Keflex

Much better night last night. Matt had the "bookend shifts" (meaning, the 1st and 3rd) for the babies last night. I made him promise that he'd sleep if he had the chance instead of just waiting up on the computer or wherever just listening for the babies. He agreed and followed through. Hannah was awake for a good deal of the 1st shift. Fed them around 1am and then went "on duty". Woke up to Robby crying around 3:20. Not bad at all in my opinion. Fed them and then they slept until like 7am. I'll take it.

We both feel better this morning.

Came home from Matt's parents' house late yesterday afternoon to find water in the laundry room (the basement is finished [with BRAND new carpet by the way] except for the laundry room). My mom, who is my great-aunt's power of attorney/financial person, had just had the cracks in the laundry room sealed up with some epoxy something or other. Yeah, one of the sections was leaking. Thank God for warranties, huh? Even more frustrating, though, because we had thought it was fixed, first of all, and second of all, the dryer is finally getting fixed (as I type this) and we thought we'd finally be able to start organizing our laundry room -- pretty key in a 6 person family. So, we wait, again, to get the epoxy guys back out to repair the leak that wasn't supposed to happen. Ugh.

Speaking of leaks...yesterday I thought maybe I had a small infected spot in my c-section incision. My WONDERFUL OB, Dr. F, was able to fit me in. As it turns out, my incision looked great but he's concerned that I have a what seems to be an infection in my belly. It's all hard and warm. I truly had just thought that that was an after-affect of being so ginormous for so long with the twins. Not so much. So, I'm on a hard-core antibiotic (Keflex) -- 4x a day for 10 days. Sheesh. Have to go back to Dr. F to recheck on Tues. I'm glad my incision is good (it FREAKS me out, frankly, to even have that incision) but frustrated that my belly is taking its time to recover. Oh well. Healing takes time, right?

Speaking of more leaks, Faith had some sort of stomach bug yesterday and threw up twice. Nice. She seems to feel better today. Let's PRAY that Mari, or worse the babies, don't get it.

So, those are all my thoughts for now. I am totally amazed that there are only essentially 2 more weeks of school left (at both Matt's and my schools). This school year has FLOWN by like nothing else, for the most part. I just can't believe it.

Ok. Really, guys, please leave a comment (if you can get it to work) or a poll opinion! Matt doesn't ask for much. He just wants to know that people are reading!

Steph

No such luck

Finally the bad night we knew was coming. Yup. It's 4am and I'm up. Haven't had much more than a couple hours sleep tonight...and had no nap yesterday. They're both in there making just enough noise to keep me from relaxing and falling asleep.

Hannah woke up first this time...before midnight. I was so deeply asleep, I was totally disoriented for awhile. I got her up and tried to comfort her for a while, but nothing short of holding her and letting her suck my finger kept her happy. So, we hauled her in for an early feeding, and woke Robby up too. Feeding done, switch shifts, Steph is on duty.

Well, the bad news is, if Steph's shift is not going well, I'm not going to be able to sleep. I can hear the kid(s) crying next door, and not only does it keep me up, I also feel awful for Steph having to deal with it...and of course I'm also so tired that even though I want to go help, my muscles don't even move. So I basically lie awake or doze fitfully at best for most of my shift.

Finally I get up to help. This time it's Robby who's unhappy - again, all that will keep him happy is finger sucking...and that's not a good thing to do too much. So we haul him in for an early feeding. And of course, he does the classic "I've been screaming for food for 2 hours but when you get me all set up to eat, I'm gonna look around and just hang out." Finally he eats. I go to make the 'supplement' we're supposed to give for a little while more...and can't find the little caps that go on the feeding syringes, without which you can't just drop them into hot water to heat up. So to heat up the milk I have to hold the syringe under running hot water with my bare hands. Meanwhile Hannah has woken up and is screaming. Finish all the feedings. Put the kids down. Sit on the couch, exhausted, drained, yet too wired to even think about going to sleep, because I fully expect to be in there again any second dealing with more crying.

So yeah, a rough night.

Make sure you check out the post below - Steph finally found time and energy to post a bit. Oh, and AS pointed out that you don't click the envelope, you click on "Comments" to leave a comment. Sorry....

Matt

Ok, ok...

So I'll attempt to post. I can't promise that it will be written all in one sitting, but I'll do my best.

