Zombies Ahead

Every now and then I identify with the most random things. This week it was a news article discussing how hackers had changed the caption on an electronic road sign in Austin, Texas. The caption they chose? Zombies Ahead. And I thought, aha! That is the sign I need! I am definitely a zombie!

The past couple of weeks have been rough. In hindsight, I know that in addition to dealing with extreme sleep deprivation and returning to work, I've been suffering mastitis, an infection that has left me with flu-like symptoms, as well as a touch of postpartum depression. (Apparently the latter has been a problem for about six weeks, but I have been too depressed to notice. The irony!) The combination of all of the above does not make for a very fun girl.

That is why I am soooo glad that I am not a single parent. My husband is a golden god. He has kept the family together and things as under control as they can be in our house of crazy while I fall apart. In addition to keeping the kiddos alive and in clean diapies, he also keeps up with Mt. Laundry, takes care of the kitchen and dogs, and somehow manages to have dinner ready every night when I stumble in from work. He's keeping the kids on a schedule and even finding time for adventures with the kids. He is pretty freakin' amazing. But the sick part? He so dang chipper about it. It's like he likes this crazy life! (Did I mention the postpartum depression is apparently making me just a tad bitter?)

So while I have waded through the past couple of weeks half asleep and feeling like everything was an unachievable chore, here's what was accomplished by our little family, primarily due to his efforts.

On Tuesday, January 20th, I returned to work and Wilmington had its first accumulating snowfall since 2003. (If the date sounds vaguely familiar, most of the world remembers it for that whole inauguration thing.) Since she had never seen snow that she could remember, we made sure R got to go out and play in it. We figured she would love it. We were so wrong. J took her out early in the day, and she just stood holding the hood of her coat tightly to her head. When I came home from work, I took her with me to get the mail. She didn't even let me put her down. She wanted to be carried to avoid incidental contact with the snow on the ground. Mostly she kept saying, "Brrrr. Snow cold!" I guess all of our kids have southern tendencies. J took each of the boys out to see the snow. L snuggled into his blankies. I'm not sure M ever woke up, preferring to keep his eyes closed to this chilly whiteness. However, R has already started talking about going to the beach, and in the bathtub her bath friends play in their swimming pool. She is all about the hot weather!


Last week M somewhat came into his own. It's like he finally accepted the fact that he was stuck out here in the real world. He started staying awake during the day and became much more observant. Suddenly he was more than a lump that was just freakishly large and strong in comparison to his puny big brother. L, for the record, didn't do anything too remarkable last week. He was happy to just kick back and watch the world around him, as he usually does.


We actually had a busy weekend. On Saturday we all ventured to Target and Radio Shack. We are addicted to our Attractions coupon book, and can't stand to let coupons go unused just because we have newborn twins, so we also went out to lunch at Mama Fu's. Because our meals were buy one get one free, we let R get her own meal off the kid menu which let us order real (i.e. not kid friendly) food since we didn't have to share with her. (It's not the R won't eat everything, but we draw the line at super spicy foods and foods cooked less than well done.) It was lovely. On Sunday we went to Verizon and to Panera to pick up some bagels for the week.

The Monday rolled around and it was time for my first five-day work week since last April. (I started working on a four day flex schedule in May.) I have been worthless this week. J and the kiddos have fallen into a nice routine. He even got out with all three of them one day to take the recycling. Not only do I think he is freakishly chipper, I think he is one brave man!

Where does the time go?

I started writing this before I returned to work, but, of course, did not have time to finish it. Though things are slightly different now, I thought I'd share.




Before we had kids, I was pretty on top of things. I was a busy, productive person. But then we added R into the mix, and things changed. My perceived productivity crawled to a halt. Suddenly doing something as simple as meeting a friend for a casual dinner became a major event. I had to break down the event into its components - showering, getting dressed, feeding R, packing all her gear, staying awake - and it often turned out that we just wouldn't be able to make that dinner.

