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Mom-notony

~ riadawson ~ Leave a comment

I keep thinking I’ll write something really interesting or profound, but right now, everything looks the same.  I’m Bill Murray in “Groundhog Day” listening to “I Got You Babe” every fucking morning.  Except instead of Sonny and Cher, I have baby coos and cries and toddler squeals.  I love my kids, of course, and I love to snuggle with them and take care of them — but I love other things, too.  I love to be a person.

I stay up late to have some time to myself and watch whatever TV shows take me away from life for a little bit — make me laugh or cry.  I feel like all my posts end up sounding the same, but that’s life.

Today’s excitement (other than my dermatologist appointment) was when my toddler returned from a trip to Legoland with my parents.  He was really excited to be home, and I was glad to snuggle with him.

I keep thinking back to when my life was exciting.  I used to wonder what the night would bring.  My worries were insignificant in the grand scheme of things.  Now, I worry about every breath each of my kids takes.  I worry about their development and progress.  I worry about the potassium in everything, because my little Baby B’s kidneys can’t process it.  When she’s able to really swallow food (something else to worry about) and eat table food, she can’t have anything with salt, spices, fat, butter, or sugar.  Cake frosting has too much potassium for her to handle (not that I’d just feed her cake frosting, but it’s an example).

Maybe one of these days I’ll say something more exciting.  Until then, I’ll keep snuggling my littles.

Break Time

~ riadawson ~ 2 Comments

One of the hardest things about being a stay at home mom is that I never get a break.  I’ve had horrible neck and shoulder pain for 4 days, but it doesn’t matter.  My son was vomiting all day on Saturday, so I was right there with him…and then I got sick.  I haven’t left the house in three days, and I’ve been living in pajamas.  But I can’t call in to work tomorrow.  At least my toddler is feeling better, so he is going to go to the babysitter’s house.

Last Tuesday, I went out to dinner with two of my close friends from my teaching days.  We all had baby girls last year, so there were three adults, one toddler, and four baby girls.  My toddler was literally climbing the walls (a short dividing wall), and we all spent most of the time feeding and dealing with our own kids.  I had to hold Baby B because she cries if she’s not being held.  By the end of the meal, I wondered why I had even bothered to spend money going out when I didn’t even get to have a conversation with my friends.

I know it’s important to spend time with other people, but I feel like none of the time I spend with anyone is quality time.  It’s really discouraging.  I can’t even speak a full sentence.  My closest friends and I communicate mainly through Facebook and text messages.  There are days when my husband and I don’t say anything that’s not kid-related, let alone snuggle.  All of my kids want my attention, and they need my attention, but how do I give it to everyone?  As I held my Baby A last night and rocked her at bedtime, I realized that I miss that.  It’s so rare that I can snuggle with her.  Baby B usually takes all the snuggles and needs all the attention.  My toddler still has someone read to him and snuggle him until he falls asleep, but the majority of the time, I feed both babies in their Boppy pillows, then Baby A goes to sleep on her own while Baby B finishes her bottle.  Then, Baby B gets snuggled to sleep.  She snuggles and nuzzles all night, because she needs that comfort in order to sleep well.  The time I can spend with Baby A makes me both happy and sad, because I can’t be with all my kids at the same time, and it seems like little A gets the shortest amount of time from me.

I feel like I’m a full-time mom to Baby B, a part-time mom to my toddler and Baby A, and a per diem wife to my husband.  I don’t know when the dynamic will change, but it has to — for the sake of my sanity and my marriage.  I don’t know when I will be me again, or even if the “me” I once was is still there.  It’s so hard to try to keep up with everything, and I can’t; I feel guilty constantly.  My husband and I have to get some time alone together to reconnect without the kids interrupting.  We have a long weekend in NYC planned for our fifth anniversary in December, and I can’t wait.  I am sure I’ll miss the kids, but we need that time together.

In other news, Baby B saw the neurologist last week for a follow-up visit.  He seemed happy with the progress she’s made through therapy, and he said he would contact our insurance company to try to get her more than the 90 allotted therapy visits per year.  However, he was not hopeful that it would be granted.  He’s ordered a swallowing study to see if she’s aspirating when she swallows.  In his words, “that’s what usually gets kids like this [with brain injuries] later in life.”  I, of course, heard that as “that’s what usually kills these kids,” but my husband heard it just as “that’s what causes problems with these kids.”  Either way, we don’t want her to have problems, and we certainly don’t want her to have to be tube-fed.  If only the insurance companies would see the progress she has made since beginning therapy in May.  We will still get her the therapy she needs, but it would be wonderful if the insurance would cover it without hassle, like they should.  I’ll just send them a video of her with her big smile and bright eyes, and they won’t be able to say no.  Or I’ll just fight them until they say yes, but I’m hoping we don’t get to that point.

