jeff and megan’s babies

Since Megan never actually wrote about our sons’ details, here is a copy of an email I sent to my work.

Subject: Say Hello To Our Little Friends
From: xyz@—school.com
Date: Sun, November 2, 2008 1:23 am
To: abc@—school.com
Priority: Normal

Hi Orcas,

James and Lincoln were born on Monday, October 27 at 11:14 and 11:19 AM. The induction went smoothly and labor lasted less than 3 hours. Both of the guys are currently in the NICU until they can maintain their body temperatures at adequate levels. Other than not being chubby enough, they are in great health. Hopefully they’ll both be home by the end of this week. Megan is doing great (no C-section or episiotomy :P) and is thankful to be sleeping in her own bed and getting home-cooked meals.

I’ve attached a picture. Please feel free to share it with the students.

Jeff

See more over at our Flickr page.

Our little guys came into the world around 11:15 this morning.  Baby A is 4 lbs. 12 oz., and Baby B is 5 lbs. 1 oz.  They and I are doing great.  More details (you know, inconsequential things like name assignments) to come later.

Man, it’s been a long time since I posted. Good thing I have Jeff to keep everybody updated.

When we checked into the hospital again last Wednesday and checked for the wireless network that intermittently works from this room (we’re back in the same room as last time), we discovered that the hospital finally got its act together and set up a guest network for this section of the building making posting to the blog a lot more convenient for me. Hence this my first post in two and a half months.

For those of you who have not yet heard, this leg of the adventure is almost over. Induction is scheduled for 8 a.m. on Monday. That is the official 37 week mark which means that we will have made it to full term!

We first checked into the hospital over 12 weeks ago under the suspicion that delivery could very well be imminent. We saw the neonatologist about what to expect when our babies were born prematurely. Every time we saw a doctor or nurse we hadn’t seen for a while they’d remark, “You’re still pregnant?!” I got two courses of steroid shots (4 weeks apart, each time because they thought I would deliver soon) to help the boys’ lung function. We’ll have to check with Jamie on this, but I think we have surpassed all of the guesses from the baby shower. My own prediction was that we wouldn’t make it past 36 weeks, but even as uncomfortable as I am with two ever-bigger babies pummeling my guts and prying at my ribs to try to make more room for themselves, I am so thankful for every day they have in there to get bigger and stronger.

I even made a list of how I am thankful for bed rest. Things I liked about being in the hospital on bed rest:

• Sense of security about having the doctors and nurses right there to help if the boys tried to be born.
• Reassurance of hearing the boys heartbeats three times a day.
• Visitors! It is so wonderful to have good friends who took the time to visit us while I was in the hospital and brought activities and treats/food. It made the stay so much easier to handle.

And just to be fair, the other side of the story. Things I did not like about being in the hospital on bed rest:

• Being woken up in the morning by nurses who claim, “I let you sleep as long as I could.” I say friggin’ boloney to that! It’s 8:30, and the nurse yesterday let me sleep until I woke up which was at 10 o’clock.
• Having to lie pretty much perfectly still (lest we lose the babies’ heartbeats and the nurse comes back in and moves the monitor around for 15 minutes until it finally ends up back where it was in the first place) for an hour or more three times a day.
• Being forgotten regularly and left on the monitors for an extra half an hour at least once a day.
• Getting settled into a room and then being moved to a different one. I finally broke down and cried one time after they moved me again. I hadn’t intended for anyone to know I was crying, but the nurse said she would leave me alone for a while to eat my breakfast, so I thought I was safe. She came right back in, though, and caught me. Everyone felt really bad. The director gave us a gift certificate for the gift shop, and the next day they moved me back into the room I’d been in and never moved me again.
• Having no privacy. Even though there’s a curtain at the door so that I can talk to people after they come through the door but before they fully enter the room, almost all the nurses just shove the curtain aside as soon as they enter the room. This is especially problematic when you are trying to cry in private or use a bedside commode.
• Bedside commode. I don’t think I need to elaborate on that one.
• Sleeping without Jeffrey. I had a good cry the first time he left me alone for the night at the hospital. (I’m starting to sound like a big cry baby, aren’t I? I swear I’m not.) Luckily he accidentally left his pillow with me that night, and I had it to cuddle.
• Eating hospital food. Even though it is not that bad, not that bad gets really old really fast.
• Having to answer the same questions over and over and over and over every time there is a shift change. Most annoying are the questions to which they would know the answer if they just read my chart (or remembered from the last time I was their patient two days ago). Seriously.
• Telling the nurses exactly where to place the monitors to get the babies’ heartbeats and then having them move them all over my belly anywhere but where I told them. For the few nurses who are reasonable enough to listen to me, hooking up the monitor takes less than a minute.

Whining aside, if all the unpleasantness of the last 12 weeks is what we needed to keep the guys unborn, it was totally worth it.