I assumed twins would be a lot of work, but I thought I would still be able to find time in my day to do some simple things. I was wrong. One day my goals were to give the boys baths and take a walk. The boys' baths take about 5 minutes a piece, so I budgeted 30 minutes of my day for this. I planned on walking for 30 minutes, so I budgeted an hour for this. Somehow, I never found that 90 minutes.

And so, instead of beating my head against the wall (which would just have given me a headache and make me wonder where the heck the Tylenol was and if I had time to look for it) I decided to try to determine where all my time went. Here's what I discovered.

Food
Feeding the boys takes most of my day. At night we make it a point to feed the boys back-to-back. Since Michael won't regularly eat from the breast, I also pump milk for him. No matter what I do, a meal seems to take an hour and fifteen minutes even if Jeff helps or if I feed the boys simultaneously. The boys eat about 8 times a day. So, time spent on feeding the boys is:

8 feedings/day X 1.25 hours/feeding = 10 hours/day

The rest of us have to eat too. R is very social when she eats and between chatting, playing with her food, and eating her own weight in food at least once a day, her meals generally take 30 - 45 minutes a piece. Between feeding R three meals and a snack, cooking, and cleaning the kitchen, I'd say additional food time is:

3 hours/day

Sleep
The boys sleep a lot. R sleeps a fair amount. The dogs sleep because we don't do anything with them. Jeff and I, however, do not sleep much. At night we seem to always get to bed around 11:30, and we are up for the day by 7:30 a.m. The boys get up once or twice in between to eat. Given that feedings last 1.25 hours, this means that we sleep:

5.5 hours/day

We try for naps, and there is generally one fifteen minute period a day in which all three kids are asleep. There is also a significant amount of time devoted each day to laying around pretending the kids are asleep. So I would say napping/denial times is:

1.5 hours/day

Bathing
R gets a bath every night. The boys get baths every three days. Maybe. I was only showering every other day, but I learned that the shower is a great place to hide, so I started taking a daily showers. R's bath time includes bathing, time for her to run around the house naked before her bath, time for her to run around the house naked after her bath, and time for her to run around the house when she is supposed to be putting her clothes in the hamper. My showers basically just involve hiding in the shower until we run out of hot water, Jeff demands I actually help with the kids, or the babies scream enough that my breasts demand I feed them. I also attempt to dry off and clothe myself afterward. (Sometimes I am successful, sometimes I am not.) I'll throw in the time I spend brushing my teeth, washing my face, etc., too. Bath times per person:

R = 1 hour/day
Me = 1 hour/day

Other
Picking up R's toys before her nap and before bed = 30 minutes/day
Reading books in the morning, before R's nap, and before she goes to bed = 1 hour/day
General picking up around the house = 30 minutes/day
Laundry = 30 minutes/day

So, if you add it up, that totals roughly 24.5 hours per day. Which makes it easier to see why there wasn't an extra 30 minutes for baths or 60 minutes for a walk! And, yes, Jeff does help, but there are so many things I didn't include like taking care of the dogs, grocery shopping, etc. Who says staying at home isn't a full-time job???? I've got some laundry for them to fold...

Well Babies

The boys went in for their two-month, well-baby check ups this week. I happy to report that we are now intervention free! We were finally given permission to officially take M off his apnea monitor. This means we now have no extra equipment in our house. (Or at least we will as soon as I remember to call the equipment provider to have them pick up the monitor.) Woohoo!

In addition to getting the full battery of two-month immunizations, the boys were also subjected to CBCs to check their neutrophil counts. (You should've seen the band-aid collection on the poor little guys!) I am happy to report that once again, the blood counts came back normal.

Other news from the appointment:

M now weighs 7 pounds, 14 ounces and is 20 3/4" long. We have completely non-PC nicknames for our kids, and we refer to him as our chunky monkey. If it helps you visualize, he has just about outgrown newborn size clothes, and he has a double chin. Some days he has a triple chin.