The dr's appt. went really well yesterday. Fri. night in the hospital when they weighed the twins, Robby had lost 10% of his birthweight and Hannah 11%. The max is supposed to be 10% so the nurse had to call the pediatrician. They wanted us to start supplementing my nursing with formula. Not happy about that but we complied of course.

Well, Sat. morning the lactation consultant comes in (and if you have never experienced a lactation consultant [LC] -- they are WONDERFUL, AMAZING lifesavers but can be a bit...opinionated?) and was all mad that they had us use formula and a bottle, etc etc. So she set us up with a new plan which involves me pumping and Matt using that after after other nursing.

ANYWAY, I was nervous about the dr appt but both babies have started gaining weight and are now within the safe range of weight loss. Everything else looks good with them and Hannah had to get her frennulum snipped (that's that little flap thing underneath your tongue -- hers went all the way to front of the bottom of her tongue and it impeded her being able to get her tongue far enough out to latch well). Totally not a bit deal, though. A tiny drop of blood, a little cry and she was fine.

Had another really good night last night (for 1 wk old twins that is). They went two long stretches (including a 3 1/2 hr stretch) between feedings. Wouldn't go back down after the 5am feeding, but my big-time morning person of a husband was totally ok with that. As he said, if we can get them to sleep for the better part of between 10pm and 5am, we should count ourselves lucky.

Got a nice visit today by my uncle John (mom's brother) and aunt Kathy and cousing Johnnie as well as my grandma. They are such busy people (they live near Louisville, KY) and we are too so we don't get to see each other as often as we would like. Also had a short visit from aunt Margie (mom's sister) and the girls had a really good time playing with her, which was a Godsend to Matt who was trying to multitask (not his best gift) and cook dinner and calm fussy babies at the same time.

Sooo....hopefully tonight will go well too, although we are SO not getting our hopes up for a third night in a row!

Tomorrow morning we look forward to hanging out with Grandma Specter while Mari and Zayde go to "gym class".

Later. Steph

Nightly News

Last night went pretty well. Both twins slept from the time of the post until almost 1, then after their feeding, both slept until about 3:30 something. After that Robby was not ready to go back down and had to be comforted until about 5 or so.

So I am getting small chunks of about 1-2 hours of sleep 1-2 times a night. Enough to keep me from going totally loony, but the pace IS starting to catch up with me during the day.

This blog has become a bit of a comforting thing to do during the first part of the night...allows me to organize my thoughts and process them, which puts me into a better state for the remainder of the night. People keep telling me that lots of people are checking in and reading the blog, but no one ever comments on anything (well, almost no one, thanks mu and AC). You all realize that there's a little envelope icon down at the end of each post? Click on that after a post you particularly like or dislike and leave me a note. It'd be nice to know that this isn't just a personal diary disappearing into the ether.

To quote a line from this year's first grade play, "People, people, I'm falling apart here!" Well, maybe not that bad, but some responses would be nice. C'mon - I've got newborn twins and I'm finding time to do this blog - drop me a line.

In other news, I may possibly be having a trip to plan again. An awful lot of speculation and ifs, but since the big Specter reunion in Cleveland has fizzled, Dad is looking at other options. Small options to be sure, but a very low-key, week or so escape to the Smokies and possibly some other Tennessee city (Chattanooga is looking very nice) sounds like a lot of fun. An awful lot has to happen to make it all come together, not the least of which is us feeling like the twins will be on some kind of regular schedule by around July, and that we'll be feeling ready to take on that kind of a challenge. But the idea of researching another trip (if I can find the time to do it) is a bright ray of sunshine.

So, I'm off to grab an hour or so of sleep. Good night all - see you in the morning.

Matt

P.S. Doctor's visit went fine, Steph can fill in the details later. I'm going to bug her to post tomorrow.

Another day down, another night awaits

It's 10:24. We refined the procedure a bit tonight. Since it seems that Robby just needs to scream for an hour or so before he can sleep at night, we let him have a head start a little early, hoping that by the time he went down, he'd have worn himself out a bit. We're already ahead of our 5 minutes from last night...been about 7 so far. As for me, I'm still expecting my first shift to be a busy one, but again we've learned enough now to know that when Robby does the banshee wail, there's not anything serious to worry about. It's just a question now of mentally steeling yourself for the onslaught of screaming.

