can’t. Yes, we can! No, we can’t……). Running the dishwasher every time we dirty four plates and four bowls because all our other dishes are boxed. All while keeping Devon from unpacking the half-packed boxes on the floor, replacing pacifiers when they fall out, and producing enough milk to fill a Super Big Gulp. I’m a good mom, but I feel like putting everyone on notice: this moving thing is seriously interfering with my ability to Bring My A-Game.

I could try to sleep a few more minutes, but I can’t stop thinking.

Three more days.

Craig successfully defended his dissertation on Wednesday (just call us Dr. and Mrs.!). He’s upstairs printing his copies that the UK library will keep as documentation of his four years of research on tall fescue pastures and armyworms. He’ll turn those in today and be officially done. We’ll give our worldly goods to movers, load kids and cat into our cars, and hopefully avoid Hurricane Irene as we drive south to our new home.

I’ve never been to Florida. When Craig went for a visit, at 30 weeks I was great with child (children?) and advised not to accompany him. I’m relying completely on his positive impression and the fact that he got the USDA job he was shooting for after years of hard work. I’ve looked at our new backyard and driven to Sam’s Club from our house thanks to the Street View setting in Google Earth, but in a week I’ll be driving the turnpikes for the very first time.

It seems weird to say this about a place I’ve spent only 4 of my 32 years, but I feel like when we leave Lexington we’ll be saying goodbye to our home. We even listed Lexington as our hometown on the degree paperwork. It makes me sad to think that all of our kids were born here and none of them will remember living here. That’s probably why leaving Lexington is so much harder than leaving California was four years ago. Having children ties you to a place in ways that are hard to understand.

Every time I get a spare minute, I linger over a feeding and hold the twins. This is their one and only fourth week of life. I find a way to cherish them even in the midst of our upheaval. When our schedule settles down and we can finally take a break, they’ll still be ours, but bigger, stronger, and different already.

Then I chase Devon down the hall and tousle his hair. It grows longer in the back and sides, and if I don’t break down and cut it soon he’s going to have a Baby Mullet. He won’t remember this moment. Or the thousand times he crawled up the stairs to his room giggling with pregnant me plodding heavily behind. Or the first family walk around the neighborhood as a family of five in the lime green triple stroller that manages to fit all of our children at once. Their family memories will most likely begin with Florida, and surely we’ll have good ones. After all, we’re moving to the beach!

Now, if I could just fit into my bathing suit……

August 19, 2011, Carrie and Melina

2011-08-19T08:49:00.000-07:00

So, is it “Carrie and Melina” or “Melina and Carrie”? We’re making an effort not to constantly refer to them as “the twins” like they’re a package deal, although sometimes I call them “the girls”. It seems like the older one should be first, so who would that be?

In the womb, Carrie was measured as five days older. Usually the split that makes a set of identical twins takes place three to eight days after conception, and so the extra baby that resulted was Melina. Carrie is, therefore, the older sister. In the operating room, Melina was born first, a whole minute before Carrie. Melina is, therefore, the older sister.

Shrug.

Now that Melina and Carrie have been with us for two whole weeks, it’s hard to believe that we ever struggled over naming them. It’s as if their names were already decided and we stumbled upon them in some random flash of insight. I was pretty opinionated even from the start, checking the twin website suggestions and rejecting every pair as too matchy-matchy (Madison and Madelyn) or too gimmicky (Heaven and Nevaeh—no twin wants to be their twin spelled backwards!!). We also rejected anything we liked that sounded too much like Devon. Megan was an early favorite, but we decided that calling one name or the other out the back door could get confusing. Craig also wouldn’t abide anything that would be abbreviated for daily use, so he rejected Annabelle (Annie for short).

We thought the name Carrie had an heirloom classiness. We went with the old-fashioned spelling, like the little girl on Little House on the Prairie. The double-r’s in the middle were an easy mnemonic; the twin on the right became Carrie. She looks most like pictures of Mommy when she was born. So far, she is the thinker, curling her hands around her face to contemplate life.

Her stock expression is a little Oh! of surprised pleasure. Oh! she says, pinwheeling her arms good naturedly. Milk? Daddy? Blanket? For me?

Melina is a slightly unusual name, and that was important to us. Only a teacher truly appreciates how hard it is to have eight Will’s and seven Hannah’s in one junior class. We wanted both the twins to have fairly rare names. I had only one Melina in nine years of teaching. We thought it went well with Carrie while still sounding distinct.

Melina is living up to her womb reputation as the more active twin, though she weighed just under five pounds at birth. In the hospital she was the first to stretch out her legs, and we’ll often find her sleeping straight as a board, looking a bit like she’s levitating.

She looks most like pictures of Devon when he was born.

Sometimes I even think she looks a bit like Ally kitty.

Her stock expression is a wide mouthed smile, like she’s laughing at a well-told joke. Hah!

So, Carrie and Melina stood out on our short list because they sounded good together. Then, we looked them up and discovered that they both mean “song”. Carrie is an English name, a form of Carol. Melina is a Hebrew name, a form of Melody. That decided it. Their names are related but not obnoxious in their sameness. Our girls are free to be individuals, not part of a matched set, and hopefully that will make them feel close to each other.

So far, we call them by their names and occasionally by one set of nicknames. A relative made beautiful embroidered blankets for the girls, one with a moon motif and one with a cloud. So, they are occasionally Carrie-Cloud and Melina-Moon. Yes, we still avoid most nicknames, but we're sure that they are unlikely to be called "Moon" and "Cloud" by their friends at school.

Devon is Celtic and means “Bard”, a kind of travelling singer/songwriter, so all three names go together well.

Since I don’t know whether they’ll be Carrie and Melina or Melina and Carrie for the long term, I try to mix it up. When I go in to get them, I sing them "The Carrie and Melina Song":

Carrie and Melina
Melina and Carrie
Now it is time to feed (change, dress, burp…)
Carrie and Meli-NAH!

One last shot-- Melina and Carrie know Kung Fu!

August 13, 2011, Week of a Thousand Diapers

2011-08-13T18:12:00.000-07:00

We thought Carrie and Melina are filling out pleasantly, and it was confirmed Wednesday at their well-baby checkup. At ten days of age, Carrie Annabelle is back to her birth weight at 6 lbs. 2 oz. Melina Mae almost broke the five pound barrier, but the night before she spit up an entire feeding in a spectacular foot-long arc of projectile prowess. She settled for 4 lbs. 15 oz., and we are so happy she continues to suffer no ill effects from low birth weight. Other than a few days of upset tummy they seem to be thriving despite their hurried entrance into the world. I’m recovering myself, and trying to engage in activities that will help me gain strength for the coming move.

It’s also a small personal milestone for me to be “off the hard stuff”. It’s a little disturbing to be sent home from the hospital with two babies to take care of and feeling loopy from the vial of white pills you're taking for the pain. Some things I said at the time don’t make sense in retrospect. I told my Mom it was perfectly all right for me to be vacuuming after surgery because our vacuum cleaner was easier to push than our Chevy Malibu. Then I had a waking dream that I was lying in bed with the laptop at my feet. I was cold, so I went to www.ask.com and asked Can I have a blanket? One promptly unfurled right out of the screen and covered me. These and other lapses while taking the medication worried me slightly. I soon decided that I could stop any time I wanted to. And so I did.

How many cards does Hallmark make to congratulate the parents of twins?

Just one, apparently, so we're not just seeing double when we look at the babies.

My parents' card was a normal single-baby card, but Mom wrote "Times Two" on it to make it more appropriate. It reminded me of my grandmother Irma Meth, the one whose August birthday angel figurine will be displayed in the girls' room now that they made their August due date. She is quite the grammarian. Her cards would arrive with birthday wishes from her and Grandpa and I's painstakingly changed to we's wherever necessary.

This evening I had to sneak away to Target to buy diapers because I didn't think I had enough to get through the night, joining hundreds of UK students buying textiles and body wash to stock their dorm rooms. Augusts in Lexington are always tough times to shop, the lines always long, the aisles always crowded with perky moms picking out deodorant and toilet paper with their sullen freshman sons trailing behind. Just how many diapers will our three children use this month? Who cares? We have more important things to occupy us:

A first family picture before Mom and Dad went home Thursday. That's me forcing my shoulders back and positioning Carrie strategically over my tummy bulge. I lost 20 lbs. last week. That's a lot, even if it was 11 lbs. of baby, 6 lbs. amniotic fluid, and one plus-sized placenta. It feels good to weigh less than my husband again, and I can zip up one pair of my jeans.

I said I zipped them up.

I didn't say I could breathe.

My talented friend and neighbor made these headbands for the girls. Great for a special occasion. The royal wedding, perhaps. She sells these and other baby stuff at http://www.etsy.com/shop/sewjoycrafts.

I did not stage this picture, but I don't blame you if you don't believe me. I imagine them doing this in the womb. Important to note that a week and a half later, Melina is still leading by a nose.

Birthday, August 1, 2011

2011-08-06T21:30:00.000-07:00

Carrie: So, that didn’t go like we thought it would, did it?

Melina: Sorry.