When we were in the NICU, M was sooo laid back. He was happy to just see everyone for a few minutes every four hours to eat. That changed abruptly about two weeks ago. He is now what is affectionately called a high-need baby. He likes to be held. And he has taken to SCREAMING during the night. Our appointment actually took place after two bad nights in a row. I explained this to our doctor. Then I told her that he can be consoled. He settles right down if held or if allowed to sleep in any of the forbidden positions - on his tummy, on his side, or in our bed laying on a pillow. That's when she gave me the dreaded, patronizing look I feared. Then she confirmed my worst fear. There is nothing wrong with our child. This is his personality. It just took awhile to emerge. Since he does occasionally projectile-vomit (trust me, this is not spit up!), she did prescribe an antacid for him. It won't keep him from vomiting, but it will keep it from burning. She said it wouldn't hurt to try, and we could always discontinue it if it didn't make a difference. The real prescription is to keep him in a sling or a front pack and with us as much as possible during the day and to try to anticipate his needs.

M also inherited my skin, the poor thing, and he is now suffering from eczema, cradle cap, and baby acne, not to mention a hideous rash from the strap of the apnea monitor. The doctor was not concerned at all, but she did tell us we could use cortizone to treat the worst patches.

L, on the other hand, apparently just has a flair for the dramatic, and now that he is over his major issues, is doing just fine. Our non-PC nickname for him is skinny-mini, and he is now 6 pounds, 13 ounces and 19 3/4" long. He has (relatively) long, lanky arms and legs. He does not have any of M's fat rolls. I also refer to L as my bowling ball, although he is not that large, since he likes to spend most of his time curled up like a ball. (It goes beyond the fetal position, my little yogi will invert his legs so his feet are up by his chest.) Everything with him looked great, although the little guy did have a yeast infection thanks to spending nearly a month on antibiotics. We got him some nice, manly athlete's foot cream to treat it, and he should be good to go.

Although the doctor had no concerns, I was a little concerned about L's lower weight gain. (There is nothing like having two children the same age to make a mom completely neurotic!) I think the reason that he gained so much less weight has to do with the fact that he moved from getting expressed milk to nursing at the breast and after being so scheduled for so long, he's just not demanding the breast enough. Apparently he agreed, because when I offered him a bottle again, he instantly chugged it down. So it looks like he too will primarily drink from bottles. Since I am going back to work, this is not entirely a bad thing.

Out and About

Since I last wrote:

• I had a day in which my only accomplishment was putting on deodorant. At 3:00 in the afternoon.
• I met a mom with twin five-month-olds and a four-year-old in the parking lot of Kohl's. It took her over 10 minutes to get her kids in the car after shopping. While she was loading her offspring, we chatted. She reassured me it does get better. She added, and I quote, "You still won't have time for a shower," but she did reiterate that it will get better.
• In attempted to detemine why I don't have time to shower, I worked on quantifying how I spend my time. I didn't know if I should be disturbed or impressed by the number of hours a day that are devoted to feeding various members of the family. I think I'll post the numbers separately.
• Because of the hour spent devoted to feeding various members of the family, I decided to give up breastfeeding. Except for pumping at work. But the boys sensed it and then nursed better than they ever had. So I decided I loved breastfeeding. And then my milk supply went down. And I decided I was sick of it again. We are now at a standstill.
• Based on the above, I realized that now is not the time for me to make major life decisions. Or any decisions. At all.
• On Monday the whole family went out to lunch for Jeff's birthday. Jeff pointed out that it was the first whole-family outing since October. We were overdue. We had lunch at Moe's. The boys slept the whole time. It was successful.
• It took us 4 hours to get ready for that lunch which lasted 45 minutes. Lunch would've been even shorter if R hadn't been sucked into watching the TV's at Moe's.
• R and I picked up fried chicken for dinner for Jeff's birthday. When we pulled into the parking lot, she started saying, "No, no, no!" We were at Church's Chicken. She thought we were going to church. She was heartbroken. She also insists that we pray any time all three of us sold-food eaters converge at the table. Where did this child come from? And, yes, I will take her to church soon. How can I say no to a child who is sad you are getting fried chicken instead of going to church?
  
