The World's Worst Way to Make Small Talk with Your Wife While She Expresses Breast Milk

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House Call

One of the best benefits of having preemies is qualifying for a home health care program. This is also one of the worst benefits, one of the most useful benefits, one of the silliest benefits … there just aren’t a lot of benefits to having preemies. Not having to haul around 40-week-old twin fetuses is about the only other benefit.

The home health care program involves having a nurse visit our home once a week to check on the boys. This is great because it allows the boys to have frequent checkups while saving them the hazards of being exposed to generally unhealthy crowds in doctor’s office waiting rooms. It also saves me the trouble of hauling three children under the age of 2 out in public simultaneously, but insurance won’t pay convenience alone. The big downside is that we have to allow a stranger into our home to view the full spectacle of our newborn twin-induced housecleaning, or lack thereof.

Today was their checkup day. Checkup day was supposed to be five days ago, but the program was waiting for their Synagis to arrive. Synagis is a vaccine to prevent RSV, a serious respiratory virus that, according to my understanding from glossy ads found in parenting magazines, automatically sends its infant victims to the NICU with difficulty breathing, black and white vision, and generally pathetic appearance. Synagis is extremely time-sensitive, requiring shots spaced almost exactly 30 days apart to be effective. Since this dose, their second, was five days late, they’re still essentially unprotected until their next dose arrives in (hopefully) 30 days. For all the good it’s done, they might as well have given them sugar water instead of their first dose; it would have been almost as effective at preventing RSV and would have cost about $1000 less, per child.

The nurse came this afternoon, administered their vaccine, and checked their vitals. They’re both in good shape overall. Both have small heart murmurs, which are common in preemies and almost always go away quickly.

Most exciting was the weighing: Ian weighs 6 lbs; Tory tips the scales at 6 lbs, 8 ozs. Both boys added almost a pound since their checkup last week, meaning they’re growing well on breast milk without us having to spike it with a little formula powder. Almost as importantly, it means I can pack up their preemie clothes (good for up to 5 lbs) and free up a little space in their room. A few less things to pick up should help with the housekeeping.

Cabinet Lock, Stockpot, and Barrel Opener

Before the twins came, I had more free time to spend on luxurious activities like sleeping and writing clear and concise blog posts. I have to be more efficient with my time now that I have two newborns to care for who never ever sleep unless of course we’re trying to feed them, at which point their bodies go limp as soon as the bottle goes in the mouth and the only way to wake them is to place them in their crib.

One of my luxury activities has been to tolerate Abbie playing in the kitchen cupboards. She only has access to large cooking implements, like cookie sheets and sauce pans, so there’s nothing she could hurt herself with like cleaning chemicals or glass objects, unless she climbs on the kitchen table, which she usually does, but she’s already destroyed everything breakable that we did keep on the table. I used to let her fling pans and plastic containers all over the floor because when I’m cooking I’d rather have her doing that than hovering under my feet trying to make me spill food. The dog already serves as a food-scavenging kitchen obstacle, and she doesn’t need any competition. After finishing my labor of lunch, I would take a few minutes to return the pots to their cabinet, the plastic containers to their cabinet, the pans to their cabinet, return the pots that Abbie just pulled out to their cabinet, and then shoo Abbie out of the kitchen to fling toys all over the living room, or possibly clothes all over her room.

Now that every second is precious, we’ve invested in a sturdy set of cabinet locks. They slide around the handles, preventing Abbie from opening the doors until she reaches an age* where she can defeat the locks. They also force us to slow down when removing an item like a stockpot from the cabinets, requiring us to reconsider if we really want spaghetti tonight, or some taco-like concoction.

At first I felt guilty about locking the cabinets. For months I had given Abbie de facto permission to rummage through our cabinets, and suddenly I shut her out. Then I saw her encounter the locks for the first time, see that she couldn’t open the doors, and leave the kitchen under her free will. Now I can cook in peace, as long as you consider a dog under feet and wailing newborns in another room peaceful, without having to pick up any messes in the kitchen that I didn’t make. That gives me time for other, more important duties, like picking up toys in the living room.

* Probably around 20-months-old.

150 Minutes

We’re trying to establish a schedule with the twins. In the NICU, the nurses checked the stomachs every three hours. If they were empty, the received more milk. If they had undigested milk, they had to wait. The latter occurred rarely, providing more proof that they were my sons because I never miss a meal. If they were hungry before the three-hour check, I guess they went hungry. They were premature, so were likely in a perpetual state of exhaustion that prevented them from complaining.

When we took them home, we tried to keep their three-hour schedule. From sunup to sundown, we fed them every three hours. While we slept, we cheated the gap back to four hours. Sometimes they complained before their next scheduled feeding, but we easily coerced them back into complacency.

As the days progressed, they started waking sooner and complaining harder. I noticed they were waking after two and a half hours, so I decreed that to be their feeding schedule. We fed them every two and a half hours during the day, even if they were sleeping. Whoever said, “never wake a sleeping baby” wasn’t working around the schedules of newborn twins and a 19-month-old. At night, we let them sleep as long as they wanted, which was originally four hours.

As the days progressed, their sleeping time degenerated to three and a half hours, and then three hours. Finally last night, they slept two and a half hours between feedings. That’s 11pm, 1:30am, and 4am, and then we somehow coaxed them to sleep until 8am. That’s what happens when you establish a two and a half hour daytime routine. I hope that’s the bottom, because I’ve been in a fog all day, the kind of fog where you can lose track of minor details like which bowls games are on tonight, which child needs changed, which side of the road you’re supposed to drive on.

We’re moving their feeding schedule back to every three hours. The idea is to keep them asleep for a little longer at night. Much like preemies, Ellie and I are also in a perpetual state of exhaustion, except our exhaustion doesn’t prevent me from complaining. It does prevent me from completing a coherent thought, and if I can just get them to sleep for slightly longer stretches, I might start making more sense.

Giving Us a Black Eye

After having the twins home for just a couple of weeks, I’ve already discovered that some times are better than others. Some times, the moons and naptimes align, everyone sleeps simultaneously, and I have chance to accomplish important work around the house, like blogging. Other times, everyone hits their active phases concurrently, and my powers of containment can only supervise one or two children at a time, leaving the extraneous children free to run wild and eventually develop a black eye.

Shortly after noon today, Ellie and I sat on our bed feeding the twins. The twins’ eating habits are turning fussier, requiring much prodding to keep eating. I held Ian, Ellie held Tory, and we both turned our full attention to keeping them eating. Abbie had just finished lunch, and was careening about the house burning off some energy before her nap. We gave her free run of the house without our visual supervision, but how much trouble could she get into? We closed all doors, gates, and cabinets leading to dangerous locales, and assumed she’d play contentedly with her toys maliciously with her books, the same as usual. Plus the dog was watching her.

50 cc’s into the twins’ bottles, we heard a thud from the kitchen. Then a crash. Then glass tinkling. Ellie handed Tory to me and investigated. From the bedroom, I heard Ellie exclaim exasperation.

“Is everything okay?” I asked. “No,” she replied. Horrible visions danced through my head of Abbie seriously hurting herself on broken glass, and it would all be because of my negligence. Ellie then walked by the bedroom carrying an apparently unharmed Abbie. I clarified my question.

“Is Abbie okay?”

“Yes.”

Abbie had climbed on the kitchen table, finding one of mommy’s pretty glass candleholders up there. After trying to determine how best to play with it, apparently ruling out eating and juggling, she threw it on the floor. Upon impact it shattered in a display that, although naughty, was probably pretty cool.

After cleaning the mess, we resumed feeding the twins, but this time we were smart enough to keep Abbie in our room with us where the carpet would at least give glass objects a chance survive an Abbie toss. Confident there was nothing she could break we again focused entirely on the twins. Then Abbie rolled off the bed smacking her eye on a nightstand on the way down.

She has a nasty mark by her eye right now that may swell to a full-blown black eye by morning, but otherwise she’s fine. Half an hour after the incident, she was careening around the house burning off energy before her nap. The moons aligned shortly thereafter as we set the twins down for their nap, and then set Abbie down for hers. I used my free time to accomplish the most important work of all: Thinking of ways to keep Abbie safe while we feed the twins. My best idea was to feed them in a more central location than our bedroom. Also, we want to keep glass candleholders off the kitchen table.

Post-Christmas Presents

Once upon a time, say about two weeks ago, I thought we had too many baby clothes in the 0-3 month size. We had a dresser stuffed with more tiny clothes than I am with Christmas fudge. I started telling people not to buy us anymore 0-3 month clothes. I think I even returned a few outfits.

That ranks with some of my all-time dumbest underestimations, right up there with “how much work could one child be?” and “how much work could one blog be?” I forgot that newborns are adept at ruining their outfits with spit milk at mealtime and a different kind of spitting at diaper-changing time. About the time that I did laundry for the third time in a week, I decided we needed more outfits.

With this in mind, I sent Ellie out this morning on a post-Christmas shopping spree, looking for clearanced clothes. Technically this was my Christmas gift to her, letting her shop for a morning while I juggle three children, sometimes literally, out of her earshot at home.