We were pleasantly surprised on Monday morning after check-in to find that I was already having what the nurse referred to as Monster Contractions and would barely need any pitocin. They were also progressing quickly, leading the doctors to predict that we would have twins by two in the afternoon. Twin A was in perfect position and the doctor again said he was looking forward to a “very graceful birthday.” Labor did really go exactly like everyone thought it would, and Craig and I amused ourselves by watching the two heartbeats on the fetal monitor and wondering when we would see our daughters.

At 1:40, the sleepy tempo of the early afternoon exploded into activity as Twin B’s water broke, I was pronounced ready to deliver, and the fetal monitor registered a sudden drop in both heartbeats. I was quickly unhooked and rushed down the hall to the OR with Craig running behind me. As he got into his scrubs and I was prepped for delivery, things relaxed again as the heart monitors showed normal heartbeats and the doctors were again confident that a normal birth could be attempted.

At this point, Twin B, ever the unpredictable one, decided to attempt a move favored by NASCAR drivers and chariot racers in Ben Hur: to edge out the competition from behind and finish first. Unfortunately, when you decide you’re ready to be born you can’t just shove your twin sister aside and pull ahead by a length like you’re Seabiscuit. Two things happened: Twin A’s progress stalled because of B’s pressure on her, and B’s heartbeat again dropped because she was no longer protected from the full force of the delivery by her own amniotic fluid. So ten minutes after we arrived in the OR the decision was made to deliver the twins by emergency C-Section.

I pity Caesar, who gave his name to the procedure by apocryphally being delivered that way. I don’t know why there is such a thing as an elective C-Section for reasons other than the health of mother or baby. I do know, however, that the doctors and nurses saved my babies by getting them out quickly. Melina Mae was born first at 2:11 pm., weighing 4 lbs. 14 oz. and responding quickly to nursery care despite a sleepy start. Carrie Annabelle was born a minute later, weighing 6 lbs, 2 oz. and crying her outrage at her sister’s ruining her shot at being born first.

As we reflect over the pregnancies and separate out the sonogram pics for their baby books, it is interesting to note that since Melina won the race to be born, she is now Twin A instead of Twin B, as well as her heavier twin’s big sister. I saw Melina’s right ear as the anesthesiologist held her up for me to see, and then Craig held a swaddled Carrie, and then they were off to the nursery to get checked and I was off to recovery. I’m not sure why they call it ‘recovery’ if it’s the place you go and feel steadily worse for an hour.

Four hours later, the twins joined me in the mother-baby wing and we were able to room together for all of my three-day hospital stay. I’m not sure what the odds are on this, but we thought this was pretty amazing given the twin pregnancy and Melina’s birth weight. The hospital photographer startled me by saying that she doesn’t think she has ever photographed a baby as small as she is except for in the NICU. Everyone from the pediatricians to the lactation consultants marveled at how healthy they are for being born at 37 weeks. Melina spent the first evening tucked into my hospital gown to help regulate her body temperature, but was holding her own temperature by the next morning.

I thought I’d have to be older and wiser to get to the point where I felt like quoting myself, but my birth plan all along was:

1. Nobody dies.
2. Nobody goes to the NICU.
3. I don’t have to have a C-Section, unless it conflicts with rules 1 or 2.

I’m blessed that I was granted this. If I had dug in my heels and been adamant against a C-Section, I may have needed a grief counselor. I don’t think you can order a delivery like you order a hamburger. And now more than ever I think that anyone who plans a home birth is crazy. People should have babies in hospitals where it is safe. We were even lucky to have planned to be in the hospital for the induction, as my labor progressed so fast that the babies could have been in distress before I ever thought I should leave for the hospital.

Instead, we have two impossibly sweet, tiny, and healthy babies sleeping next to our bed in the pack and play. For that, we are grateful.

Full Term, July 29, 2011

2011-07-29T18:09:00.001-07:00

Devon scampered down the hall this morning, shrieking with delight and flapping a pair of my underwear in each hand. He’s a quick one to catch our open bedroom door, and so we leave it closed because he loves to raid the hamper. Now everyone in the house knows that although Grammy is here to play with Devon, she’s not the one wearing granny panties these days.

Maybe if the twins take after their brother, Stella really should be worried about them being born feral. Stella is our three-year-old niece, and my sister-in-law Laura was explaining to her the other day why they couldn’t keep the kittens born on their property. Since they were born outside and grew up without human contact, Laura told Stella they were “too wild” to be handled and wouldn’t make good pets.

“When Auntie Krista has her babies, could they be born wild?” she asked, concerned.

I’m sure with four adults and one small child around, these babies will have enough love and handling to keep them from turning feral, but the jury may still be out about Devon. He is celebrating birth week by cutting all four of his first molars. He runs around the coffee table with one of the New Baby dolls, flashing me an alarmingly toothy smile (“All the better to bite you with, my dears!”). Then, he kisses the New Baby, which for him means biting it on the head like it’s an especially tough apple skin.

It’s Friday night, which means I made it to 37 weeks, just like I was hoping to. Technically, not until Saturday, but even if I looked down at this moment to see water running down my leg I’d not have the babies until after midnight.

So, full term for normal birth, check.

The reason I didn’t follow that statement up with a few exclamation points or some sassy emoticons is that I’ve come up against the disadvantage of having an Iron Matron Cervix. It does its job so well that it doesn’t know when to quit. What it really needs is an emergency release cord like parachutes have. If it did, I’d definitely give it a yank, grab my suitcase, and go have some babies!

There are no clothes I can wear comfortably when I am nine months pregnant. To roll over in bed I have to hold the babies up with one arm curled around my stomach, do a dog-leg kick to give me enough momentum to rise to a sitting position, stand up, transfer the weight of the babies to my other arm, and then lower myself slowly down on the other side until they hit the mattress and I can curl my arm under my head. All this awkwardness and discomfort is accompanied by a burst of nostalgia on Craig’s part, so I never know what unflattering position I’ll be squirming in when I turn around to see a camera lens pointed menacingly at me. I let him take a few sanctioned shots in the backyard so I could at least control what he was shooting and make sure I was fully dressed.

Two days ago I used the last of my Burt’s Bees Belly Butter, not that it has helped me avoid stretch marks. Devon left me with a cute little smirk of freckle-sized marks under my belly button. They faded discreetly under some cheap vitamin E cream in a few months. Though I’d never again have a bikini-ready body it’s really hard to miss what you’ve never had to begin with. My twin stretch marks (aka “twin skin”) are epic, not to mention the red splotch in the shape of Indiana over my belly button that never stretched but sprouted a few days ago as a full-on scar. I’ve bought a forty-dollar tube of Mederma Stretch Mark Repair to start the day after the birth, and if it works I’m buying stock in the company. In the meantime, if you’re a teenager who’s contemplating going too far too fast in a romantic relationship, message me and I’ll send you a close-up shot of my stomach. That’ll give you the strength to choose celibacy for a few more years.

I hope my airing a few petty complaints doesn’t give anyone the impression that these babies are either unwanted or unloved. The main reason I want them out right now is so I can make sure they’re healthy and safe, and just to SEE them. All day I’ve zeroed in on every twinge of a backache or moment of abdominal tightness, willing it into a bona fide contraction. No such luck.

It gives me insight into the Romans 8 passage my Bible titles “Present Suffering and Future Glory," the one that talks about all creation waiting to be liberated:

22 We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. 23 Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies. 24 For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? 25 But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.

The mental image I’ve always conjured with the reference to all that “groaning inwardly” is pain, complete with sweating and panting and exaggerated Lamaze breathing (hee hee hoo hoo..). Maybe it’s because I choose to do my hard labor under epidural, but thinking about this passage now makes me think of creation (and Christians) living in a state of intense longing, the kind I'm experiencing right now.

All day long I’ve been begging my body to hurry up and let me see my daughters. For nine months they've been snuggled up under my heart, rocked by my movements, soothed by my heartbeat, and protected from harm and high risk complications by the unseen hand of God.

Come quickly, babies.

Mommy says please.

36 Weeks, July 25, 2011

2011-07-25T17:18:00.000-07:00

One week to go, and multiple sources say I want to last the whole week. Even though the babies are healthy, advantages of going another week include a better nursing reflex, a more complex immune system, and a few extra ounces of birth weight. Other moms with 36-week births have run into hospital rules that treat their babies as premature even though they are full term for twins. So, their babies spend needless and very expensive nights in the nursery or NICU just because it’s hospital policy. That gives me some incentive to last until my induction. On the other hand, it would be nice if I’m going to have three kids to know what normal labor feels like, and it’s reportedly easier on the babies than even-your-eyeballs-are-squeezing pitocin contractions. So, my plan for the week is pretty much this:

1. To stand on my head until Friday.
2. To right myself and jump up and down all weekend until gravity does the rest.
3. To go into labor on Sunday night, thus checking normally into the hospital a few hours before my induction is scheduled so I can have delivery at 37 ½ weeks.

Our bird family vacated the nest in our planter this week. We heard a flurry of activity on the doorstep and were in time to see the babies take off with much coaxing from the mama and daddy birds.

