How's It Going with the Twins?

Sebastian aka Chicklet aka Whoop Whoop and Maximo aka Shadow Boxer aka Grunter

We have been home almost one week and I think we're getting into a rhythm. Thank GOD!

It takes a little while and it's all consuming, but we're getting there.

Thanks for all of your suggestions and comments regarding the poopy post.

I'm pleased to say that everything kept on.....er....coming and today I had THREE, yes, count with me now, THREE poops! And all have been unassisted with anything but a great diet and a bit of prune juice.

I took two stool softeners on Thursday and drank the Smooth Move tea once and that's IT!

Looks like my body is getting back to normal. Whew.

I'm keeping a food journal to make sure I'm eating properly and every 3-4 hours. That has helped tremendously.

Oh and thanks Jen, for reminding me about the post partum night sweats. I had no idea what was going on until you commented about that. Oh man, do these ever SUCK. I am sleeping with a towel under me now, but I still wake up drenched and freezing.

I think as far as the C-Section itself, I've been SUPER lucky. From the first day home I've been able to reach down and pick up the babies, get them in and out of the crib, swaddle them up, change the diaper, bend over to do things (not things on the ground). My 'wound' has never really hurt other than the first days in the hospital and I still think that was mostly gas pain.

I tore all of the tape off today and feel like it's healing nicely. I remember (in my drug induced haze) in the hospital every time a nurse or Dr. would come in to look at it, they would comment "Oh that's a nice one". Bullet dodged. What do they say to the ones who got the crappy looking ones??

Tomorrow, my goal is to get these little baby animals into their double stroller and out for a walk. The weather isn't supposed to be too cold and we haven't been out of the house since Thursday (Chicken has, but not the twins and I). I'm feeling ready to move!

Also, I've already lost 25 pounds. What the hell? In eleven days?? There was that much baby, placenta and fluid in me?!? Only 15 more to go and I'll be super happy and almost back to my pre-pregnancy weight.

Next up: I talked to the world's best Lactation Consultant over the weekend and am on a new plan of action.

Short story: I doubted with all my gut what the pediatrician was telling us, felt there had to be a better way, have tried out the plan from the the world's best LC and the babies haven't had ANY formula in over 30 hours. Turns out my tits DO have milk in them!

More on this for the next post, but guess who is probably changing pediatricians tomorrow...?

I love this community of bloggers, thank you all for giving me so much support and advice!

Realities of Recovery After a C-Section

I haven't read much about all of the pain that goes on after birth from a C-Section--and it's not that I want to scare anyone and I know everyone's experience is different--so I'm writing this because I need to document what I went through/am going through.

This post talks about poop. You've been warned.

***I started this a couple of days ago but haven't had time to finish writing and posting***

For me, it's not been so much the cut itself, but the pain from the gas.

That overrides everything else. If I take pain meds, like perco.cet, to deal with the radiating pain coming from under my shoulders and traveling down to my lower back, well that makes my back feel better but that drug makes you constipated plus it could be decreasing my milk supply. (I kicked the Per.cocet to the curb upon finding this out and am dealing with the deal through Motrin now.)

Add that to the extra iron they've thrown at me because I'm severely anemic from too much blood loss during surgery and you've got yourself a puffed up Puffer that hasn't pooped since 2 hours before her C-Section.

That would be a week ago (Thursday).

Thursday was so bad I spent half the day and all evening/night on the toilet. We disinfected everything in the bathroom and I set up a station in there because I COULD NOT sit down without extreme pain. Since the pediatrician had me on my new strict, every 2 hours pumping schedule, I ended up pumping on the toilet and eating two meals on the toilet. I even put a small pillow behind my back and got real cozy with the toilet.

Chicken went out and got everything she could think of: prune juice, stool softeners, a huge salad, smooth move tea. Nothing moved. I could tell it wanted to, hence the extreme pain, but nothing would exit.

At one point, I ditched all efforts as nothing was 'happening' and got into a hot bath. I haven't had a hot bath in EIGHT months and it was heavenly. It was the only thing that gave me any relief.

After this I was at least able to get into the bed for an hour and sleep on my side--a major accomplishment as this is the first time since birth that I haven't had to sleep flat on my back.

At midnight, as the pain was only getting more intense, Chicken made me a double espresso latte and around finally around 2am.... what can only be described as something that crawled out of Mexican city prison sewer, was expelled from my body. Totally vile and disgusting. Nobody ever talks about this part of recovery.

