Yesterday at Work

I haven’t posted about my job, mainly because I’d like to keep it and it’s not considered terribly ethical to publish information about the marital difficulties of one’s clients, even if they do things like have shouting matches in the parking lot and key each other’s cars before the drive off. So when I talk about anything on here related to my job, I’d like to state before the record that I obscure all identifying details and alter the stories so even if they were to stumble onto this blog, they wouldn’t recognize themselves. Except maybe the couple I referenced before. Anyway, I work on Saturdays and the occasional Tuesday and Rob stays home with the girls. He’s writing his dissertation right now, so he can work from home during naptimes. (Here’s a picture of how he gets sooo much work done when he’s home-that’s L., who enjoys chewing on the hair of family members).
I love what I do-I feel like marital counseling is what I’m best at, but I love the individual counseling, too. About one-third of my client population is under 18 and I consider the work I do with children to be among the most difficult, primarily because no one brings their child to see a therapist for insight-oriented therapy-something bad is always happening in their lives to bring them in to see me. And that makes me sad, because while you can make a case that the adults who are coming to see me have at least limited control over the circumstances in their lives and can act dramatically to change things, with children, they are rarely responsible or able to change what’s going on that necessitates the counseling. They’re usually in a fair amount of pain, because their parents are divorcing, because they’ve been abused by an adult, because they’ve just lost someone they loved and emotionally, it’s hard to be the person who hears it all and is responsible for helping them heal because I find it so profoundly painful as well. Yesterday, I saw one of those kids. She was talking about how she was uncomfortable coming to see me. And I told her that was okay, that some things are just uncomfortable to talk about, that I wouldn’t want to come see me, either, if I was always having to discuss bad things that had happened. She then said the saddest, funniest thing “It’s not you-I like you. I just that I wish I had broken both of my legs.” It’s been my experience that it’s always better to ask what your client means when they say something like that- so I asked the obvious question “why do wish you’d broken your legs?” Because I didn’t really see how broken legs would have improved her situation any. And she said “then you could be my, you know, that other kind of therapist-like the one my friend sees to help her move her arm after she broke it.”

“Oh, a physical therapist.”

“Yes, that’s right. I wish you were just my physical therapist.” I really wished I was, too.

Clean

A week or so ago, it must have been on a Sunday, because Rob and I were both home for the girls 4:00 meal, I was feeding E. a botttle on the couch and I noticed that I was idly scraping some dried oatmeal off the side of her face. At that moment, Robert looked at me and said " You know, I was always really critical of parents who wouldn't even take the time to wash their kids faces before bringing them out in public." And then we had a hearty laugh, because we carefully wash the girls hands, necks, faces- really virtually any exposed skin- after every meal. Invariably though, as soon as either of them gets into strong light, you notice that they still appear to be covered in patches of whatever it was they just ate. We've learned a lot of valuable lessons the past ten months, one of which is "you can wash your baby as carefully as you can, but you can't make her clean."
Fortunately for us, we have a bathtub. About a month ago, we grew weary of always having to wash the dishes every time we wanted to bathe the girls, so we decided it was time to move them to the "big girl tub." We were a little sorry we didn't do it before, because it is one of their favorite things in the whole world. When L. hears us start to run the water, she starts to giggle like crazy. She laughs through her whole bath and is a big fan of sailing her ducks. E. likes bath time, too- she's not necessarily as enthusiastic as L, but she loves to flop onto her stomach and swim. She has to sit at the back of the tub because she is drawn by forces beyond her control to pull herself up on the faucet. Not that the putting her back there slows her down all that much, as her picture at the top probably reflects. I sometimes feel that she is only happy when she is putting herself in danger of ending up in the doctor's office. You'll note that E. has no problem climbing right on L's legs to get where she wants to be. Directly after their bath and massage, they are usually so tired and they like to cuddle. Right after these pictures were taken, they did one of the really sweet twin things they've started recently. E. will crawl over and lay down across L.'s lap. L. leans down pats E's head and chews on her hair and they both smile. The saliva matted hair sort of defeats the whole purpose of bath time, but it's so adorable to watch, you think that your cute sensors are going to explode.

