Approaching seven months

We're sick. It sucks. Turtle got it first, along with L's cousin who's here from Italy to help us for a month. Turtle has had a fever as high as 103 (underarm), and his nose is running like crazy. He also has a cough. Yesterday was the most pathetic I've ever seen him, just laying in the arms of whoever wanted to hold him at that moment and being really cuddly. The cuddly thing is sort of nice. Speaking as the mom of two babies who don't normally cuddle.

Tadpole had a high fever today, and her sickness is a bit different. She has the same runny nose, but she's hoarse and is sneezing a lot (so is Mama). While she's more cuddly than usual, she's still pretty active and independent. She's a little fireball.

Overall, we're reaching an exciting time. Tadpole's been crawling (!) for a couple weeks now, although it's not a proper crawl, just a military crawl. Still, she gets around, and fast! It's a little scary, since the house is a bit of a shambles. Turtle started sitting up around the same time that Tadpole started crawling. It's funny to see the difference in their personalities. Turtle will sit up with a bunch of toys and play with them quietly, examining them and turning them over and over, with his head tilted to the side. Sometimes he cries and holds out his arms to be picked up. Occasionally he falls over, and then he cries for someone to come and set him back up or pick him up. He hasn't even tried to crawl.

Tadpole on the other hand was rolling all over the place until she got the hang of crawling so she could give that stupid rolling thing a rest. Crawling is a better way to get around! She rolled under the futon, to the back door, out of her carseat, and into a lot of trouble in general. Then she started crawling and I can't leave her alone for even a second now. She is into EVERYTHING. She rarely cries, even when she bumps her head. She steals Turtle's toys. We had to put a bumper in her crib, stat, so she wouldn't bash her head against the rails. She probably travels over every square inch of her crib five times during the night. I still think it's funny that my MIL thought she should have sheets, blankets, and a pillow!

Turtle has two teeth and more coming in. It's part of why he's so miserable now. Tadpole is finally getting teeth. She's not as miserable as Turtle.

Turtle rolled himself up inside a blanket a little while ago. Tadpole had fun inside a laundry basket. We took them up to the mountains for the first time this last weekend (which is most likely where the sickness came from). We broke out the jogging stroller last week, but now we can't leave the house with these little sickies.

We're also sleep training, with mixed success. This sickness may just set everything back. Which sucks.

I wanted to catch up to where I was, chronologically with the babes. Hope to get back on track soon. And post some photos.

Unbelievable

I honestly can't believe that so many things can go wrong with breastfeeding, as they did for me, and now something else!!!!

I don't think I ever mentioned that I gave up breastfeeding and pumping back in September. My husband and I reached an agreement that as the primary caretaker of two babies with very little help or support, breastfeeding was just not going to be possible and was already causing more trouble than it was worth. It sounds simple when I say that, but it actually took days of arguing, crying, fighting, pumping, not pumping, trying to breastfeed, babies screaming, etc., before I grudgingly agreed to give it up.

In retrospect, I have no idea why I didn't just scale it WAY back and keep pumping a couple times a day to maintain some supply so I could try to ramp it up again later if/when things got less crazy. Partly because my husband was convinced it was an all-or-nothing issue and I believed him. Partly because he thought my breastmilk was causing the babies' fussiness and I believed him again. I wish I hadn't. I wish I just maintained the possibility of breastfeeding at some point. But it doesn't matter now.

I gradually stopped breastfeeding, and because of my husband's belief that my milk was causing the babies' fussiness, I meticulously bagged and labeled every ounce and stored it in our deep freezer until I was no longer producing. I had something like 300-400 ounces (maybe more), which isn't a lot, but I hoped to give it to my babies at some point in the future.

Later in the fall, we started giving the babies one bottle of breastmilk every night with rice cereal mixed in, and every morning I found several ounces sitting on the kitchen counter from my husband's shift with the babies. He said that the rice cereal would get too thick at the bottom of the bottle and the babies couldn't drink it. I was thawing 8-10 ounces of milk per day and throwing away 2-3 ounces. It was breaking my heart. So we stopped, and I decided to wait until we got back from Italy and then I'd start giving them one bottle per day again.