OH!  And Baby A is getting her first tooth — the bottom right tooth.  Plus, she is saying, “MAMA!”  She’s said “Dada” a few times, but mostly she says, “Mama.”  I’m so proud and happy, and it makes me feel even more guilty that I don’t snuggle with her more.  I know that Baby B needs it and cries whenever she’s not being held, but I want to hold all my kids and snuggle all of them equally.

Adapting

~ riadawson ~ Leave a comment

Thankfully, my husband took off the entire month of December, so he was able to stay with us and help navigate our new family situation.  That first month was a blur of breastfeeding, bottles, diapers, and crying…and toddler tantrums and tears, too.

During the first two months, we had to bring Baby B in for blood work multiple times to check her kidney function and Potassium.  She was on medication to help remove Potassium from her system as well as a new formula for babies with low kidney function.  It seemed like the formula made her little tummy hurt, so I tried to keep pumping and nursing as much as possible so she didn’t have to have the formula.  I felt so guilty for deciding to stop nursing and having my supply decrease when it seemed like breast milk was the answer to one of Baby B’s problems.

Baby B’s Potassium was slowly decreasing, but not enough so that she could be off the medication yet.  We also discovered that even experienced nurses and phlebotomists have difficulty taking blood from a 5-7 pound baby.  The day my husband returned to work, I brought the babies to the local hospital to have Baby B’s blood drawn.  Three hours and five needle sticks later, we were all in tears, but they finally got a draw from her foot.  After that, we have gone to the children’s hospital in Orlando for her blood tests, and they have had more success getting her blood, thankfully.

The hardest part about having a toddler and newborn twins wasn’t the lack of sleep, it was the feeling that I was disappointing my son.  Since the day he was born, he has been my number one.  He’s got such a dynamic personality that people are just drawn to him, heaping praise upon him for his little dances, songs, and monster truck commentary.  It was so difficult for him when he was no longer the singular center of my world.  People would visit and fawn over the babies, but he was an afterthought.  It broke my heart every day.  I just wanted to spend time with him again, after all the time on bed rest when I couldn’t do more than snuggle, watch t.v., and read to him. However, the babies needed me, too.  I constantly felt torn between my kids’ needs…he needed attention,  but they needed to have their basic needs met, and that had to come first.

One of the toughest aspects of having twins is that there are TWO of them.  Duh, I know.  But you don’t really understand how hard it is to feed two babies at the same time.  If you feed one after the other, especially when they are newborns, you’ll be feeding them all day.  You can’t hold both and feed them, so there’s some propping to be done.  Tandem breastfeeding was something I never mastered, although there are some super moms who can do it.  They both need to be held and loved; diapers need changed; baths need to be given — all of that times two.  Plus, Baby B seemed to be a little more high maintenance than Baby A.  She cried more (still does) and wanted to be held constantly.

In the meantime, our toddler was watching a lot of monster truck videos and Disney Junior.  He would come into the bedroom when I was nursing one of the babies and start yelling or throwing toys.  I felt like a terrible mom yelling at him and spanking his butt (which I rarely did, but ended up doing multiple times in the first few months after the girls were born), but he would yell and hit me when I was attempting to feed a baby, and there was no reasoning with him.  Before I knew that Baby B really did better on breast milk, I abandoned the idea of nursing, because it just made our lives more difficult.  I wanted to try to pump when I could, but I didn’t want the pressure of trying to feed two babies when it seemed to take such a toll on my son.

At first, it was so difficult to get out of the house.  The babies weren’t really on a schedule, and my toddler was not handling his new normal very well.  Luckily for us, my parents both retired last year.  They came up to help as much as they could, and the kids and I went to their house quite a bit, too.  The toddler went to his old babysitter’s house every once in a while, so he could get one-on-one attention.  Even with some help, there were plenty of days when it was just me with the kids.  I called my husband on more than one occasion, crying, and begged him to come home from work, because I just couldn’t handle the chaos.

I cried every day.  I was failing my toddler.  I was failing my babies.  I didn’t know what Baby B would need and how I could help her.  I was leaving the life I knew as a lawyer and transitioning into a role I never wanted, stay at home mom.  My husband had to go back to work, and I had no idea how I would handle three kids alone.

At my 6-week post-partum OB visit, I knew that I needed to talk to Dr. OB about what was going on in my life.  There were just too many crazy changes, and my life felt upside-down.  I knew that I was depressed, and I did not want to sink into a pit of despair when I was alone with my kids.  The doctor understood and prescribed anti-depressants for me.  He also scheduled a follow-up in a month to see how I was doing on the medication.  I felt relief that finally I might be able to feel happier and enjoy my babies and son.