The first rule of shopping on a busy day is to arrive early, preferably when the stores open at 7am. Ian helped her achieve this one by waking us up at 5am, giving her plenty of time to feed, change, feed herself, and change herself before attacking the sales.

I kept the peace by myself for about four hours at home. It was nothing too challenging, though my finest moment was feeding Abbie, feeding myself, and preparing the twins’ food while Ian, who was still in no mood to sleep, lay in my lap.

When Ellie returned home, I examined her haul with glee normally reserved for Abbie’s Halloween candy. I wanted to see several sleepers they could wear through spring with statements like “Baby’s first Christmas” or “Happy Hanukah” or maybe even “Festivus” stitched across the front, and ridiculously low prices on the receipt.

What Ellie found were several very comfy, very cute, very unclearanced outfits. It turns out, they don’t make many of those holiday outfits, possibly because they know cheap vultures like us will snap them up on December 26th like so much excess Christmas fudge. She also picked up decorations for next season; mini-bulbs for the tree, large snowflakes for outside, small snowflakes for garland. Sadly she didn’t buy anything with the words “8-foot” and “inflatable” in its description.

Now the twins have a few more outfits, or at least they will as soon as I run another load of laundry.* None of the outfits advertise holidays, but that’s okay since no one wants to be reminded of the holidays long after the fact.

Now where’s my leftover fudge?

* It’s been two days since the last load, so I’ll probably do that tomorrow.

Way Too Early Chirstmas Morning

On the first Christmas I can remember, I was out of bed at 2am to open my presents. I shredded the paper first thing to play with all of my fabulous new toys. Five hours later, my parents emerged from their bedroom* with disappointment on their faces; they missed the opportunity to see the joy in my eyes as I tore into my presents, or maybe they just didn’t want to clean up the horrific mess I made. That’s all I remember about that Christmas. That, and the fact that I was really grumpy that day.

Twenty-some years later, I was again up at 2am on Christmas morning to tear into something, but this package wasn’t so much joyous as stinky. After feeding and changing the twins, I went back to sleep. Three hours later,** I did the same thing. A little later, I woke up for good to take care of Abbie. After that, the twins needed another feed ‘N change. Shortly after 9am, a time that would have killed me to wait for twenty years ago, we finally set about opening presents. We took a picture before doing so to preserve the memory.



We look goofy, but we learned long ago that when taking family photos, it doesn’t matter what the adults look like as long as the kids have a presentable expression.

Abbie received too many toys, and they mostly came from us so we have no one to blame but ourselves when we spend the next 12 months stepping on broken toy pieces. The twins received mostly clothes from our families, which is perfect since they’re several months away from developing the motor skills needed to throw a ball no matter how boldly the words “All-Star” are emblazoned on their onesie. Ellie and I exchanged beautiful gifts that required onerous amounts of effort and cash to acquire.

Nah, we have newborn twins; we don’t have time or money. I gave Ellie my blessing to shop on the day after Christmas without the children. Ellie gave me the opportunity to nap after opening presents. I was up at 2 this morning after all.

* Slackers.
** Those four-hour stretches at night that I bragged about at first keep getting shorter.

Christmas Discoveries

Abbie still doesn’t understand the concept of opening presents. She grabs a loose part of the wrapping paper, tears it off, and goes back to destroying her books or whatever she was doing. I’m sure the boys won’t have the same problem destroying things when they get a little older.

Today, Tory found his thumb for the first time. Tomorrow, I start trying to break him of this thumb sucking habit.

While it may satisfy the requirements of a lactose-free diet, using soymilk to make scrambled eggs and ham is not a good idea.

I’m hoping Santa brings me a good night’s sleep.

Merry Christmas.

Turning to the Pink Side

I underestimated the number of outfits we’d need to keep the boys in soft, cottony comfort. Now I’m doing laundry every time they pee on every single outfit in their wardrobe, which work out to two or three loads a week. Fortunately we have a friend who had a preemie baby and was willing to lend us some tiny clothes. Unfortunately, her baby wasn’t exactly like ours.



Those are our boys, and one of them is wearing a borrowed outfit. I don’t want to say which one is dressed in pink; that way I have an effective blackmail tool for either child in the future, should I need it to get the car back at a reasonable hour, or possibly to be placed in the nursing home of my choice.

I left him in that outfit for possibly too long; at one point I mistakenly called him “her.” To make up for it, his next outfit was the manliest, bluest, football-est sleeper I could find.

First Public Appearance

The twins achieved another milestone yesterday when Ellie took them into public for the first time. Here, “public” means “the doctor,” so it’s not like we did anything crazy like going shopping, eating in a restaurant, or spending the holidays with our families after a three-hour drive. Still, Ellie took them to the pediatrician in the hospital where she works, giving several friends and dozens of quasi-strangers the chance to ogle them.

While Ellie took them to the doctor, I stayed home. I was sick with a stomach bug, and life is easier when Abbie can stay home. Since I was too sick to eat and Abbie needed supervision, I spent my time without the twins doing the only thing I could think of: Vacuuming the floors.

Ellie discovered many things on her trip to the hospital. First, the twins are in great health. They’re adding weight at a rate that should put them into size 1 diapers long before they use all of the newborn size diapers I stockpiled for them. They detected no health problems, and they’re grasping fingers at a proficiency level expected in children twice their age.

Second, there are no more quick trips into public. She left just before 9am with milk in hand ready to feed them in the doctor’s waiting area. She returned just before noon with two hungry babies ready to eat again. She was gone for so long that I had time to rest, vacuum, rest, vacuum the bedrooms, rest, wash the dishes, rest, finish washing the dishes, and rest again.

Third, while most people are aware of the axiom “never wake a sleeping baby,” they also believe that it has an appendage “unless you can hand that now awake and screaming baby back to its parents and leave the room.” Ellie had the twins sleeping while strapped into the double stroller, and somehow countless passers-by took that as an invitation to try to wake them. I guess they wanted to see what they do when they’re awake.* Fortunately that lead to another discovery, which is:

Fourth, despite their deepest cuddling desires, most people will not remove a baby from his stroller. That may have been the only thing saving Ellie from having two awake and hungry babies on her hands that were very frustrated people keep waking them as soon as they doze off.

Fifth, everybody loves hearing that you have twins. Even the people who see you enough to know that you work at the hospital, but aren’t quite of your department. Maybe it’s internal medicine; maybe it’s in maintenance. Either way, they want to know about your twins. Also, no matter how many people you told about the twins before the delivery, there’s always someone who didn’t know.

Sixth, even though all adults in the house are too sick to eat, those three minors still produce a significant number of dirty dishes.

* They open their eyes, check that nothing important involving diapers or milk is happening, and go back to sleep, or maybe they just cry.

"I have soy milk. The doctor says the real kind could kill me."

Disclaimer: Despite this post’s beginning, everyone is healthy and everything is fine.

Of all the substances that you don’t want to see come out of your newborn’s rear end,* blood has to be at the top of the list. I got to see this treat while changing Tory’s diaper yesterday. Having raised a newborn daughter with a healthy colon who now creates messes that require double-digit numbers of wipes to clean, I’m experienced at dealing with various discharges. Blood was a new one, though.

We immediately called the pediatrician. Like a tech support operator who needs to check the basic stuff first like verifying that your computer is plugged in, he started with basic questions. No we had not done anything to cause trauma to that region like inserting a thermometer, and no we had not fed him anything silly like cherry Jell-o. He quickly deducted that Tory must have developed an allergy to cow’s milk, and that was causing the bleeding.

Both kids eat breast milk right now, but the NICU had us spike their milk with powdered formula to up their caloric intake. It worked as they both added almost two pounds in three weeks, but now the bovine protein was wrecking havoc on their innards. After the diagnosis, I realized both were probably suffering from the allergy. Both grunted a lot. Ian especially kept his knees in the air most of the day. Both pooped their diapers after every feeding, or approximately 15,123 times daily. Then there was the blood thing.

The pediatrician gave us samples of a formula based on something other than cow’s milk or soy. Judging by the formula’s odor, I’m guessing goats are somehow involved. I realize that all formulas tend to waft a little eau dugout, but this formula seemed comprised of especially unkempt goat. Pulling off the can’s lid stunk up the kitchen. Judging from the twins’ reaction to the change, it also apparently disgustified the breast milk. Feeding our newborns suddenly turned from a magical experience as your dependent child suckles contentedly, to a maddening experience as your defiant child screams continuously.

The next day we spoke to the pediatrician again, who gave us the okay to give them straight breast milk. The catch is Ellie now must avoid the entire dairy food group in her diet. No more string cheese. No more Cheez-Its. No more Goldfish. I think milk might also be out, but she doesn’t drink much of that anyway.

Things have gone much better today. The kids seem happier. They’re pooping a sane number of times daily. The only substance coming from their rear ends is the standard substance you don’t want to see.

* There are, by the way, very few substances that you do want to see come out of your newborn’s rear end.

