eight months

our girls turned eight months today on 8/10/11!

where.does.time.go?

as they near closer to one year, i can't help but have mixed emotions with all that we have experienced these past eight months... most importantly, gabriel and and my life was changed... forever... as were the girls' lives!

became a mama for the first time.  to twins.  identical.  girls.  surreal then, and sometime surreal now.  second nature, it has become, though.  naps, feedings, pumping, juggling both, co-managing double tears, cloth diapers x2... have i done this before?  never.  i would like to say that...

we were all thrown into the headbands, matching-outfits, coordinating earrings, toothless grins with beautiful deep-blue-black-hole eyes....

they are so different now than eight months ago... it's amazing to see how much growth a person can have through measurable length... born as preemies with 4#15 and 18" and 4#14 and 19" in such a low percentile for their weight, yet, they're now growing like little beautiful weeds with their height and holding their own with their weight.

i feel so old in one way, but i feel so young in another light... partly because my daughters bring out so much youth to my life.  they envision things and have different glasses on than i do with my own blue-with-yellow-laces-eyes...

did i think that i'd look at a ceiling fan the same way months ago?  hardly.
did i think i could love two little babies of mine this much?  sounded far off.
did i think that i'd be able to leave them and return to work?  definitely not.  so glad that i didn't.  so privileged that God blessed us with such beautiful gifts that i had a safe escape to not return to work.
would it have been a different story with one baby?  i don't know.  it's never been about one baby; i have two.  always has been two, always will be two.
did i think we'd have identical twin girls?  jokes aside, wasn't a thought in my mind that God would split my egg.  betcha your cards that i'm so thankful that He did.

we're so blessed with our miraculous babies... they are a dream not wished, but a dream come true.

we love you, willow kate and coral bliss!

love, tati si mama :)

day 7 and then some...

jeez, i just need to get on it. sorry that it's been awhile for me to blog about the rest of what happened, so here we go to sum it all:

my wound vac was put on, and we were only concerned about my blood levels in order to discharge me. it took into the mid-afternoon until they told us that i would be discharged... i asked when... asap...


very nice, folks. :) but, you mean, i have to take these kids home and take care of them myself?! i mean, with gab and family??? that's it... that's how we do this...?

my sister and brother were driving in from back home (SoCal), and we weren't sure where we'd be by the time they were arriving... turns out, we were still at the hospital, so they met us there.  for the first time ever, my sis and brother were thrown into, hey... hi... we're packing, can you hold her?  and, we'd go back to packing... talk about wasting no time!

LOLOLOLOLOL.  so funny!

they relished their first moments as a new aunt/uncle.  the girls were so fragile and small that they looked like little dolls as my siblings held them... of course, many photos later, we finally were leaving this room that we had called "ours" for so long.  leaving the babies' first home... to bring them to ours.

since it was so late, and i pretty much had missed my final hospital dinner (bittersweet feelings about that), we decided on salvadorean food down the street... which is what i really wanted originally when i found out that i'd be delivering at that hospital... lol.

mind you, i hadn't been OUT of the hospital in seven days.  it felt like a strange new beginning... to.finally.leave.  BUT, supposedly, hospital policy (and, i can't remember if i posted about this before) is to have the mom "carry" out the baby because we carry them in our bellies and we have to "carry" them out... nobody else.  isn't that strange?!  i've never heard of that, but then again, i've never been a mother until now.  yet, i thought that the women always held the baby(ies) because they were so proud... didn't know that it was hospital stipulation.  :)

anyway, since my girls had been discharged the day before, i "technically" didn't have to "carry" them out.  however, i had gone through a battlezone and i earned every gold medal to carry them in my arms and be pushed through in a wheelchair to the entrance... and, along the way... goodness, babies are precious.  when you carry twins, let alone girls, let alone identical TWINS... they are instant celebrities.  the most random people walked up to gab and me, commenting, congratulating, sharing their baby stories... it was such a beautiful moment of which to be proud... these girls are OURS, and "welcome to the world," girls!  this is what life looks like outside of a hospital room.  lol.

my mom had chosen their "going-home" preemie outfits the night before... and, they were still swimming in them!  they wore their hospital hats with "A" and "B" written on them (for my brother and sister to identify them since they just met them... what am i joking!  until weeks later, we couldn't ID them if not for their hospital anklet and bracelets! lol).