Baby #1 did a controlled fall to the windowsill, letting us snap a few telephoto pictures of his downy head, and then tried to hop back up to the nest via our screen.

Baby #2 peeked over the edge for fifteen minutes and managed to careen all the way to the spruce tree.

Then the whole family flew together around the corner of our house and was gone. This must be why they call it “empty nest syndrome,” not “empty den syndrome” or “empty stable syndrome." Once they’re gone, it’s final; they don’t even come back to do laundry.

I’m past the huge belly phase and into the ‘stuck a couple of babies under my shirt’ phase. It looks more like I have a rare and medically documented deformity. All day the twins bounce around inside like the numbered lotto balls in the dispenser, giving me the mental picture that they’ll suddenly plink into position and come popping out like they do on TV. Twin A (righty)’s heinie is up so high tonight it looks like I’ve developed a rogue third boob. She’s the one that the doctors say will be delivered first, but unless she’s planning to come out my ear I’m wondering if she’s changed her mind.

Something I did when I was just pregnant (and not so big that my bulk makes the tides shift, affecting worldwide weather patterns and causing the Eastern heat wave) was to take Devon to the mall. First, I got the same thing at Sonic: a Lime Real Fruit Slush. This beverage speaks to the twins in ways I am incapable of fully understanding. Then, after Devon played in the climbing gym, we'd get another lime slush and take it home to Craig. He’d drink that one while he worked on his dissertation upstairs.

Today I was able to repeat the ritual with the help of my parents. They fed Devon shaved ice and chased him around the mall, keeping up with him in ways I shouldn’t if I don’t want my water to break in a very public place. My Dad also initiated a loud conversation in the food court about what it means to be 3 cm dilated and 90% effaced.

“So, how do they find this out?” he wondered aloud.

“The doctor pats the babies on the head, and then he knows,” I said, which was, I thought, the most the topic needed to be addressed while people sat around us eating their Chinese stir fry and their Chick-fil-A.

On the way out, I ordered Craig his drink like always.

“So, I hear you’re having twins!” said the cashier.

“Yep,” I said, glancing back at my parents. The joy of grandparenthood is directly proportional to the number of people that know all the details.

“Well,” said the cashier, looking down at the second 44 oz slush, “that explains a lot!”

July 21, 2011, Trying NOT to Think About It

2011-07-21T04:59:00.000-07:00

“Look,” said Craig. “Devon and I are playing a new game. It’s called ‘delivery’.”

As I sat down to watch, Craig took the New Babies, the dolls that Grammy brought, and stuffed them under his shirt. Devon started laughing the deep “HAA, HAA” that means he’s more than just amused—he’s highly entertained. He reached up under Daddy’s shirt and out popped pink sleeper New Baby as Daddy lay back and made groaning noises in parody of labor. When Devon had “delivered” the one, he tossed her on her head on the floor and went back in for twin sister. Devon then did a second body slam and a victory lap around the coffee table, arms raised in touchdown posture. Meanwhile, the discarded New Babies lay on the floor, glassy blue eyes undisturbed, fish lips splayed in perfect calm. They don’t cry unless you “feed” them with their bottles and then take the bottles out.

Strange, somehow, that I only have to have the babies once and Craig has to “have” them twenty or thirty times so Devon can watch and play obstetrician. It’s an interesting way to prepare Devon for the next week.

Personally, I think the best way to handle impending labor is to not think about it. I didn’t even pack my suitcase until the night before Devon’s induction. At the time I was hoping I’d go into labor naturally and be in enough pain to actually WANT to go to the hospital and have people help me. It was sort of hard to wake up at 5 on a perfectly normal morning, take a shower, check myself in feeling fine, and then set down to the task of having a baby for the next fifteen hours. Thankfully, my sense of unreality took over big time and even without narcotics it seemed like the whole experience couldn’t really be happening.

The worst part was I had spent time planning things to do for the boring hours of the induction when you’re hooked up to machines and waiting for the medication to ever-so-slowly ratchet up your contractions. I sat back and set my ipod to play the new Orson Scott Card audiobook I’d downloaded from Audible. The plot went like this:

Boy and companions catch new virus while trapping monkeys in Africa and start coughing and bleeding out of their eyes. They go to the hospital, where they get subpar Third World medical care and everybody but boy dies. Boy goes back to village, where everybody is bleeding out of their eyes and dying. Virus spreads to surrounding areas and boy watches while everybody starts…

No hard feelings to the creator of the Ender saga, but he probably shouldn’t market the Empire series to people in the hospital. I lasted for about a half hour before switching over to the book I brought. Forty pages into The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett, the wife of the main character dies in—you guessed it—childbirth. Sigh.

I’m packing my hospital suitcase today, which is probably wise because I have two amniotic sacs instead of one. Each breaks separately, and if they both do at the same time it could be Victoria Falls. I also did a going-to-the-hospital pedicure, since hundreds of people are going to breeze in and out of the operating room while my feet stick up in the air.

Yes, they each have a different color polish; it wasn’t an oversight because I’m not seeing much of my feet these days. It’s our plan for telling our identical girls apart. When they lose their hospital bracelets, we plan on putting a drop of polish on each baby’s big toe, and I’m memorizing lefty’s color and righty’s color by trying them out on my feet. It’s a tamer version of what we’ve been telling people we’d do all along.

Friend: So, are you worried about telling them apart when they’re born?
Me: No, we’ll take a permanent marker and draw a mustache on one and a beard on the other.

I couldn’t paint my nails myself; I can touch my toes but only with my feet brought up sideways. Craig did it; a job he compared to putting glue on a model airplane. This he did with the same calmness and attention to detail that he devotes to any task.

Speaking of barefoot and pregnant, Craig sneaked a few pictures of me with Devon in the kiddie pool.

Let me tell you, it’s a real thrill to debut on the Internet three or four shy of two hundred pounds.

Devon needed some encouragement to play in the pool, and Craig was there to help me up.

I was slightly worried that we’d look down and notice there was way more water in the pool than we remembered and know what happened.

We’ve watched two movies this week, Secretariat and Three Idiots. One was set in India, one in Kentucky. Both were superb. They also each had a childbirth scene. I HATE childbirth scenes in movies, even if one of the movies just featured a horse giving birth. All that sweating and panting and grunting and mooing seriously disturbs me.

In the other movie, this poor girl started labor in the middle of a record flood that shut down city infrastructure and stranded her in a classroom. Forty Indian male engineering students, also stranded, improvised a suction positioner out of a shop vac and car batteries and delivered the baby all by their nerdy selves.

Not the mental image I wanted. Sigh.

35 Weeks, July 16, 2011

2011-07-16T07:07:00.000-07:00

Good news for UK Healthcare: their stock is going up in my estimation. No surprises here, but our Humana Student Health Insurance (Need Health Care? Naw. Think home birth.) barely approved the upcoming delivery, and only after much persuasion on the part of the nurses. My favorite little snippet of conversation related to me at Wednesday’s appointment was:

Nurse: Yes, the patient will be delivering twins around August 1.

Humana: And that will be outpatient?

Why do they want to code this as outpatient? Our insurance has a ridiculously low threshold of outpatient coverage, so they’d like to stick us with the entire delivery bill after kicking in a few hundred dollars. Nice!

Or, like Craig said, “So, is the potato field they expect you to squat in a covered expense, or do they expect us to pay rent for that, too?”

The good news, however, comes from my appointment today. We’ve set August 1st as an eviction date, if the twins don’t come before then. I’m very pro-induction, after a perfectly smooth one with Devon when he was two days overdue. It was a rough decision at the time, and seemed to garner me a lot of disfavor from the home birth/natural labor crowd who think that pitocin is poison, hospitals are hell, and going into labor a month late is safer. I actually had a stranger shake her head and tell me “Babies know when they want to be born,” and I’m not sure why my delivery choices were any of her business.

For the record, I don’t think that babies know when they want to be born. Babies don’t know when they want ANYTHING. Devon wanted to eat while sleeping and pooping, and ALL of these 24 hours a day. We had to convince him that there were hours in a day where Mommy got to eat something and take a shower and wear a shirt. Now that he’s bigger, he also knows when he wants to do things that aren’t good for him, like playing with steak knives. So I think it’s fine to chemically nudge the girls in the right direction if they’re overdue, which at 37 ½ weeks for multiples they will be. Or as I say:

“Okay, babies, if you don’t come out in two weeks we’re coming in to get you!”

In the meantime, I can imagine them in there discussing their options, perhaps scratching out a calendar on the walls of my uterus and debating the pros and cons of another two weeks inside. I’m in favor of at least another week, because their immune systems and organs are still fine tuning, and a few extra ounces of body weight wouldn’t hurt them either. In the meantime, their combined weight and movement is truly incredible. Sometimes they seem determined to dig their way out through my bellybutton like the Allied POW’s in The Great Escape. Sometimes righty hooks her heels under my rib cage and starts swimming up while lefty bumps her head rhythmically against my pelvis.

Devon seems to be getting excited about the New Babies.