Tired and Sick

If there’s anything more exciting than tag teaming with your wife to care for newborn twins and a 19-month-old, it’s going solo to care for all three children while your wife rests horizontally with a stomach bug.

As I prepared the twins’ 2am feeding this morning, Ellie informed me that we may have trouble. Her stomach was turning in loops, just like her father’s did right after visiting us this weekend. I handed her a bottle, wished her and her Nexium good luck, and sat down to feed my charge. Only a few cc’s into the feeding, Ellie left her charge on the bed rushed into the bathroom to eject something out of one end or the other, and possibly both.

I stared at my boy eating contentedly, and at my other boy looking around contentedly but definitely not eating. Now was the time to answer one of my most pressing questions, a question I’d held since I learned the twins were coming: Can I feed two babies simultaneously? I knew that eventually Ellie would return to work and I’d have to figure out a way, I just hoped I’d be able to wait a few more weeks when their muscles are a little stronger before discovering the answer.

It turns out, I can. While sitting on the bed, I opened my legs from crossed into a diamond position with the feet flat against each other. I set one baby’s head on my left foot, the other head on my left foot, took a bottle in each hand, and inserted hoping they didn’t slip too far out of position.

And that’s how my day went, sitting on the bed, simultaneously feeding two newborns every three hours and hoping Abbie stayed away from anything breakable while I was disposed. Ellie helped however she could, going so far as to start the Sesame Street DVD twice for Abbie, but spent most of her time resting on the couch or in the bathroom.

As the day progressed, Ellie’s strength returned and her stomach relented somewhat. Of course as it did, my strength diminished and my stomach knotted. It never forced me into a flat position, but I did move a lot slower than normal. At one point I stood helplessly as I heard Abbie dump most of a box of Tasteeos on the floor from another room. Had I not been sick, I would’ve moved quicker, possibly swooping in just in time to scold Abbie immediately after the box hit the floor. Scolding is more effective when it occurs immediately after the infraction.

Fortunately this seems to be a 24-hour bug, so hopefully I’ll be much improved tomorrow. All I need is a full night’s sleep to regain my strength. Oh … right. The twins.

I wanted to add to our family. I wanted to add to our family. I wanted to add to our family.

"Who the @#$% are you?"

I cut off Tory’s hospital identification bracelet. I noticed the bracelet was growing a little tight around his ankle. It’s amazing what you’ll find to concentrate on when the clock says 3am, and you’re desperately finding a reason to stay awake. I had to slip the scissors through a tight gap between the bracelet and the skin, and must have pushed the backside of the scissors hard into his leg. He screamed horribly, not that I hurt him, and boy did I check him several times just to be sure.

Without that bracelet, we have one less way to tell them apart. We haven’t had them home for a week, but I still can’t tell them apart. Hand me a naked baby, and I’ll correctly identify him 50% of the time. Then I’ll quickly hand him back because I know how dangerous it is to hold a naked baby, especially boys because of their range.

We have a few tricks to tell them apart, though. First, Ian is on the left, Tory is on the right. The NICU started this one for us, and we’ve made sure to always place the proper baby in the proper spot. This should work until they start rolling over, or until Abbie starts carrying them around.

Second, we remember which baby has which outfit. I imagine that as the sleep deprivation worsens, and they’re already losing their newborn narcolepsy, this trick will be less effective.

Third, and most definitively, Tory is bigger by about half a pound. Set them next to each other, and I can tell which one is bigger. As long as Tory eats more and exercises less for his whole life, this trick should always work.

If all else fails, we can just look for the identification bracelet. Ian still has his around his wrist, and with plenty of slack left, we’re not cutting that one off for a while, hopefully not until one of them can tell us his name.

First Bath

We gave the twins a bath last night. They had baths while in the NICU, but those were of the sponge bath variety and involved small buckets of water and tiny swabs. This was their first ever honest to goodness bath involving a bathtub, soft cotton towels, and of course lots of screaming.

We drug out our baby bathtub for the first time in months. It went into storage as soon as we discovered it was easier to let Abbie roam free-range in the big person tub than to force her to stay seated every time she tried standing. The twins are little more than cute blobs at this point, so we have no worries about them trying to stand.

Not only did we drag out the baby bathtub, but we also drug out the hammock that stretches across the bathtub. That hammock has been in storage for 17 of Abbie’s 18 months. It’s a good idea, suspending a newborn above the water and supporting his body since newborns, much like water, tend to flow to the lowest elevation. Unfortunately being suspended above water keeps the body wet and in a perpetual state of evaporation. This leads to infants in a perpetual state of cooling and in a perpetual state of cranky.

With Abbie, we could both afford the time to fawn over her as she writhed cutely in the chilly hammock. With the twins, we need a system where one of us stays bathes one child, keeping him wet, warm, and minimally furious, while the other parent preps the non-bathing, prepping or drying as needed. As for Abbie, I guess she plays nicely on the floor while the non-bathing parent checks on her periodically to ensure that she hasn’t stuffed too much dog food in her mouth.

I took the bathing job last night. Just as I remembered, the hammock severely ticked both of them off. Ian screamed for most of his bath, but Tory gave us some moments of silence. Not because he hated his bath any less, but because he became so mad that he refused to inhale for a few seconds after screaming. He’s fine, but I haven’t seen him turn those colors since he was on NICU oxygen.

Also just as I remembered, they both peed in their bath.

Not-so-Great Expectations

I woke up last night to feed the twins when something strange happened. Actually I woke up twice to feed the twins last night, which isn’t too bad. They went four hours between feedings last night, giving me a chance to achieve a functional amount of sleep for the night. I was expecting closer to two hours between feedings since that’s what Abbie gave us at first. My philosophy of “keep your expectations low and you won’t be disappointed” serves me well.

The strange thing I mentioned was during the 1:30am feeding. A few sucks into Tory’s, or possibly Ian’s bottle, I heard Abbie cry. I knew Abbie would wake up sometime while I was occupied feeding someone, I just hoped it wouldn’t happen on night #2.

She cried for a minute, and quieted down. Since I was busy feeding a child with the muscle control of an exceptionally lazy beanbag chair, I let her go, figured she had a nightmare, and fell back asleep.

A few minutes later, she cried for another minute before quieting down. That’s when I thought something might be wrong, but Mr. Sack of Rocks was still sucking on his bottle, so I let her go again.

After putting Ian, or possibly Tory down, I was cleaning up after their feeding when I heard her cry again. Lacking an excuse to ignore her, I barged into her room to calm her down. I hoped she had just dropped a stuffed animal and was very insistent on retrieving it, but I knew something was very wrong as soon as I took one whiff.

You experienced parents may think that a foul odor in the baby’s room is always poop related, but you’d be wrong. Her problem was from the opposite end, and I only wish she had a diaper in the way to contain the output.

Vomit was everywhere. It was on her pajamas, in her hair, and most distressingly all over her beloved stuffed animals. Everything she had eaten since supper came back up in mostly recognizable form, like a reality TV show regurgitating the careers of celebrities, only her room was more appealing to look at but less appealing to smell.

I took Abbie out of her crib, stripped her down, and set to work cleaning. I was thoroughly dismayed that I had to sacrifice precious sleeping time cleaning up, but Abbie thought it was pretty cool to play with her toys while naked at 2am.

I made it back in time to sleep for several minutes before the twins woke back up. I’m short on sleep today, but otherwise doing well. Abbie is also doing well. I expected her to be sick today with a stomach bug, but she seems okay. The only remnants of the incident are a small loss of appetite and general crankiness, both of which may be tied to her loss of sleep. She could be a lot worse.

There’s those low expectations at work again.

Day 1

Wednesday night, someone in America won a Powerball jackpot worth $115,000,000. By the next morning, word was spreading across the state that the winning ticket was sold in Iowa, and it was the biggest jackpot ever won in Iowa. Later that day, the news reported that the winner bought the ticket in Des Moines, at a grocery store only a couple miles from my home. While I never regularly shopped at that store, I had bought groceries there numerous times over the past few years.

When I woke this morning from my first night with the twins, I opened the newspaper to find a front-page headline asking, “Who’s happy today?” The headline rhetorically referred to the unknown winner who had yet to step forward, but I thought of my situation, about how I had just completed my first night caring for my complete family, enjoying the miracle of twin infants that few will ever enjoy, and I thought that headline could refer to me.

That’s what this post could be about if I could hold a coherent thought. Instead I’m rediscovering that brain no work good on small sleep.

I have to say the twins weren’t too bad. The NICU did a fantastic job of putting them on the same schedule. They still woke up every three hours, but at least they did so simultaneously. Three-hour stretches overnight aren’t bad for newborns either. Abbie only gave us two-hour stretches for those first few blessed,* blessed** nights.

Speaking of three-hour stretches, we just completed one, and both are awake. I’m typing with Tory in my lap right now. He’s sucking on a pacifier, waiting for me to finish typing and feed him. I can’t imagine a big bag of money being any sweeter.

* Here, “blessed” is used in the “gift from God” sense.
** Here, “blessed” is used in the “substitute for an expletive” sense.