The Breastfeeding Post

Primarily, it’s taken me so long to write this because I don’t want to complain about anything related to the babies. One of my least favorite parts of infertility- and there were a few least favorite parts- was pregnant people’s incessant complaining about their morning sickness, back pain, swollen feet, etc. A woman I know, right during the saddest part of the whole thing for me, when I was struggling most with the idea that it was a real possibility that we might never have our own biological children, came right out and said “You should be glad you’re not pregnant-this whole thing is ruining my life,” because her morning sickness was getting to her. So I was firmly resolved that if I ever got pregnant, I would not complain about such an incredible blessing. And for the most part, I didn’t. I was pretty morning sick, which is pretty common in a multiple pregnancy because of the ludicrously high hormone levels, but I have never been more delighted to be nauseated in my whole life, which is what I would tell people who wanted to commiserate about how awful it was. (Except to Rob, who was glad when I reached the end of that stage when I would lie on our floor in fetal position, asking whether or not he thought nausea could kill you). This-the not complaining, not the nausea- actually became a bit of a problem. In my effort not to appear ungrateful, I didn’t discuss the low back pain I was experiencing, sure that it was just what you would expect during a twin pregnancy, I ended up in the hospital having contractions because of acute polynephritis at 20 weeks. I became better about at least talking to my doctor more about the symptoms I was having. All of that to say, I am well aware of how lucky we are to have E. and L. So if you’ve dealt with infertility, please don’t read the rest of this post as a lack of gratitude, because that is not the spirit in which it is meant.

I have really grieved our inability to work out the whole breastfeeding thing. I was well educated about the breastfeeding-I had done a lot of reading on the topic, watched friends nurse their babies and fully intended to breastfeed until at least a year, although I would have considered going to 18 months or so. One of the most annoying things to me is how just about every book on breastfeeding spends about half of its content telling you why you should breastfeed, how everyone who’s really committed can breastfeed and then only about 25 pages on the actual mechanics of the whole process, because it’s not like you waste your time reading a 200 page book on breastfeeding if you don’t think it’s worth your while to at least give it a shot.. I had even gotten my hands on Karen Gromeda’s Mothering Multiples, the out-of-print bible on how to nurse twins and read it cover to cover. I knew that it would be a challenge, what with the two babies and all, but I was committed to trying for at least six weeks. I don’t think I really even considered the possibility that it wouldn’t work out according to plan- I mean I registered for a few bottles, but secretly thought I wouldn’t need them and had absolutely no formula in the house when we got home from the hospital. The idea from all the books that if you just do it all right and truly want it enough that you can make it happen was ingrained in my head and I fully believed it.

Anyway, the girls were born (and again, I plan to type up my memories of that soon) via Cesarean. E, even though she was smaller had an easier time regulating her temperature at birth, so after the 30 minutes it took them to get me to recovery, I was able to hold E. by myself and we got to try and nurse. It was the most amazing thing- I remember her tiny face and her huge eyes looking up at me and her knowing just what to do, latching right on and nursing away. She just stayed on for a minute or two, but of my memories of that afternoon, that is among the most clear. Actually, of all the memories of my adult life that moment is one of the most vivid. They wouldn’t let me hold L. in the recovery room; the nurses insisted on keeping her in an incubator and then taking her to the nursery to check her out. So it was a couple hours later that L. and I got to practice our nursing. Neither baby was staying latched very long or able to suck for any lengthy of time, so my first postpartum nurse brought me a Medela Lactina and showed me how to pump; since I delivered late in the day, it wouldn’t be until the next afternoon that I saw a lactation consultant. So every two to three hours, I would try to latch and nurse each baby for about 15 minutes apiece, passing each one off to Rob to feed when I was done, get the girls tucked in and back to sleep and then pump for 20 minutes. On average, I had about 40 minutes to sleep between pumping and starting over (hence the name of this blog). That next afternoon, the lactation consultant came in and we worked with the babies, trying to get them to maintain a latch. She was so encouraging and gave me a plan to work with babies over the next few days. But my milk was slow to come in- as I’ve learned since then this can be caused by a number of factors- a c-section (check), prolonged bed rest (check-at this point I was on my eighth week of strict bed rest and my 14^th week of modified bed rest), prolonged use of terbutiline (check-at this point I was on my sixth week of Brethine); family history of diabetes (check)- and the girls just couldn’t seem to stay latched on. I kept trying at every feeding, but I was getting more and more concerned because we had to keep supplementing them with bottles of formula (initially, they were having a few problems maintaining their blood sugars) and I knew the risk of them developing a nipple preference that would be hard to reverse and my milk was not coming in. I remember taking a shower my second night there and just standing there . with the water washing over me and crying, not wanting to get out because I knew I would have to pump and I already hated it. Our third night there, I called the on call lactation nurse in the middle of the night and she came in and assessed what was going on and said “I think given your anatomy and the girls being a little premature, nursing is going to be very difficult for you.” I was so upset and wasn’t ready to hear what she was saying. So I kept working at it and went home trying to nurse at every feeding.

