Still Posting

I'm still posting at my new blog, so if you're wondering where I am... I'm over there, and you're missing all the fun. Email me for the new URL!

Are You Missing All the Fun?

I've got two new posts up at the new blog. Are you missing all the fun? Do you have the new URL? I'm not cross-posting anymore, now that NCLM is over, so email me for the new URL. You don't have to "apply", there are no special requirements. Just ask and ye shall receive!

9 month appointment

Note: My blog has moved! This might be the last post I post directly in this blog as NCLM ends tomorrow, and that's the main reason for my cross-posting. If you would like the new URL, please email me. There is no criteria for getting the new URL... I am handing it out willy-nilly, I just don't want to post it directly. Also, Mel has it posted on the June 12 edition of the Lost and Found Connections Abound page for those of you who wrote to me and said you couldn't find it on the lost and found page. So do EMAIL ME for the new URL if you haven't already. My goal is to NOT lose a single lurker!

Can you believe my babies turned 9 months last week? They definitely did not ask my permission to get all growed up!

They've changed so much in the short time that I've been entrusted with their little lives - they're not the fragile little beings that once rested in tiny little incubators, covered in tubes and wires. The noise I hear around them isn't the beeping of their monitors anymore, it's the gleeful squeals and happy giggles and excited babbling of healthy 9 month olds (7mos adjusted).
They are regular little people now, and it's just fabulous. They are doing all kinds of baby-things. They are doing the combat-style crawling that babies do where they aren't doing hands-and-knees crawling just yet. Abby and Sam will get up on their knees and rock:

(for some reason, I can't get the YouTube video to properly embed here... the direct link is http://youtube.com/watch?v=eALdKd51RrM .... now it seems to be working, but I'm leaving the direct link here just in case!)

What else? Oh! They're finally all on their charts! Their relevant stats are:

Sam: 18 lb, 14 oz (25th %ile); 27.5 inches long (25th %ile)

Eliana: 17 lb, 11 oz (30th %ile), 27 inches long (32nd %ile)

Abby: 16 lb, 10 oz (15th %ile), 26.75 inches long (24th %ile)

Between them, they have 8 teeth. Abby got her first two teeth about a month ago (on the bottom). Sam got his first two about two weeks ago. Ellie finally sprouted her first two on Friday. Sam and Abby both surprised me on Saturday by sprouting a top tooth as well. They are dangerous!

All in all, the 9 month check up went quite well. Dr. B said he was impressed with them and impressed with me. I am not certain what he meant by that, but it was nice to hear anyway. My babies certainly ARE impressive. They are doing really well and doing all the right things. They're a little behind in where he'd like to see them with feeding skills and fine motor coordination (their feeding skills would be better if their fine motor skills were better), but this is not surprising given their prematurity.

When I was describing what each one was doing and what each baby was like, I said very clearly, "You should never label your children, particularly when you have multiples. Ellie's the good one." He laughed. :) I told him that I have very easy babies and that it was about time... I've paid my dues with J (I adore J, of course, but low maintenance, he is NOT). He said not only did I pay my dues with J, I more than paid my dues with the early days of triplet parenthood. I guess I never really thought of it that way, but he reminded me that I had a longer-than average stay in the NICU for 33 week triplets, worked hard to breastfeed them (or, in Abby's case at least provide her with breastmilk), had Ellie on a heart monitor for 45 days after coming home and then shortly after that had to start dealing with bi-weekly visits to the doctor for her failure to thrive.

Honestly, at the time, I never really thought of it as anything other than what I had to do. Looking back, I see how far we've come and I'm so grateful that I was discussing three perfectly healthy, happy, developing babies with him. Really? What more could I ask for?

Okay, I mean, I could ask for 26 hour days and five MILLION dollars, but that would just be greedy, considering the four amazing children I have.

Date Night Interrupted

Note: My blog has moved! Email me for the new URL! I'll be crossposting for another week or so, but this is getting tedious... after that, I'm outta here and you'll have to be reading at the new blog.

Wednesday night, Seth and I tried to go on a "date".  We haven't been to a movie together since 2006,  before I got pregnant the first time, even, and it was high time.  So we kept trying to find a date to go, and we almost went two weeks ago, but ran out of time to make it happen (Seth was leaving for Texas the next morning and time was just too tight), so finally we said, "We don't have the time to go, but we're going."  Unfortunately, it turned out that the night that we'd set our foot (feet?) down and said "we're going no matter what!" was also a night that Seth was on call with the hospital.  Dumb, dumb, dumb. 

Seth brought me flowers and everything.  It was going to be a real date night.  The babies were asleep when we left the house, and my mother stayed with Julian, so we were home free.  Except as we stepped out of the car in the parking garage, Seth's pager went off.  Someone was calling out for the next morning's shift.  Normally, he would have taken the next 20 minutes to find someone to cover the shift, but since he didn't want to miss the beginning of the movie, he decided he would just cover the shift himself... an 0630 shift.  Ugh.  No big deal.  We were still out for our date night.  Life was good.

We got settled in to the movie, just in time for the previews (missed part of at least one, but that's okay).  And we were enjoying the movie when Seth's pager went off again about 35-45 minutes in.  Just as it was getting good.  A few minutes later, Seth popped back in  and said, "I'm sorry, there's an actual emergency, I'm going to be a while," grabbed his back pack and walked back out.  An hour later, he returned in time for the last, oh, ten minutes of the movie.

A woman was being transferred to his hospital who was 32 weeks pregnant with active malaria and the pharmacy dept. didn't have in stock the drug that the ID department wanted her to use that would be safest for the baby.  So he spent that hour trying to track down some of the drug to borrow from another hospital.  At least it was for a good cause.  Poor Seth... HE was the one who had picked out the movie! 

Ah well. He apologized for ruining the evening. Didn't ruin MY evening. After all, I got to see the whole movie!

Not Cross Posting This One

I've got a new post at the new blog... but I'm not super-comfortable cross posting this one. So if you haven't emailed me for the new URL yet... now's the time, or check the Thursday, June 12 edition of the Lost and Found, if you know where to find that.

Remember, there's no special criteria, application, or prerequisites for getting my new blog URL. I just don't want to post a direct link here at this time. So all you have to do is email a quick one-liner asking for the URL and it's yours. Of course, you're welcome to also tell me more about yourself, as many have done... I love to hear about who you are or how you found me, or what your story is and why you're interested in li'l ol' me. But a one-liner will also do, if you're too shy to tell me more. I've gotten about 150 emails asking for the URL, and I've responded to all of them. If you haven't received a response from me, then it probably got bounced back to me. If you have an MSN account... for some reason, they're bouncing back to me, so try emailing me from a different account!

Time Passes

Note: My blog has moved! I am cross-posting until the end of June as reliably as I can remember to, but please email me for the new URL! You don't have to have any special "qualifications" to get the new URL, I'm giving it out freely, I just don't want to post it. Also, Mel has it posted in the Lost and Found, because she rocks.

This evening, my husband went to shul to say Kaddish (the mourner's prayer) for his father at Mincha (the afternoon prayer service, which must be said before Sundown). At Ma'ariv (the evening service, which follows Mincha), Seth was no longer obligated to say Kaddish (though he'll still say it on the yarzheit, of course). Eleven months have passed since his father died last summer. Eleven months ago I was about to go on full bed rest trying to keep contractions at bay, trying to keep my shortening cervix from giving out. Eleven months ago I wasn't sure whether all three of my babies would make it into the world, let alone healthy and thriving. Eleven months ago, we didn't know that my father in law would never meet his grandchildren. Eleven months ago I didn't realize how quickly time would pass.

A month later, I was in the hospital afraid I was in labor all too soon. Later that day, I was getting my terbutaline pump set up, and I was helping my husband register the news that his father had died. It was one of the worst days of our lives, but thankfully, those babies stayed inside that day, and many days after.

Eleven months my husband has been saying Kaddish. It's hard to believe.

Meanwhile, Trilcat inspired me today, though I'm not sure whether she intended to. But she made me realize today that my I've been feeling overwhelmed by the simple act of making Shabbos dinner, and it's been intimidating me more than it should. So tomorrow, in honor of the fact that my husband is no longer saying Kaddish, we are having guests for Shabbos dinner. And tonight I made baked gefilte fish, chicken, broccoli kugel, and sauteed summer squash. Tomorrow I'll make rice and salad and it will be a lovely Shabbos meal. Maybe not *quite* up to my former standard, but you know? I didn't used to be the mother of triplets plus one, so sometimes our standards have to evolve, right?