Homecoming 2: The Re-Returning

The phone woke me just before 7:30 this morning. Four weeks ago I was still waking up before 7am, but ever since the twins came I’ve been letting my sleeping habits take a much-needed slide. I was too slow to answer the phone, but I heard the message as the answering machine recorded it. The NICU was on the other end. The twins were ready whenever we could pick them up. The day I had been awaiting for over three weeks had finally arrived, the day when I could cut the NICU identification bracelets off my wrist. It was also the day the twins could come home.

Right after breakfast, we passed Abbie off on a neighbor, pretended not to hear her (Abbie) scream as we left, and sped through snow flurries to reclaim our boys. Our neighbor had a doctor’s appointment at 10am, so we had to hurry, but that was okay because Abbie had a doctor’s appointment at 10am as well.

We arrived in the NICU for the last time, hopefully ever, and began collecting our belongings. Some of our things we had brought from home, like clothing, stuffed animals, and at least three different cameras. Other things the hospital gave to us as we left, like diapers,* formula,* and assorted personalized holiday decorations as their stay spanned two major holidays more or less.

With all possessions precariously loaded on a cart and all children tightly strapped into their car seats, we rode the elevator back downstairs. I ran to the car to pull it up to the door, the whole way fighting snow flurries that were suspiciously thick for supposedly amounting to no accumulation. Aided by a nurse, we packed the car and secured the boys as quickly as possible, finishing just in time for the car’s heater to warm the cabin to “tepid.” We drove away, beginning our lifetime as the sole provider to three children.

Abbie took the major life change surprisingly well, or at least she did once she calmed down after we rescued her from the neighbor. I feared that she might resent the attention we must devote to the twins, but so far she enjoys taking advantage of our divided attention by misbehaving when there isn’t a darn thing we can do about it. The dog seems happy about the twins, which is a welcome change from the panic-fueled submissive wetting we saw when we brought Abbie home. The cats seem upset, more so than usual, that we didn’t learn our lesson with the first child.

I’d say so far, so good. No major fights yet. Of course we haven’t tried sleeping at night yet.

By the way, thank you to everyone leaving comments. I read and appreciate all of them, even if I don’t respond to most of them. You’ll understand if I’m a little short on time.

* Thank you.

Homecoming Eve

Before leaving the NICU today, I stopped to give the twins’ nurse an update on their condition. Ian was dozing peacefully, and I had just set Tory down to nap after stuffing him full of 2-ounces of milk. She listened and, as I was walking out, remarked, “Barring any setbacks, it looks like they’ll be coming home tomorrow.”

Something clicked in me when she said that. We’d been shooting for Thursday as the day for them to come home for almost a week now, but it hadn’t sunk in my mind yet. When Ellie and I talk about them coming home Thursday, it sounds like we’re dreaming. When the nurses talk about them going home Thursday, it sounds like they’re just humoring us. Even when I heard that the doctor said they might go home Thursday, it sounded like wishful thinking, like every spring when the Cubs say their goal is to win the World Series this year, even though every man, woman, and goat knows full well they’ll never win another World Series. Somehow when the nurse said they can go home tomorrow though, it all came together in one package of realism; a tidy, beautiful, relieving, panic-inducing package.

I still have too much to do to prepare for their homecoming. First on my list was getting my hair cut. This may not sound essential, but keep in mind that my last haircut was months ago, and when my hair grows too long, it curls into wings by my ears. Besides making me look embarrassing, the wings present an eye-poking hazard when I fling the twins over my shoulder for burping. I knew that once the twins came home, I wouldn’t be able to leave the house without the twins, and I couldn’t leave by myself for any appreciable amount of time for any reason that didn’t involve acquiring food, be it the grocery, formula, or take-out type of food. So I burned 30-minutes getting my hair cut while Ellie directed Abbie’s energy into relatively silent, safe, and non-destructive activities, such as climbing up and down chairs.

After the haircut, we went Christmas shopping. Because our family and friends will be disappointed to meet our freshly expanded family if we don’t also offer them a trinket commemorating the holiday season. We have no hope of journeying to the mall as a family once the twins come home.

Once home, I realized what else I will never again do once the twins come home: Nap. I dozed off for a few minutes this afternoon, bringing my daily sleep total dangerously close to eight hours, which is another milestone I surely won’t see again for months.

I decided the final activity we needed to do before the twins come home is eat out in a nice restaurant.* By “nice” I don’t mean “the type of place where you’re expected to dress in business casual attire or at least change from your Winger t-shirt;” rather I mean “the type of place where servers come to your table to take your order and deliver your food, and the only place you see clowns is on the children’s menu, which doubles as a handing coloring book.” I remembered that when Abbie was born, eating out with her at a sit-down restaurant was pure hell for the first few months. That was mostly because she spent her entire time in the restaurant eating or screaming, and the time between us sitting down and receiving our food is almost exactly how long it took her to finish her bottle. We’re just now arriving at the point where we can keep her placated by distracting her with toys until the food arrives, then keeping her face too full to scream. Eating out with two newborn balls of fury and a toddler in need of constant distraction will be impossible.

I enjoyed a nice barbeque dinner while stuffing Abbie’s face. Then we came home to finish arranging things and tiding up a bit around the house. I wasn’t worried about those things because I can always work around the house once they come home. It’s leaving the house that will be a problem. I’m looking forward to their homecoming, just a little apprehensive about things. What if I never sleep again? What if I never leave the house again? What if I just jinxed their homecoming with this post?

* Unrelated tangent because there’s no way we’re fighting those crowds for quick-serve quality food, unless Fuddruckers is involved: Popeye’s opened their first restaurant in central Iowa on Monday. The restaurant has been packed every since with cars in the drive-thru consistently lined up into the street. Insert your judgment about the populace of the Des Moines metro area here.

Next Thing You Know She'll Be Dancing to Bob Seger in Her Underwear...

When holding our newborn twins, I remember all the things I enjoyed about babies when they’re little. There’s the tranquility of holding a bottle with no other responsibilities for up to a half-hour while they suck in virtual silence. There’s the tiny diapers that fill the diaper pail slowly and cost less, or at least they will cost less once their sizes are measured in numbers instead of letters. There’s the assurance that comes from knowing that the only food they must and should consume today, tomorrow, and a month from now is milk. The best thing about newborns though, is their inability to make a nuisance of themselves. Sure, they can and will cry at all hours of the day, but that’s nothing compared to Abbie’s ability to misbehave.

Her latest trick to act up and tick off daddy involves the stereo. From the time she learned to crawl to nearby objects, Abbie has always loved anything with buttons to push. At first the only button-festooned objects she could access were things like remote controls and telephones, objects we could easily place out of her reach provided we remember to do so before they wind up in her mouth.

As soon as she learned to stand, she discovered the joys of our stereo, which we thoughtfully positioned at toddler eye-level. She immediately swung open the glass doors it rests behind, and found its multitude of buttons, the LCD display that dances with every push, and the pop out tape deck doors that make convenient handles for pulling herself up.

As soon as we realized she was playing with and potentially breaking an expensive piece of home electronics, we fashioned an elaborate child-deterrent system consisting of a rubber band stretched across the handles on the glass doors, effectively locking the doors shut. That rubber band, and its many successors as they dried up and snapped, served us well, preventing Abbie from accessing the stereo no matter how hard she tugged on the doors, assuming that we left the remote out of her reach, which we always swore we did yet it somehow often found its way into her mouth.

Recently I learned that the rubber band wasn’t so much a deterrent as a strength-training device. After months of reps on the DoorMaster, she finally developed the strength to pull the door hard enough to separate the handle from the door. When she did, the estranged handle went flying across the room along with the rubber band. At least I assume they went flying across the room; I heard a clang sound followed by a thunk sound, and that was the last I saw or heard of the handle.

Now the door flaps unhindered, and the stereo is at Abbie’s mercy. Fortunately she has moved beyond pulling herself up by the tape deck trays. Unfortunately she has grown more adept at pushing buttons. Besides being annoying when she turns the radio on to static, pushing buttons wouldn’t be a problem in itself except that she’s also grown more adept at turning knobs, specifically the volume knob. The house can go from peaceful silence to static amplified to speaker shattering levels in under five seconds.

We’re trying to figure out a new way to childproof the stereo doors without much luck. Their glass attribute eliminates most traditional locks that could be attached. For now we’ll just keep watching her closely and hoping she grows out of it. I figure that by the time she does that, she’ll be old enough to tell on her brothers when they touch the stereo.

"Did you barricade the door?" "Why? Oh, the zombies. No."

It finally happened last night; Abbie finally locked me out of the house. She learned to shut doors months ago, and ever since I knew that one day she would lock me out of the house, preferably while fully clothed.

One of her favorite activities in the kitchen, assuming the dishwasher is closed, is shutting doors. If any cabinets are open, she’ll shut those tight. If the nearby front door is open, she’ll shut that tight. If the basement door is open, she’ll shut that tight unless the safety gate is in the way. If the refrigerator is open, she’ll open that door all the way to play in it because the refrigerator is stocked with a myriad of rare treasures, like the soy sauce bottle.