To read about the rest of our TTTS journey, click here.

Full House, Full Hearts

~ riadawson ~ Leave a comment

Now that Baby B was home, it was like the plates shifted back to their proper position and the ground stopped shaking.  Now we just had to sift through the rubble and figure out how to navigate our new world.  But we were all together, and that was the most important thing for right now.

I still felt horrible.  The next day, I could barely move.  I stayed in bed.  My husband thought I was dying.  I didn’t get up to nurse the babies or change them.  Finally, I felt a wave of sickness and got up to use the bathroom. (SKIP THE REST OF THIS PARAGRAPH IF YOU ARE SQUEAMISH.)  I passed a huge blood clot, the size of my palm.  It was horrible, but I immediately felt better.  I called the doctor to make sure this was normal, and the on-call OB said it was normal, as long as I didn’t have a fever or any additional pain.

With that over, I was able to start being a mom again.  There was a lot of snuggling to do, and also a lot of shopping and Christmas stuff to finish.  Part of the problem with being on bed rest for so long was that, although Amazon helped me shop for some of the bigger things, there was still the completion of the gift-giving process to wrap up (hah).  Plus, I love Christmas.  I love everything about the season.  I wanted to go to the stores and see the decorations and hear the holiday tunes.  I wanted to dress my babies up in matching Christmas outfits and take a ton of pictures.  I wanted to bring my toddler to see Santa.  I just wanted our lives to be normal.

That week, we brought the Babies to the pediatrician, who attempted to assure me that we don’t know what Baby B will be able to do.  He reminded me not to worry about the future, just focus on today.  That’s nearly impossible for an anxiety-driven worrier like me.  But Baby B seemed to be doing well…she was gaining weight and rocking the newborn stuff.  We asked about seeing a neurologist, and the pediatrician recommended waiting until she wasn’t meeting milestones.  Although we thought that was strange, we agreed…after all, she was eating, sleeping, and going to the bathroom, so what else would a neurologist tell us at this point?

Baby B’s first appointment with the nephrologist (kidney doctor) was that Friday, when she was 13 days old.  She needed blood taken that Tuesday prior to the appointment.  I received a text message from the office manager at my job asking when I might be coming back and if I could be available for a phone call with the bosses.  I decided that after the nephrologist appointment, we would stop by the office so I could hand in my notice, return my laptop and key, and pack up my personal things.

My mom stayed with the toddler and Baby A that morning so my husband and I could go to Orlando with Baby B.  Initially, a nurse took the baby’s vitals, then a nurse practitioner checked her out.  When the nephrologist walked into the room for the appointment, he brought an entourage of about 4 other people with him.  He didn’t even touch the baby.  However, he did say that he didn’t think she would need dialysis or a transplant (although his opinion has since changed), so we felt relief that maybe this kidney problem would be temporary.  They wanted more blood work done, so we had her blood drawn at the hospital before we left for lunch.  Before we even finished our food, the nurse practitioner called to tell us the results.  Baby B’s Potassium levels were too high, so she would need to be on medication and have blood work again in 4 days to see if it decreased.

I felt nervous as we headed to my former office.  After all, this was the place where I worked for 5 years.  I clerked in the Tallahassee office at the end of law school.  These ladies had been at my wedding.  They were there through my pregnancies and heard all the stories about my adorable toddler.  I was really going to do this — be a stay at home mom.  I never wanted that.  I mean, I wanted to be with my kids, and I hated leaving my son with a babysitter; but I liked using my education and my brain, too.  When we got out of the car, I held my office key in my hand, because I wasn’t wearing pants with pockets, but I didn’t want to lose it in the black hole of my purse.  I made small talk with the coworkers I hadn’t seen since the end of August, while they fawned over the baby.  The boss, office manager, and I went into the boss’ office where we had a phone conference with the big boss in Tallahassee.  I handed over copies of my resignation letter and started to cry as soon as I said that I didn’t know what Baby B’s life would be like, so I would need to stop working.  I did ask that they consider me for part-time or contract work from home when life became a little more settled, and they agreed.  Everyone was so kind and said they would miss me, but they understood.  I packed up my office (which was uncharacteristically clean, since I hadn’t been there in months), left my laptop with the boss, and said goodbye to my friends.  I was strangely happy in the car, as it went much better than I anticipated.  I didn’t know if my bosses would be upset by the news, but they seemed to be understanding and caring.   Now I could head home to focus on my babies (and my son) and try to figure out how to be the best mom to these sweet girls.

To read about the rest of our TTTS journey, click here.