Time passes and life moves on. Eleven months ago I had no idea how happy I could be today. I had no idea how full my life would be and how capable I would feel.

The Light Shines Brighter

NOTE: MY BLOG HAS MOVED! Remember to email me for the new URL. I will be cross posting to this blog until close to the end of June, but then I'll be phasing out this blog. If you don't have the new URL, please email me and I'll send you the new URL

Sam has now slept through the night seven days in a row.  Abby, while still waking up in the middle of the night, usually does have a six-to-eight hour stretch somewhere in the night (problem is, she goes to bed at 6:30, so that doesn't help US much!).  Yes, I get that, medically speaking, six hours is sleeping through the night, but practically speaking if she goes to bed at 6:30, wakes up at 12:30am and then proceeds to wake up every three hours, that may be sleeping through the night, but it really doesn't help us much, does it?  What is more common is that she wakes up around 11pm and 4am, which I can live with. 

I prefer it, though, when she sleeps through her 11pm feed which she used to do regularly, and I'm not sure why she reverted.

That being said, I will not ignore my baby's hungry cries.  Particularly Abby's.  She has been on a ridiculous hunger strike ever since we introduced solids.  The only thing she'll eat is yogurt, but she turns her nose up at all other food, and doesn't even enjoy bottles of mommy's milk anymore.  She fights mealtime like it's pure torture, and I don't get it.  Poor kiddo.  When I took her to the doctor to get checked, she was, fortunately, still on a perfect growth curve, despite only taking in about 400 calories per day (compared to her brother and sister who take in closer to 800-900 per day!).

Before you all get on me about various methods of sleep training, the pediatrician agreed with me that she's not taking in enough during the day to ignore her at night.  She simply needs more calories and if she's waking up at night to eat, we must feed her.  Furthermore, she's not a baby who can be force-fed during the day to make up for what she's not taking in.  She screams bloody murder if you try to force food into her (whether it's bottles or solids).    No sense in forcing my baby to cry. 

Still, we can see that light shining brighter at the end of the tunnel.  But careful what you wish for, because my bed is empty and I feel the emptiness so clearly now.  Just as my arms used to be heavy with the emptiness of infertility and the babies I wished would fill them... now my arms are empty in the middle of night as I reach for my Sammy, who used to snuggle with me all night as he went on his all-night-all-you-can-eat mama-buffet binges.  Are those a thing of the past?  Will I never again get to snuggle with my snuggle monster?  Is my bonding time done?  *Gasp*  Where has the time gone?  Did I forget to savor every single moment?  What will I do without him??

I Need a Cape

**First, some Housekeeping**
My Blog HAS MOVED! If you haven't gotten an email from me with the new URL, it's either because you didn't email me for the new URL, or because I tried to email you and your email bounced back to me. So email me (my email address is RIGHT THERE in my sidebar!) and ask for my new URL. You don't have to be an infertile myrtle, or a triplet mama, or a mama at all. You don't have to "qualify". Just shoot me a quick email for the URL. Failing that, keep an eye out at Mel's Lost and Found and wait for her to announce the new URL.

Don't be shy! I'm not moving to avoid YOU! I love you! Keep reading! I've been positively overwhelmed with the number of emails I've received over the last several days in response to my announcement that I'm picking up and moving. I've heard from over 100 people who I didn't even know were reading my blog. Some people just shot me a quick one-liner (e.g. "Hey, send me the new link, thanks!") and others told me their whole infertility history. I loved every single one of the emails. I tried to write back to everyone personally, though toward the end, I'm afraid I may have missed a few. But you all are astounding women and I am humbled to walk among you.

I will continue cross-posting here at blogspot until at least NCLM is done and so that any stragglers get the opportunity to move along with me. But after that, I'll be trying to figure out how to move my archives over to typepad and probably eventually shutting down this blog all together.

Please do not assume that I have your email and that I'll proactively email you. I had a huge computer crash back in January and replaced my dying little macintosh with a PC and have never figured out how to transfer over my email files and address book, so I'm without a lot of my old email addresses. I'm also busier than I've ever been, so proactive isn't my middle name anymore. I'm happy to respond to your emails asking me for the URL, but I can't promise that I'll think to email you first!

**End Housekeeping**

When people hear I have triplets, before they even hear I also have a four year old, they immediately say, "Wow, you must be SuperMama."  My response is always the same, "Nope, not SuperMama, just AdequateMama."  Some days are better than others.  I'm not perfect, but I do my best.  But there are days that I even impress myself. 

This morning, Seth had to go out to check the eruv, and left me at home with J and the babies.  J, happily, was entranced by the electronic babysitter, er, the idiot box, um, an educational video, a Disney DVD.    Suddenly, my three completely happy, peaceful babies started HOWLING.  It was still a little shy of breakfast time (about 15-20 minutes early, but in the ballpark), but it was clear that for whatever reason, they were all starving.  Normally if I'm home I do not feed Ellie and Sam bottles.  I nurse them exclusively while I'm home.  But with all three of them screaming, and the potential for J to start becoming needy at any moment as well, I realized that desperate times called for desperate measures.  So I went and prepared bottles for all three babies and returned, bottles and boppies in hand.

However, this still led me to a conundrum.  As Keira pointed out in an email to me recently, we MoM's (Mothers of Multiples) are not Octopuses, yet we have to be sometimes.  This was one of those times.  I don't bottle prop*.  I have never bottle propped.  Once, in my pediatrician's office, the nurse "helpfully" propped one of my babies' bottles and I was furious.  That was the one and only time that my babies have had propped botles.  So since I don't prop bottles and I'm not an octopus, how was I going to feed three screaming babies?  After all, the whole reason I wasn't nursing Sam and Ellie was because I had three screaming mouths to feed. 

But necessity, as you know, is the mother of all invention, and MoMs are resourceful and creative, if nothing else.  I put each baby in a boppy and put a bottle in each of their mouths.  At first I held one bottle with my left hand, stabilized the next bottle (the middle baby) with my forearm and held the third bottle with my right hand.  But Sam was not happy and was squirmy and screaming, while the girls were calming down, so it was clear that he needed some extra TLC.  I picked him up and held him in my arms and held the bottle in my left hand.  I moved Ellie over to my right side and held her bottle in with my right hand.  This left poor Abby.  None of my babies is coordinated enough to hold their own bottle in their mouth for an extended period of time (more than a few seconds), so that was no good.  Something had to be done.

And so, resourceful MoM that I am... I held Abby's bottle in with ...  my foot. 

I do wish I'd gotten a picture of this ridiculous sight, but of course if there had been anyone around to take a picture, then I would not have needed to have done anything so ridiculous!

So I may not be quite a DC or Marvel Comics-worthy superhero, but I do leap tall buildings in a single bound.  I think I need a cape.  And a sidekick. 

------------------
*Please note I have no issue with people who do bottle prop, but it's one of the things that I felt very strongly about with my triplets.  I was told constantly before they were born that I would never be able to breastfeed (hah!), that I would never be able to feed them individually (Sunday's incident was one of only maybe three similar incidents in which all three babies were starving at the same exact instant that I can remember in the entire seven + months that we've had the triplets home... we have them fairly well trained to eat in rotation), that I would have to bottle prop, that I would have to do all of these things like it or not.  Since research shows that bottle fed babies are already held less than breastfed babies, it was very important to me that Abby (who cannot nurse) is held for her feedings with rare exception.  Bottle propping only discourages holding the babies during feedings.  I recognize that with multiples, particularly higher order multiples like mine and others, you simply do what you have to do to survive.  Therefore, I'm merely presenting what my parenting philosophy was, without judgment on what anyone else does, did, or did not do.  If bottle propping, podee bottles, or similar things is what kept another MoM sane, then by all means, I encourage it.  For me, it would have driven me further from sanity, so it was not a good option for me.

Official Notice

It's official, I'm setting up a new blog. Once I've got it all set up and pretty, I'll let you know the logistics of how to find it. I'm not going to leave a direct link here for how to find it, but I'll have Mel post the direct link in the Lost and Found. You can also email me directly for the link. If you're an anonymous lurker (one of my AWESOME ONES!) I hope you'll still email me for the link or find me over at Mel's. I love you guys and I don't want to lose you. I promise to lose your email address and forget who you are immediately... I've got so much else going on in my life, I wouldn't be able to remember anyway.