She exhibited her door shutting skills last night while I was doing laundry. We have a unique laundry situation in our home; our washing machine is installed in our basement, but our dryer is installed in our neighbor’s basement. We live in a duplex-type building with adjoining living spaces, so entering the neighbor’s basement is as simple as opening a door in the basement. While lugging wet clothes next door makes for an inconvenient laundry situation, the basement door does make my life simpler when I need someone to watch Abbie and I can shove her through the door hoping they won’t notice the extra child in their house until I return.*

I usually carry Abbie downstairs with me when I do laundry. That way instead of wondering why she’s screaming on the floor above me, she’ll be in front of me where I can watch her hurt herself and know exactly why she’s crying. While in the basement, she usually amuses herself by wandering around, taking in the staggering amount of clutter we’ve amassed, and corroborating with the cats to discover new ways to access their food. Sometimes she climbs up the basement steps, an action that requires me to swoop her up for safety and carry her back to the washing machine so I can continue with laundry for an additional 13.28 seconds until she runs right back to the steps.

Last night she was content to poke around our clutter. When I drug a load to the dryer, I called her to follow me to the neighbor basement. As long as she isn’t engrossed in a rousing session on the stairs, she usually follows me. The neighbors keep an immaculately clean basement sprinkled with a few toys that Abbie loves, like action figures and rubber balls that are completely different from the rubber balls we own.

While I stuffed clothes in the dryer, Abbie busied herself with the balls. I check on her periodically to make sure she wasn’t doing anything dangerous like bouncing the balls in a hazardous manner, but focused primarily on transferring clothes without dropping them. At one point I looked up and noticed she wasn’t in the neighbor’s basement anymore. Then I saw the connecting basement door starting to close.

The connecting door locks only from our basement. I always keep it locked because it just seems like a bad idea to have an unlocked door leading into our home. Someone could just walk into our home and make trouble at any time, even though that “someone” would have to be our neighbors who would never do such a thing. Thanks to that locked door, if our neighbors ever want to steal our clutter, they’ll just have to do it during one of the many times they baby-sit for us in our home.

I knew the door was locked when I saw it swing shut. Fortunately, Abbie just pushed it lightly shut so the door swung against the frame without latching; I could easily push it back open. Then, my reinforcement of “shut it tight, Abbie” every time she similarly shut a door without latching it came back to bite me in the butt as I saw the door suddenly pushed shut from the other side. I pushed on the door, but no luck; she locked me out of the house.

I stood dumbfounded, trying to decide what to do. I knew the door could be opened even when locked, so maybe I could find a way to wiggle the lock open. Abbie quickly found a reason to scream though, so I knocked on the neighbor’s upstairs door for one of the more fractured conversations in my life.

“I, uh, need upstairs. The door, uh, locked. Abbie is screaming. Um. She pushed the door. Uh, Abbie locked me out of the house.”

I bounded out their front door and back into our house. I was fully clothed except for a lack of shoes, so the trip outside would have been tolerable if it weren’t so cold. Back in the house, I discovered Abbie was fine in spite of my negligent parenting; she was just upset that no one else was around, possibly because she wanted to show off her door shutting skills.

* The neighbors have seven children, as of right now. It’ll be eight in a few months.

"Enjoy our party snacks"

Ellie’s company holiday party was the other night. It was a formal affair with catered food and no children who are old enough to run around and make trouble. This is in direct contrast to my company holiday party, which is a pants-optional affair with no food served unless it comes ready to eat from a box and we all sit on the couch and hope the screaming children don’t drown out the television. I hold these holiday parties every night in our house. I threw on my suit, Ellie threw on her nice pre-pregnancy clothes that just now started fitting again, and we dropped Abbie off with a friend before venturing off to the party for fine food and conversation.

I know that new parents are instant mini-celebrities. For the first few months of Abbie’s life, taking her into public was guaranteed to attract strangers eager to touch her and ask questions like “how old is she?” and “are you sure you should take her into public so young?” This effect faded as she aged and fresh newborns attracted the well-meaning strangers’ attention.

I’ve heard that parents of twins are instant mini-celebrities. I’ve heard stories that taking twins into public is guaranteed to attract strangers eager to touch them and ask questions like “how old are they?” and “are they identical?” and “what do you mean one’s a boy and one’s a girl?” Sometimes parents hate this attention, especially when they just need to run in and out of the local mega store for diapers after discovering that twins can burn through an entire package in one day. Other times, parents dress their twins identically, take them to the mall, and derive pleasure by feigning surprise when strangers fuss their delectable duo.

At the party, I learned that new parents of twins are instant mega-celebrities, especially when surrounded by people that know you but haven’t talked to you much since you lost all that weight. We made it as far as three steps in the door before Ellie’s boss stopped her to ask how she and the twins were doing.* We answered his questions, showed off the pictures Ellie thoughtfully remembered to bring, and stepped toward the appetizers. We made it as far as the drink table before the first co-workers stopped us to ask how Ellie and the twins were doing.* We answered their questions, showed off the pictures again, and slipped toward the appetizers again.

Before I could decipher the flavors of veggie dip in front of me, more co-workers stopped us to ask how Ellie and the twins were doing.* We answered the same questions, showed off the same pictures, and tried to keep moving in the same direction. Even more co-workers tried stopping us, but Ellie parried their questions by saying she needed to drop off her drink and appetizers. We chose the closest seats at the closest table, and returned to questions about how Ellie and the twins were doing.*

And so our night went, us answering identical questions from everyone in the room. The co-workers expressed surprise and wonder at the miracle of life. The co-workers’ spouses expressed dismay that their husbands hadn’t told them any of this yet, but in their defense most of her co-workers had barely seen her. Many people offered to help us with anything we need, and I hope they were serious because I wrote down names. We loved the attention, but by the time we went home, we wished we had forgone the formal attire in favor of t-shirts sporting our twins’ faqs.

At the end of our night, we picked up our coats from coat check, and told the coat check lady all about how the Ellie and the twins were doing.* I can’t remember if she asked or if we just acted out of habit at that point. Then we returned to pick up Abbie from our friend who already knew all about how Ellie and the twins were doing.

* Ellie is recovering nicely. The twins were a little early, but otherwise healthy. They’re learning to eat and might come home in about a week.

A Quick Update, with Pictures!

Ian is up to 4 lbs, 3 ozs. He came off the bile lights yesterday, and went into Tory’s crib today. Tory is up to 4 lbs, 10 ozs. It’s a good thing we don’t have very many preemie clothes for them, because they’re going to blow past the 5 lbs weight ceiling on the preemie size before the month is out.

Not only are they sharing a crib now, but they’re in a private room too. No longer will the alarms from every other baby in the NICU wake them. Now when an alarm wakes them, it will be their alarm.

We’re hoping they’ll be home late next week. All we have to do is keep them awake long enough to eat eight times a day. That sounds easy, but keep in mind I can barely eat eight meals a day, and that’s only if I count banana bread as two of those meals. The doctors left orders to bottle-feed them at the designated times whenever they’re awake and ready. For Ellie and me, that means they’re awake and ready to eat every time we’re in the NICU, though sometimes is takes a lot of poking to wake them. Some nurses share our dedication and work hard to train them to bottle-feed at every feeding. Other nurses are willing to bottle-feed as long as nothing more important needs done, such as reading blood gasses or taking phone calls from boyfriends/husbands.

Tory had a bit of a setback today when he ate about three-fourths of his bottle, and then insisted on choking on milk instead of breathing. The nurse brought him back to normal after the first incident, and set him back in the crib after the second incident. The nurses gave him milk a la nasal tube for the rest of the day, no matter how awake he was or how present in the NICU Ellie was.

Less than a week to go. Maybe.



Ian’s last day ever (hopefully) under the bile lights.



Tory’s last day ever of solitude, peace, and quiet.



Reunited at last.



Abbie is reminding us that she won’t be forgotten.

Origin of the Late Bedtime

Abbie’s bedtime keeps moving in the wrong direction. A couple months ago, before the twins’ birth, Abbie’s naps had wilted to an hour in the afternoon. To compensate, I moved her bedtime up to 9pm sharp. I decided she needed all the sleep she could get to stay in a good mood and to optimize her developmental potential. Plus I had stuff to do around the house.

After a couple weeks of short naps, she magically reverted back to those wonderful three-hour naps. The kind of nap where I could nap, exercise, shower, blog, eat lunch, solve a sudoku, and nap again before she woke up. Those were good times, and, wanting to keep them rolling, I slipped Abbie’s bedtime back to 9:15pm. My theory was that if Abbie sleeps less during the night, she’d nap more during the afternoon. I don’t have any actual evidence to support my theory, though as I understand, that’s the sign of high-quality scientific theories like origin of life theories. Abbie’s night sleep times and nap times may be and probably are unrelated, but until I see hard evidence otherwise, I’m going to assume my theory is correct. That’s also a sign of high-quality scientific theories.