You know how in the hospital, they try and get you to write down every time the baby eats, how much or how long it eats, how often you change it, etc? And how then, when you get home, you reflexively keep doing it? Just like with your first baby, when they tell you “She needs to eat every three hours, minimum around the clock,” so you actually WAKE YOUR SLEEPING NEWBORN to feed her (second time moms assure me that you are never naïve enough to do the next time around). Well, being the compulsive, OCD type person I am, I wrote down how long E and L attempted to nurse, how much pumped milk they ate, how much formula we supplemented with and how much I pumped each time I pumped. Should you ever need to visit my archives, just give me a call and we’ll set it up. Looking back on it now, for six weeks, I fruitlessly attempted to breastfeed two babies at almost every feeding and I was pumping 8 times a day sometimes less than an ounce of milk total at each session. Again, since that time I’ve learned that to build a full milk supply for multiples most moms have to pump 10 to 16 times a day, rather than just 8 . By the end of my first week home, I had huge blisters because the girls had difficulty getting a good latch and was in a fair amount of pain. That second week home from the hospital, I remember sitting out on my front steps, crying in the dark and calling my friend Jenni to ask how long it was going to be this hard. The next day we had an outpatient lactation consult where they weighed E. and L. both before an after they nursed. In thirty minutes, neither baby got more than one third of an ounce. The LCs also diagnosed me with thrush, so I began treatment for that. We went back every two weeks until the girls were sixteen weeks old; by this time they were beginning to resist nursing- getting milk from their bottles was so much easier for them. At her best, neither baby got more than an ounce in a half an hour of nursing. It was around this time that I moved to trying to nurse them each once a day; they were pulling away and crying every time we tried and it was so sad for me and becoming so traumatic for them. At my last lactation consult, the LC finally said, after checking their latches “Your girls have really high arched palates. Normally, they would be less so by now; you might need to try occupational therapy for them if you want to get them to nurse.” Sometime in the week following that session, I really began to accept that this wasn’t something I could make happen by working at it- I could see from the blisters it left every time E or L tried to nurse. All of this time, I had been pumping to increase my milk supply so that when the girls learned to nurse, they would have something to eat and had finally reached an reasonable supply of milk, so I didn’t feel as much like I was pumping and getting nothing. So by 20 weeks, my milk reached its maximum, which provides about three fourths of the girls milk needs. So when the day came that they refused to latch on (at around five months) I had been pumping for so long and had worked so hard to get my milk supply up that I didn’t want to quit. Well, I did want to quit, but I felt stubbornly committed in a way I can’t explain even now.

Every mom has something that’s really important to her- co-sleeping or the baby sleeping in its own room, Avent versus Dr. Brown’s, staying at home or working, pacifier or thumb- and for me it was breastfeeding. And the funny thing is, whenever anyone tells me a story about the horrible things that happen to them and why they quit nursing or whatever, I feel a lot of compassion and DON’T think to myself, “well, you should have worked harder” or whatever. Frankly, I’m not sure why it is breastfeeding was that thing that was so important to me. I guess the most likely reason is that after everything- the endometriosis, the surgeries that didn’t help, the over 120 injections Rob and I had to give me for the IVF, the high risk pregnancy that no one I knew could really relate to, I just wanted my body to do its job. I wanted to have one thing that was kind of like what the other moms were getting to experience with their babies. I just wanted to be normal because I felt like it would be, on some psychological level or something, healing. Plus, I’ve read the repetitious first chapters of the breastfeeding book and know that it’s good for their immune systems, good for their tiny digestive systems, prevents premature graying in adulthood, bunions, male pattern baldness or whatever else they’re claiming right now. (And actually some of the better studies suggest that breastmilk in infancy any reduce the incidence of Type II diabetes in high risk populations, which, thanks to my family history the girls and I are). So anyway the girls are nine and a half months old and I pump five times a day to provide three quarters of the milk they eat each day. When Julie at alittlepregnant wrote about her experience with breastfeeding, she said something to the effect that she did everything she could. Not everything that could be done- but everything she could do. And that’s where I’m at about the whole thing. I did everything I knew to do to make nursing work. In retrospect, I might have pumped more often in the beginning to provide all of their milk, hired a lactation consultant to come to the house daily the first few weeks, taken the girls to infant occupational therapy to work on their latches, but really, I have to remind myself-I did everything I felt able do at the time. I’m sure other moms might have done more and that more could have been done, but it’s only in these last few weeks that I’ve been able to stop blaming myself for the fact that breastfeeding didn’t work out. I actually had to stop just now and change that last sentence from “the fact I failed to breastfeed.” I think that’s how I’ve viewed it, that it was some sort of personal failure on my part that I couldn’t breastfeed and that I’ve needed to be ashamed about it. Rob points out that when people ask if I’m nursing, I could probably just say yes and not treat them to a detailed description of what “kind of breastfeeding” means, but if this post proves anything, it’s that I don’t tend to be a person of few words. Anyway, that’s my breastfeeding story for posterity. I’ll keep you updated as this particular saga draws to a close.