Grammy arrived, and brought two newborn dolls for Devon to carry around. They have bottles so Devon can practice feeding the New Babies. He does this with great delight. Then, he chews on their feet.

I dare you to look at the next picture and not say, “Awwwwwww.”

It’s an involuntary response, like now when I grunt while getting up out of a chair. I was originally adamantly against brand new matchy-matchy car seats. Then I hit my third trimester and went completely insane. I had bad dreams about taking the babies to the grocery store and people thinking they were boy-girl because only one car seat was frilly. Graco, of course, discontinued Devon’s Winnie the Pooh car seat a month after we bought it, so there was no question of matching that one. So, one of our family presents is new matching car seats. Those who know me well are surprised, because I never buy anything new when I have something adequate already. I’m surprised, too, but right now still fitting into the jeans I wore yesterday surprises me.

34 Weeks, July 10, 2011

2011-07-10T08:24:00.000-07:00

I’ve been watching them all day.

Two small brown songbirds decided that our house looked fertility friendly and decided to build their nest in the basket of begonias hanging near our front door. I ignored their popping in with leaves and twigs at odd hours of the morning, thinking they would change their minds in the parade of realtors and home inspections. They didn’t. Craig swooped in with the watering can a week ago, and Mama bird flew out of the basket straight at his head as if to say “Get your own young!” A chorus of chee chee chee chee chee chee chee kept up until she returned 20 minutes later.

So now I can sit in the leather chair by the front window and watch two little brown birds provisioning their babies. They approach from below, tantalizing Ally kitty by hopping sweetly across the windowsill. When they reach the doorstep, they turn, fly straight up to the edge of the basket, and pop the yummy grub they’ve been holding over the edge. We respect their privacy and don’t want to disturb the nest, but Craig is a whiz at the telephoto and so managed to get a shot of one of the babies…

…and even a good one of Mama bird with the avian equivalent of Enfamil tucked in her beak.

It’s stinkin’ cute to watch, but it makes me glad I’m a mammal. Seems easier to eat food and make it into milk instead of nourishing my newborns with a 24-hour supply of foraged and regurgitated stuff. I think it would be really cool, however, if humans were marsupial. Those mammas got it made. The koala has her baby when it’s the size of a Brazil nut, and it nurses and sleeps in a special tummy pouch made to hold its weight and not develop stretch marks. Then, when the babies are bigger, cuter, and more aware, they pop their heads out of the pouch and look around like they’re in a 100% natural Baby Bjorn.

By far the greatest attraction of the marsupial lifestyle is that they never have to be THIS pregnant. Last night I spent five minutes flopping around in the recliner like a beached trout. Craig finally asked me what the problem was.

I couldn’t get up.

So, of course, he put his foot on the footrest, gave a hard push, and out I popped. I still wonder what I would have done if I was home alone.

A few weeks before I had Devon, my then-10-year-old nephew asked if I was afraid of having “my first painful birth experience.” His exact words, I swear. I told him I was more afraid that the baby wouldn’t come out and I would be nine months pregnant
forever.

People tell me to think of three weeks from now when I can hold my cute little girls and see their sweet faces, and then maybe hand them off to Grammy so I can shave my legs without navigating around the bowling ball in my lap. This is true, but it doesn’t make me feel better, and I’d rather not build an association between the twins and these last few weeks of discomfort punctuated by moments of pain. Today is Sunday, and I’m up at 5 because for the past month Twin B’s way of observing the Sabbath involves resting on my sciatic nerve. It’s a fun new way for me to experience the curse of Eve, but the Bible also says I’m going to forget my travail in the golden sweetness of motherhood, and I’m sure I will.

At some point.

What really makes me feel better is to think of intensely uncomfortable things I’ve done for short periods of time.

1.Taught for one year in the Lexington Public Schools.
2.Refinished my kitchen cabinets in 110 degree Ripon weather as viscuous black stain dripped and dried all down my lower extremities.
3.Broke my foot in June of 2007. Moved 2500 miles in a black boot brace.
4.Worked for two weeks in the Stanislaus County Welfare Office, signing the perfectly capable but clueless up for portions of my tax dollars and offering free and off the books abortions to local fifteen-year-olds (yeah, it was that last one that made me quit when I finally realized what all those fresh-faced middle class darlings were getting when they showed up in line asking for “Confidential Services”).

While it may depress some to hear about the low moments of my life, they perk me right up, convincing me that the human spirit is resilient and capable of handling a lot for a short period of time. It is an important milestone to reach 34 weeks, the marker after which over 99% of babies born survive. From here to 36 weeks, some estimate that every day I can carry the twins saves two that they could have to spend in the NICU. I’m not above trying to score some sympathy (in the form of an extra back rub), but I’m not asking for an earlier delivery date.

Devon is still checking my stomach, and checking other people’s. He’ll circle the living room lifting shirts, wondering why Daddy’s tummy is so much flatter and hairier than Mommy’s. He’s even taken to contemplating his own navel several times a day.

On Friday night Devon spied Ben, his next-door-neighbor friend, playing outside. Since it was bedtime, I brought him away from the window and he collapsed in a paroxysm of weltschmerz , wailing so hard that his tears dripped down his face and into a puddle on the kitchen floor. He wasn’t just mad for not being allowed to play outside. He was tapping into some well of deep human sorrow, mourning the loss of Eden where there were no early bedtimes. Not one to reward tears with pleasure, I put him to bed and let him exhaust his grief and fall asleep.

But as a parent I do love giving good gifts to my children, so Ben came over for a playdate Saturday afternoon. For two hours they hid from each other down the hall, bounced the ball, and shimmied under the coffee table to Devon’s great delight.

Six-year-old Ben also composed an original song for Devon that he sang so many times that it’s still running through my memory:

Life with a baby
Just wouldn’t be the same,
If there was an apple
RIGHT NEXT TO ME!

Ultrasound, July 1, 2011

2011-07-01T07:34:00.000-07:00

Today is July 1, 2011, and I’ve been assured that the babies will be out (one way or another) in one month or less. Their lungs are fully developed, and the only thing they have left to accomplish is a little porking up. Yesterday the sonogram measured them at 4 ½ pounds each. It’s great for 33 weeks, but a pound of pudge apiece shy of the 5 ½ pounds I’m shooting for. It's hopefully doable since they each gained a pound in the last three weeks. My doctor says that 5 lbs. is a pretty important threshold; the extra mass helps the babies regulate their own temperatures without an incubator. Since we’d really rather go with the rooming-in option instead of the NICU stay, I’m trying to think of things I can eat that will help the babies keep gaining weight.

Yesterday was probably my last sonogram. Funny, because we thought the first one we had way back in March was first-and-last. The discovery of twins led to many more, and it seems a little weird that I don’t have another scheduled appointment. I’ve seen the sonogram techs and doctors so many times that in my daydreams about delivery I automatically imagine them there: the tech checking the heartbeats, the doctor measuring my contractions. The sonography office has been the one place at UK Medical where everyone seems to have it all together, and they’ve been a big help in dealing with our Humana Student Health Insurance (Need prenatal care? Why? Your grandfather was born in a barn!)

We were very excited to get a rare glimpse of both babies at once! In the bottom of the picture, you can see an over-the-shoulder profile of A: a sloping forehead and a chubby cheek. Twin B is facing her, and if you look for the tech’s arrow you can see her nose and lips pushed up against the membrane between them like it’s a window she’s looking through. We had to stare at it for a while, but see it once and it’s unmistakeable.

Twin B is the camera shy one in general, always pressing her face to A’s shoulder or turning away from the camera, but we got a glimpse of her profile this time…

… as well as her sister’s. We were never bothered because they are identical, but it’s still nice to see B for the first time since week 16.

Twin B’s face shot turned out a little squashed. Poor thing, she has no idea how bad it’s going to get in there soon, with both of them growing and running out of room. Even if this face was a little mask-of-Darth-Vader I still love it because just before the tech snapped the still picture I saw her blink.

I've been trying not to notice how my housekeeping and my parenting have been slipping in the past month. For example, Devon's newest form of self-amusement is to improvise a basketball hoop out of anything round and throw things through it. So far this morning he's thrown Daddy's shoes, all of his Little People, and his Tigger Ball through the seat of the exersaucer and run to pick them up on the bottom. It's fun for me to watch from my beached position on the couch, but the game has it's weird moments. Namely, when I'm sitting on the toilet and he's throwing red car and yellow car through the hoop that my shorts make stretched across my knees. Do I stop him, though? Nope. I'm just glad I can pee before he finds the plunger and decides to stick it to his head.

So we're counting down to delivery, but more importantly we're counting down 12 more days before Grammy comes to stay for a while. Not only is she fresh from a 3-month deprivation and ready to see her grandson, but she's been shopping! Last week she sent me this picture:

I had mentioned that I didn't have enough clothes for two babies that would probably actually wear the newborn sizes for a while. Now I do. She has a favorite children's consignment store, and it just so happens they were having a sale.

She recently posted on facebook that she bought a 20 lb. jug of cat litter to carry around as practice for picking up Devon. It's a good idea. However, Devon does not have a handle, and he doesn't stay still. I suggested that she practice carrying around a 20 lb. bag of cats.