Then the twins came. Suddenly I needed her naps, not for trivial matters like solving puzzles or showering, but for visiting the NICU. I wanted her naps to remain nice and long, so I set 9:15 as a minimal goal for bedtime. If she doesn’t land in bed until closer to 9:30, then she’ll just nap that much longer tomorrow afternoon. That assumes my theory is correct, and since no one has yet presented contradictory evidence, I’m certain I’m right.

Abbie, sensing my softness on bedtime, is taking advantage by encouraging me to let her stay up later. Her most effective trick for doing so is to play quietly on the living room floor while I crash on the couch. “Gee, dad,” I imagine her saying, “you look tired after a long day of caring for my baby brothers. Why don’t you just relax on the couch while I entertain myself for a bit? I’ll bet there’s a crucial sporting event on television. Why, there is! And look, they appear headed for overtime. Just enjoy how this plays out and I’ll continue busying myself over here. Come get me when the participants arrive at some sort of resolution. Sucker.”

She has a one more bedtime book tactic. Every time I try to move her to the next step in her bedtime routine, she throws a book at me. Sometimes I indulge her inquisitive mind and read to her. Sometimes I see through her manipulative attempts and drag her into the bathroom to brush her teeth. I believe she learned this tactic from her book “Olivia,” where the girl “Olivia” pesters her mother “mother” to read one more book before bedtime. She’s not even two and already picking up bad habits from the media. I should lock MTV out of our televisions now.

She threw her latest trick at me last night. After giving her a bath, she was happily playing with her bath toys. Since a crucial basketball game was on television in the next room, I left her to play while I watched a few (42) possessions. I drained the bathtub before leaving the room, making me simply a tired parent and not dangerously neglectful. After losing interest in the game, I stepped into the bathroom to dry her and finish the bedtime routine. As I knelt by the tub, I caught a whiff of a little Abbie toot. When I lifted her, I found a little Abbie remnant, and by “little” I mean “big enough to plug the toilet.”

After flushing the toilet and turning the shower flow on habanero hot for a few minutes of sterilization, I realized that my special girl, who barely talks, is smart enough to leave a steaming Abbie pile in the bathtub to slow me down and keep her out of bed longer. At least that’s my theory.

As a bonus, here’s an outtake from this year’s Christmas card picture:

1 Word = 1 M&M

The twins keep hitting new milestones. Tory has graduated to a crib. Ian would join his brother in the same crib but his bilirubin level requires him to stay under the lights and continue working on his tan by himself. They’re both eating from a bottle at every feeding. Their current ration is 35ccs per feeding. Ian consistently eats at least 30ccs by the bottle; Tory consistently takes at least 20ccs. The battle isn’t so much training them to eat by bottle anymore, it’s keeping them awake and energetic long enough to take their whole bottle every three hours. A few nurses are throwing around the “h” word, so hopefully they’ll soon be awake and energetic every three hours in our bedroom.

The twins aren’t the only ones hitting milestones though. Big sister Abbie just hit 18-months, the big one-point-five. She’s currently attacking the toughest milestone she’s faced yet: Speech. That one is taking her far too long to master, as opposed to say the milestone of throwing a temper tantrum, which she learned about and maximized its efficacy shortly after discovering that we keep the Wheat Thins on a shelf just out of her reach.

The doctor at her 18-month check-up gave us a handy sheet of milestones she should have achieved by now. It said she should be able to say at least four words right now. That is an absolute minimum for her age; most of her peers say more than that, and some say a lot more. I’ve heard stories from parents who swear their child was talking long before 12-months, and by 18-months could recite over 100 words referring to the family, common household objects, and every American president except James Buchanan because they’ll be dead in the cold hard ground before any child of theirs recognizes that amoral national disgrace. Abbie can’t do that, but she does hit the minimum, albeit barely, and then only if you count signs and don’t require her to say anything unprompted. Unlike most peers, her list of words is short enough to fill out a hastily written blog entry.

“More” and “book” are the only two spoken words she knows. She learned those months ago as they refer to the most important things in her life: Food, as in “more food,” and books, as in “read this book to me, and don’t force me to speak again you prick.”

Recently she added “uh-oh” to her repertoire, but I don’t think it qualifies as a spoken word because she doesn’t say it correctly. The “oh” sounds very accurate for a girl with a vocabulary I can count on my fingers, but her “uh” is an inhaled squeak. I’d be more thrilled about her learning this sound if it had any purpose in the English language, say if a local sports team changed its nickname to the Fighting Uhs. Still, she find plenty of use for the word, such as letting me know that she just threw food or a sippy cup on the floor for the 7,002,867th time in one meal. It’s a good thing that noise is cute or she’d annoy me at mealtime. Moreso.

Her signs are “kiss,” where she makes a kissing sound with her lips, “me,” where she points to herself, “dog,” where she pants, and “hair,” where she points to her hair. She even has her first homonyms, “up” and “hooray,” where she throws one or both hands in the air to mean either. We need to clarify those two. I might be able to count “clap,” where she claps her hands, and “bounce,” where she bounces on her bottom, but those seem more like commands for a rousing game of Simon Says than useful signs. Today she added “eat” to her signing vocabulary, where she brings a hand to her mouth like she’s eating something. I’d been trying to make her pick up this sign for months with no luck. Then today we tried making her sign before giving her M&M’s, and miraculously she learned to make that sign unprompted in about 41 seconds. Chocolate apparently motivates better than Tasteeos.

So in the broadest sense, she knows 11 words. All it took to reach this point was a lot of hard work, a little patience, and buckets of cash to buy learning aids and candy. I guess all children have to have something for their parents to fret over. Abbie is making us fret over her speech. Hopefully the twins won’t make us fret over when they come home. I’m getting too used to sleeping through the night.

New Nurse on the Block

The NICU nurses have a long list of rules for holding our babies. Limit holding to one hour per day when they’re under the bile lights. Never hold the babies while you’re sick. Don’t rock them while they eat. Always be as gentle as possible with them, unlike Abbie who spends most of her day either encouraging us to rough her up or inventing new ways to injure assorted body parts on common household objects. I understand why these rules exist; preemies are fragile creatures in need of the ultimate in care if they’re to come home anytime soon so dad can quit putting wear and tear on his car driving to and from the hospital every day and start putting wear and tear on it driving to and from the doctor so often it feels like every day. I just wish the nurses would be consistent in their rules.

Yesterday, the twins had a nurse that I hadn’t met before, which isn’t a surprise. The twins always have a nurse I haven’t met before. In their 17 days of life, I estimate that more than 30 different nurses have looked after our babies. If the twins stay another 17 days, they’ll probably have another 30 different nurses. There must be thousands of NICU nurses roaming about this town; I had no idea that such a substantial proportion of Des Moines-area women worked as NICU nurses.*

This nursing carousel makes it difficult to know what to expect from the nurses when I go in every day. Some nurses are friendly and helpful. Some nurses are aloof and just doing their jobs. Some nurses usually work in the PICU and are just helping out. Some nurses need help interpreting their blood gasses.

Yesterday’s nurse seemed friendly, taking the time to update me on their status. But when I said I wanted to hold one, she threw a new rule at me: Cluster care. You see, preemies need their deep sleep. They spend a lot of energy fighting through their daily activities, keeping warm, sucking, and pooping. Hasn’t anybody mentioned this before? Every time we disturb them, we wake them from their deep sleep. I can’t believe nobody told you about cluster care. Therefore it’s very important that we only disturb them right before they eat, so they can awake for a productive feeding and spend the rest of their time in deep sleep. Somebody had to have told you about this.

Incredibly, nobody had told me about this. I wandered into the NICU that afternoon expecting to hold one of my children before feeding him during the precious little free time I had carved out of my day, and this nurse was adamant about letting them rest. Because deep sleep is evidently more important than bonding with a parent. It’s not like I wanted to take him jogging around the NICU, he’ll probably sleep in my lap the whole time. I can’t imagine those alarms that keep dinging all around him are any less disturbing than me picking him up anyway.

I was less than thrilled by the situation. Maybe it was having my plans dashed by yet another new nurse and her seemingly random rule. Maybe it was all the monitors chirping around me. Maybe it was the fact that the nurse was sitting in a parent’s recliner during her “down time” when I walked in. Whatever it was ticked me off, and I decided that if I couldn’t hold either one I might as well just go back home. Fortunately the nurse relented and let me hold Tory briefly before I fed him a little early.

Now I’m shifting my schedule, trying to arrive in the NICU just before their feeding. I want the twins home as soon as possible. I want to do what’s best for the twins. I just wish that what’s best didn’t change from nurse to nurse. Fortunately I’ll probably never see that nurse again. Unfortunately, the next nurse may have a different rule I know nothing about.

* I know it’s an outdated stereotype that all nurses are women, but all of these NICU nurses really are women. I think I’ve seen one male NICU nurse, but he’s never worked with our boys to my knowledge.

"I'm here about the nanny job. I'll keep a watchful eye on your kids, and if they get out of line ... Pow!"

