Babies, Babies Everywhere (And God Do I Need A Drink)

OMG you guys.

Everywhere I turn, there are babies.
Isaac came home yesterday and shit has been WILD. I'm up to my knees in vomit, up to my elbows in dirty diapers, and up to my eyeballs in sleep deprivation.

And I'm not even lying when I say that I may have forgotten that I'm supposed to bathe these kids for, like, 3 days.

It's great. It's terrible. It's grerrible.
Or...grerribizzle, as Snoop Dogg would say.

We had our first pediatrician visit today.
It was successful, in that everybody made it there and back alive and relatively in one piece.
It was not so successful, in that Simon peed on himself, me, and the doctor.

With Brian home, things are manageable. just barely.
But I'm already terrified of what will happen when he goes back to work.
Do you have ANY IDEA how loud these kids can scream?!?

So I just wanted to update you guys on my life, so you would understand why I may not be blogging much in the near future.

Great.
Isaac is crying.

Okay, gotta run.
Wish me luck, because I'm gonna need it if we're going to make it through this without permanent damage.

All of us.

In Which I Explain Why Getting Vomited On Is A Good Thing

I have no subject for this post. And it's impossible to be funny on 3 hours' sleep, so you'll just have to bear with me today.

Or not. See if I care.

Okay, I care.
Don't leave.
Come back (and if you bring a hot meal, you can be my BFF).

Simon came home two days ago.
It's been wonderful and exhausting and elating and absolutely chock full of bodily fluids. But for once they're not mine. They're his, so they're cute and endearing, as opposed to vile and un-maidenly.

Must be nice.

Motherhood is a weird thing. Sure, I've been a mom for 24 days now, but it was kind of a provisional role. Occasional changings and feedings, interspersed with long periods of non-parenting and Ghost Hunters marathons. Now...it's the real deal. And shit is about to get even more real when the other peanut comes home, but let's not go there.

It gives me the agita, just thinking about it.

So we're bumbling along, doing all the stupid first time parent things like getting peed on and trying to figure out why in the hell is he still crying?!?!
Yanno, stuff like that.

I've learned that babies spit up about a gallon of their food per day, which is odd, because they only eat about 16 ounces per day. The math doesn't exactly add up, so I'm assuming the explanation involves a little particle physics and maybe a worm hole.

I've learned you can never have enough burp cloths and towels and blankets and socks (don't worry - they were clean) to clean up this aforementioned vomit and hence, you will have to do a load of wash on a daily basis to keep stocked. Your laundry, on the other hand, won't see a washing machine for...well...ever. Forever. You'll never have clean clothes again. They've been sacrificed to the Gods of Parenting, so you might as well get used to wearing your skivvies inside out if you want "clean" underwear.

I've learned that wearing your child is socially acceptable, provided you have one of those trendy Moby wraps.
Baby.
It's the new black.

And I've learned that once you bring a baby home, you will never see your spouse again. You will sleep in shifts and barely manage to mumble some sort of greeting twice a day when you meet in the hallway. But that's okay, because even if you tried for a second to have an adult conversation or - god forbid - get a little frisky, the baby's spidey sense would go off like 5-engine alarm and he'd be screaming within seconds.

But all joking aside, it's honestly not that bad. I was prepared for extreme sleep deprivation and massive amounts of tears (mine - not theirs) and general chaos and misery. And yeah, you definitely don't get the sleep you need and your life revolves around feeding and changing diapers.

But the thing is, that's kind of how I wanted my life to be. Anyone who goes through invasive fertility treatment has fully considered the parenting lifestyle (or at least, I would hope so) and made a decision that the sacrifices are totally worth it.

So I'm changing diapers and feeding and hovering and obsessing about my kid's bodily functions by choice, and therefore even in the darkest times, it's still WAY BETTER than not having kids.

Of course...ask me again when we have double the babies and I might have a slightly different outlook.