Now that I've had a few more days to think about it, I've devised a list of exercises that anyone anticipating a visit with a 15-month-old can do to physically and mentally prepare. If you'd like to truly empathize with me, you can attempt this list with two 5 lb. sacks of sugar duct taped to your bellybutton.

In the Kitchen: Open a can of kidney beans. Smear 2 T. on high chair tray, 3 T. on cloth seat of high chair. Stick 5 beans to wall. Dump remainder on floor. Let dry 30 minutes. Clean up the mess.

In the Bathroom: Run warm water in tub and add bubble bath. Bathe, lotion, diaper, and dress reluctant raccoon while singing "Take Me out to the Ball Game" and balancing a rubber duck on your head.

In the Living Room: Spread 100 ping pong balls on carpet. Tune 2 different radios to different stations at medium volume. Crawl around coffee table on your knees, pausing to lift jug of cat litter down from the couch, coffee table, or stairs. Continue this action for 30 minutes. Pick up ping pong balls.

32 Weeks- June 26. 2011

2011-06-26T20:42:00.001-07:00

While doing laundry last week I remembered why we stopped buying Dreft shortly after Devon was born.

Ally kitty loves Dreft. It’s her catnip. I was sorting pink sleepers and she sidled up next to me with a hungry look on her face and vigorously rubbed her face in the pile. I call the motion lip-grinding, because it’s seriously what it looks like. Rewashing baby clothes that had been smeared with cat hair and spit got old fast, so we used Babyganics or All Free and Clear, just as safe and neutral in smell. Still, it could have helped Ally with what must have been a difficult transition time.

The new baby made alarming noises and sudden movements, but at least he smelled like heroin to her. I don’t think Ally kitty suspects that two more of those small humans will come home to greet her shortly, but Devon knows that something is up. Our daily conversations about the New Babies are starting to sink in (Do NOT sit on the New Babies! That HURTS Mommy!). Devon has taken to lifting my shirt to check on the New Babies several times a day. He chuckles at my round stomach, pats it, and then stares inside my shallow belly button like it’s a portal to another dimension. This is endearing when we’re at home alone. It’s not so cute in Cracker Barrel.

We put one major check mark on our To-Do list this week. I’m happy to report that we’ve bought a suitable vehicle for a multiple child family.

Minivan people? Us? I’m sure you all saw that one coming, though this was a bit of a surprise for those following our vehicle search. We had all but decided on a Dodge Ram 2500, the truck that we’d been dreaming about for four years as we made do with one car while Craig was in grad school. I was NOT going to put a one-year-old in the back seat of a minivan, and most have only two middle seats. It turns out that newer models have an 8-seater option with a middle seat that installs to make three car seats possible. Then we can leave the back row down for groceries, a triple stroller, etc.

I’m also proud of Craig, who made the decision and then convinced me. I know a lot of guys who would be seriously miffed about giving up their Cummins Diesel engine for a V6 Mama Car with power side doors and a back-up camera. Yep, I married a good man, someone who knows how to make the responsible choice and then convince his hormonal and bovinely unattractive wife that it’s what he’s secretly always wanted.

We had also been basing our truck decision on some incorrect assumptions about our future. As I mentioned in my first post, we’ve known that Craig’s upcoming graduation means moving this fall. Up until lately, the job search was revealing much more demand for entomologists in colder places: Illinois, Maryland, Iowa… Places where you need a 4-wheel drive vehicle. As it turns out, the paperwork was finalized this week for Craig’s new job with the USDA in Vero Beach, Florida. We’re thrilled to be decided at last, and even more floored that we’ll be spending the next few years in a town that half the people we talk to have been to on vacation. The only way it could be better timing is if I could expect to fit in a bathing suit anytime soon.

As you can see, it's not looking likely. But, on the upside, another big hurdle in the upcoming move has been settled, too! Our house sold in nine days, amazing in the nationally stagnant housing market. The sign in the front yard really drives the point home. In five weeks we’ll be welcoming the New Babies home. In ten weeks that home won't be ours anymore, and we’ll be loading the twins, Devon, and even a reluctant Ally kitty into the new van and leaving Kentucky for Florida.

Sounds like fun.

Ultrasound, June 9, 2011

2011-06-14T09:19:00.001-07:00

On the morning of my 30-week sonogram, I strapped Devon into his high chair, sat down with his bowl of oatmeal, and tried to cross my legs. I couldn't. My leg slid right off and back to the floor. It's one more sign that I'm getting pretty big, but at least I'm supposed to. My funniest milestone when I was pregnant with Devon was the day I told my students to make a circle with their desks, sat down in a desk to be casual, and had to pop right back up again because I was too fat and the desk grazed my stomach. My students thought it was pretty funny.

The upside of not having much room left at my waistline is that hopefully the girls have made up their minds and will stay head down, making a normal delivery at least a possibility. The tech still called righty Twin A, since her head is still furthest down. The rest of her body is curled up like a cashew around Twin B, whose body then curls around the top of A.

Twin A is still the photogenic one, giving us a good face shot, a profile, and a crown shot where we can see that she definitely has hair. Twin B is still hiding next to her identical sister. As usual, they were both moving up a storm, and it took the tech a long time to get a good cord reading because they would turn away from the wand whenever she would try.

Way more important than the pictures, though, were this week's measurements. At the last visit, A was 15% larger than B, which is pretty normal but the doctors still watch closely to make sure everybody's still growing. Today, the gap had narrowed to 2%, with each baby measuring out at about 3 1/2 pounds! That's still way above average and fabulous for mono-di twins! The doctor felt confident enough in their growth to still schedule my sonograms 3 weeks apart.

No wonder I'm feeling like I'm really sharing my space with these girls. Devon was born at a healthy 7 lbs. 2 ozs., so the twins together weigh what he did when he was born! I'm very thankful that they are growing so well, since their weight and activity means that they are in good health now and should stay healthy. I was aiming for 11-12 pounds of baby by 37 weeks, the end of a normal twin pregnancy, and it looks like we're right on target.

My Birth Plan, as of June 5, 2011

2011-06-05T14:32:00.000-07:00

I’m not into birth plans. Most women who are, if I’m allowed to be stereotypical for a minute, are the kind that think birth is a beautiful, natural experience that your body is capable of doing without drugs or hospitals. I read a lot of these experiences on the Internet while first doing research on twin births.

“It was the most beautiful and profound experience of my life to have my twins at home. My doctor and I parted ways because he didn’t approve, since they were VBAC (vaginal after caesarean) and mono-mono (where there’s no separation between the babies and you’re carrying them around--cords and all--tangled up like two cats fighting in a burlap sack). But my doula felt that I could do it and coached me in my living room in a birthing tub of warm water. My doctor would’ve wanted me to have an epidural and to deliver the two quickly one after the other, but I was able to nurse my little Gaia for 20 minutes before her sister Flower was ready to descend…”

As you can see, some prefer to deliver twins the natural way. When I say "natural", however, I don’t mean drug free. This woman obviously smoked enough crack before writing her birth plan that her judgment was floating loosely in the sky with diamonds. I’m glad she and her twins enjoyed their one-of-a-kind “birth experience”, but she’s missing the point. PEOPLE DIE HAVING BABIES. Both my dad and Craig’s dad can think back a generation ago, when a hospital birth was still unusual and medical care was comparatively limited. Lots of kids in grade school had stepmothers because their own mothers only made it through three or four home births until their luck or health ran out. Twins were born then, too, but not always safely. Elvis Presley’s twin brother, Jesse, was stillborn before him, and many wonder if The King’s obvious emotional problems were a result of the lifelong heartache many suffer from being an only surviving twin.

Today childbirth is safer for mother and baby because of prenatal care and hospitals. There are a hundred different ways that Gaia, Flower, or their mother could have failed to survive the home birth, some of which are listed in her narrative. Adhesions from the previous C-section could’ve bled out. She could’ve needed a new C-section and not been able to get to a hospital. And yes, babies that share a blood supply (like mine, even though their sacs are separate) are usually encouraged to come out close together because of increased risk of placental detachment. I don’t care if it is fun to give birth in my living room in a Rubbermaid tub of warm water while tiny seahorses swim around me and nibble at my toes. I don’t want to do it. And really, what woman who has been through any kind of birth before wants all that mess and noise IN THEIR OWN LIVING ROOM? I’d never be able to look at a brown spot on the carpet the same way again. Even if the doula-and-pool package comes with a cleanup service, I’d rather give birth in a hospital under the influence of safe and legal drugs.

Although, after the week I’ve had, I’m not sure that delivering with my current OB office leaves me much better off than that poor lady and her living room tub. I’ve been battling a cold for about two weeks, and on Thursday I woke up at 3 am with a sinus infection giving me the worst pain I’ve ever felt. After staring at the clock for five hours until my doctor’s office opened, I called and explained my situation. I’m in my third trimester of a high-risk pregnancy with mono-di twins, ill with a sinus infection, a fever, and maybe bronchitis, and need to be seen by my doctor today. I was told to leave a message (!!!) then, and at 9am and 11am when I called back. At 1 pm I was sick of spending the day crying on the couch because I was in so much pain and my fever was starting to spike, so I called back and demanded to speak immediately to someone who was authorized to schedule me.