Just because I have twins in the NICU, it doesn’t mean I spend all of my time by their side in the NICU. Even if the hospital let me hold them all day, I still have plenty of things to do back around the house. I have carpets to vacuum, food to cook, and a blog to blog. I also have another child to care for back in the house, our firstborn by the name of, um, Ashley? Allie? Abbie! I have to take care of Abbie, especially since Ellie is still recovering from her c-section and unable to lift or carry anything heavier than a preemie boy who’s still more than five weeks before his original due date.

I need to be careful to shower Abbie with sufficient attention to let her know that she’s still loved. I think all older children, especially firstborns, go through a bit of shock when a younger sibling comes home and sucks up their parents’ attention like an Oreck. That has to go double for older siblings of twins, whose parents are kept so busy with the twins’ needs that they experience debilitating sleep deprivation, as experienced parents of twins readily tell me with a suspicious amount of glee. I need to be sure that, no matter how tired I get, I spend quality time with Abbie every day to prevent her from growing up isolated and becoming one of those people her future neighbors describe as “a loner” on the local news after the cops pull multiple bodies out of her future backyard.

I learned to pay attention to the older child last night while watching the TV show “Supernanny.” Or maybe it was “Nanny 911.” Whichever one is the trashier, Fox-based show. Normally I don’t watch reality television, especially when competing networks televise pivotal sporting events, but the last night’s show caught Ellie’s eye while channel surfing. Since reality television is like a super-addictive visual form of crack, I also slummed around long enough to wallow in its filth.

The premise of last night’s show was the nanny visited a family with a five-year-old boy and three-and-a-half-year-old twin girls, an eerily similar situation to the one our children will live in by 2009. We started watching for advice for our current family, and to spot the traps this family fell into so we can avoid them now. Plus it was really fun to watch this messed-up family scream at each other … no! Must … look … away … from … train wreck…

The main lesson we took from the show was to spend time with the oldest child. Their oldest had grown accustomed to, at best, being ignored at best, or, at worst, having his head bit off for the slightest infraction because his parents were so flustered trying to keep the twins in line. The result was the boy careened back and forth between extremes of major disobedience to get attention and withdrawing from the family to the point where he was too scared to bother his parents when he genuinely needed help. At least that’s the convenient portrait the show created with suitable video clips for the nanny to solve within the show’s time constraints. Real life may have been different, but reality television seldom has time for real life.

The family solved this problem by having mom spend an afternoon fishing with just their boy. The multiple hours filled the boy with so much delight that he immediately became permanently well behaved. That’s what I assume happened anyway; I turned the TV off shortly after learning the lesson to spend quality time with the oldest child. Other lessons I learned include establish proper bedtime routines early in life, don’t yell at your children in front of cameras for a major television network show, and never watch “Nanny 911” again. Those lessons will serve me well as I spend the next 17 years raising, uh … Abbie!

Abbie Meets the Twins

At one time, the twins had so many tubes and wires attached to them that they qualified as clothing. They had oxygen tubes, IV lines, vital sign monitors, feeding tubes, and possibly a few other superfluous lines just for warmth. The cumulative effect was all those lines created a short leash for them that relegated their existence to within three feet of their beds. It also complicated holding them, requiring manpower generally associated with major public works projects to move them from their bed to our arms.

Slowly, those layers of lines disappeared as their health improved. We can now lift them out of their isolettes with relative ease, making the nurses’ assistance more of a luxury than a necessity. They still have their vital sign monitors, but those are easily detached should we want to carry them around the NICU for any reason, such as to show the twins to Abbie through the door window.

Last night, we took Abbie up to the NICU to introduce them for the first time. I always felt this was an important step in bonding our family, like decorating the house for the holidays together or picking the Christmas tree up as a family after the cats knocked it down again. I’m not doing it so much for the twins’ sake; they barely wake up long enough to acknowledge being rescued from their isolettes, and even then they fall right back asleep. I wanted Abbie to see them as soon as possible, even though she’s too young to remember the event. Telling her about the twins is too insignificant; like telling her drawing is fun or playing with the knobs on the stove is dangerous, she just can’t comprehend.

I stayed with Abbie in the waiting room while Ellie fetched the twins. I didn’t know what Abbie would do when we held all of them up to the window. Maybe she would howl in protest because mom was holding another child. Maybe she would look disinterested and figure out a way to run down the hall some more. Maybe she would even find some sweet way to recognize their existence and verify that no matter how scary things look now for our family, everything is going to be just fine. I was betting on number two.

Ellie knocked at the door, and I approached with Abbie in my arms. Ellie was holding Ian and the nurse was holding Tory. Or possibly it was the other way around. I don’t know and I’m really in trouble if I don’t figure out a way to tell them apart. Maybe it’ll be easier when I’m dressing them. Or maybe I’ll just have to leave their hospital bands on until they’re old enough to tell me their names.

Abbie looked at her brothers, pointed to Ian, pointed to herself, pointed to Tory, and pointed back to herself. Despite her young age, I think she processed something, that she realized we have two new babies to care for and we’re going to need all the help she can give us. Or maybe she just thought the twins were neat. Either way, I think everything is going to be just fine.

Snow Day

The phone rang yesterday shortly before noon. I answered and found the twins’ NICU nurse on the other end. My first thought was “uh oh.” When your family member’s nurse calls it’s usually with bad news, like the patient has taken a turn for the worse or is being kicked out for refusing to stop smoking. I braced myself for the former.

The nurse quickly assured me that nothing was wrong. She simply wanted to give us an update on the twins. Des Moines saw its third measurable snowfall in a week yesterday, which she feared would make the roads treacherous and prevent us from trekking to the NICU. Little did she realize that I recently purchased a mighty Subaru wagon with all-wheel drive, ensuring my safe passage through the swirling snow no matter how perilous the roads. Plus we live less than three miles from their hospital so I could probably walk there if I had to.

The nurse had nothing but good news for us. The twins are off their bile lights, hopefully for good. Both would have their IV lines removed in the future.* They’re both taking more than an ounce at each feeding. They’re both tied for the cutest babies in history of the NICU, which she never actually said but I’m pretty sure she was thinking.

90 minutes after talking to her I stepped outside and started my car. 105 minutes after talking to her I climbed into my toasty car with windows defrosting to actually drive to the hospital. The roads were snow-covered but passable. I’ve seen worse. In fact, I used to drive through worse a few times every year on my 35-mile each way commute to work. That’s one of the big advantages of being a full-time parent: If I think the weather is too dangerous for travel I can simply stay at home and no one will yell at me, or at least no one with the power to sign my paychecks will yell at me.

I arrived at the hospital planning to hold Tory as per our agreement where I hold a different baby every day so as not to show favoritism to one or the other as that could cost me my choice of nursing homes when they’re supporting me in my old age. Unfortunately the nurse was working on Tory when I arrived, getting him dressed and preparing his IV for removal, so I got to, er, had to hold Ian for the day.

Holding either one is almost the exact same experience. They sleep, periodically open their eyes to confirm that nothing worth waking up is happening, and fall back asleep. I haven’t seen them much without wires covering their faces, but they look identical to me, so they’d better develop unique personalities real quick or I’ll never be able to tell them apart.

By the time bottle-feeding rolled around, the nurse was finished working on Tory, so I could have switched be to give Tory his turn enduring a daddy feeding, but opted to stand pat with Ian. The nurse handed me his bottle and I set to work feeding him with little luck. Ian was fast asleep, and no amount of prodding or talking would wake him. I got him to take a couple ccs, far less than he had been taking. As Ian slept on my lap I noticed Tory was staring at us the whole time from his isolette and realized I should have switched babies. They’re less than two weeks old and already jointly playing mind games with me.

I went back home to trade places with Ellie, and everything turned out for the best. Since Ian barely ate for me, the nurse let Ellie feed Tory and feed Ian again. Ellie managed to coax both into drinking close to 10ccs.

They were sleepy again for me today, so Ellie got to feed both again. This time they achieved a breakthrough: Tory drank 20ccs, and Ian drank 35ccs, the whole bottle. Now we just need them to eat that well every three hours and they’ll be able to come home. Even if it snows on the day they’re supposed to come home, my car will be able to handle it.

* They came out today.

"...Turn and face the strain..."

Having twins in the NICU is surreal. We have twins to care for, but we can’t do much with them. All newborns are little more than lumps that occasionally cry and blowout their diapers, but NICU-bound babies are only slightly more interactive than the big cats in a zoo’s exhibit. I was geared to endure months of sleep deprivation from bottle-feeding twins at all hours as soon as they were born, but instead I continue enjoying nights of uninterrupted sleep while the NICU nurses fill their feeding tubes.

When Abbie was born I realized that having a child was like having a demanding pet that you couldn’t leave in a cage when you needed a rest. When we wanted to go out to a restaurant or a movie before Abbie, we left the cats and dog at home and trusted them to stay out of trouble, or at least to not throw up on anything too difficult to clean. When Abbie arrived, we suddenly had a tagalong everywhere we went. Trips to a restaurant, if we were even brave enough to try it, were timed around her naps. Trips to a movie theater were forsaken completely because no one with a courtesy level above that of a deaf hippopotamus would have the gall to bring an infant to a movie.