Three days ago, I discovered that while we were gone, the contractors working on our house rewired the living room and in the process disconnected the sunroom where the freezer lives. Since we'll eventually demolish the sunroom, they didn't bother to hook the electricity back up in there. Everything in the freezer was thawed and had to be thrown away, including all of my milk.

It seems a bit like the final straw. Clearly the universe didn't want me to feed my babies breastmilk. I'm just really sad it all ended this way.



Coming up next - a few happy posts, I hope. Plus notes on long-distance air travel with babies. Maybe a post on how our six-month appointment will go today with the doctor who turned us in to CPS. The possibilities are endless!

Craziness

Back in November, our lives took a crazy turn that really leaves me wondering in retrospect how I made it through everything, but here I am. Now I can breathe and finally put this down on paper.

I wish I could pinpoint exactly when it started, but I unfortunately can only narrow it down to a span of a few days (but let's say the first day I'm sure of is the Wednesday a week before Thanksgiving). Tadpole, our sweet, smiley, happy, "easy" baby started being cranky. After a while (hours, days, who knows?) we noticed that she wasn't just cranky, she was really hysterical. She would calm down when I'd cradle her, and then fall asleep, but when she was awake she was inconsolable. We couldn't see anything obviously wrong, but after several days of this, we finally called the advice nurse. At this point it was the weekend, and the nurse thought it was worth a trip to the doctor during the week.

When Monday came, off to the doctor we went. He checked her out (although didn't undress her, which I thought was strange). He ruled out an ear infection, and chalked it up to either growing pains or teething. Then he sent us home.

On Wednesday morning, the day before Thanksgiving, we noticed that Tadpole wasn't putting her left foot down when we'd hold her up and let her feet touch the ground. If we tried to lean her in that direction, she'd pull her foot up even higher. When she was in her "rainforest jumperoo", she'd only push with her right foot, and if we tried to put pressure on the bottom of her left foot, she'd pull it away. We thought it was strange, but didn't know what else to think of it.

By Thanksgiving morning, she was still favoring her left leg and we started wondering if there was something wrong, and if it could possibly be related to the inconsolable wailing. Another call to the advice nurse - she told us that it sounded like something could be going on, but it wasn't an emergency and we should wait until Friday to go to urgent care. So we waited, but all day we kept noticing her favoring her left leg. Since there was nothing visibly wrong, we started worrying that there might be some neurological problem, and I started to quietly freak out a bit.

Friday morning, we spent hours at urgent care seeing the doctor on call (not a pediatrician). He mentioned bone cancer and joint infections, and then sent us for hip x-rays - let me tell you, getting hip x-rays of a 4-month-old baby is really sad. The x-rays checked out ok, so he made a follow-up with the on-call pediatrician for Saturday. Friday evening, I remembered that a friend's step-dad was a pediatrician, so we went to their house get another opinion - he also thought Tadpole seemed ok.

Saturday morning, we went back to the hospital for our on-call appointment - the pediatrician also had no idea what could be wrong, but my husband asked if we could x-ray her whole leg. Over an hour later and after many trips back and forth down the hospital corridors with a semi-naked baby (due to major incompetence at the x-ray lab), we had our x-rays, and the pediatrician thought everything was fine and sent us home.

Two hours later, I received a call from the doctor's office - the x-rays had been read by the radiologist, who determined that Tadpole had a fracture in BOTH her tibia and fibula, just above her ankle. We had to come back in for a splint, but she assured us that it was already healing well, and Tadpole would have no trouble crawling or walking. After thoughts of cancer, neurological disorders, and bone infections, we were incredibly relieved to have found what seemed like a minor problem that was already healing. There was nothing wrong with our beautiful baby! Our hearts were light as we let everyone involved know the result, although we still had no idea at all how the fractures could have happened.

Monday morning, my pediatrician called me. It turns out, my friend's step-dad called him and urged him to report us to Child Protective Services! I cried for an hour before I was able to calm down enough to call my husband to tell him. The next day he called back to tell us he had made his decision and felt obligated to report us. I cried again. I cried myself to sleep for several days. I imagined the county coming to take our children away from us. No one could tell us what would happen, except that someone would contact us "very soon". It took a week for them to contact us, and I lived in constant fear and anxiety, wondering when the axe would fall and what would happen.