“We don’t see you for a sinus infection. Go to your primary care physician,” replied the nurse, clearly annoyed at being made to answer the message.

“Not only is it too late in the day to start the message game at another office, but I have nobody to see but the University Health Service. While the interns there can give me a flu shot or fix a minor sports injury, I’d prefer to see a DOCTOR because…” I countered testily, launching back into a description of my case and my symptoms.

“Well, if you have a fever, you should go to emergency!” As you know, we have Humana Student Health Insurance (Need health care? No, you don’t!) and they wouldn’t take too kindly to an unnecessary ER visit.

“You can’t tell me that I am not sick enough AND too sick to be seen. I’m sorry if you’re busy today, but it’s unacceptable to deny me the care that my case warrants because you’re overbooked…” I try to use big words on the phone with my office in general. Sadly, it seems like they’re used to dealing with people with a lower level of education who are therefore more easily bent to the will of overbearing nursing staff (especially because most of the patients don’t pay their own medical bills, if you know what I mean). In short, I refused to hang up and was given an appointment. The doctor was concerned, called in a safe prescription, and checked that the babies weren’t suffering distress from my week of poor health.

I admit that I'm not entirely proud of the way I handled the situation. Shakespeare nailed it when he said "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned," only he didn't take into consideration what it's like to be THREE women. When the nurse (a different one than my phone buddy) came in, she remarked kindly over my son and said "He's a keeper!" and I replied "Really? I thought I had to hand over my firstborn in order to get an appointment today."

I've heard horror stories about non-OB doctors misprescribing for pregnant women because they didn't know any better, like Vicodin for pregnancy migraines. I felt that to get the right antibiotic I had to see an OB and I don't like it that I was forced to choose to be ugly or not get what I needed. I’m glad the situation was resolved, but it doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in the team of people slated to get me through the riskiest thing I’ve done so far.

Not that this is my first inkling that I would prefer to not deliver at UK. There’s the story of a friend-of-a-friend who labored to 8 cm in a hallway because they were short staffed and couldn’t prepare her room (or her epidural). Or my friend who battled an infection for a week after her son’s birth because they left her in L&D for too long and she didn’t get adequate recovery care. Also, UK is a teaching hospital. Since the birth of twins happens in the OR and is medically interesting, you might as well wheel the gurney to the three-point line at Rupp Arena and sell tickets. That’s how many people will be attending. Like it or not.

To console me, Dad reminds me that there are advantages to having the twins surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses. Giving birth is icky, but it’s better in my book than being whacked open like a Cinco de Maya piñata that sprays babies instead of candy. I’d rather not have a C-section. I’d also like to leave the hospital in my pre-pregnancy jeans and a belly shirt. We’ll see if that works out. My most vivid fear surrounding a C-section is that the surgeon will punch a few of my organs while he’s clearing me out and I’ll wake up piddling and leaking indiscriminately. According to my dad, it’s comforting to know that with that many witnesses, I’ll at least be a wealthy woman who pees into a bag for the rest of her life.

I think that making out a birth plan is audacious in the assumption that I actually can determine the course of a process that is unpredictable and entirely out of my control. But here goes:

My Birth Plan, In which I list my preferences of the upcoming “birth experience” according to priority.

1. Nobody dies.
2. Nobody has to be in the NICU. Or the ICU, for that matter.
3. I don’t have a C-section.
4. If #3 conflicts with #1 or #2, forget about it.

Third Trimester, May 29, 2011

2011-05-29T19:41:00.000-07:00

Today I’m 28 weeks and finally in my third trimester. I say finally because the math has been a bit hard to pin down so far. On my first prenatal visit, the nurse calculated my LMP due date (look it up, kids) and gave me July 28. I arrived at my first ultrasound on March 10 thinking I was 20 weeks, and along with the news that I was cooking a two-pack came a smaller size estimate than expected. The twins measured about 15 and 16 weeks, so my due date was recalculated to August 20.

Somehow, this information didn’t really make it back to my OB’s office. Unfortunately, I get the feeling sometimes that they aren’t on top of things. Remember that since Craig is finishing up grad school we have Humana Student Health Insurance (Need health care? Roll the dice. Evens we’ll cover it; odds we won’t. Oh, and don’t use those dice. Use ours). The OB’s office we have to use caters to—um—mostly a demographic that I don’t really identify with. Let’s just say that when I first called the office and told them I was pregnant, their words to me were not “How exciting!” but “Do you need counseling?” (read=abortion). And the person waiting next to me in the OB waiting room could be wearing an orange jumpsuit and leg irons.

For whatever reason, my OB stuck with my LMP due date and sonography the measurement one, which is supposed to be much more accurate, and so I was always bouncing back and forth between estimates of how far along I am (22…25…24…27…25...). At my last visit I pointed out the error, the nurse practitioner measured the size of my uterus as a tiebreaker, and now I think that everybody’s on the same page. If my due date is, indeed, August 20, then I’m 28 weeks today.

If I’m not due for 12 more weeks, then why does my blog bio say we’re expecting in July? According to my doctor, everything with twins happens about four weeks faster. So milestones or symptoms I experience seem to arrive about four weeks earlier than I remember with Devon. That includes delivery, too. Twins are delivered at 36 weeks on average, and at 37 weeks ready or not. My third trimester isn’t really even three months, it’s nine more weeks if I’m lucky. So our arrival estimate, the one we’ve been giving out, is August 1st. It’s important to make it to August if I can because with a premature delivery comes a NICU stay and an insurance NIGHTMARE (see above). It would also be nice for sentimental reasons. My maternal grandmother, Irma Meth, was born in August. She is still alive but not doing very well. When I was helping my family downsize her possessions I kept her August Birthday Angel figurine, thinking that I, my brother, or one of my cousins could have a baby girl with an August birthday someday and I’d pass it along.

The new question I’m hearing fairly often is “So, have you adequately prepared Devon for becoming a big brother and the changes that go along?” Umm… he’s 14 months old. His full vocabulary is: Daddy, car, peg, go, ball. How does one use this linguistic platform to have the conversation, exactly? Don’t misunderstand me; I talk to my son a lot. So much that people in the grocery store steer away from us, me filling my cart and narrating like the star of my own documentary and Devon listening soberly. “Kidney beans! Your favorite! No, we don’t eat the bananas until we get home. Do you like the way the bag of chips feels?” Sometimes, while sitting up in the cart he pushes my belly like the button on one of his toys and then looks up to give me a big smile.

Devon is still on the small side for all of this. At Babies R'US I browsed through a rack of "I'm a big brother!" t-shirts looking for his size. The smallest they had was a 3T. I don’t think anything could prepare Devon for the changes we’ll experience this summer. Any of us, really. Not me, crossing activities off my list one by one because I’m just getting too big and awkward. Not Craig, who likes to watch the vague shapes of our daughters’ limbs move up one side of my stomach and down the other like bubbles in a lava lamp. We’re all in for an interesting time.

Much Ado About a Very Small Matter

2011-05-24T14:34:00.000-07:00

I’ve just spent a disturbing few minutes catching up on news from my home state; more specifically San Francisco’s “Battle of the Bris”, the move to ban elective circumcision of boys under 18 that could show up on the city’s ballots as soon as November. In short, the city that banned the Happy Meal now takes up arms against what activists are calling “male genital mutilation.” I’ve breathed sighs of relief at having left California before, but none so deep and satisfying (despite the four little twin feet working away at my diaphragm) as the one I am enjoying right now. San Franciscans, what are you thinking?

If there was anything wrong or unhealthy with infant circumcision, the American Academy of Pediatrics would be leading the move to ban, and that is definitely not the case. Surgical removal of the foreskin, according to the AAP, reduces incidence of penile cancer, HIV and HPV, infection, and inflammation. In addition, many parents opt for the procedure for reasons of hygiene. Keeping the foreskin area healthy is difficult through the diaper years and late into childhood, requiring parent-supervised cleaning a few times a day. If activists now claim that the procedure has no health benefits and causes “severe physical, emotional, and sexual side effects”, they clearly must shoulder the burden of proof. If circumcised adult males are having physical or sexual problems, how can they conclusively pin them on a procedure they had at birth, giving them no point of comparison? And yes, some men apparently resent their parents for altering their physiology when they were too small to say “no”, but who’s to say their “mommy issues” wouldn’t have found another place to roost if they hadn’t been circumcised?

Other parents choose circumcision for reasons of normalcy, since it is performed on roughly 60% of American boys and is very common in regions such as the Midwest. You’d think that San Franciscans would appreciate the freedom to alter one’s appearance more than any other group. A walk around Pier 39 never fails to showcase the many bizarre things that people do to themselves for the sake of looks. There’s clearly no objection in The City to bars and studs through various facial features, huge tattoos, and ear piercings that have been stretched so grotesquely that I could throw a ping pong ball through the metal hoops. If it’s legal in San Francisco to have elective surgery to split the tip of the tongue, giving an individual a snakelike appearance and the ability to retrain the muscles of each side to move independently of the other, doesn’t the presence or absence of a tiny flap of skin that stays covered when you’re out in public seem a little insignificant? If the problem is not with the surgery itself but rather that it is performed on individuals too tiny to give consent, then why isn't anybody going after infant ear piercing as well?