the girls looked darling in their outfits, and... while gab went to get the car, i was counting the moments and hoping to God that they wouldn't start wailing at the same time in front of the hospital entrance where i'm waiting in a wheelchair for my husband to pick us up!!!  LOL!!!  and?!  they didn't!  they made me look like such a good mom.  :)

on the way home after picking up our tamales and pupusas, they did start to cry in the car, but calmed down immediately.  they weren't used to the movement.  when we got home, i made sure that i got out and approached our pups inside by myself... i read that.  make sure that you approach the animals by yourself and allow them time to smell you... then, slowly we let the pups near the babies once we brought the babies in... a gradual process.  and, they were fine.  there was no jealousy, just acceptance, which was a relief!

since then, i'll narrate it very quickly:
my wound vac was D/Ced because the home health nurse didn't administer the tape before the black sponge; therefore, i got many blisters and rashes around/under the tape/incision... it was awful.  we ended up going with another nursing company.  that one was miserably awful.  my new girl was from nigeria and such a lovely woman!  they moved me to a wet-to-dry dressing (with an open wound!!!), which means she had to pack my incision every day with gauze, place a bandage around it, and put adhesive around it that i wasn't allergic to.
from that, i obviously got three infections, one which was quite UNcommon.  of course, that's me!  medically, i go all out!!!  they placed me on antibiotics, which then turned into further infections... for my lack of taking a probiotic in place.
women: take a probiotic whenever you take an antibiotic.  otherwise, your body is imbalanced, and all of your good bacteria is also killed.
weeks later, my wound finally closed... my sister, my nurse, and gab all had to change the dressings some time or another... each day.  i have so many medical supplies left that it's insane. :)  yay, i should put together our emergency kit with them! :)
just to let you know... it took seven weeks for my wound to finally close naturally.  towards the end, they used a calcium alginate dressing, which helped close it.
on the other hand, i still have an infection that i'm fighting... oh, happy day!

it's amazing all that i've gone through... medically, emotionally, physically, mentally... and, am still going through.  i remember what one of the nurses from the first company said to me...

at least, you got two girls to show for it.  some people don't have that when a wound vac is placed... and, you got two beautiful girls to show for it.

absolutely.  we do.

day 3

i was excited for day 3.  until now, each day, they had been checking my anticoagulant levels... weaning me off of lovenox and onto coumadin.  usually, on days 3 or 4, a woman who had a c-section gets to go home.  so, as long as my levels were between 2 and 3 (thin enough for nothing to happen, but for regular people, it's usually between 1 and 2), then we'd get to go home!!!

meanwhile, the babies' pediatrician continued to visit them, and it's strange... "suddenly" the nurses thought that our babies had jaundice?!  but the NICU didn't think so?!  interesting.  turns out, no jaundice... thank God.

regardless, i could tell that my milk was going to come in... pins, needles, and marbles is what you feel like when engorged!  no fun! :(  that day, we also had visitors... an old family friend and a co-worker of mine.  it was great to see everyone!  but, later that night... something crazy happened.

i was going to take another shower, and the nurse was worried about the area around my incision... was starting to get very hard and big underneath... she said that she was worried that they might be hematomas.  in my head, i was thinking what is that?!  i guess a big blood blister could be a way to describe them.  anyway, she wanted me to take a shower, which i did.  i was careful with everything, and then...

after i lathered lotion all over my body, i felt something dripping all over my body, and i look down and BLACK BLOOD is streaming down from around my mid-section, which i thought was from elsewhere!  then i realized that it was seeping from my incision area!!!  immediately, i pulled that emergency cord in the bathroom and screamed for help (my mom was in the room, and she ran to get a nurse).  the nurse was so calm and helped me out... i was so freaked... black blood?  what is going wrong now?  why can't anything ever be simple with my medical situations? 

at this point, i knew that i wouldn't be going home anytime soon if 1- they didn't regulate my blood levels OR 2- they didn't get this bleeding under control...

day 2

it was Sunday.  when my mom got there, we went to see the girls... and, what a sight that was!

imagine you're in a wheelchair, and you round the corner to the hallway to which your babies' rooms connect, and you see YELLOW CAUTION TAPE, blocking off the other side of the hallway with many nurses, doctors wearing surgical scrubs, AND masks... IN FRONT OF YOUR BABY'S ROOM?!?! 