The days are going pretty well. Robby still seems a bit yellow, we're expecting him to at least need to get blood drawn tomorrow at the doctor's appointment. We've for the moment stopped worrying about Hannah being so sleepy all the time. Her color looks better than his, but we just think that since she's smaller than he is, she doesn't have as much energy to throw around. Steph managed some good awake time with her this afternoon, which was nice for everyone.

Everything we do has to be planned out and strategized. If I want to so much as go downstairs, it becomes quite a complicated process of figuring out how to arrange all the remainder of the people in the house. Tomorrow we're all getting in the car together for the first time. Should be a blast.

The other main point to make is that I've reached the functional balance of new parent adrenaline and sleep deprivation, which means that I function pretty well as long as I just keep moving. If I stop and sit on the couch for more than 1 minute, I start to drift off rather aggressively.

10:34. Still waiting for the first cries. I know they're coming. I wait. I wait...

Current theories

When Mari was going through her difficult sleep period, Steph and I had a running gag going of introducing new ideas with "Theory number 38" or some other number, when we thought we had figured out why Mari didn't sleep as well as Faith had. In that spirit, I am going to start posting our current theories on why Robby and Hannah are having trouble sleeping...should be entertaining one day to go back and look through these and see how wrong we were. But anyway, here are the current thoughts:

*Hannah sleeps better than Robby.
*Both kids have crazy gas problems which at least contribute to the inability to fall and stay asleep.
*Hunger is generally NOT a major issue.
*Robby is pretty needy - he needs to be held, and he needs to be sucking on something just about every second.
*Both kids like to sleep on their sides, facing each other, preferably with Robby turned to his left and Hannah to her right.
*They both have already thwarted our ineffectual swaddling efforts.

Time passes

Steph is sleeping well, so I'm extending my own shift a little bit. It's now almost 1am, and I've only had to go in there once in the past hour or so. Cool thing happened - I literally fell asleep standing up. One second I'm starting at them in the crib, trying to decide if it's safe to walk out on our loud creaky hardwood floors, and the next second, I awake to feel myself falling. My foot shoots out to keep me upright, and luckily the loud thud goes unnoticed. Nice adrenaline rush, though. Oh, and about 5 seconds later my son lets out a huge fart in his sleep. I'm so proud.

Both our kids are gassy, seriously. Robby let out a belch on Saturday that would have made a frat boy blush.

One more thing - managed to crush the tips of my middle 3 fingers inbetween panels of the garage door tonight. It kinda hurts...

Matt

Ha Ha Ha

Yeah, Robby started screaming at 9:01 and things just now quieted down...at 12:15. I've got the rest of this shift, until 12:30.

At these times, it is a lot easier on me if I just stay awake. I can handle a night with no sleep a lot better than a night with 1 hour of sleep divided up into 5-minute fragments. So I have time to tool around the internet.

I suppose I've heard stories all my life about the weird connections twins sometimes have...usually it's with identical twins and really, I never thought about it much. But from day 1, when I saw Robby and Hannah lying next to each other in the hospital bassinet, turned towards each other, touching foreheads and seeming oddly calmed by each other's presence...these stories starting popping up in my head, and I've been watching the two of them with a different eye, looking for other signs of these mysterious bonds.

What I can tell you is this - at night, it's almost uncanny. First of all, Robby may be screaming his head off like a banshee for over an hour (our attempts to comfort him are doing less and less) and she doesn't move a muscle or wake up the littlest bit. And then when he finally calms down, it's like a switch, and you can hear Hannah start stirring. I know this just sounds like a 'newborn twins sleep problem' horror story, but it's eerie. It's almost like the sound of Robby NOT screaming is more disturbing to Hannah than the screaming itself.

Who knows? But we will for sure be keeping our eyes open for more of these weird connections. Anyone out there who knows if fraternal twins have been reported to have these connections, too, please feel free to leave a comment.

Matt

We ARE Still Here...

...but as you can imagine, there's not much time to spend organizing and typing thoughts. It's 8:55pm, and all the kids are asleep...we actually got the twins down to bed smoothly tonight. None of us are arrogant enough to assume that we will do as well tomorrow, or that they won't both be screaming again at 9:00, but small victories are fine for now.

The pace isn't frantic, but it is constant motion. And the logistics of feeding two is like some sick logic puzzle. One day at a time...one night at a time.

God bless...
Matt

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