(The picture is of L. trying on her crocodile Halloween costume the morning before. E. is sitting in her swing laughing, blissfully unaware that she, too, will soon be wearing a crocodile costume...)

E. and L.

I haven't blogged in so long, so these pictures are from October, when the girls were just six months old. It's crazy how small they look to me after just three months! E. is the one sleeping and L. is the one who is a little curly headed after her bath. The primary reason that I've been away so long is that I've been deluged by e-mails from friends from Oklahoma protesting my last post. No really, the reason I've been away is thank you notes. I had around 300 total to write over the course of the last year. I didn't do it while I was on bed rest, because I was on a dose of Brethine that made my hands shake and it looked illegible, like a 115 year old or three year writing. The first few months of having twins didn't turn out to be as conducive to writing notes as I had naively imagined. And I began to feel guilty (justifiably so, I think). My mom was of the opinion that I should just write two or three lines- "Dear _____, Thanks for the _____. I love it. Hope you're well. Love, Emily" I have a hard time doing that though. So many people took time out of their schedule and spent hard earned money to buy and send me and my daughters gifts and I am so overwhelmed and humbled by all the love that people have showered our family with. As a result, I want to send well thought out and heartfelt thank you notes to each person who made time and effort for me, especially as so many of you were so faithful to call and encourage me and pray for us while I was on bed rest . Anyway, I am finally done (much to my mom's relief). If you haven't already received it, it could be your thank you note is in the mail. Anyway, now that I have devoted the time I wanted to that task, I am committed to staying more up to date with my blogging.

Why My Children Are Being Raised As Hog Fans

I had a friend back in college who was at his dentist in his home town- in a different state than where we attended school- and it came up while he was in the chair that the university went to was in my hometown. His mouth was still wedged open and the dentist was wielding that hook thing to scrape my friend’s teeth when the dentist said an astonishing thing. He commented that he had been to Tulsa once and had seen Oral Roberts University and that it was, as Oral Roberts had intended, a beautiful picture of the heavenly city. This was troubling to my friend on a number of levels, but primarily because he had slightly higher hopes for the heavenly city. And I have to admit, I, too, will be disappointed if it turns out that heaven is entirely filled with early sixties, space age architecture and coated with a lot of fake gold. My parents live less than a mile from ORU, so I am forcibly reminded of this every time I am home to visit. For the most part though, I love my home town and would move back there in a heart beat; I have friends who have moved to larger cities and are always saying things like “ Well, here in ‘large city X’ we have great culture, fabulous shopping, the Cheesecake Factory, random gun crime, etc.” All of those things are true of Atlanta as well and I know I’ll miss those things when it comes time for us to leave here-but I love both Tulsa and the small city in Northwest Arkansas where my husband grew up and where we spent the fantastic first three years of our marriage. When acquaintances here ask where we’re from, I usually say that we’re from Arkansas unless they’re specifically interested in my background. All of this to say, I think of myself as from both states. And I’d love to move back to either one day (or, frankly, anywhere that preschool admissions aren’t competitive). Rob and I though, in the privacy of our home, have a little “whose state is cooler” competition. I would like to state for the record that I appreciate them both and that none of this would ever had come about had one member of the marriage not felt the need to mock the other’s when that person’s home state’s tourism department launched their “OklaCool” tourism campaign. And the fact is there was nothing I could say- OklaCool is a fundamentally, inexcusably bad and embarrassing slogan. The best I could come up with was mocking Arkansas as “the mental health state” because of the ironic fact that while the majority of Arkansans report they feel they would be “stigmatized” if they sought mental health care, Arkansas has the third strictest mental health licensing laws in the country- so the brave Arkansan who sought the help of a counselor would end up seeing someone well certified. Which I recognize is a totally weak insult; but, really, what could I say that could compete with OklaCool? The next best I could do was making fun of the Hog Call done at all University of Arkansas sporting events and routinely by people who did not actually attend the school- it sounds vaguely like a cult chant to me. Unfortunate, because (and I am sad to admit this to my hometown friends) because Rob calling the hogs in a soothing voice is one of the few things that makes both E. and L. laugh and, if they’re fussing while we drive, quiets them right down. Anyway, you can only imagine my delight a few weeks ago when, after the babies’ early morning feeding, I saw on CNN that Little Rock has recently decided to make its new motto “The Rock,” which calls to mind nothing so much as the ex-wrestler turned actor Dwayne Johnson (I get a lot of my news from E! Entertainment Television). It was perfect. I had just commenced my routine of systematically working “The Rock” into conversation when Rob e-mailed me an article about Oklahoma’s new literacy campaign “Ya’ll Read.” Clearly, this was meant to be self-deprecating fun for Oklahomans who actually can read, but naturally, the way it’s being portrayed in the national media, it makes us look like hicks. As if coming from Arkansas and Oklahoma doesn’t make that a difficult label to shed when you move elsewhere- even here in Georgia, where the governor is named Sonny. So anyway, the score is now 3-2 in Arkansas’s favor (ORU, OklaCool, Ya’ll Read versus the Hog Call and the Rock). So until Oklahoma can come through for me, I have to allow Robert to raise the girls as Razorbacks. Here they are in their Auburn game day outfits with their dad. (The whole family is excited about passing these onesies on to their new cousin who’s coming around the middle of June!)