(note: at the same time, the "financial services department" called me on the hallway phone, and wanted me to make payments right then and there!  i was flabbergasted, quite upset, and pretty much hung up after telling them to contact my insurance!)

i freaked out in my mind, asking Gab to go check on our baby to see what was wrong.  i didn't know if our baby was okay or not.  i didn't know if they were in her room or not because they blocked off her room.  he just about sprinted there!  my mom and i waited on our side, waiting... they told Gab that he couldn't pass... turns out, they were doing surgery in somebody's room... on the baby NEXT DOOR!  apparently, it's easier to do the surgery there than anywhere else!  the major bummer part was that we couldn't go see our daughter over there, and surgery was going to take awhile.  we were disappointed because that's a possibility of NOT having your babies with you, but also separated in the NICU!

meanwhile, i was so upset with financial services calling... the audacity!  on a Sunday?!  especially when i was emotional since we couldn't see our other baby?!  so, i'm not sure who suggested this, but our sweet nurse heard us talking about our disappointment, and suddenly left... returning with our other baby!!!  we were so overwhelmed with joy because this was the first time that we were all together since birth!!!  that was the first time that we were able to see, side-by-side, how identical these girls really were! 

then, in the midst of all our happiness, the doctors come in talking about DCing (discharging) our babies from the NICU, saying that they were doing better, but nutritionally speaking, weren't eating as much as they should!  regardless, they said that they'd start the paperwork.

it happened much sooner than we thought... i mean, my mom and i had lunch, went back to my room, and the nurse comes in to tell me that i need to start packing up because they're moving me to the maternity ward... the pod that i was in was for women post-op, and no room for babies.

so, within a couple of hours, we were in a new larger room, and just as i was about to get some shut-eye, everybody came in with the NICU nurses pushing our babies in the bassinets... and, it was so funny... the nurses from both hospitals had to read off the hospital bracelets to make sure that the wrong babies weren't being released to us... sort of in a top-secret military operation!

and, then... finally!  we were together for the first time as a little family!  man, that first night... we were awoken just about EVERY hour and a half!  you should have seen Gab!  i'm sure that we looked quite awful the following day with the little sleep that we did get!

by then, i was trying to BF, but i was in-between getting colostrum and getting my milk, so we just used formula.  we were hoping that my milk would come in soon!

our babies are here!

(allright, i know that apologies are in order, but i'll do that later. :)  yes, our lives have been a complete whirlwind since we even found out that we were pregnant, but... it got even crazier as time passed.)

our lovely identical twin girls, Willow Kate and Coral Bliss, were born on December 10, 2010 (12/10/10) shortly after 10:10a.m.!  Willow weighed 4lbs., 15oz. and was 18" long while Coral weighed 4lbs., 14oz and was 19" long!!!

they are completely identical with no identifying marks... how crazy is that?!

i will update later when i have more time on my hands spent not sleeping. :)

and, yes, photos will follow, however, i'm still working on those and with my minimal amount of sleep, it's taking awhile....

until then, may God Bless your family in ways not yet revealed this day forward!

little earthquakes

no, not tori amos' album.  :)

at 27 weeks, feeling little earthquakes at all times of the day!  the only way to explain the feeling/happening is... imagine you're dreaming, and you're falling off a cliff, and you have the deep pit feeling in your stomach?  that's sometimes what it feels like. :)

i have been feeling A and B's heads (since they're pretty much knocking on each other's bag, they're so close) press against my belly... above the b. button to my left... small size of an orange or so...

i think that i'm starting to feel both of them move around at the same time... or movement in two different areas.   i do feel a lot of movement around my b. button, though.

we'll see if i'm right. :)

update 10/10/10: YUP, i'm right.  i felt both move at the same time last night!  a bit of space out on both sides of my belly button, i felt them! 

twin onesies

look at how adorable these onesies are for twins:

twin copy/paste onesie

she also has boyish font for twin boys!