• On Tuesday I went to Wal-Mart by myself with the boys. (Disclaimer: Five people + two dogs = expensive. We will support the evil empire at least for now) . It was the first time I had taken them anywhere truly in public by myself. Other excursions had been limited to doctor's appointments and a trip to a La Leche League meeting on Saturday in which I fell back in love with breastfeeding. The trip was actually successful.
• I did learn that getting newborn twins out of the car in the pouring rain is not fun or easy.
• The rest of the trip was rather fun and easy.
• We finally sent out the last of our Christmas cards today. Not even a month late. We rock!
  

Normal!

We took the boys to Chapel Hill yesterday to see their hematologist. (It still blows my mind that they have their own, personal hematologist!) We enjoyed finally meeting him in person. He was really nice and really laid back. We will also hopefully never see him again, at least in a clinical setting. Yesterday both boys had neutrophil counts in the normal range! This means they are done with crazy interventions unless one of them gets sick and injured in the next couple of months. If they do, they will do an additional CBC (blood count) at that time. If the neutrophil count at that time is in the normal range, they will treat them like any other infants. After they get to be about 4 months old they will definitely be treated like other newborns unless there is a reason to suspect a problem.

For those of you interested in the cause of all this madness, in really non-scientific terms, there is something in Jeff's neutrophil that my body doesn't like. At some point his neutrophil passed into my body, most likely at the time of conception. My body decided his neutrophil was bad, bad, bad, and my body made antibodies to destroy his neutrophil circulating in my system. (And my body was smart enough to make antibodies that would only attack Jeff's neutrophil and not my own.) These antibodies passed across each boys' placenta (not an easy task for any substance). The boys continued to get the antibody the whole time they were inside and cookin'. Unlike in me where they antibodies differentiate what to attack, in them, they attack all neutrophil. Once the boys were born, they were no longer receiving the antibodies, but the antibodies still had to work their way out of their bodies.

The hematologist never told us exactly how rare this is, although none of the pediatricians or neonatolgists (NICU docs) in Wilmington had ever encountered newborns with this exact condition before. In fact, as far as anyone knew, the anti-neutrophil antibody test had never been ordered by our hospital before. One nurse in pediatrics, who had worked in hematology at a much larger hospital, put it in perspective. To the best of her knowledge, this happens in 1 in 100,000 births. In any given year, you can count the number of newborns born this way. And we got two of them!

Regardless of the odds for the prior odds, we are just ecstatic that the odds are now in our favor when it comes to having healthy, happy babies.

Moo

Breastfeeding with the boys has been quite an experience. Because they were so good at it in the NICU, we had to discontinue it since they weren't hungry for their bottles, the only food that "counted" as the doctors worked to ensure they were getting enough to eat. Then when we got home, it just didn't happen. They weren't good enough to exclusively breastfeed, and I just didn't have the energy to pump milk, give them bottles of expressed milk, and breastfeed. But then my milk supply all but disappeared last weekend, and so last Sunday we began our week-long breastfeeding odyssey.

I first turned my attention to L, who at least was still interested in the breast. I am extremely happy to report that over the course of this week, he has gone from feeding once a day at the breast to feeding all but once a day at the breast. Although I've offered it, he hasn't been too interested in the middle of the night, and I'm too tired to keep trying with him. He gets a bottle so we can get some sleep! Of all three kiddos (R included) he definitely has the least trouble with the breast, and this is a good thing. Because then there is M.

M, who nursed like a champ in the NICU and could get letdown in a matter of seconds, was showing absolutely no interest in the breast. He refused to even attempt breastfeeding. It got so bad, there were a couple of days over the past few weeks I didn't even think to offer it to him. But it also made me sad because I realized there were days in which I had no contact with him other than to change his diaper. It was pass him off to Jeff for bottles, play time, etc., while I focused on L who wanted to eat.

So, in addition to nursing L lots this week, and pumping for M, I also gradually took over most of M's feedings. This meant a lot of baby time for me, and little time for anything else. But the efforts paid off. While still not enough for the boys, my milk supply is back to where it was before it dropped off 10 days ago. (The boys are just eating a lot more now.) And M has now successfully breastfed four days in a row. It's just been one feeding a day, but that is a huge improvement.