After all, the main reason that parents usually make the decision to perform a minor operation on—uh—the most sensitive part of a man’s body is that it ISN’T a very sensitive part of a baby’s body. A little local anesthetic and a Tylenol chaser and baby’s none the worse for the experience, especially since being squeezed out a birth canal into a bright, cold world was also on the To Do list for the week. Delaying even a few weeks complicates the matter, as undecided friends of mine found out after they brought their son home unsnipped. When they later discussed the procedure with their son’s pediatrician, they were advised that he would need a general anesthetic, an overnight hospital stay, and weeks of recovery time. Undergoing the procedure as an adult is reportedly exponentially worse, with all of the above and painful side effects that, according to an anonymous friend, “leave you walking funny for a month.” Pragmatism, not patriarchy, is what usually puts the burden of choice on parents.

Activists may believe that the majority of American circumcisions are performed for religious reasons, but Jews and Muslims make up such a small fraction of circumcisions that this cannot be the case. Those who believe that circumcision is mandatory for Christians are mistaken. Yes, there are those Old Testament passages like 1 Samuel 18, in which David kills 200 Philistines, bringing back their foreskins to King Saul and earning his daughter Michal’s hand in marriage. I think, however, if I read the New Testament to my son he will not grow up thinking that we impress girls nowadays by killing people and cutting off their foreskins. My husband had a childhood friend who was told (probably by an embarrassed parent) that circumcision meant “to cut you up.” When in an exuberant mood, the little guy would run around striking his best karate pose and growling “I’m going to circumcise you!” When a kind adult took him aside and enlightened him on the real meaning, he immediately removed the word from his lexicon.

Whether to mandate circumcision as a nod to Jewish tradition was a question the early church had to settle. Their decision is recorded in Galatians 6:15, “Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything; what counts is the new creation.” This means that an individual’s relationship with God is a personal choice. It doesn’t matter if a parent cuts off a tiny part of you or sprinkles a little water on your infant head; only you decide where God fits into your life.

I don’t want my son to think that something I chose to do to him at birth made him right with God. I want him to pursue his own relationship with God as he becomes old enough to understand. Yes, I chose to have my son circumcised, but I don’t believe the procedure carries any spiritual meaning. I honestly couldn’t tell any other parent what to do in the same situation, but I definitely don’t support a ban that would take choice away from parents, who are, after all, chiefly responsible for the well-being of their children.

In closure, San Franciscans, though I feel that you are misguided on this issue, it’s nice to see you taking up the rights of the newborn for a change. Could I just take a moment to remind you that abortion destroys a tiny foreskin along with the rest of the baby, and it’s also performed when children are too tiny to give consent. It seems that your anti-circumcision activists aren’t really bothered by this. Why is that?

Ultrasound, May 11, 2011

2011-05-12T04:07:00.000-07:00

My first glimpse of the girls in four weeks was a very welcome sight. The tech put the scanner low on my stomach, pretty close to the south pole if you know what I mean, and I saw this:

Yesss!!! My babies are both head down and side-by-side. Since I’m about 26 weeks now, they could flip again, but I hope they get pinned down there by their rapidly expanding bodies. Now begins the race to the finish line, so to speak, and here’s where it gets confusing.

Twins are designated A and B, A being the closest to the mother’s cervix, B being furthest away. Since ours were head to butt at the first appointment, it was hard for the tech to decide. How do you tell who’s closer to my cervix when one twin is head-butting it and the other twin is tap-dancing on it? She eventually made lefty A because her little feet were snaking around her sister’s head just a bit. Today she changed the designations because righty’s head is a few inches lower than lefty’s, and when they’re head down that means that if I deliver normally she will be born first.

We got a sweet shot of A (righty's) face, too. It's the most babylike image I've ever seen on a sonogram. Twin A is growing amazingly well. Her weight estimate for 26 weeks was 2 lbs, 5 oz., which is in the 74th percentile.

"For multiples?" I asked.

"No, for babies!" replied the tech. Amazing!

B was hiding her face on her sister's shoulder, and the tech was unable to get her to move and smile for the camera. She's identical to A, though, so how much different could she look? She's 15% smaller than A, at 1 lb. 15 oz., but that's still the 57th percentile.

Whatever I'm feeding these babies appears to be working. The doctors are okay with a weight discrepancy as long as one isn't measuring small or getting smaller, so I was cleared for another four weeks. If my expanding size is another indication too, they appear to be growing just fine. Here is me in February 2010, 35 weeks pregnant with Devon.

I have what most women want to have when they're pregnant. The tight-little-belly look. I was too embarassed to take a rear view, but I wasn't wide or waddling, just thrusting forward like the prow of a sailing ship. Compare that to 26 weeks with twins.

If I didn't have different hair and different weather, they could almost be taken on the same day. A few have said I look small for twins, but that is slightly worrying as well. Just how big am I going to get? With only four pounds of baby in me, I'm almost as big as I was right before I had Devon, and I'm shooting for about 12 pounds of baby at the end. Forget the aquatic vessel analogies, unless you say I look more like a cruise ship. Appropriate, I suppose, since I'm providing a pleasant underwater experience for multiple passengers.

So, sometimes my expanding size is comforting, and sometimes not. Since I'm a firm believer in averages, I think that total weight divided by three is the most accurate description of my weight right now. I'm pleased to report that I weigh 60 pounds, which I haven't managed to pull of since I was, like, 8. It's scary to think that the fact that we've gained 30 pounds already and it isn't a problem with my doctor, and he'll put me on supplement drinks if I don't gain 20 more in the next 2 months.

It's hard to be big headed into summer, and the stores seem to have stopped selling maternity shorts for the sake of human decency. Don't worry, I'd never wear them in public, I just want a pair to wear at home or in the back yard with Devon.

As far as people making references to my size, I prefer the phrase "Whole Lotta Women." I coined it for myself, and I think it's most accurate.

Easter, March 23, 2010

2011-05-01T05:33:00.001-07:00

Devon celebrated his second Easter on Sunday, the only major holiday that we will celebrate twice with only one child. Last Thanksgiving Devon was crawling and I was a few weeks pregnant with the twins. At Devon's first Christmas we were still in shock from the pregnancy test I had taken three days earlier, thinking in awe that we will have two consecutive first Christmases. We were joking with family that we could keep up the rhythm, get pregnant again when #2 is eight months old, and have #3 as a Christmas 2012 baby for a third consecutive first Christmas. Of course, now that we know that we're getting #2 and #3 as a package deal, it's even funnier in retrospect. We’ve been advised that we have a 40% chance of another multiple pregnancy, so now the number of children we could manage to produce in three years increases to 6.

Devon was six days old on his first Easter, lying on the blanket and looking tiny. That didn’t stop Grammy from giving him an Easter basket, vintage from my childhood and filled with toys old and new. Since the basket went into the closet intact, this year’s Easter basket was a snap. I found last year’s in the attic, transferred the toys to a new basket, and this time Devon enjoyed rooting around in the basket.

Sunday Devon also debuted his Big Boy Shoes. He’s worn Robeez, the wonderful pre-walker soft leather slippers, until now. Friday I decided that the unusually dapper vest-and-golf-short combo passed to him from a friend’s son needed real shoes. On the changing table, he tried to bite the new sandals off, which is probably what Ally kitty would do if we tried to get her to wear shoes. On the ground, he lifted a foot WAY up in the air, eyed the shoe distastefully, and then smacked it down as if trying to shake it off. For you Nick Park fans, it was a motion that can only be compared to Wallace in The Wrong Trousers. Thankfully, Daddy was able to convince Devon that Big Boy shoes weren’t that much harder to wear and made a pleasing clomp every time he took a step, so the transition was over in ten minutes. When he woke up from his nap, he found his Big Boy Shoes and brought them to me to put on again. Here’s a better side view of Devon and the B.B.S., as he plays with his Little People Circus, a birthday gift from Grammy and Grandpa.

We took about twenty pictures of Devon in his outfit and with his basket, but only a few turned out. Sadly, the best one of him also features me in the back goggling like a startled deer.

Craig is a great photographer and always gets his camera out to capture a cute shot of Devon. Sadly, even the most careful parent must do battle with what I call The Immutable Laws of Juvenile Photography:

1. No matter how many snaps you take, only three will turn out. Usually the first three.
2. In those three, parents have a weird facial expression, a body part accidentally exposed, or an awkward posture that reveals post-baby lack of physical conditioning.
3. The child will be so cute that the shot will still go in the baby book, the mailing, or the slideshow. Parents will either be totally oblivious to looking bad, or call attention to it in a "tee-hee" sort of way.

Take one of our first Devon-and-Mommy pics, for example.