But so far...so good.
WAY good.

And besides, wearing babies is totally slimming for your hips and thighs.

A Day In The Life Of A NICU Mom

So, I get this one all the time:

"Well, at least you can rest up now while your kids are in the NICU."

And when this happens, what I really want to do is stare deeply into their eyes and slowly and deliberately smack them in the forehead with my open palm. However, the only thing I really can do is just blink at the offending party as if they had just said, "banana-rama slipper face monkey sucker," ...or something equally ridiculous and nonsensical.

Because rest is exactly what I'm not getting, but people always think they know shit.
Sheah. As IF.

My day starts at 5:00 am, where I wake up (for the third time that night) soaked in a cold sweat from my hormones re-balancing and leaking boob juice onto the front of my shirt.
Great.
So I get up, strip off my vile, disgusting, clammy pajamas, breast pump, shower, make coffee, and give the cat her insulin shot.
And now it's only 6:00 am. The sun won't be up for another hour.
Life is awesome.
Since I've got an hour and fifteen minutes until I have to leave, I squeeze in a little bit of work. (because I'm an idiot and agreed to take on some hefty assignments before the kids come home).

At 7:15, I drive through rush-hour traffic, brandishing my fist of rage or the even more popular finger of justice, and make it to the hospital by 7:45-ish. At 8:00, I feed one meatloaf, usually after much drama because I attempted to change his clothes and ended up with a head through an armhole or a butthole, or disconnected his leads, which sent the nurses running for dear life because they though he was coding.
We feed from 8:00 to 8:30, snuggle from 8:30 to 8:45, and then it's time to traumatize the other meatloaf by accidentally poking him in the eye with the thermometer or otherwise endangering him.
Feed, snuggles, apologies for bodily harm, etc.
Since I have a whopping HOUR until it's time to do it all again, I head down to the cafeteria for some grub (because feeding babies makes mommy hungry).

Back upstairs for more traumatizing/breastfeeding.

Now it's 1:00.
I get home by 1:30 and daydream of napping, but instead I sit back down at the computer and frantically attempt to finish this work before the kids come home from the NICU and shit really hits the fan.

So I blink, and it's 4:15. Time to head back.
Back through the rush-hour traffic, only this time I'm too tired to communicate my displeasure to the other drivers, so I just stare straight ahead and make every effort to stay awake and not hit any bicyclists.
Feed meatloaf 1.
Feed meatloaf 2.
Try not to kill them.

Now it's 7:00 (or 7:20, if we didn't snag the nurse before the shift change and got essentially abandoned for half an hour before someone realizes that we didn't actually intend on spending the night).

Back home, at which point Brian and I talk about all the things we need to do, like the dishes that haven't been washed in 3 days, or the laundry that's needed folding since I gave birth, and instead eat dinner and collapse in front of the TV/X-box.

Consequently, I get in about 15 minutes of Ghost Hunters before I drift off to sleep, only to be awakened by my 12:30 alarm because surprise, fucker, it's time to breast pump again.

So this has been my life.

I'm not saying it's going to get easier when the kids come home, but in terms of rest?
Yeah...notsomuch.

But the good news is that the boys are doing well. Isaac had a set back yesterday and couldn't advance to his 6 oral feedings (from 4). I tried to not let it get to me because they've been rocking it up to this point and steps back are inevitable. But when you spend all day and all night intentionally not thinking about how much it breaks your heart every time you leave them in the NICU, set-backs really have a way of turning you from a rational adult into a simpering child.

*sniff sniff

But they're fine. They're beautiful and well-behaved and just wonderful in every way. So I'll continue with this crazy, hectic schedule for as long as it takes, because, quite simply they're worth it.

Circ? You Mean Like Cirque Du Soleil?

I'm starting to learn that parenthood brings up a lot of questions that you never necessarily though about before and sure as hell don't have answers to.