Anyway, I had two incidents happen recently (which had nothing to do with the anonymous commenting sh*tstorm of a couple days ago, though that didn't help matters) which just pushed things over the edge. I'd say what those incidents were, but it would just lead to hurt feelings and there's really no point in that, now is there.

In the meantime, here's some news:

Sam-man: He has a tooth. His opthalmology appointment went well - we'll keep an eye on it (no pun intended) and he'll go back in six months. He's seriously mobile, though he still can't sit up. It's not true crawling, but we're not far from that.

Ellie-bean: She is still toothless (thank HEAVENS...she bites me while nursing even WTHOUT teeth). She sits really nicely and is also seriously mobile - again, not true crawling, but that's not far away.

Abba-dabba: Still has two teeth. She is the least mobile, but not because she's not capable of it... just because she is more content to sit and play with a toy. She is starting to have some serious stranger anxiety, poor thing.

And that's it for now.

Nakedness and New Days

Well, I sure did just let it all hang out there yesterday, didn't I?? And I sure did break all the rules of no excessive cursing in my blog and no going off the deep end publicly and all that. Heh. That being said, I'm not sorry about it. My blog has never been a place where I cover up the truth of my life. I don't hide the pain of infertility, the frustrations or joys of triplet pregnancy or the rollercoaster nature of parenting four children after infertility. That's not in my nature. No, anonymous, I don't need anger management. My blog suffices as my means to letting out the steam on the few occasions when I need to. And now I feel better. But thank you for the well-intentioned, surely constructive, meaningful suggestion. I'm certain you had nothing but my best interests at heart. You'll be happy to know that I took my blood pressure this morning (I have a freakish paranoia about my blood pressure...I always have, despite having freakishly low blood pressure) and it was its usual 90/54, so I haven't done myself any permanent damage with my little freak out.

But aside from feeling naked from letting it all hang out there, I also feel naked because I am without any wedding/engagement rings this week. Yesterday I washed my hands, turned around to get a paper towel and my rings flew off across the bathroom. It took me a few minutes to find them both, and I decided it was time to stop procrastinating and take them to be re-sized. So I dropped them by the jeweler at lunch time to be re-sized. I have gone from a size 7 1/2 ring size on my left ring finger to a size 6. And that's only because my knuckle is still huge. Once past my knuckle, the ring will still be loose around my finger.

This triplet diet thing? It really works. You may recall that I lost about thirty pounds WHILE pregnant with the triplets. And I've lost a lot of weight since then. This was me shortly before I got pregnant the first time and then a more recent picture...
Then:


Nowish:


Clearly, I still have some pounds to lose, but I have a lot less to lose than I used to, that's for sure.

In other news, today is a glorious day! Last night all three babies slept through the night! Abby slept from 9:30ish to 5am; Sam slept from 7pm to 5am (he woke up at 10pm, but went back to sleep on his own); Sweet, predictable Ellie slept from 6:30pm until we woke her up for breakfast at 5:30am! That meant I got an entire four, count 'em, FOUR uninterrupted hours of sleep! I can almost SEE the light at the end of the tunnel:


(Seth got even more sleep than me because he was asleep before me) Hooray! Here's hoping our little ones sleep through the night TONIGHT while Seth's out of town! :) Wouldn't that be nice?

And LIFE IS GOOD! Today is a new day. I left smiley happy children today who were happily chomping on graham crackers when I left...all four of them. A good day.

Some Helpful Suggestions and One Asshole

Thanks for listening to my venting in my last post. I actually feel much better now. My MIL picked up J from school today, which enabled Seth to go to BJs and the grocery for me. Another friend stopped at the kosher butcher and picked up chicken and ground beef for me. My mother called randomly and told me she'd be willing to take J to school Thursday morning to help me out while Seth was out of town. I got a LOT of baby food made tonight (and you know what? It was SO YUMMY). Slowly, the pieces fell into place.

A lot of you had some good suggestions. For example:

Use grocery delivery services (e.g. Peapod)
This is a good suggestion, and one that I've used in the past. It's not a fool-proof suggestion, though. The limiting factor for me is that I keep kosher and I can't get all of my kosher products from delivery services. I can't get any kosher cheese, meat, or specialty items. I can get produce, paper goods (when available), and some commercially available products (though the online selection of kosher products is never as good as the in-store selection). That's not to say it's not a useful suggestion, it just has to go hand in hand with others as well. I also happen to suck at getting myself organized enough to get orders submitted in time for when I need them... but that's another story and something for me to work on.

Your babies really don't need much, if any, solid food right now. Give them some bits and pieces to nibble on if you get the chance while J is eating (bits of ripe pear, banana, avocado, steamed broccoli if you have the time to make it, steamed carrot, rice cakes spread with philly, toast etc.). They get enough nutrition from milk, and they will be learning to feed themselves. See www.babyledweaning.co.uk for more info
I'm actually a big believer in baby-led weaning. Er, I just haven't managed to implement it in my own life. Heh. The babies and J don't eat at the same time, so that doesn't work SO well, but it's all good. The babies DO eat little bits of our food when they're at the table when we're eating and they enjoy it, but they also REALLY love their purees, especially the chicken and broccoli (which I leave a little chunky for them). Fortunately, I did get a lot of food made tonight and it's in the freezer so it will last for a while.

Follow up to previous suggestion...
If you really want to feed them purees, buy jars. It's ridiculous that you are adding making purees onto your life. If the UK has places that will deliver organic baby meals, I would bet my life the US does too.
Again, the limiting factor here is the keeping kosher bit. Kosher jarred baby food is pretty limited to just a few kinds. As for delivered organic baby meals... not kosher ones. Still, I have to say, some of the most relaxing time I have these days is the time I spend making food for the babies. It really DOESN'T take that much time, and it gives me time that I can spend chatting with friends while I'm cooking the food. Pureeing takes seconds once the food is cooked. I feel such a sense of accomplishment once all is said and done that it's something I'm loathe to give up.

For heavens sake don't tidy up for your cleaner. She can tidy herself, or just clean around the mess.
Most weeks, I'm more satisfied if I can get rid of some of the clutter before she arrives, but this week, I WHOLEHEARTEDLY AGREE WITH YOU. You are 100% correct.

can't the nanny make up the bottles herself?
Oh, she could. But it's a holdover from when Ellie's bottles were all complicated with the fortified calories. I've only JUST weaned Ellie from the fortified bottles, so I'm used to being a bit of a control freak about that. It was too complicated before. But you're right. It's probably time to just remember that I can give up some control in the world.

Does the four-year-old often fight with you about eating, or might this be a request for attention? Perhaps some extended, special one-on-one, just for fun time with him in future weeks would help.
It's both normal and a cry for attention. J has a whole set of his own issues. We got him when he was a year old. He's got a whole host of issues that were present probably long before we got him, poor kid. I have a whole post a-brewin' about what's been going on with him. We had a classroom consult done for him recently by an OT/Behavioral Specialist and are now working with a developmental pediatrician to decide how best to address his issues. He definitely DOES need some special one-on-one time, which we do try to fit in for him... he gets lots of individual attention from his grandmothers who each take him out (JUST him), and a fair bit from Seth, but I need to work on taking him out by himself also, because he doesn't get a lot of one-on-one time with me. That being said, the tantrums, fits of rage, sensory issues, attention problems... those were all present before the triplets were conceived, before they were delivered, before they came home, and before they started interfering with his world. They certainly don't make things better, though, do they?

******

Those were some of the helpful suggestions. Now I'm going to start cursing, so if you don't want to hear (read?) cursing, um, stop reading? Because after all these lovely helpful suggestions, there was, of course, one obligatory asshole. An anonymous one. And before you go telling me to turn off anonymous comments, I will NOT do it. As I've said before, I've got several regular anonymous commenters (whom I recognize from content and writing style) that I love and I'd hate to lose them. The vast majority of my anonymous commenters are awesome. They are a good part of why I won't go password protected, also.

So, before I get to the asshole, I'd first like to thank the subsequent anonymous commenter, who totally rocked my world when she (I'm assuming she, but I suppose it could be he) wrote, "Hey Anonymous at 8:46, stop giving us Anonymouses a bad name!"