Thank god I have no inhibitions because for days my mom and Chicken have had to see me in nothing but the lovely hospital mesh panties (complete with giant maxi pads) and my tits hanging out ALL the time and now THIS. Sometimes I wear a robe they gave me in the hospital, but I find it gets in the way, so mostly I just let it all hang out. It's pretty, I assure you.

In spite of it all, I just keep starting at these two little perfect boys and I know that it's worth all the pain in the world.

First Pediatrician Appointment

Well, it decided to snow yesterday morning and while that's all nice to look at....the thought of dealing with snow PLUS the twins PLUS getting out of the house PLUS hailing a cab PLUS getting their car seats in a taxi for the first time?! Whoa.

Not to mention I can't carry anything, not even the diaper bag. Chicken is a rockstar Sherpa, once again.

Thank goodness the snow stopped, the sun came out, we managed to leave the house on time right after a feeding and a diaper change. We didn't leave anything behind, had everything in the diaper bag we needed, got an awesome cab driver who didn't curse under his breath that we were taking so long to load up AND we got there in time!!

Whew! Grunter and Whoop Whoop like their car seats and have not fussed in them the entire two times they've been in them, so this is a good start.

In fact, when we undressed them on the table at the peds, the nurse remarked how chilled out they were and that most babies were fussy at this point. We have nothing to compare it to, so we'll take her word.

The have both gained back their birth weight in only 6 days PLUS Max put on an extra ounce! Yeah babies!

They look great, but have to go back in only 5 days to be checked again because they are right on that cusp on preemie/not preemie (born at 35 weeks and 5 days, where 36 weeks would've crossed that line).

So far, so good.

A big concern is that my milk hasn't come in and it's been a week. I have now been advised to pump on a very strict pumping schedule every 2 hours. Unfortunately I have been very absorbed with breast feeding them and perfecting this rather than concentrating on pumping. It should have been the other way around because they are still so small and while they are feeding, their suck is not strong enough to bring in my milk. Now, I should only try to breastfeed them every 3-4 feedings and just pump, pump, pump. Damn, I wish I'd know this DAYS ago.

F***ck!

I'm in a bit of a panic mode now because I am just at that crossroads of "it might be too late".

She advised me to get some mother's milk tea, which I did and I'm drinking that 3-4 times a day now, hydrating like crazy, putting heat on before and ice on afterwards, dropping the pain med Perco.cet and 'trying' to get some rest. This is quite difficult when you pump every 2 hours as it really only gives me 1.5 hours of sleep at a time.

It's day 8 now and I know that many things could delay your milk coming in: a C-section (check) Perco.cet (check), thyroid problems (check), excessive blood loss at birth (check), so I really do feel that I'm in a race against time.

If anyone has a similar story or can give me advice, please please please tell me! I need reassurance that it's not over before it's only begun. It's already breaking my heart that I can't breast feed them every feeding and we have to supplement with formula but I know this is the for the best in the long run.

Chicken thought it would be really funny to suckle me and I kicked her. Not funny. Not funny at all!! I never imagined your nipples could hurt so bad. OUCH.

WooHoo for hands free pumping! I can blog again!

So tired

The visit to the doctor's was fine although everyone was talking about how wiped out I looked.
Now that I'm on blood pressure meds and iron pills I should be getting better. They were very concerned about me getting enough rest.
I have no idea how to do that yet until I can get them tandem all the time. Not easy as sebastian aka whoop whoop, fights getting on. But once he's there he could stay for 30-40 minutes.
His brother, Grunter, does better getting on but doesn't stay as long.
We'll get there, we've only had 5 days practice.

At least they are both breast feeding and I'm getting more milk from pumping. Not enough to stop the formula, but soon I hope.
I am having a really hard time finding the time to fit pumping in every two hours as well. But I have the hands free breast pump and just ordered a bra so I can actually use that feature when it arrives on friday! That will free up my hands which is going to be great.

I have massive swelling and fluid retention in my legs, feet and ankles. I realize now I barely had any swelling during the pregnancy compared to this. The thing is, walking and moving is supposed to help that, but it also raised my blood pressure so what's a girl to do?!

We are both starting to suffer from the effects of sleep deprivation.
It's really hard, even with my mom here. Damn hard. But we are getting into a routine slowly. Keeping a log of every single thing really helps as it gets so confusing.