Our Five Month Schedule

Since I’m using this blog to journal about the girls, I’m posting their schedule so that months from now I will be able to remember what this time was like. If you’re bored, feel free not to read it. Our day usually goes something like this: Sometime between 6:45 and 7:30am, we all wake up (usually L. first). It only really happens at 7:30 on a day that it’s very important that Rob or I am somewhere very early and are counting on the fact that the L. and E. always get up at 7 or earlier. Since I’m typically up at least once in the night to pump, Rob is most often the one who does their 7:00 feeding. Since they’re twins and, consequently, get a little less snuggling and individual time with us, I like to feed them one at a time so we get a little extra cuddling and one on one talking time. However, they have absolutely no patience with this early in the morning, so we put them in their Boppy pillows and sit between them and talk to them both while they’re being fed. L. has recently been experimenting with holding her own bottle, which has been fun to watch. I try and get an extra half hour of sleep. When they’re done eating, Rob gets me up and I shower and then pump and eat breakfast while I play with the girls. We change them out of their pajamas and into their daytime clothes. This is actually the time of day they are at their most fun- they smile and laugh a lot and their favorite morning activity is what we call “going to the gym” where they play in their Gymini (thanks, cousin Jamie!) They are least likely to regard tummy time as the cruel oppression that they believe it to be early in the morning, so while Rob gets ready, we do some of that. They’ve both been rolling (mostly front to back) really well during the past few weeks, so eventually they usually turn themselves over and put a stop to it all. About 8:45, I wrap them up in their blankets and lay one on each side of me on the couch to read a couple of pre-nap books. Right now, our favorite is The Belly Button Book by Sandra Boynton. I sing their nap time song for them and they roll in to rest their faces against my leg until they fall asleep. This nap usually lasts anywhere from one to two hours. I take this as an opportunity to sleep myself, which sometimes means my sleeping with whichever baby is in the pack and play in our room (which ever daughter goes down first gets put in their room). About half an hour before they wake up, I pump and get their lunch bottles ready. Sometime between 10 and 11, everyone gets up (again, usually L. first) and I feed them their lunch. Then it’s play time. Since it’s always exotically hot here in Atlanta, usually we’re inside having some blanket and toy time or sitting in our Bumbo seats reading and talking. Often, there is singing and dancing. When I first read in Weisbluth’s Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child that small babies had a hard time tolerating more than two hours of being awake until about six months, I assumed that it was a lie- but I believe it now. An hour and forty five minutes or so after they get up they start to get sleepy and cranky again. They are soooo much happier and fun to be around when we keep them on a schedule that ensures they’re only awake for a couple of hours before we try and put them down. So between 12:30 and 1, we read and they’re back down for their afternoon naps; this one only lasts about and hour or so. Keep in mind that when I say they “go down for a nap,” I mean that within a half an hour of each other they fall asleep- they seem to take turns waking up a fair amount still. I pump while they sleep; when circumstances permit, I also try and each lunch. Between 2 and 3 they are up again. They eat their 3:00 meal, have a diaper change and get ready for our big activity. This is the time of day we put on our sunglasses and go for a walk and do things outside. Or we go places like Target or anywhere that gets me out of the house. We’re back by 4 or so for their mini-cat nap, which usually lasts around 45 minutes and which I usually let them take lying beside my legs on the couch. Then it’s time for Rob to get home. He plays with E. and L. while I pump again. Then it’s time for baths, a massage and their 7:00 bottle and, finally, bed. We co-bed them in one of the cribs- during naps, when they sleep more lightly, they wake one another up, but at night it seems like they initially sleep better when they’re together. E. likes to roll over and lean her head on L.-it’s really sweet to see. They’ve been going down pretty well, but E. tends to wake up every 45 minutes or so until about nine. Every night, one of them, (and it’s usually someone different each time), wakes up in the middle of the night. She’ll go right back to sleep if we bring her to bed with us.
All the infant books say that we need to put them down sleepy but awake, but we have the hardest time doing that without a lot of crying. Our house is so small, that even with white noise machines, any amount of yelling wakes everyone up. If any of the moms out there have any advice for getting E. and L. to go to sleep without assistance from Rob and I while minimizing crying, I would love to hear it. Any non-moms opinions would be appreciated, too. An occasionally a baby sleeping with us is fine, but the fact is for people who are less than three feet tall, they take up a phenomenal amount of space, so I think co-sleeping is out. Rob and I are both tempted to sleep on the floor some nights when they try and come to bed with us. Any suggestions?