And on to the asshole, oh Anonymous at 8:46. I'll take your comments one at a time so that I can address them each, individually, with complete fairness, and with all the respect they deserve, and then some.

Why don't you sleep instead of taking all this time to type this all out?
My point of the post wasn't so much that I was sleep deprived, but rather that I was (am) facing a rather hellish week. Yes, I'm sleep deprived, but that's not really my issue. Furthermore, I posted this post at 9:15 in the morning. I was at work. I wrote it while I was on a break pumping, if you must know, so I was multitasking. I can't exactly sleep in the lactation room at work, but I CAN type. I didn't have any work that I could be doing in there, so getting a little personal stress out so that I could work effectively the rest of the day seemed like a good idea at the time. Come to think of it, it still seems like a good idea. It's certainly not like I do it every day. I don't even post every day. Also, I type about 85 words per minute, so it's not like it's all that difficult to type something out. And, for the record, if you're wondering why I'm not sleeping now, instead of typing this out now, I'm pumping. Again. That's what I DO.

Why are you paying for a Nanny and a housekeeper if you say you can't afford groceries?
I pay for a nanny because I go to work every day. Full time. A nanny is cheaper than day care for three infants. I've done the math. I make more money than my nanny makes. I've got several posts in my archives about the financial sense of paying for a nanny. I will not repeat them here. If you don't like it, screw you. I don't have a housekeeper. I have a cleaning lady. There is a fundamental difference between the two, actually. A housekeeper implies someone who is here much more full-time. My cleaning lady is here once per week for less than 2 hours. Why am I paying her? Because I have four children and a full time job. I don't pay her very much, but there are only so many hours in the day. I didn't explicitly say I couldn't afford groceries. I said I didn't know how I was going to pay for them. I'm splitting hairs now, but bear with me a minute. The point is I'm stressed about money. But so what? FIND ME SOMEONE WHO ISN'T STRESSED ABOUT MONEY SOMETIMES. Seriously. Screw you for judging me based on one off-the-cuff comment. You have no idea what my financial situation is. I'm not sitting around my house eating bon bons and watching television whilst I have my household help take care of my children and clean up my bon bon wrappers as I drop them on the floor. No one is peeling my grapes for me. I have someone come in to clean the floors and the bathrooms in my spacious mansion modest house, because there just isn't enough time left to do it all. I do believe I said quite clearly I'm NOT supermom.

Don't you think J is acting out because of the triplets?
No, I don't think that's it at all. I think if you knew anything about J, you wouldn't ask any such thing. I think ANY child would act out with the addition of a sibling and certainly with the addition of three siblings and to a certain degree, J did that in the beginning. But that's not what's going on in this case, in terms of what I was trying to illustrate in my previous post. As I said above, J comes with his own set of issues, and they are issues that were present long before I was pregnant at all, let alone pregnant with triplets. Long before the triplets came and turned his life upside down. J is at his calmest around the babies. I don't want to give anyone the wrong impression about him either... he is one of the most loving, affectionate, sweet, giving children you will ever meet. But he also needs so much help. And we're GETTING him that help. We're WORKING with him. But when you have a child who perceives true physical pain just from putting on a pair of socks, a child who will SCREAM in true AGONY because he feels THAT level of pain from the sock when he's having one of "those" days (and you can't predict when one of "those" days will happen), you know that child needs help. When you have a four and a half year old who has been abandoned by his mother and is now so anxious anytime anyone leaves the house and forgets to say goodbye (even if it's just, say, a repairman or someone who wouldn't know better) that he becomes inconsolable for a ridiculous period of time.... you simply CANNOT blame that on the triplets. But you went and made a snap decision. You sat there with your armchair psychology and made assumptions based on very little knowledge of the actual specifics of our situation, didn't you? You just don't have a clue what this poor child deals with every day, but you just MUST know what you're talking about, musn't you, because you have the luxury of not living with whatever he has to live with. Well, WE are the ones who live with him and help him and love him and hold him and hug him and cry with him and laugh with him and giggle with him and tickle him and find the ways out of the scary places he finds himself in. WE are the ones who have worked through so many problems already. WE are the ones working with doctors and OTs and therapists for him. NOT YOU. So bugger off and stop acting like you have a cluestick, you dimkwit.

I think in a previous post, you said you wanted more children. Maybe you should re-think this because from what you have stated I don't think it would be wise financially or emotionally.
And this, you little shit, THIS is where you started me on my cursing, ranting, raving madness tonight. I'm sure my venting session right now is only adding fuel to your fire in terms of your belief that I'm too emotionally unstable to have more children, but you know the best part? YOUR OPINION DOESN'T MATTER!

Here's the thing: In the past 8 months, have you EVER known me to post a post in which I've been THIS overwhelmed? I don't think so. And did I not EXPLICITLY STATE that I generally am "very, very good at keeping everything together. I don't get stressed out. I don't get overwhelmed. I handle things with grace and ease, MOST of the time." ??? Was I not clear that it was simply all the shit that I have to deal with THIS week that was overwhelming me?

And what the hell? Find me ANYONE who would NOT be overwhelmed with this week. Find me ONE PARENT who has NEVER been overwhelmed a SINGLE DAY of their parenthood. Oh, you'll find parents who CLAIM never to have been overwhelmed, but they're lying. You'll find parents who will never write down in a blog that they're overwhelmed, for sure. But you'll NEVER find a parent who has never a single day in their entire parenting lives felt overwhelmed.

Today, I felt overwhelmed. And writing that last post was part of what I needed to put it into perspective. I felt a little better getting it all out there. You know why? I wrote it down, read it, realized that I'd only written down about a QUARTER of what was going on this week and thought to myself, "Okay, Karen, you are COMPLETELY justified in feeling overwhelmed. Now what are you going to do about it?" And then I got myself together and made it happen. And now the rest of the week looks a lot better and I know it won't be a problem and I'm NOT overwhelmed anymore. I'm honestly looking forward to it.

There isn't a single day that I'm not grateful for my children, all four of them. There also isn't a single day that I don't wish for another. I long for another child just as much today as I did before. The pain of infertility is still fresh in my mind. My arms are finally full of babies, in a way I never expected, nor dreamt of, but that doesn't mean I have to be done. I have so much love to give the babies that I do have and so much love to give the babies I don't have. And I'll have as many children as I am able to. Maybe that means I won't have any more. I don't know. But I sure hope that's not the case.

Before I go to bed each night, I look into each one of my babies' cribs (they all in their own crib now!), and also into J's room, and I think about what each one of them did to make me smile that day. It's always something different. Today Sam tried his darndest to crawl, and he almost did it. He also ate five graham cracker halves at the park (my nanny even got it on video on her cell phone for me) like a little piggie and wouldn't eat his dinner because of it. Ellie gave me such HUGE smiles this morning at breakfast time. She was so happy and smiley and cuddly. She smiles for everyone, but for the first time today, she showed a little bit of stranger anxiety, which makes me tear up a little - another developmental milestone that she's showing signs of reaching - a bittersweat moment for me, but one worth a smile from me. And sweet Abby with her two toofuses. She had such a great belly laugh today. And she LOVED those graham crackers today, also! I never would have thought to give them graham crackers yet (another nanny in the park - our old nanny for J, actually - gave them to them), but Seth picked some up at the grocery today. Abby was so sweet and giggly and she chewed with such excitement on her new teething ring today. She's definitely Dracula! And J? Sweet J. Tonight he wanted pasta (he has a tendency to want "second dinner" as a stall tactic at bedtime), so I re-heated some pasta that was leftover from last night. He ate the pasta and said it was yummy and he came into the kitchen and said, "Oh Eema, do you know what I'm going to give you for making me this yummy pasta? I'm going to give you this nice hug!" And he did. He gave me a great big bear hug, and it was perfect.

Some days are overwhelming. Every single day is 100% worth it. My kids... all FOUR of them... are amazing.

frustrated

Feeling frustrated, whiny, overwhelmed, and unsure of myself lately. Tired of being called supermom because I'm not sure I'm living up to the expectation anymore. I'm not even sure how to write about what's going on. I feel like I really need to buy this magnet, though:

Story of my life, the damn thing is sold out.

This week is going to be hell. H - E - Double - Hockey - Sticks - HELL.