We are enjoying it and they are so cute we could just eat them up, but tired? Yes indeed.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Day 6 with the Twins

In bullets b/c there's just too much:

• My condition was declining toward HELLP but they were willing to induce me for a natural labor
• The natural labor they described was the most unnatural thing I've ever heard of, could take +48 hrs and more than likely would end up in an emergency C-Section anyway. The only natural thing was that the babies "might" exit out my vagina. Might.
• The C-Section was solely our decision
• We prepped for OR at 5:15 and the boys were here at 5:53
• Those drugs are intense. Whoa.
• Sebastian was fine from the beginning and was taken to well baby nursery
• Max had a little problem breathing and spent the night in NICU but was released the following day mid-morning
• I lost a lot of blood during surgery and am now severely anemic
• We didn't name them for over 48 hours
• Chicken is a natural, she is a rock star and the love of my life. The babies totally have Chicken noses.
• If you didn't suffer from gas pains from your C-Section consider yourself extremely lucky indeed
• My gas pains were so severe I had intense labor like contractions every 2-3 minutes all day and night on Saturday. I thought I might die. I actually wanted to die just to not feel the pain anymore. I was completely convinced there was no way it would ever end.
• Take the drugs they offer you. All of them. DO NOT let your pain get away from you.
• It got a little better on Sunday...with a little help from my friend suppository.
• We let the nursery take them the first full night (Friday) but kept them in our room on the second night (Saturday).
• By the middle of the night we knew that recovering from a C-Section PLUS twins=we need extra help BIG TIME.
• We called my mom Sunday morning.
• Sunday was a lot better. There's nothing like two babies needing you to get your recovering C-Section ass out of bed and get on with it.
• My blood pressure started going up on Monday.
• We were all released to go home this day and Chicken's dad drove 4 hours in the pouring rain to help us get home and meet his grandsons.
• Coming home was intense and chaotic and wonderful and with little sleep.
• My mom flew in yesterday (Tuesday).
• I now believe all the people who said "you WILL NEED EXTRA HELP."
• Yes, I am a believer. If you ever want to sleep again, you will need help.
• My blood pressure continued to climb yesterday.
• I was almost sent to the hospital again last night, but my OB called in some blood pressure medication for me at midnight.
• Thank god we live where we do and there's a 24 hour Pharmacy right across the street.
• I have to go to the Doctor's this morning for monitoring and blood work and pray to whatever gods are responsible that this doesn't now turn into E-Clampsia.
• I finally had a shower this morning after one week.
• The babies are the most perfect thing ever. They both breast feed but b/c they are so little we have to supplement with formula until my milk fully comes in.
• I can even tandem breastfeed!!!
• They go to their first pediatrician appointment tomorrow and I can get a better idea of how much we can cut down on their formula until we go 100% breast.

I got their weights wrong before:

Sebastian was 5 lbs, 4 oz.

Maximo was 4 lbs, 16 oz.

No, we did not expect two boys either!

And yes, I did remember what the psychic in Brooklyn said long, long ago when I asked her if I would have kids and she replied, "Yes, I see two boys, but they are not yours".

I told the entire OR staff that story while they were stitching me up. It was the first thing I thought of.

Have to go to the Docs now...hate to leave these little guys even for a couple of hours!

Following you all on my iPhone (my Push gift!! WooHoo!) but can't figure out how to blog from it. If anyone can tell me how, you'll be hearing from me more often.

Mommy Pufferfish

Our Twin Boys are Here!

It's only Day 2, but everyday they grow more beautiful and we grow more in love.

Born at 35 weeks, 5 days

Se.basti.an Cr.uz 5.4 lbs. Born at 5:53 pm, Jan. 21, 2010

Max.im.o Hud.son 4.15 lbs. Born at 5:53 pm, Jan. 21, 2010

Seb.astian and Max.imo, one day old

Trying out the football hold. Ma.x is a natural, Seb.astian needs some help, but we'll get there.

18 hours old, proud mommies and the twin boys!

Birth Day?

Well, we kept telling the universe "Just Let Us Make It To Aquarius." Damn, that universe listens and is timely.

My blood levels are deteriorating and going in the direction of HELLP.

Induction will start within....an hour or so? I'm scared to death of the induction because I've just not heard too many encouraging stories of being induced while still not dilated and having the vaginal birth outcome successful.

Nevertheless, these twins are vertex/vertex for a reason so I am going to give it my best shot.

I have the option to say STOP and go to a C-section anytime I want.

Someone's coming to give me an IV now and move me to Labor and Delivery. It's been quite the morning.

I'm in SHOCK. Chicken is on her way here. We are having babies....today? Soon!

I need to go find my ZEN place, it seems to have disappeared.

xoxo,

Almost Mama Pufferfish