The Outcome

“It was good” is my short answer for “what was the outcome?” if the two babies I’m pushing in the stroller don’t make it abundantly obvious. It started out auspiciously- on August 8, the first day of the IVF cycle, my antral follicle count, the baseline number of eggs one has ready to mature in a given month was 16, which is perfect. So they started me out on a low dose of stimulation drugs. Things went a little less well from there. The birth control pills and lupron had shut down my body so well that I was over-suppressed, so the doctor keep ratcheting my dose of the Gonal-F until I was taking the maximum acceptable dose. Every morning when I went in for my ultrasound and blood work, there was the constant speculation about whether or not they would cancel the whole cycle. Thankfully, the night of my 14th day of stims, I got the go-ahead that they would do the egg retrieval on Monday. They retrieved 10 eggs, 8 were mature, the embryologist fertilized 3 and all 3 survived to transfer. And that began our anxious 12 days. I’ll skip over that part, because it was, well, anxiety-provoking and not a little depressing.
But on September 6, after the longest day of work EVER-- my poor clients- God help whoever was hoping that I could focus enough to help them save their marriage THAT day- we finally got the call that we waiting for. We were sitting on our couch, watching the movie Love Actually that my wonderful cul-de-sac friends from college had sent as part of my in vitro support kit, when the phone rang. It was Lynn, the nurse that had been our nurse and contact person daily the whole cycle. She asked if Rob was there, so my heart sank- I thought she might want him there because she was going to give me bad news. So he picked up the other phone and she told us “Congratulations!! You’re pregnant!” I asked her if she was kidding and she said that she typically didn’t joke with the IVF patients. That’s when I burst into the hysterical crying and said something about it having been so long. I asked about the hCG number and she told me it was 269.3, and they liked to see it about 50, which was our first inkling that there might be more than one baby. Then we sat, stunned for a few minutes and started making a few calls. My sister, Erin, was the first person we told. We had community group that night, so we left early for it, so we could walk the nature trail near our house and process everything. The men and women were meeting separately that night, so we both got to tell the groups of people who had praying for us and had organized the 48 hour of prayer after our embryo transfer. It was an incredible night.
Later that week, my hCG had more than doubled, which was our second inkling there might be more than one baby on the way. Two weeks later, we had our first ultrasound and saw both of their beautiful, blinky little heartbeats. It only took about another twenty weeks for us to believe that they were really coming.
Two weeks ago, on the 6th, we loaded up our two live, take home babies- E. rode in the Bjorn with Rob and I wore L. in my wrap sling and we hiked the nature trail again. This time last year we had no idea how wonderful this would be and I don’t think after everything, either of us had the ability to hope or imagine that we would finally, really, get to be parents.
And as it turned out, the whole world figured out what was going on with Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, who as near as I can calculate, got pregnant two weeks after we did. Somehow, I feel like it was a lot less of a hassle for them.