Yesterday wasn't so bad, just the usual, get up, feed babies, feed more babies, get dressed, change diapers, fight with J to get him dressed and ready to go, go to work (Seth took J to school), work all day, pick up J from school, go home, feed babies, while trying to make J dinner, fight with J to eat dinner, juggle three screaming babies, feed three babies again (they eat a small amount of solid food for dinner, but if I want them to actually SLEEP at night for any length of time, they also have to be nursed/have a bottle afterward... they aren't to the point where solid food is REPLACING milk as food, they just won't take enough in yet), put three babies to bed, try to calm J down, coordinate with Seth (who has now arrived home) to get J fed (because he wouldn't eat when it was just me juggling all four kids), coordinate with babysitter to get her to my house (she's now called four times for directions), skip board meeting I'm supposed to be at because J is going ape-shit and I can't leave him with babysitter for that long, run two errands closer to home than board meeting, come home, fight with J to get him into bed, check email, do some work, pump milk, make bottles for nanny tomorrow, find preemie clothes for friend who just delivered triplets, make sure all preemie clothes are labeled with my name, re-pack preemie clothes into box, put box in Seth's car (she delivered at the hospital where he works), feed a baby who woke up, wash bottle, collapse in bed kind of day. You know, that kind of day, not too bad.

Tonight my friend Connie was going to come over after the triplets' bedtime to watch J so Seth and I could relax and go to a movie for the first time in over a year. Not like Connie doesn't have enough to do on her own, seeing as how she's got TRIPLETS OF HER OWN. But she's awesome, and she offered, and she repeated the offer, and then she repeated it again, so I figured she was serious, and we took her up on it. But then as I was thinking of the week ahead, I realized how stressed out I was getting over the logistics of going out tonight that I told her tonight wasn't a good night for it. Because, really? If I'm getting more stressed out over a relaxing night out than staying in... it kind of defeats the purpose right?

I'm almost out of baby food in my freezer, which would be fine, because it's easy enough to whip up a few batches of baby food, except that it's impossible to do that if you have no ingredients with which to do so in your house. Whoops. So I need to buy chicken and fruit and vegetables. But WHEN? HOW? I was supposed to do that yesterday, but couldn't because there was no time after I picked up J without being late for relieving the nanny. Then, in theory, I was supposed to go to a board meeting, though I ended up bailing on that anyway, but grocery shopping didn't happen either because there was too much else going on and J couldn't be left with the babysitter for too long because he's just been completely crazy lately. You'd think something as simple as grocery shopping would be easy, wouldn't you? Hah!

Tomorrow, Seth is leaving for Texas at 5pm, which means he won't be home after work. Fortunately, my mother is picking J up from school, which buys me a little bit of time, but this means I have to get home, feed babies, clean them up, get J dinner (oh wait, my mother will probably feed J, phew!), feed babies again (see aforementioned note re: solids vs. milk at dinner time), get babies to bed, get J calmed down for bed, get J INTO bed, get J's lunch made for school the next day (do we even HAVE food in the house for his lunch??), pump, make bottles for the nanny, sleep?, get up with whatever babies wake up in the middle of the night (usually Sam and Abby, hopefully just Abby), and then get up in the morning, feed three babies, get showered (hah!), dressed, get J dressed (this is ALWAYS a fight), get J off to school (once the nanny arrives), get to work and breathe for a minute.

Then Thursday afternoon, I have to leave work early, pick up Sam, take him to the ophthalmologist (and I have to remember to pack some snacks for me and for him, because this appointment could take up to two hours, hooray!). My MIL is picking J up from school, thankfully, so that takes one thing off my plate. I have to rush home from the ophthalmologist to relieve the nanny (I'll probably be late, but the nanny already knows that. Feed babies. Clean them up. Feed them milk. Change them, get them in PJs, put them to bed. Feed J, bathe him (hey, I forgot that part the last two nights, didn't I?), get him in PJs, fight with him about bed, pray that he goes to bed, explain to him that YES Abba WILL be home by the time he wakes up! and hopefully he'll go to sleep at some point.

Then I get to start making dinner for Friday night (and WHEN exactly did I go grocery shopping for Friday's dinner?), I'll have to pump, do some straightening so that my cleaning lady (yes, I'm a spoiled brat and I have a cleaning lady) can actually CLEAN
when she arrives on Friday, make bottles for the nanny the next day, probably have to feed Abby at some point (she usually wakes up around 10 or 11pm), and go to bed. Seth's plane arrives after midnight, so I don't expect him home until 1am-ish and I have no intention of waiting up for him.

Friday J has an appointment with a developmental pediatrician, so at least we don't have to be prepared to take him to school first thing in the morning. And at least Seth's taking him to that appointment. I'll just have to get up, feed a baby, feed another baby, get showered, get dressed, get to work, work all day, come home feed three babies, feed them again (see aforementioned note on solids vs. milk dinner feeding...)...

Oh yes, it's going to be a FUN week.

And yet, people STILL tell me I should sleep when my babies sleep. Please, someone, explain to me exactly how I'm supposed to make that happen! Because for the life of me, I'm STILL trying to figure out exactly when I'm making it to the grocery store this week, which I desperately need to do (nevermind how I'm going to PAY for the groceries...right now it's only about the logistics of GETTING to the grocery store!).

Normally, I'm very, very good at keeping everything together. I don't get stressed out. I don't get overwhelmed. I handle things with grace and ease, MOST of the time. But right now? THIS week? I think I've hit my limit.

Still to write:

• What's been going on with J
  
• Early Intervention Evaluation for the Triplets
  
• Lots o' pictures to post (who has TIME?)
  
• Fun with Jessica (TWO weeks in a ROW! What a treat!)
  
• Milestones (Babies are ALMOST mobile...Gah!!)

But seriously? When is all this writing supposed to happen?

See? I warned you that I was feeling whiny. But did you listen? NO! That being said, if you made it all the way to the end of this post, you get a cookie. Not that I have the time to make you cookies, or anything, so you'll have to make your own. Or buy your own. Or just use your imagination and dream of your own cookie. So here's your virtual cookie. Because hello? I'm a mother of FOUR children. Did you REALLY think I have time to bake you cookies??

Birth Story FINALLY

I’m a bit afraid to sit down and write this here birth story for a couple of reasons. The first is that right now it’s MINE, all mine, and no one else’s. Writing it down means sharing it with the world and making it everyone’s. And there’s something a bit intimidating about that. Right now I have something special in holding the story close to my heart, and keeping it to myself. A bond that I share with my babies that no one can take away from me. Letting the story out to everyone else means giving a piece of them and me away for everyone else to have. But the second reason it’s a daunting prospect to write this all down is that I’m afraid it’s a bit anticlimactic. When it boils down to it, I had a c-section. It’s not the grueling hours of labor and delivery of a vaginal delivery where I might have something interesting to say other than: “I went into surgery, they took the babies out, they sewed me up.” After all these months of anticipation, perhaps you’re expecting some great and profound words from me. Perhaps you’re expecting me to be interesting and witty, but I’m not feeling it. The day of my babies’ birth was a life-changing day, but so were the seven-months leading up to that day, and every day since that day. My life will never be the same and for that I am incredibly grateful. But for anyone other than me, I’m not sure the story of that day is particularly interesting. With that rather anticlimactic introduction, however, here it is, at long last.

My surgery was scheduled for 9:30am on Wednesday, September 19th, 2007. I was absolutely hysterical about it, still begging to be allowed a vaginal delivery. I was frantic because the doctor that I knew best in the practice (Dr. P) had been on vacation the whole time I’d been in the hospital and had just gotten back, but wasn’t on call that day, so I wouldn’t see him until after the surgery. He was the only doctor who I believed would have let me skip the c-section, and a piece of me felt like if only I could talk to Dr. P I could call off this surgery! Of course, logically that wasn’t the case. Baby C had long since stopped growing. She was too tiny to do well with a vaginal delivery. If she survived a vaginal delivery, it would probably have doubled her NICU stay and would have seriously complicated matters, but emotionally, I was a wreck. On the inside, anyway. On the outside, I think I held it together most of that morning, but I took it out on the nurses by becoming a control freak over stupid things. For example, they brought me a consent form to sign for various things and the consent form included a statement that I had already seen and spoken with an anesthesiologist. Since I hadn’t yet spoken with the anesthesiologist, I refused to sign the consent, which irritated the nurses, and I got really pissy about it, but that’s how I was acting all morning.