I thought this was an adorable shot of both of us. I included it in Devon's email birth announcement and copied it for the baby book. Then, when I returned to teaching on finals week, one of my students pointed out that the dopey smile on my face was not new motherhood. I was well and truly stoned, complete with pupils dilated to cover my entire iris. Whether it was the previous days epidural (I'm a big girl, so my dose of anesthetic could fell a stampeding bull elephant) or the Percoset I had taken at five that morning, I was definitely feeling no pain. Yet, I'm still showing off this photo. Tee-hee.

Ultrasound, April 14, 2011

2011-04-21T16:39:00.000-07:00

I’m happy to report that positioning for the twins has improved 75% in the last 2 ½ weeks. They were double breech, an automatic c-section combo. Now Twin B is hanging out head down in the back, while Twin A sprawls sideways in front of her like a backslash. People who have noticed me looking especially stickie-outie in the last two weeks can understand: we take up more room front to back when the three of us are in single file. I’m sure somebody, probably A the quirky one, got tired one night of me tossing and turning from left side to right side in an endless ricochet and decided that nobody really had to have the bottom bunk. It’s still a combo that is delivered by c-section, but it is definitely a step in the right direction. If Twin A gets tired of Twin B’s toes tickling her ear, she may decide to give the head-down lifestyle a try.

Our biggest good news is that a normal 24-week scan for mono-di twins is a huge milestone. It means the placenta and dual umbilical cords formed correctly and we are past worrying about TTTS. The tech took Doppler readings of my heartbeat through the cord veins and arteries and the blood supply looks equal. Great news! The only disappointing thing about our 24-week scan was: No Pictures! I came home, empty-handed, to Craig wanting to see more little black-and-white renditions of hands and feet, soft palates and bases of spines. The reason we didn’t get a photo booth keepsake to commemorate this scan was that though two babies still flashed by on the screen and the tech did record their heartbeats, this scan didn’t measure the babies.

Years from now, we will NOT look lovingly down at the photo album and say “Awww, look! There’s my placenta. How adorable is that!” or “Yes, I remember when my cervix was long and closed!” I don’t even WANT a picture of any of it. Truth be told, I think that placentas and umbilical cords are slimy and disgusting, and the thought of having a few inside of me engages my yuck factor. I was too drugged to notice the delivery of the placenta after I had Devon, which was fine with me, and when Craig (ever the biologist) launched into a description of it ("I was amazed at how HUGE it was, Krista. Like a PIE PLATE! And it had all these blood vessels snaking around it like red and blue--") in recovery I had to cut him off.

Another odd fact about pictures is that in the past week the mysterious entity http://2.bp.blogspot.com has ripped the sonogram pics off my blog and posted them on Google Images. I spent the morning trying to change the security settings to keep my twins from being carelessly disseminated through the ether without my permission. No luck, thus far. I feel that being the owner of said blog and fetuses gives me enough of a copyright that I can expect that my images not end up on somebody’s powerpoint. I’ve heard about this happening. Moms post sweet baby pictures on Facebook and see their babies selling cereal in an Internet ad a few weeks later. People post pictures of their diet progress on a weight loss blog and end up on a makeover site, with their pictures used as "Before" shots and models comprising the "After" pictures. Didn’t think it would happen to my twins, but it could be worse. I’m glad I didn’t upload any pictures of my placenta.

Ultrasound, March 28, 2011

2011-04-12T17:36:00.001-07:00

Most same-gender twins have genetic testing at birth to determine if they are identical or fraternal (boy-girl twins are obviously not—think about that one for a while). How does the doctor already know that our girls are identical?

Twin A and B are mono-di twins, short for monochorionic-diamniotic. They split from a single egg three to seven days after conception. Each twin has her own umbilical cord and amniotic sac, but they share a placenta. It’s hard to tell when you’re looking at it on a fuzzy gray screen, but the whole thing looks like one of those cherries that is really two developed on the same stem but stuck firmly together.

Mono-di twins have a 1 in 7 risk of a condition called Twin-to-Twin Transfusion syndrome, a really scary complication where the blood vessels in the cord filter all the blood supply into one twin and then the other. One twin swells up and develops heart problems from all the extra pumping, and the other one shrivels up like a raisin because it can’t get enough blood. This condition is usually apparent by 18-25 weeks, so that explains the extra scrutiny. Thankfully, the girls measured about 20 weeks today and there wasn’t any difference in amniotic fluid, the first sign of TTTS.

We’ve been fielding questions about twins in the family since our discovery ultrasound two weeks ago. No, neither of us have twins in our lineage, but this makes sense. Family genetics can produce only fraternal twins, which are caused by more than one egg released at once. Fraternal twins are also the only kind produced by taking fertility drugs to induce hyperovulation, one reason why it seems like there are many more sets of twins than there used to be. Higher maternal age is another factor in increased chance of fraternal twins, but there is no way to predict or increase the likelihood of the spontaneous dividing of a single pregnancy that causes a set of identical twins, a 1 in 250 chance for everyone, no matter what.

The first thing I wanted to know about my very special girls at this ultrasound was their position. Right now they are both breech (imagine me with two hamster-sized fetuses perched upright on my lap). Now that they have their heads together, I hope they can figure out a way to go head down, because I am really hoping for a natural birth. There are complicated formulas for positioning combinations in a twin delivery, but my best chance of not getting popped like a beach ball in front of a hundred interns taking notes (UK is a teaching hospital) is for them both to be bottoms up at term.

We were also hoping for some cute two-heads-together or four-little-feet pictures, but our twins were not in a photogenic mood. The main reason the scan took over an hour was their constant movement. The tech would isolate a foot, prepare to measure it, and it would disappear. She could move the camera a bit, but the first foot that came into view might not be the right one of the four squirming feet she had to keep straight.

We did, however, get a “Power to the Babies!” sign from Twin B, busy executing a barrel roll.

Devon’s favorite postpartum gesture was to make a punctuating grunt and stab a fist emphatically in the air, like he was saying “Power to the Babies!” I think Twin B was just reminding us who was in charge.

Ultrasound, March 10, 2011

2011-04-02T05:24:00.000-07:00

I could tell that something was different in the ultrasound room. On the screen I saw my baby for a moment, a rib cage, a snub nose in profile, then the image suddenly dissolved, and then reappeared again, only… upside down? I didn’t remember that trick from Devon’s 20 week sonogram, which wasn’t all that long ago (November 2010). Then the sonogram tech started rapidly swirling the camera around on my stomach in a figure eight-like motion and I thought of Mr. Potato Head when you open the door in his back and see all his spare parts tangled up inside. A knee and an ear? A foot and two hands? Three feet and a chin? Was there something wrong with my baby? Could it be fixed? What would they do with all the extra body parts… donate them?

“So… what number scan is this for you?” asked the tech.

“The first.” I thought I was two months late when I finally saw a dark blue cross on the end of the stick, but it was hard to tell. The monthly visitor had barely started visiting me again anyway because I was still nursing Devon, then 9 months. Since it was Christmas week, I had to wait until the doctor’s offices opened again to make an appointment, and they couldn’t see me until late January. When they said they could get me in for an ultrasound at 16 weeks, I declined. Since my husband is just finishing grad school, we have Humana Student Health insurance (Need health care? Flip a coin. Heads we’ll cover it. Tails we won’t!).

The kaleidoscope of baby shapes continued to move on the screen and then came to rest for a moment. “Well, I have a surprise for you. There’s more than one in there!”

I gasped and looked over at my husband, who was holding almost one-year-old Devon tightly and grinning like we had just won the fertility lottery. “I knew it!” I wheezed. But did I really? What I had was more a vague sense that this pregnancy was different, and they say that every one is. I had several dreams of Devon and he was always a boy, so I’d been going to bed every night waiting for gender clues in my dreams. So far, I dreamed of food: burritos, cheeseburgers, cake, terryaki chicken bowl. I was definitely sicker with this pregnancy, and I had already stopped riding the stationary bike because of a tight abdominal sensation I was experiencing, reminiscent of two stakes being wedged between my rib cage and my pelvis, one on each side.

As it turns out, the stakes are identical twin girls. Twin A is currently breech and seems to be the more active one, using my bladder as a stairmaster in the evenings.

Twin B is currently head down, and seems quieter. I can occasionally feel her fingering my intestines like the strings of a harp.

I triumphantly told the ultrasound tech that this was why I was big for 20 weeks, and her response was that my due date was also off. Measuring at 16 weeks and 17 weeks, my twins are due August 21st, not July 28th as we thought. So Devon will probably still be a big brother by 16 months, because twins are often early. And being moved back four weeks in my pregnancy didn’t help any size estimates either. I’m kind of like global warming: it’s a vague problem that everyone seems worried about, but we all have no idea how bad it’s going to be.

So, Devon turned one last week, and Craig finishes grad school in August of this year, and whatever job we find will probably include moving again. I’d spent weeks picturing us driving off in our car with one newborn, one toddler, and one tabby in the back seat of our compact car. At the moment, we’re not sure how we can accommodate three babies under two and a tabby cat in our compact Chevy Malibu, but it’s not a bad problem to have.