Brian mentioned that his workplace was offering some sort of special on will-making this weekend. Personally, I'm not sure I want my will drafted up on some sort of buy-one, get-one free deal. I have a strong suspicion we'll show up and some dude who reeks of pot will be drafting wills on coffee filters out of the back of his van. And sadly, this will not have been the shadiest thing I've participated in.

Regardless, as we were holding the meatloaves, we started talking about our end-of-life wishes. I volunteered that if I was brain-dead, he should probably pull the plug, lest I contract some weird hospital virus and become a zombie and force him to smash me in the head with the nearest IV stand. Brian felt that if he was a paraplegic, he didn't want to live. I told him that he could still lead a fulfilling life as a paraplegic (I mean, look at Stephen Hawking). He thought about it and then said, "Well, I guess. Maybe I could get prosthetics."

I'll give you a moment to let that last statement sink in.

So we were laughing at the image of Brian asking the doctors to amputate his legs and arms and having prosthetic limbs attached and then still not being able to move them.

And then the nurse came in, and we were talking about the boys, and she eventually asked, "Are you gonna circ?" And I honestly for a second thought she was inquiring into my future plans as an acrobat for a traveling circus.


To which I laughed because, come on, have you ever seen me try to do a cartwheel?!?

But then she clarified that she was asking if we were going to have the boys circumcised...

...and I was completely dumfounded. Not only because I had never thought about it, but also because I realized that I didn't actually know if most of the men in the US were circumcised or not. Because I've really only seen one *type* of wiener, and I didn't know if it was the kosher type or the non-kosher type, if you get what I'm throwing at you. I mean, am I the only one who doesn't know this stuff? And if I am, WTF, man?!? How can a relatively intelligent, worldly, college-educated 29-year-old woman not know the difference between a circumcised and non-circumcised schlong? I blame the public school system. Mostly because everybody blames the public school system, and I'm always ready to jump on to the nearest bandwagon.

So I looked at Brian, panic stricken. And he looked at the nurse and said yes. and I was all, "well, that answers that question."Everybody says that parenting teaches you all sorts of things. So far, I've learned that Brian isn't exactly clear on the concept of prosthetic limbs.
And that he's circumcised.

It was an enlightening day.

(Brian: if you're reading this...sorry. This is kind of like an episode of When Keepin' It Real Goes Wrong from the Chapelle show. Feel free to smash me over the head with that IV stand.)

Everything You Never Wanted To Know About Delivery (Srsly, Don't Read This Post)

Okay, let's do this.
It's 6:00 am, I've been up for almost an hour an a half, I'm jazzed up on coffee, and my ta-tas are feeling scrumptious from their recent pumping

(If you thought I was gonna ease you into the disturbing nature of this post, you were wrong. dead wrong. Abandon this blog, oh ye of faint heart and testicles)

So.
The birthing process.
Yeah....not so much miraculous. More like a humiliating disgust-fest the likes of which we haven't seen since Courtney Love slopped her way through MTV.


But where to start?

I could start in the Maternal Fetal Medicine office, where we went in for a routine ultrasound and came out with marching orders to head straight to the hospital to deliver. But there's nothing funny about being told that people are about to open you up and take out babies. ESPECIALLY when you were looking forward to a leisurely Panera breakfast.

So let's start in Obstetrics Triage where, after some routine placement of monitoring devices, a chatty, grandmotherly nurse strolled in with an electric razor and volunteered me for some Hoo-Hah landscaping.
Poor Brian.
It was SO CLOSE to every guy's porn fantasy. So close....and yet...so far. She chatted away about her grandkiddies, expertly grooming my nethers into a trendy surgical coiffe, while Brian looked at the walls...at the ceiling...at the monitors...everywhere but right in front of him, where a potentially hot sex scene had made a hard left turn into Nightmare-ville.