Seth came in while I was having a fit about the consent form and told me it was fine to hold off on signing the consent form. He went about packing up all my belongings because I would not be returning to the room I had been calling home after the surgery. After the surgery, I would be moving to the post-partum unit. As my things were being packed up, I took out my terbutaline pump and waited for the contractions to pick up. I paid careful attention to them, knowing that I may never feel contractions again. This was as close to labor and delivery as I was ever going to get. At least for THIS pregnancy. The babies weren’t very awake, so I poked at them, wanting to feel them kicking one last time. Part of me felt guilty for waking them up prematurely (no pun intended), but again, I knew that this may be my last chance ever to feel a baby (babies!) kicking in my belly. And ohmigod even as I’m typing this I’m crying just remembing how I felt right then.

Eventually the anesthesiologist came in and I talked with her and told her I’d rather have an epidural than a spinal, because I didn’t like the idea that you can’t turn off a spinal, but you CAN turn off an epidural. Remember that one of my biggest problems with having a c-section was that I was positively terrified with having a spinal or epidural. I had a stroke/TIA when I was 23 years old so the very idea of losing feeling in half of my body on purpose was terrifiying to me. The anesthesiologist said that they actually use epidurals when they want the effects to last longer than a spinal, because once they turn it off, it still takes a couple hours to wear off, so I agreed to a spinal. I still didn’t love having a needle in my spinal column, of course, but since my only other option was a general anesthetic, which I was wholly opposed to, a spinal anesthetic it was. I signed the consent form.

Finally, a nurse from the floor, not a nurse I knew, came in to put an IV line in me (they had blessedly taken my line out a couple days before because it kept getting infected and I didn’t need it). The resident who would be assisting on the surgery came in around the same time and absolutely threw a fit that this hadn’t been done earlier. Apparently several other patients were trying to bump my surgery which would be a total disaster because my surgery affected the schedules of at least 16 staff members. Though my morning had been relatively calm up until that point, things suddenly became a flurry of activity. The resident told me his name, but I forgot it immediately. I’m sure it’s in my record somewhere, but I’ve never thought to ask for my record. He was a very nice, Pakistani, flamboyantly gay doctor and managed to convey a sense of total urgency and relative calm at the same time. He wheeled me down to the OR, Seth disappeared, presumably to um, well, I don’t know why. Let me ask him. He had to gown up, he says. Also, they wouldn’t let him in the OR while I was getting the spinal, which really pissed me off, but I’d already been warned that would be the case.

Once I was in the OR, I had to get from my stretcher to the OR table, which was a ridiculous ordeal. I could barely move by that point and my contractions were pretty regular. To be honest, without the terbutaline, I probably would have been in labor that afternoon anyway. I got up on the table with a lot of help and they had me lean over so that they could do the spinal. Leaning over started some extremely painful contractions and also made it impossible for me to breathe, but I’d been expecting both, so I did my best to stay still. The spinal was every bit as horrible as I expected it to be, to be honest. Everyone told me that it wouldn’t be as bad as I was expecting it to be, and I sort of figured that once it was over I would think, “Oh, that wasn’t so bad,” but that wasn’t the case. I now know that I was 100% justified in my terror over having it. Now, that isn’t to say that for someone without my history that there’s anything particularly scary about a spinal or epidural… but for me, it was awful. As soon as the needle went into my back I got the most painful contraction I’d ever had and it was all I could do to not move, but that part was over pretty quickly. Soon I couldn’t feel anything from my breasts down. I felt cold and… oddly slimy. I felt heavy and gross and I felt helpless.

The operating table felt very narrow and suddenly I felt very wide, but they assured me that I wasn’t about to fall off the table. The resident went about his business of getting me prepped for surgery, but I was wholly unprepared to discover exactly how naked I would suddenly be. All at once my breasts were covered and that was it. No one had really warned me about this. I guess I’d always felt like maybe it would just be my belly exposed and my legs would be covered up, but … not so much! Seeing as how I couldn’t move anything other than my arms, there wasn’t much I could do about it, so protesting wasn’t going to help me. I made one more feeble remark about seeing whether they would be willing to let me attempt that vaginal delivery and the resident looked up in shock. “Oh honey, that would just be too dangerous for little tiny Baby C! We don’t want any harm to come to your babies!” Fair enough. And really, there was no going back at this point, right?

Finally, the anesthesiologist came in and started to get another line ready… I guess they ran Pitocin through the line after the delivery? I don’t think it was during the delivery, that wouldn’t make total sense. I’m not sure. Once the anesthesiologist got set up, Seth finally got to come in. I couldn’t see him very well, because I was lying flat on my back and Seth was up by my left shoulder, so I had to twist my head around to see him. I had asked if I could have a mirror so that I could watch the surgery taking place, but they’d said no… I still don’t understand why, to be honest. Instead, they set up that blasted drape between my head and my belly (“blah, blah, blah, sterile field, blah, blah, blah”). And THAT, my friends, is when I had an all-out panic attack. The stupid blue drape was laying flat against my face and I felt like I couldn’t breathe. But there was so much hustle and bustle in the room and my arms were pinned down and the drape was covering my face that no one could really hear my muffled cries. Finally Seth heard my terrified pleas for help and the anesthesiologist pulled the drape away from my face and got me some oxygen (which did NOT help) and told me that as soon as the babies were out they’d give me something for anxiety. I tried to explain to her that I wouldn’t need it then. My panic attack was strictly related to having that damn drape covering my face, and oh, you know, the fact that I had no fucking control over my body and no one was fucking listening to me! But once the drape was not covering my face anymore and everything, I was doing better. Seth brushed my tears away and I calmed down.

There were about 20 people in the room with me, which was a lot more people than I would have liked to have had, given how frickin’ naked I was! There was my doctor and the resident who was assisting, plus several nurses assisting. Then there was my anesthesiologist and a nurse or two up at my end, plus Seth. Then each baby had a team of 3-4 NICU staff and then there were some miscellaneous nurses around, it seemed, though maybe they were also NICU staff? We’re not really sure.

And then, next thing I knew, surgery started. There was a tremendous amount of pressure on my body as they were pushing and pulling and whatnot. It’s really hard to explain, but it really did feel like my guts were being wrenched out, but without any real pain. I felt like the wind was being knocked out of me and it really caught me by surprise. And then, they broke the first amniotic sac. More tugging, more pulling, intense pressure, a rushing in my ears. I closed my eyes. I heard a lot of movement in the room as the NICU staff moved into place (truthfully, Baby A’s team was probably already in place over by my belly, so it was probably Baby B’s team getting ready to be in place).

“Amniotic fluid’s clear”
“Sweet Baby Boy! Hello Baby!”
“9:43!”

Tears started streaming out of my eyes and I remember being so embarrassed by that… I don’t have any idea WHY I would be embarrassed by that, but I didn’t even want Seth to see that I was crying, even though there couldn’t possibly be any more natural reaction in the world. Still, I was helpless to do anything about it, what with the pinned down arms and the lack of a prehensile nose and the whole, naked body on an operating table and the spinal anesthesia… Seth wiped away my tears…again.

There’s not enough room in the OR for three babies to be assessed by the NICU staff, so Baby A (my son!) was taken into an anteroom to be assessed, with promises that they would bring him back to join his siblings and see me before going to the NICU.
Seconds later, more tugging, more pulling, intense pressure, a rushing in my ears. I closed my eyes. I heard a lot of movement in the room. The second sac was broken.

“Meconium-stained,” said the resident.
Dammit. This is supposed to be going smoothly. I am not supposed to be having problems right now.
“It’s just light staining, Karen, just light staining,” said Dr. M, reading my mind. I’m still not sure how she read my mind since I hadn’t made a peep.
I have no idea what that means, but she obviously thinks this is better. Breathing now.
“Hello Baby!!”
Baby… ? Baby WHAT?
It felt like an eternity before finally Dr. M said…
“Baby Girl!”
“9:44”

A huge sigh of relief. I had gotten my “mix”… I knew that no matter what Baby C was I wasn’t having three boys, or three girls… I was having some of each. I would, of course, love my children no matter WHAT sexes they were, but at THAT moment, I was thrilled. Baby B was taken over to the left side of the OR to be assessed. She weighed in at 3lb, 12 oz, just about average for triplets.