In the end, a social worker and police officer came to our house on a surprise visit and luckily they picked a good day. The house was relatively clean, the babies were dressed in their cute Christmas outfits, and Tadpole was in a happy smiley mood (although they pointed out the birthmark on her head and asked if it was an injury, sheesh). They talked to me for a while, and asked to see where the kids sleep, and said they didn't see any problems (whew). No one followed up with us before we left for Italy, so I'm still nervous about what will happen when we get back.

At that point in my path to motherhood, I had already been feeling a major lack of self-confidence, and nothing had gone the way I expected, starting from pre-eclampsia, the induction, the entire labor and delivery process, and my failure to continue breastfeeding. I knew I was lucky to have two beautiful babies, but it seemed that everything was spinning out of control, and the constant comments and "advice" from friends, family, and strangers really chipped away at my self-confidence. To have everything culminate in my sweet 4-month-old having a broken leg and us being reported to CPS - well, I'm not sure I've quite recovered from any of it.

After all this, the daily isolation and mental strain of having two little babies, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week without a break is really starting to wear me down. I question myself and doubt everything I do. When I'm not with them, I miss them. When I'm with them, I feel anxious about how I'm going to get through the day. I sorely feel the lack of a support system, and I'm finding it harder and harder to get out of the house with two babies that are more active every day. I love them ... and that's why I've decided to start looking into getting some help and advice from a professional, as soon as we get home from Italy. I don't know if I have postpartum depression, but I have so much anxiety and depression that I think it's better to get things checked out.

So - we are in a much better place right now, but the events of the last few months still remain with me and I wanted to get it down. The next posts should be much better! Happy 2011, everyone!

First tooth!

Turtle cut his first tooth today! We've seen it lurking under his gum for more than a week now, and today's the first day we can feel it's sharp little edge. He's not a big fan of letting people see it, although everyone's excited about it.

I hope this means he'll start sleeping slightly better, but I doubt it, since its little buddy tooth looks like it's coming in, too.

Crazy story in a post coming up soon ... as soon as I get a chance to write it.

Italy

It has been months. I'm sorry. I've been busy. And tired, and stressed, and now we're in Italy! Yay!

Actually, things aren't going well here, mostly because of sleep issues. Have you ever dealt with 9 hours of jetlag? When you already have issues with insomnia? Our babies, who are now 5.5 months, adjusted after a few days. Unfortunately, we've been here a week and Mama still hasn't adjusted. I think the problem is that when you can't sleep a few nights straight through on the new schedule, your body just things you're napping. So I wake up to feed a baby, and I don't get back to sleep because hey! According to my body, it's not actually bedtime yet. Even though it's 3:20 am and I've only slept from 11pm to midnight. Ugh.

I want to catch up on the last few months, but I don't want to overwhelm with a long post. Here are some bullet points of the last few months, the current situation, and more interesting differences between Italy and the states:

• SIDS doesn't seem to be a blip on anyone's radar here. Babies sleep with little tiny pillows, sheets, blankets, etc. I keep wanting to tell people that they're not miniature adults, they're babies! They don't need miniature pillows.
  
• No one here swaddles, apparently. My in-laws keeps complaining that we're putting Turtle in a straight-jacket, and when they are watching him, they don't do it (and he doesn't sleep well). I know he's a bit old at almost 6 months, but it really does help him sleep.
• I'm worried I'm developing PPD. Can you develop it this late in the game? Actually, I think it's been coming on for a month or two now, exacerbated by some really shitty stuff that happened a little while back. I'll have to ask my hubby if he's ok with my posting it on the web, and then you'll see what I mean.
  
• The babies are freaking adorable. I'm so in love with them, even after I've been alone with them for hours and am just dying to hear another adult voice.
• Tadpole can roll over! And over and over and over. She's gone from a sweet, smiley little thing to a fireball of energy and attitude. She's still smiley, though.
• Turtle is a little charming heartbreaker who actually does smile and even laugh now. He's also starting to grow some hair (ahead of his poor sis). Most of the time he can only roll back to front, but I've seen him occasionally go the other way, too.
  