Now Abbie is old enough to eat with us at a restaurant, or watch with us at a movie provided that we’re attending one of those unfortunately named “Mommy Matinees” where half the audience is under the age of 5 because no one with a courtesy level above that of a blind rhinoceros would take an 18-month-old to a normal movie. We’re starting over again with the newborn twins, but having a child in the NICU is like having one at home that you can leave in a cage when you need a rest. Discounting the hours each afternoon we spend in the NICU, we’re living our lives almost exactly the way we lived before the twins’ birth, except Ellie never has to go to work and she’s more agile. If I need to do something important at home like cook dinner or vacuum or watch conference championship football game blowouts* I simply leave the babies in the capable care of the NICU nurses.

Even if I had all the time in the world to spend in the NICU, I can only do so much with the twins. If I want to hold them, the bile lights limit their time spent outside of their isolettes each day. If I want to bottle feed them, I can only do it once per day to prevent overloading their underdeveloped reflexes. If I want to carry them about the room during their one-hour-per-day of freedom to introduce them to new experiences like completely different babies connected to monitors that chirp identical alarms or possibly even over to a window so their sister can see them, their preponderance of wires and tubes prevent them from moving more than a couple feet beyond their isolettes.

Most of the time, all I can do is touch them in their isolettes. That’s better than nothing, but no expecting parent dreams of bonding with their child by laying a hand on his forehead for hours on end while he rests in his plastic warming station.

When my hour of holding is finished, I head home to my mostly uninterrupted life. Sure, I’ve seen minor changes in my life, like losing my afternoon nap and needing to scramble to cram in my daily workout and shower. I’m still sleeping through the night unmolested though, except for when Ellie’s breast pump gets a wee bit too loud and wakes me, so how different can my life be?

I need to post more pictures, so for no reason, here’s me trying to addict Ian to his pacifier.



* Sorry, Amy.

First Bottle

We bottle-fed the twins yesterday. That was the first time they ate from a bottle; prior to that all of their sustenance came intravenously or through a Gavage feeding,* which is a tube running through the nose carrying milk directly to the stomach.

We were surprised when the nurse asked if we wanted to bottle-feed yesterday. We had entered the NICU planning to simply hold them for their hour-long break from the bile lights** when the nurse popped the question. The nurse actually asked if we wanted to feed them for the first time, as if there was a chance we might say “Nah, we’ll do enough of that when we take them home” or “I’d love to, but ‘Days’ starts in 20 minutes.”

Being an experienced dad, I thought I knew all about feeding newborns. I simply shove a bottle in his mouth, stuff him full of milk, wipe up the spit-up, burp him, wipe up more spit-up, and hand him off to mommy so I can take a nap. Fortunately the nurse gave us detailed instructions on how to feed preemies before handing me the bottle. I had to take special precautions to protect a preemie’s fragile frame.

First, feed him on his side. That way if milk pools in his mouth it pools to the side, not in the back of the mouth where it could create a choking hazard because a preemie when a preemie chokes on food he often buys a few more days at Club NICU. Second, watch his breathing. Preemies are already prone to forgetting to breathe, plus their suck-swallow-breathe-repeat reflex often hasn’t developed yet. If the little guy focuses on the suck-swallow part at the expense of the breathe part for too long, tip the bottle down so the milk flows out of the nipple and he remembers that, fun as it may be to eat, his primary job is still to breathe.

The nurse handed us bottles festooned with the Enfamil*** logo. The last time I bottle-fed Abbie, she was sucking down nine-ounce bottles over-stuffed with milk. These were two-ounce bottles filled with 10ccs**** of milk. Right now Abbie has more milk than that left in her sippy cups when she throws them on the floor.

I fed Tory; Ellie fed Ian. At first I was a little jealous of Ellie because Ian was sucking much better than Tory. I should have remembered that Tory has consistently been a little behind his brother, so Ian would likely be a better sucker. Then I realized that just meant there was more work for me to do with him. After much cajoling with every feeding trick I could remember from Abbie, Tory ripped off a few good sucks for a first-timer.

When all the sucking was done, Tory consumed 4ccs, and Ian took 3ccs. It’s important that I not from this as a competition between them, so let’s just say I was pushing him harder than Ellie. Afterwards we set them back in their isolettes to finish their milk through Gavage feeding.***** Then we said goodbye and left the hospital because their daily holding limit had been reached. Plus “Jeopardy” was on in ten minutes.

* Gavage feeding is named for its innovator, Dr. Bob “Dodge” Gavage.
** Their bile is dropping, and they might be off the bile lights for good tomorrow. Or they may stay on the lights for another day or two. Or they may go off the lights and go right back under again in a couple days. I’m learning not to expect much daily progress.
*** Motto: “Breastmilk is best … but Enfamil is so much easier!”
**** 30ccs = 1oz. 24ozs = The average daily intake for a newborn. 8393.36oz = 1 hogshead.
***** They’re up to 25ccs total every three hours.

"Midnight basketball taught them to function without sleep."

We took Abbie to a game last night. It was an exciting men’s college basketball showdown between my hometown Drake Bulldogs and the visiting Cornell Rams. Drake won the game 102-62, which sounds impressive until you realize that Drake, a legitimate Division 1 team as proven by the fact that their scores scroll through the rotation of ESPN2’s BottomLine, was playing Cornell College, a Division 3 school from Iowa, and not Cornell University, the prestigious Ivy League school in New York that also has their scores scroll through the rotation of ESPN2’s BottomLine.

I took Abbie to several Drake basketball games last season, and she enjoyed watching those games, much more than she enjoyed watching anything on television. That was several months ago though when she was still a baby and easily entertained by simple things like shiny objects or reality television. Now she’s a walking and screeching toddler who requires more sophisticated forms of entertainment like climbing on the sofa to get the cat or climbing on the kitchen table to get the Wheat Thins.

This was not an exciting game in the sense that it was supposed to be a blowout, and it was. I wanted to take her to the game to see how Abbie acts at basketball games now. If she’s good, then I may take her to the Drake Bulldogs vs. Iowa State Cyclones game next Monday. Iowa State’s basketball team not only has their scores scroll through the rotation of ESPN2’s BottomLine, but their scores even periodically appear on ESPN’s twice-an-hour update when they only show the Top 25 scores. When Drake plays teams like Cornell, the stands are sparse and we can use an entire row if not a whole section to spread out and keep Abbie entertained jumping on and off benches if need be. Iowa State brings more people though, which means we’ll be sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with other fans. They could be Iowa State fans too, who may already be a little belligerent because of what my shirt says.* I don’t want to bring an irritable child into a crowd where I’ll have limited ability to entertain her for fear that it would severely tick off those around me, or worse, get me kicked out of the game. The Iowa State game will likely be my last big hurrah before the twins come home; I’m not planning on leaving the house for anything short of a doctor’s appointment when they come home, or possibly the grocery store, but that’s only if we’ve run out of milk or milklike substitutes to feed Abbie.

Things started poorly, and not just because we walked in three minutes into the game. Abbie was shriekingly unhappy about something to start. Maybe she was mad about the hat I forced her to wear outside for warmth. Maybe she was upset about all the weird people surrounding her. Maybe she was upset that Cornell hit seven of its first ten shots en route to a 19-14 lead.

Whatever set her off, she calmed down as the game progressed. Ellie bought a glass of Sprite to pacify her, but she was content to sit on my knee and watch 13 grown men randomly move a ball back and forth, which freed me to spill most of the Sprite at halftime.

After we moved to a different section for the second half, she continued to watch quietly. The big exception was she screamed every time the pep band played. Ellie thought that the loud music, when added to the bright lights and fast action, overstimulated her, and screaming was her way of coping. That explanation sounds better than my theory that the pep band was just that bad.**

The worst incident of the night came when Abbie peed through her diaper. This was very disappointing since I changed her right before we left, and her diapers should hold for three hours, or even six hours if I forget to change her. I thought my pant leg felt damp for much of the game, but not wanting to miss any of the exciting action or tedious timeouts, I chalked the moisture up to drool and ignored it. When a gusher flowed from her pants I couldn’t ignore it any longer, especially since it flowed down Ellie’s leg. I hauled Abbie off to the bathroom hoping to not miss anything exciting. On the court, lots of exciting things happened, including several steals and dunks, as Drake scored about ten points in two minutes. I never got to see any of the action, but I did get to hear the crowd reaction so it was like I got to see it.

Shortly after the diaper changing, Abbie hit too hard to handle stage, which was understandable since she missed her bedtime milk half an hour ago. Since Drake had already hit 100, we left with five minutes to go. Drake finished with 102, so we didn’t miss much.

At home I gave her an accelerated bedtime routine. She went to bed about 20 minutes late, which left her a little tired and cranky the next day, but at least it led to a three-and-a-half hour nap this afternoon. I used that nap time to line up a babysitter for next Monday night because I’m not going to risk missing a potentially good game to change a diaper if I don’t have to. I’ll take her to some other games.

* If I feel polite, it’ll say “Drake;” if I feel impish, it’ll say “Beat the Suck-Clones.”
** As a former member of the pep band, I’m allowed to say that.