I’ll leave you now with a glimpse into the excitement that is bed rest with Jeff and Megan. Maybe it won’t be as funny to you as it was to me–I have, after all, been a little secluded lately–but I got a good laugh out of it, and it made me really happy to be far enough along that I was allowed to laugh again (for the last month or so I was under doctors orders not to cough or laugh too hard lest the pressure cause my water to break).

A couple nights ago Jeff and I were watching a documentary about LBJ (See? This story is scintillating aleady!), and they played the bit of LBJ’s speech declaring war on poverty where he said, “…we shall not rest until that war is won.” I commented that he is resting in peace now, but the war is not won. Jeff groaned in feigned offense at my he-failed-by-dying joke and then said that maybe LBJ was not resting in peace but was, rather, haunting on behalf of the war on poverty.

He suggested, “Maybe at night he goes, ‘Eeeeend poooooverty,’ and slams doors.”

Cracked. Me. Up.

I know you all want to get in on this excitement now, but you’d better hurry to make plans because we’ve only got three nights left, and tonight is already booked by Josh and Farrah.

It should come as no surprise to any of you that Megan is BACK in the hospital! Last Wednesday, her doctor did an exam and found out she’s 6 cm dilated and pretty much all the way effaced. The call was made to end our week and a half vacation and get re-admitted because Megan has a family history of super quick births, and if she went into labor at home, Baby A might not be able to wait for me or an ambulance to get them to the hospital. It wouldn’t be a huge deal except there’s that other little guy in there who might need a little extra help if he misbehaves and decides to move from his current transverse position (i.e., laying sideways) to breech (i.e., jumping feet first into the world).

So far there are still no contractions or other signs of impending delivery (aside from the wide-open cervix, that is), so all’s well. We’re back in the same room that we had during our last 4-week stay so it’s kinda like we never left. Word came down on Friday that if Megan doesn’t go into labor, the boys are going to be pulled out on Monday, October 27!

Thanks for all of your kind words and support through this wild ride we call pregnancy!

Megan got to come home yesterday, which has done wonders for our sleep schedules. I was able to fall asleep before 5AM and she got to sleep in without anyone waking her up to hook her up to a baby monitor. But now an entirely new challenge faces us: cleaning up this house which hasn’t been properly looked-after in months. There is stuff scattered throughout, brought upon by the remnants of a guest room that has been recently been replaced by an in-progress nursery, a smattering of new baby stuff that does not yet have a proper place, a garage that was partially emptied in order to fit a minivan where an Escort once parked, and a home office furniture rearrangement that has made my workspace much more accommodating but upset the delicate storage balance that had been created over the past 3 years. Well, on the bright side, the cats are plenty happy that Megan’s home and they need their mommy’s attention real bad. Plus, Megan hasn’t given birth in the 24 hours since we got home, so it looks like she’ll be holding out until 40 weeks.

So tomorrow Megan finishes up her fourth week of this hospital trip. The good news is that Megan still hasn’t birthed the twins and the doctor has given her the thumbs up to come home on Monday. Megan’s been a trooper the past month, being stuck in the hospital and expanding and having stronger babies kick at her insides, but I think knowing that there is an escape near is making her less willing to put up with hospital crap. Anyhoo, three more days. Hurray! BTW, the boys’ heartbeats are doing great; they are monitored three times a day.

It’s been a week and a half at the hospital, and no news is good news.  Megan is still dilated about 5 cm and her uterus is irritable but her contractions are infrequent.  We had an ultrasound on Friday and the babies both measured about 3 lbs.  By this Friday, they’ll both weigh nearly 3 1/3 pounds.  It doesn’t sound like a lot, but in total they’ll be almost 7 lbs, which is about how much the human uterus is meant to carry.  I think they’ll outgrow her uterus in the next couple of weeks and want to come out around 34 or 35 weeks.  Megan is confident they’ll be in there until 37 weeks.  Either way, it’s nice to be this far along, seeing as how we first came into the hospital at 24 weeks.  Both of the guys are judo chopping and karate kicking a lot, which is increasingly uncomfortable for Megan because they’re getting stronger and can push on her insides with more and more force.  Squish goes the bladder.  We’re fairly close to finalizing their names, but we probably won’t decide until they’re born.

Well, Megan’s one week at home came to an abrupt end when we went in for a check-up today and Megan’s doctor did a visual exam and found out that Megan was about 5 cm dilated. She even let me take a peek — I saw the top of a head and everything (I think I saw a lot of hair!). Yeah, so needless to say, Megan’s back in the hospital. This time until she delivers. She’s not having contractions, which is good. We’ll be at 30 weeks in a few days, so keep those positive thoughts comin’ our way so that our little guys can have many many more weeks of gestation ahead of them!!