Another flurry of activity, more tugging, more pulling, intense pressure, a rushing in my ears, no time to even close my eyes, the third sac was broken.

“Fluid’s clear”
tugging, intense pressure, but thank heavens for clear fluid
“Baby *muffled*”
“Baby What?”
“Baby Girl!”
“9:44”
That was quick.

Baby C was also assessed there in the OR. She weighed in at 2 pounds 11 ounces. By then we’d gotten word that big brother had weighed in at 3 pounds, 12 ounces, just like Baby B. Baby C was the runt of the litter, and it was obvious that we’d made the right “choice” (not that I’d been given much of a choice) to have a c-section.

The anesthesiologist administered Pitocin to get my uterus to contract and the doctors pushed down on my uterus with what felt like so much pressure I almost choked. I imagine there’s a point to this, but holy hell, they should warn a girl about this! Then the anesthesiologist told me she was giving me something for the anxiety, Xanax, I think, and I tried to explain to her that this was completely useless since I wasn’t having any anxiety anymore, but it was too late. I was pretty ticked about it, because I didn’t want any drugs that were going to make me loopy. Fortunately, Xanax, according to my pharmacist husband, is relatively short acting (not short enough, in MY opinion, but a couple of hours according to him). Meanwhile, Dr. M and the resident went about sewing me up. Dr. M said, “I gave you a nice low, transverse incision, so you’re all set for your VBAC anytime you want, okay?” From her mouth to G-d’s ears. I’m all for it.

At some point, Dr. M got to a point where she left things for the resident to finish up and she went to write up orders for my post-op medications, so she had Seth come and consult with her on that. Her own Pharmacy Consultant. Seth walked around and saw that the resident was brushing something on my still-enormous-belly (but slightly less enormous than before) and he asked what he was doing. The resident told him he was putting tincture of benzoine on the incision. Er… see, there’s this red bracelet on my wrist that specifically says I’m allergic to tincture of benzoine… I didn’t know what was going on at all, but suddenly I heard the resident asking me what exactly happens when I have tincture of benzoine on me. “Um, why do you ask?” “Well, because I was just putting it on your incision and your husband said you’re allergic to it.” “Um, well, I haven’t had it since I was really young, but I think I get a rash. Uh, but this is one thing I don’t want to find out the hard way!” Suffice it to say, they very quickly REMOVED the tincture of benzoine (how do you remove tincture of benzoine? I’m not really sure, I think maybe with alcohol. I’m not even really sure what tincture of benzoine is for… Seth says it’s an antiseptic).

While all this was going on, the babies were swaddled and brought over to me and I got to see each one and Seth got to hold them. The nurses made sure to get a picture of Seth holding them all in the OR, which was great of them. The neonatologist came over to talk to me to let me know that they looked great and that they’d be moving the babies to the NICU for further assessment and that they’d talk to me more once they’d been able to fully evaluate the babies. Each of the babies’ Apgar scores were terrific, which is great news.

Jessica made this great video and posted it on YouTube:


Finally, I was taken out to PACU (post anesthesia care unit) for recovery. PACU was pretty boring, actually. I was there for hours and hours and hours and hours and hours because there were no beds available in the postpartum unit. Seth went down to the NICU to check on the babies. Baby A was having a little difficulty breathing, a condition the NICU nurses described as “wimpy white boy syndrome” so they gave him some help in the form of forced room air through a nasal canula at a higher volume to help him out. The girls were doing fine, though Baby C was obviously very small and they still needed to decide if the IUGR was just because her placenta wasn’t located in prime real estate or if there was a metabolic problem. I kept asking for a breast pump, but I was told that I would get one in my postpartum room. Problem with that was that I was in the PACU for hours and hours and hours and hours and hours. Hello? There’s a flaw in this system. If I ever have to have a c-section again, I’m bringing my own pump with me and pumping immediately after delivery, dammit. They ought to have pumps available immediately post-op. Whatever.

Anyway.

Seth and I took some time to talk about names. We came up with the girls’ names (tentatively) in the PACU, but still had nothing for Baby A. NOTHING. NADA. ZILCH. ZERO. We had absolutely NO boy names. Not a clue.

Dr. M stopped in as did Dr. G. Mostly I was frustrated about not being able to move my legs and frustrated about the level of pain I was in as the feeling was coming back in my abdomen. It was excruciating.

Finally, around 4pm, I got moved out of the PACU. They wheeled me down to the NICU first to see the babies, which was really nice. I didn’t get to hold the babies, but they brought the babies up next to me so that I could see them. They were so tiny, but they were doing well. Baby A (still nameless) was already off the nasal canula. The girls were still doing fine. All three were on a TPN, none were taking any PO feedings yet. And after that, I got moved up to my room in the postpartum unit.

I asked immediately for a lactation consultant and a breast pump and was told that it was too late to get a lactation consultant into the room that day (I was furious), but that they’d get me set up with the breast pump pronto. SIX HOURS LATER, they got me set up with the breast pump (more on that later). My next 12 hours in the postpartum unit were quite possibly the worst 12 hours of my life. Seth couldn’t stay with me because someone needed to be home with J. I didn’t want to have J with my mother or with another friend, because his whole life had been up in the air while I was in the hospital and with three babies now about to come home, I thought it would only be fair for him to have a parent home with him that night. That was a mistake, but it was for a good cause. Seth left to go take care of J around 8ish, I think.

The nurse that I had “taking care” of me that night was about as negligent as she could possibly have been. She ignored my requests to get set up with the breast pump. She didn’t bring me pain medicine. She didn’t answer the call button. She didn’t answer the phone. After Seth left, my friend L came to help me for a couple hours and she finally got the nurse to get me set up with the breast pump. The nurse told me that I should rinse the pump parts between each use. Since the nurse had also just told me I wasn’t allowed out of bed until the next morning, I asked her exactly how I was supposed to accomplish this. She looked at me in shock and said, “Well, don’t you have someone staying with you tonight?” No, no I don’t. “Why isn’t your husband staying with you?” she asked incredulously. I couldn’t believe she was asking me such a ridiculous question, particularly since she KNEW I had a four year old at home. I cannot have been the first woman to have come through her unit to not have a husband staying with her. And hello? Is it not her job to help me through the night?

While my friend L was with me, my IV SmartPump started beeping because it had run out and we called the nurse. Half an hour later, L went to the nurse’s station and told them that no one had answered my call button, but that my IV pump was beeping. Half an hour after that, she went back to the nurse’s station to remind them that my IV pump was still beeping and that I was still waiting for someone to do something about this, and by the way, while they were at it, I was overdue for pain medicine. Finally, half an hour after THAT she finally came to take care of the IV Pump. L didn’t like leaving me, but she’s got four kids of her own, and I assured her I’d be fine. How bad could it be, after all? So eventually, she left. Once I was able to pump, I spoke with a friend who’s a lactation consultant, and she suggested that I could just rinse the pump parts with a washcloth and water, so before L left, she got me a basin of water to make up for the evil nurse.

The night was pretty hellish. I couldn't get the nurse to answer the phone, or the call button. At one point, I dropped one of the pump parts on the floor and I almost fell out of bed trying to get it. No one would come into my room to pick up the colostrum that I'd managed to pump to put into the refrigerator and I was in a dead panic that it would go "bad" and I wouldn't be able to give it to my babies. Fortunately, I had a pitcher of ice in the room, so I put the bottles on ice, which I decided was good enough. No one would take care of the incessant beeping when my IV ran out, nor would they give me pain medicine when it wore off. The theory was that I should have still had sufficient pain relief from the spinal for 24 hours, but that wasn't the case (nevermind the fact that my orders from post-op were that I should have pain medicine administered PRN). I was having significant bleeding, but couldn't do anything about it, since I was confined to bed and didn't have any supplies to take care of it anyway.

I spent most of the night half panicked. It's hard to describe, now 8 months after-the-fact... why I was so panicked, really, but I was absolutely in a dead-panic that I would find myself in a true medical emergency unable to get help. It never occurred to me that I could simply call the operator and tell them I was having an emergency. I didn't know WHAT to do, in all honesty. If I'd been thinking straight at all, I would have called Seth at home. He knew that all I really had to do was hit the blue code button over my bed (I'm not even certain I could have reached it, to be honest) if I'd been having a real emergency, but I didn't know that.