• The babies wake up a LOT at night still. It's frustrating. Especially for an insomniac.
• I am supposed to go back to work in May ... I want to rethink my career before then. I thought I wanted to be a SAHM, but I'm not so sure anymore. I think I'd like a part time job so I can get out of the house and be part of the real world again. But I don't think I can go back to my old job. So I need to figure out what I want to do.
  
• I'm having a very hard time maintaining friendships and making new friends. I feel very isolated, especially now that we're in the rainy season in California and I can't even get out of the house with two babies. I'm very lonely.
  
• I miss exercising. It was a big part of my old identity ... I spent most of my time at work, cooking/baking, gardening, and doing sports. I don't do any of those things anymore. I don't do much of anything at all anymore.

Well, that's all for now, I guess. More later.

Smiles

Now that both of my kids are smiling, life is so much better. Things are still hard (not that I'm not ALWAYS grateful to have them). My mother's helper/babysittier has become more and more unreliable until this week she was a no-show, but my in-laws are coming from Italy on Sunday! For two weeks!! Yay!

The babies are doing great. At just over 11 weeks, Tadpole is 12 pounds 2 ounces, and Turtle is 12 pounds 14 ounces. Turtle has started "talking" to us (when he's not screaming), and Tadpole still smiles up a storm constantly. It's wonderful. They're also sleeping at night, sometimes for stretches of 3-4 hours. REALLY wonderful. (Knock on wood). Not that they're on the same sleeping schedule. Or napping schedule. Or any kind of schedule, but we just go with it and hope that it'll settle into something schedule-like sometime soon.

The best thing we've done is hire a night nurse to come a couple times a week. It is saving our sanity. Since we're still in the middle of a huge remodel that is WAY behind schedule and dealing with two cranky babies while a lot of other stuff is going on in ours lives, getting regular sleep makes all the difference in the world.

Speaking of which - the night nurse is here and Mama and Papi are off to bed. Cheers!

2 months

Time really does fly when you have babies. Everyone always told me it goes so fast! Actually, time doesn't seem to go any faster at all. I think what really happens is that the babies grow so quickly, they don't spend very long at each stage.

At two months, Tadpole is 10 pounds 15 ounces (up from 6 pounds 3 ounces at birth), and Turtle is 12 pounds 2 ounces (up from 6 pounds 13 ounces at birth, although that is an estimate since he was screaming and flailing on the scale).

Life is hard with twins. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. They keep me busy morning to night, and we still haven't figured very much out. We haven't figured out sleep/nap schedules or routines at all. I tried getting them to sleep early last night since I was a single mom for the evening, and they were up early this morning and didn't sleep well. Of course, there are always other complications, such as the fact that they had their 2-month shots yesterday, so who knows?

They are sweet babies. It's true that babies develop at their own rates, you can see it very well with fraternal twins. Tadpole started smiling three weeks ago and has been smiling up a storm ever since, charming everyone around. Turtle started smiling much more recently and is still very shy about it. He prefers to frown, pout, or scream. Not nearly as charming!

We gave up breastfeeding and pumping. It was very sad for me, and I'd like to write more about it, but I don't have time at the moment. Factors included lack of time, lack of sleep, and digestive issues. Like I said, twins are hard.

Speaking of twins being hard - one thing I want to write more about it how awesome I think it will be for them in a year or so, but how it kind of sucks for them right now. I can't pick them up every time they cry, because I can't handle two babies at once, especially now that they are bigger. The calmer, sweeter twin tends to get a lot less attention. It's hard on everyone, including mama and papi (pronounced Poppy).

I want to write about dealing with parents and in-laws, bilingualism, sleeping, babywearing, trying out cloth diapers (hopefully I'll start that today or tomorrow!), meeting other mothers, dealing with the public when you have twins and tons more.

I've learned a lot about guilt, about judging, about learning. This is such an amazing, difficult journey. But now there's at least one baby crying and it's time to get papi up, so I've got to go. Ciao!