Tonight we achieved the ultimate twin nursing victory - simultaneous feeding. At 8:09 p.m., while listening to Layla by Derek and the Dominos (these details are important, seriously), both boys successfully latched on at once. It was a miracle! Who knows when it will happen again, but if it happened once, it can happen again especially since L is proving that he can latch on in any crazy position as long as he is within about eight feet of my breasts.

For anyone who is curious, the boys are now drinking about 700 - 800 mls of milk a day. Yes, they need my body to produce the equivalent of two fifths of booze a day, and I am actually pretty close. Although sadly depleted, we did have an enormous stash of frozen breast milk, and we have only been thawing about 200 mls total per day, which out of the 1.5 liters they've been drinking, isn't bad. I have been starving all day (for all you females, think severe PMS times 10) and drinking gallons (literally) of water, so hopefully this means my milk will be increasing soon.

For tonight, all I've got left to say is "moo!"

New Year's Fun

There was a time in which Jeff and I had an annual New Year's Eve party. It was a crazy, joyful occasion with lots of alcohol and little sleep. After the evening's festivities, everyone passed out at our house. On New Year's Day we would cook a big breakfast and following the clean up from the debauchery, we looked forward to a day of football watching.

New Year's with three kids under three is not quite the same.

We did go shopping to prepare for the big event. Jeff checked the pantry to make sure we had Skyline chili in order to make dip. During a regular weekly shopping he and R picked up the remaining ingredients for dip. They also bought a bottle of champagne and a bottle of sparkling raspberry/apple juice. At the last minute we discovered we didn't have a bag of chips with which to consume our dip, so an emergency trip was made to purchase those.

We did work around the house in order to get ready for the big night. Instead of cleaning and decorating, Jeff did laundry all day on New Year's Eve. Lots of laundry. About five loads, or a 2-3 day supply. Then we placed all that laundry on our love seat in the living room where it sat filling it from one side to the other and from the cushion up to the top of the back of the seat. It was as impressive display created by around 14 pounds of baby.

Naps were taken before the big night. We weren't resting in an effort to stay up, we were more passing out from having only slept 2.5 hours on Monday night and 4 hours on Tuesday night. While I slept on the bed with M and Jeff slept on the couch with L, R held down the fort choosing to skip her nap. Thankfully she did a great job of entertaining herself and so far has always been on her best behavior when she "gets" to skip her nap, which is increasingly more common. (As a result of not napping, she's been sleeping until 8:30 or 9:00 in the morning, and that is okay with us, too!)

Rather than having a big smorgasborg of snack late in the evening, Skyline dip, our one "snack" was prepared and served with dinner so that R could enjoy it with us. Adding to her belief that holidays are about food, she delighted in knowing that on New Year's Eve you get to eat chips with dinner. She thought that was fantastic.

We somehow managed to get the boys to bed at 8:30, and R, Jeff, and I rang in the new year with our sparkling raspberry toast at 8:45 p.m. (We were celebrating the new year somewhere in the Caribbean.) We don't know if R liked the juice, the act of toasting, or the time alone with us best, but she did clearly enjoy this.

I was exhausted and cranky and had planned to sleep until 11:45, but that didn't quite happen. I can't even remember what we did over the next few hours although I know I showered, we fed the boys again, and I pumped milk. A little after 11:00, we discovered that PBS was playing one of the Eric Clapton Crossroads concerts, and what was a girl to do but stay up and watch? While watching it, Jeff broke out the bottle of grown up champagne, and he and I actually enjoyed some time alone together. We had more champagne and toasted at midnight before heading off to bed. It was lovely.

New Year's Day we woke up groggy and slightly hungover (at least I was - champagne after nearly a year of not drinking is rough) - just like the old times! And we served breakfast to a crowd, although more creatures had Iams or breast milk than bacon and eggs. But the best part were the first words out of R's mouth that morning. "Good morning, Mommy. Happy new year!" How could I ever trade that for one of our old parties?"