Seth had been planning to go to shul first thing in the morning to name the girls, but I called him hysterical at 6am and told him I needed him. Nothing was particularly wrong, but I was in a lot of pain, and hadn't seen a nurse at all in hours and hours. As soon as I heard Seth's voice, I totally lost it. I just felt like if I'd had any sort of emergency, I would truly have been lost and helpless. If I couldn't have gotten a nurse to come to my room to collect my milk or bring me pain medicine, how would I get a nurse to come help me if I had fallen out of bed like I almost did? Seth came in immediately (thankfully, we only live 5 minutes away from the hospital and my mother had spent the night at our house so there was someone at the house with J).

Before Seth arrived at the hospital, a nurse came into my room and saw me crying. She tried to talk to me but I told her to get out. She sent the nurse manager in to talk to me and I asked her to please wait until Seth came in, which she agreed to do. I explained that I didn't want her to just brush me off as being a hormonal post-partum woman and I wanted her to hear what he had to say instead. She agreed that this made sense. I admit that once Seth got in and we talked to the nurse manager, things improved. I never saw the evil nurses again, I had more attention... but there were still aggravating things... I never had my bedsheets changed in the four days I was there. I could never get them to get me a fresh hospital gown. I had to beg for pain medicine and they'd treat me like a drug addict every time I asked for it. They acted like I was inconveniencing them every time I asked for a transport down to the NICU (this required nothing more than a phone call from them, since they weren't the ones who transported me down to the NICU). It was really crazy.

Oh there's more, but is it worth it? Probably not. Suffice it to say, the postpartum nurses were evil.

But one floor down, my babies were awesome, and the NICU nurses were astounding. The NICU nurses kept telling me to make CERTAIN I didn't slack on taking my pain medicine (ironic considering I had to keep pulling teeth to GET pain medicine). Saturday was Yom Kippur, and I was still in the hospital. Dr. P. came in to see me and to get my discharge paperwork ready for Sunday. I was still so angry about having the c-section and I talked with Dr. P. about that, since he was the doctor I knew would have let me have the vaginal delivery if it had been possible. He made it very clear to me that even he wouldn't have advised me to have a vaginal delivery with a baby that small. It just wasn't a good idea. If I'd tried to deliver a baby who was under 3 pounds, it could have spelled disaster for her. Most importantly, he reminded me that one of his patients delivered her triplets at 24 weeks the night before I delivered my 33 week triplets. She lost one of her babies, and I had three relatively healthy babies downstairs. All about perspective.

And then, Dr. P. gave me a great gift. He sat down and gave me a very frank talk about my pregnancy and talked to me about exactly what I made it through. He wanted me to understand how much I really got through so that I wouldn't think it was some minor accomplishment. He told me how worried he'd been about me at 17 weeks, and at 22 weeks, and 28, and 29... How he wasn't sure I was going to make it past 30 weeks when he saw me in the hospital the last time, and how proud he was of me for making it to 33 weeks. He talked through each of the scares that I'd had and what each one of them meant, medically. And he talked to me about what I could expect in my recovery. After three months of solid bed rest, it wasn't going to be pretty, and yes, I had three babies to take care of, but I needed to remember that my body had a lot of abuse to recover from. I'm not sure that he could have given me a greater gift, to be honest. I'm not sure I ever would have realized, or appreciated, what I'd really been through. I think I spent a lot of time thinking I was just whining over nothing, to be honest. But you know what? I wasn't. I went through hell in that pregnancy, and I wasn't whining about it. I worked hard and I was pretty damn calm about it.

And finally, Sunday, I was released from my prison, my home, my world. It was bittersweet, because it meant walking (wheeling) away from my babies. But it was time. I packed up all of my stuff and Seth and J came and got me, we went down to see the babies and we introduced J to Abby, Ellie, and then-nameless "whatshisname". And home we went.

I was back again to the NICU later that day, and the next morning, and the day after that, and ...

Well, you know the rest of the story. 24 days after they were born, my little monsters came home with the rest of us, my beautiful babies. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Cliches and Blasts from the Past

I started blogging here well into my IF experience. By the time I started this blog, I'd already had several years of TTC, years of charting, 5 Clomid cycles, 3 IUIs... We'd already had J in our lives for some time by then. And, something I rarely talk about, we'd almost adopted a baby. So let me tell you the Cliffs Notes version of that story...

I got a call in January 2006 from a Rabbi friend of mine saying that he'd gotten some information through the grapevine about a young woman who was looking for an Orthodox family to adopt a baby that she was pregnant with. Were we interested? Well, sure, we were interested in finding out more, but certainly not interested in committing to anything without knowing more details. Turned out this young woman was not a Conservative woman in a nearby state, had been involved with an older (unmarried) gentleman and found herself, um, in a "family way" despite having been on the pill, and he was, well, less than supportive. She was not in a profession that she felt could support a single-mother lifestyle, neither financially nor logistically.

I can't remember exactly why she wanted an Orthodox family... she herself wasn't Orthodox, but I think she was looking to have her child raised in a traditional home with a sense of values which would hopefully lead to choices in that child's adult life which would preclude such a predicament for them. She had a list of questions that the Rabbi that she had contacted in her home state sent out to potential candidates, so we figured, "what the heck" and we sent in our answers. She asked for some pictures, too, so we sent in pictures, including some pictures of us with J. Sure enough, out of the dozens of "applications" she received, she wanted to speak with us (I think she spoke to a few others as well). I spoke with her (I'll call her SL) on the phone several times, and we emailed several times a day every day for a week.

After about a week and a half, SL decided she wanted us to adopt her baby. We had some time, since she wasn't due until the summer, but I made a list of things that I'd need to take care of... we were talking about dealing with an adoption across two states so I had to figure out how to make that happen and who to retain as a lawyer, etc.

A few weeks later, I went to go visit my grandmother, who was very sick (she died the following summer). While I was there, SL had a miscarriage. When I returned home a couple days later, I was planning to have lunch with SL. On my way up, I found out that SL was in the hospital, so I met her at the ER. She ended up with emergency surgery and lost a fallopian tube.

SL and I continued to maintain an email correspondence for some time. I got pregnant shortly after her baby would have been born and we fell out of touch. Three months later, I had a miscarriage. I didn't hear from her again until last month when out of the blue she emailed me randomly. I told her about the miscarriage, the subsequent triplet pregnancy and delivery, sent her some pictures. She told me she'd made a career change, went back to school and had just graduated with a business degree and was about to start a master's degree at a prestigious New England University.

I'm really happy for her. But it DID throw me off my game for a few days for some reason.

Little did I know how FAR off my game I was going to be thrown, because today I received THIS email:

I had been feeling tired the last few days, and my tummy was cranky so I went to the urgent care center thinking I was coming down with something. I was. I am pregnant...

So she was on the pill. Only one fallopian tube. One night stand on a trip up to visit her soon-to-be-new-University. Her period is TWO days late, and she already knows she's pregnant, just because she was feeling weird. Not so much an infertile-myrtle. I swear, I'm surrounded by cliches. You have got to be kidding me!

Cross-Eyed

So, a while ago I kept thinking that Sam was a little cross-eyed. His right eye seems to turn in intermittently. But I thought maybe I was being a little paranoid and projecting my own issues on to my children. I have strabismus and amblyopia, you see, so it could just be in my imagination. My mother has it, too. Besides, while strabismus affects males and females equally, the bias in me always figured that IF any of my children developed strabismus, it would be one of my girls.

Then, a week and a half ago, we had the Early Intervention team out to assess the triplets (more on that in a subsequent post in my copious spare time) and one of the first things that one of the therapists noticed was that Sam's eye turns in. Go figure. I took a look through some pictures of him (see above), and lo and behold! he really DOES have an eye that turns in.

So I called an optometrist friend of mine and asked if this is something that I should deal with now or later and she said absolutely nothing but bad things could come from waiting. She said I could either see an ophthalmologist or an optometrist. Her recommendation was to see a developmental optometrist, and while I see her point, I'm hesitant about that based on my OWN experience. So I called my pediatrician today and asked who they recommend I see. They, not shockingly, recommended I see a pediatric ophthalmologist who specializes in strabismus. I'm leaning toward consulting with both and going from there, to be honest.

SO, I've made an appointment with the ophthalmologist for next Thursday afternoon. I've been warned that if he sees signs of strabismus in Sam, he'll want to see the girls, too. Yippee!