twincess onesie

twin copy paste repeat onesie (don't know where my link went)

twin or triplet onesies

peanut butter and jelly twin onesie

i especially like the first two!!!  how cute is this idea for IDENTICAL twins?!?! :)

6,000,000 what?

just read on the bump's weekly newsletter, that marks my pregnancy, that our baby girls have ALL of their 6,000,000 (six million) eggs in their womb!!!  by birth, that number will drop to 1,000,000 (one million) by birth!!!

also, in my other book, i read that they are the size of barbie and ken dolls.  LOL!!!  my favorite doll growing up (the former, not latter, lol)!

to point out, this is NOT the ken that MY barbie dated when i was younger!  LOL!  he had sandy brown hair.  :)  also, my mom got rid of all my barbies one day, and pure devastation set in.  :(

also, baby center said that our babies are measuring as long as carrots- 10 1/2" long and 3/4lbs.!!!  wowsers!!!

they are now as long as a...

banana!!!  isn't that so funny that my chief problem i'm having is with leg cramping which has to do with not eating enough bananas for potassium (i do have one in my smoothie every morning)!  LOL!  and, here, the babies are this long at 20 weeks!

i don't know where they're fitting in me because i don't feel like they can be that big, but i guess our body has different plans for how to accommodate. :)

on a side note, i've been awoken the last few nights with leg cramping, especially three times last night (2, 5, and 7a.m.)- all of which weren't AS bad as they HAD been before, but it felt like the pain just kept circling around my upper calf like a merry-go-round!  the pain didn't last as long as it had before.  still, i'm wondering if i should take potassium supplements... i'll ask at my next appt. which is in a week. :)

update: another site/weekly email said that the babies are the size of a cantaloupe, so who knows!  LOL

twins' blog

Emotionally Healthy Twins' Blog was just introduced to me by a mother of nine year old identical twins!  just sharing for whoever needs it... :)

LOVE this fruit!

the babies are now the size of mangos at 19 weeks!  how cool is that!!!

i know that i haven't posted in awhile, but i have several coming this way, so be prepared to read. :)

also, nice trick my friend showed me with mangos- instead of PEELING (like smarty pants here used to do), CUT off the peel.  duh, right?  and, a family friend showed me one time that she had sliced up mango slices, put them in the freezer in a tupperware container, AND then pulled them out for snacks!  frozen mango slices!  brilliant.

yummy smoothies

ever since i "officially" found out that i was PG many moons ago, i've woken up... STARVING.  literally, waking up between 5-7a.m. (depending on work), and my stomach is  GROWLING.

for twins, the dr. wants me to eat 3,500 calories A DAY!!!  i was eating all of the time... every couple of hours.  STILL, it wasn't enough.

so, i started to make smoothies every morning, and it turns out it's been a great creative way for me to get even more nutrients than i was before..... what i love best about making my own smoothies is controlling what i put in my smoothies... the ingredients that i cannot control at a smoothie shop/jamba.

i especially love strawberries in them!  the trick is to put in half & half, frozen fruit, regular fruit, a bit of sugar, a bit of vanilla, and a bit of ice.  :)  usually, it's enough for my husband and me.

one night, i made my favorite smoothie, razzmatazz from jamba.  not to be biased, but i think that mine was greater. :)  here's the razzmatazz recipe:

1 cup raspberries, fresh or frozen
1 cup sliced strawberries
1/2 sliced banana
2 cups raspberry sherbet or sorbet (about 3 large scoops)
1 1/2 cup ice

blend ingredients until smooth.

every morning, i enjoy myself a sweet drink of a yummy smoothie with a straw... yum!

high-risk???

yes, i'm high-risk... i don't think i ever said what really happened late last summer...

i was immediately hospitalized with DVT (deep vein thrombosis) in my left leg, and also had a PE (pulmonary embolism)- blood clot in my left lung!

well, 9 days down, including a few in ICU, 3 private rooms, 3 surgeries, 3 or 4 ultrasounds, 2 cat scans, and $130,000+ bill (or was it more?) of which my co-pay was less than a grand....... i was released from the hospital.

on anticoagulants for the rest of my life.  my-lovely(i mean that in the highest regard- he saved my life)-and-obama-cloned-dr. discovered in the first surgery that i had may-thurner syndrome.
may-thurner syndrome
what is that?  well, i was born with it, and we have this center vein below our chest called the iliac vein, and mine looked like a traffic jam.  blood wasn't flowing through properly; thus, it got backed up, and i got DVT, PE...

coincidentally, i also had foot surgery a month before that, and wasn't able to move my left leg very much because of the black brace, HOWEVER, i would have developed the DVT, PE regardless because of my condition.  it was inevitable.