But it was just the first of a series of events that stripped away my femanine allure, piece by piece, until I was reduced to a leaking, sweating, emotional lump of deflated baby belly.
Seriously.
You know why so many teens date, get knocked up, manage to stay together until the baby is born, and then promptly break up?
It's not the responsibility of caring for an infant.
No.
No indeed.
It's actually because the hormone-filled boy stands by and watches helplessly as his once-attractive girlfriend with the skinny jeans and the emo hair hemorrhages and constipates and leaks boob juice and suffers through the awkward disturbance of every bodily process known to man.

You want to know what they don't tell you?

They don't tell you that it takes about 25 minutes to set up the operating room for a C-section and the entire time, you're laying on this narrow table, arms out crucifix-style, completely exposed from the boobs down, while 10 to 15 people bustle about laying out instruments and scrubbing your belly and what have you.

They don't tell you that, sure, spinal blocks are fantastic, but in return you have to spend the next 24 hours being wheeled around with your pee bag hooked on to your armrest.

They don't tell you that C-sections may spare your vagina the trauma of ripping and tearing, but either way, you'll bleed out your coochie like a motherf*cker for 6 weeks post-partum.

They don't tell you that the combination of abdominal stitches and days of narcotics tie up your bowels so badly that you'll spend an hour on the can with an unmovable lump of lead stuck somewhere between your out-hole and the toilet bowl.

They don't tell you that if you plan on breast feeding but your kids are otherwise occupied in the NICU, you're expected to place these suction cups on your boobs and sit around for about 10-15 minutes, every 3 hours, day and night, while you're essentially milked like a dairy cow.

And they don't tell you that a week or two later, even though your belly is starting look more like a human mid-section and less like a droopy sack of flour, and even though your bleeding level has been reduced from tsunami to babbling brook, and even though your boobs have gotten HUGE (which is a definite plus for us less-well-endowed ladies), you'll be sweating profusely every night that even if your husband wanted to touch you again (which is questionable, considering he witnessed the above insults), he couldn't because his hand would slip right off your slimy, clammy skin.

You guys.

And I thought pregnancy was humiliating??
Dude...that was just a warm-up.

People have done things to my privates that I never want to speak of again.
Brian has played audience to bodily functions that before this experience I swore I would never expose him to (because everyone knows that girls don't poop).
I have leaked more fluids from more parts of the body than I knew existed.

Honestly, the only thing in this world that would be worth the aforementioned physical assault of all things gross and disgusting is my kids.

So let's take a moment to thank God or Allah or whoever schemed up this whole reproduction thing for giving us the greatest reward of all time in exchange for the horribleness of delivery.

Was it worth it in the end?
Absolutely.
But I swear to God, I'll never do it again.

Well...maybe.

(Slightly Underdone) Meatloaves Have Arrived!!!1!

I'm sure there's a funnier, classier way to announce this, but I just don't have the time, energy, or emotional reserve to whip up a beautiful, sentimental post right now.

Let's just say that on October 5, 2011, two slightly underdone meatloaves were brought into this world via c-section because one of the meatloaves was refusing to cook.

Simon Wallace was born at 7:08 pm weighing 3 lbs 9 oz
Isaac Ward was born just two minutes later weighing 3 lbs 1 oz

Both are doing wonderfully, despite their early entrance. Although they're in the NICU, they're both making progress, have no problems to speak of, and are anticipated to come home within the next few weeks.

I'm a happy, albeit sore, mamma bear right now.
It's hard running back and forth from the NICU twice a day and breast pumping every 3 hours 'round the clock. Especially when one's internal organs were recently sliced and diced and restitched back together again.
At some point, I'll tell you all the nitty gritty details about the past week. Remind me to tell you how Brian's porn fantasy almost came to life (if the nurse hadn't been an overweight, chatty, 60-year-old grandmother of two). And remind me to tell you what it's like to experience the constipative effects of narcotics when one has abdominal stitches.
Oh, I'll tell you all about it, and the 300 other ways that one completely loses their dignity when going through the birthing process. By the end of that post, you'll probably have laughed, cried, vomited, cried some more, eaten a sandwich, and then vomited that sandwich up again.