SO, i left the hospital on lovenox (shots taken twice a day that my lovely sister/gab administered... hated that needle, and we'd have a disagreement every time he/she was about to STAB me!  lol).

eventually, they moved me to coumadin, which i took for the next 8 months... until i found out i was pregnant.  coumadin is REALLY bad for babies and can cause birth defects and all sorts of craziness!  it's a small enough molecule that crosses the placenta...

AS SOON AS we found out i was PG, they moved me back to lovenox (oh joy!  doesn't cross to the placenta- small enough molecule), and i then had to start taking that twice a day, 70 mg/day.... gab was giving it to me... UNTIL one saturday, he left the house, AND we forgot to give my shot... a quick call to tirz that lasted for nine minutes with my sis convicing me to take the shot.

but, i HATE shots.  despise them.  do.not.like.them.and.flinch.every.time.  and, this needle is LONG!

well, since then, it's all me.  i have a routine down. 

i do this for my babies.  i need them to be as healthy and safe as possible.

because, i'm high-risk, i go every two-three weeks... and, these high-risk specialists are now going to deliver my babies...

the plus side?  have tons of photos and get tons of ultrasounds!  i've had six so far and i'm ONLY 16 weeks!

twins? identical? whaaaat?

when we first found out that we were pregnant, we had no idea what identical meant, and it's not what you think since we've been asked this question many times....  here's how we found out:

at six weeks (my second ultrasound at the high-risk specialist office), i was really supposed to be eight weeks.  immediately, she measured the baby and stated that we were only six weeks.  i was shocked, and didn't really understand.  so, i was pushed back two weeks.

THEN, she started squinting with her eyes, furrowing her eyebrows....  straight away, i asked her if something was wrong.  "no, nothing's wrong... it's just that... i think i see... two."  

as soon as she said that, i knew there were twins.  i turned to gab on my left, and his smile was so wide, and he was laughing so hard!  i was smiling so wide... so proud.  see, we always joked around that we'd have twins since his paternal grandma was one (identical- will explain later), AND had identical twin siblings (will explain later)!!!  i, like anyone, thought it ran in the fam, and that gab was due to have twins....

then, she said, "this sometimes happens... the baby's reflection looks like a second baby is there.  very normal.  we have to do a different ultrasound now."  

but, seriously, TWINS?!  i just smiled, and we had to do the more-thorough ultrasound (do i have to name it?).  of course, we were more intrigued at this second ultrasound for two reasons- the previous ultrasound (apr. 29, turns out i was just a few weeks then) was a little sac with a black little pea in it AND we wanted to know if there were twins!

"yes, they are twins... one placenta... identical twins."

WAIT, IDENTICAL?!  my head was so foggy and shocked at this point that i asked (you might find this a silly question, but seriously when you get the same information- let's see how you react!, AND plus- others have asked me the same question!)...

can it be a boy and girl?  (wouldn't that be perfect?!)

"no, two boys or two girls."

OH BOY... so it runs in my husband's family, he has identicals on his side, i told her.

"no, sorry to say, but... this is all you.  your egg split into two.  identical twins are not hereditary, non-genetic... they just happen in life.  no explanation."

poor gab... he thought it was his genes. ;)  so, what baffles me especially is HOW IN THE WORLD did his grandma have an identical twin ALONG with identical twin sisters?!  seriously, what are the chances of THAT?!  (stats later, please)

when we did see the dr. after that, he told us that i was already high-risk as is (more later), BUT they basically were going to take over my care and deliver these babies because i was even more high-risk with twins... identical twins.  he said that his only concern was that both babies in their own sacs needed to be separated by a membrane in the placenta.  otherwise, there's a higher mortality and a higher risk of bedrest.

two weeks go by... completely concerned, stressed, and praying for these babies... we go to our next appt., and THANK GOD- there's the membrane we needed!!!  woo hoo!  fantastic news!