But that's for another time.
For now, let's just say that my newly expanded household is rocking my world in all the right ways.
It's wonderful, and exciting, and terrifying, and everything else motherhood is supposed to be.

Welcome, Simon and Isaac.
There have never been two children more loved, fought for, or wanted in the whole wide world.
It's an honor to be your Mommy :-)

You Just Supported Al-Qaeda. Feel Better?

So...I don't know how to put this delicately. So I'm just going to come out and say it.

My friends are better than your friends.

Now, before you begin to argue, I'd like to point out that the past two weekends have been absolutely crammed full of people stopping by to just, like, give me presents and tell me how good I look.
Seriously, just imagine it:
Two solid weekends of loved ones showing up, feeding me, giving me gifts that are by and large far too generous, telling me I barely look 7 months pregnant with a singleton (let alone twins!), and then bouncing the minute I start to get fatigued. Some of these people even cleaned my house! You can't make this shit up!
And keep in mind that not once was I able to offer cake, mimosas, booty-shaped lolli-pops, or any of the other accoutrements that people typically expect in return for them shelling out $79.99 on an overpriced, crescent-shaped pillow.
At most, I was able to provide a hug and a glass of tap water.
Shit is GLAMOROUS up in here.

And take, for example, today's events. A good friend of mine who lives up in Newark (which might as well be the moon, considering she has to take the NJ turnpike to get here) rolled up in this bitch at 9:00 am to organize my nursery. And I don't mean the fold a few onesies while we gossip over coffee type of organize. I mean the flat out, military-style assault on all things baby-oriented type of organize where everything finds a home, from the smallest pacifier to the largest bassinet.

When she showed up, I had baby clothes, diapers, sheets, and toys strewn about the various rooms of my house in no recognizable pattern, and by the time she left, everything was in it's proper place...cleaned, folded, and labeled.
Yes.
She brought her label maker.

And then she refinished and restored an old shelving unit she found in my garage.
Yanno...for shits and giggles, because it would look cute in the nursery.

Because this girl is pretty much what would happen if Martha Stewart and MacGyver had a love child that was slightly traumatized at birth so that it grew up with a penchant for baby doll molds (no, I'm not kidding. Read her blog). She sewed my boys beautiful matching outfits and monogrammed baby blankets (to be revealed with the nursery pics) and then just moseyed out to the garage and started going at this decrepit shelf with a palm sander and a circular saw.

Bitch be CRAZY, yo. (And I mean that in the best, most awesome way possible)

And then her brother and his girlfriend showed up, who live in HOUSTON, BTW, but had flew out for the weekend. And even though he's a dude and therefore knows nothing about baby stuff (and probably cares even less), and his girlfriend had never met me and probably didn't give two shits that I was in the midst of a procreation emergency...these guys jumped in the fray and started helping.

So there I was, reclining with my feet up and a mocktail in my hand while my friend, her brother, and her brother's girlfriend were busting their assess preparing MY house for MY children, all the while being violated by my dogs, who were determined to shove their noses in every private part they could find. (Because I forgot to mention that whatever you do, you do not bend over in front of Milo).

To say I'm grateful is an understatement. I am awed and humbled by the generosity of everyone, friend or family, who has pitched in to help us make a home for our little meatloaves.

So, to all of you who have offered gifts, support, and love, I would like to say thank you from the deepest recesses of the place my heart would be if I had one.
I'm not one to get mushy, and maybe I've just looked at one too many sleepers with adorable baby animals on the heiney, but seriously. I love you guys.

And to the rest of you who are reading this?
Thank you too.
I may not even know who you are, but by reading this, you're supporting me.
Kind of like how every time you buy pot you support the terrorists.

And that certainly counts for something.