Halfway to Where?

I can not believe it has been six months already. This month I have been marveling that my level of frustration is so much less than it was with Ada at this age. At six months I was still crying a lot. Ada was just emerging from her colicky infancy into what thankfully turned out to be a happy, charming babyhood. Ian and Mira have been happy and mostly adorable for a while already. I know I say some version of this every month, but it is just so amazing to me.

Can you tell which child is working on week 2 of a stuffed up nose?

For comparison, this was Ada at 6 months

I also see the passage of time as a bit of a trick. Like many parents of babies under one, I think in terms of surviving that first year. At six months with Ian and Mira, I've gotten through half of that, but it isn't as if there is an "end" in six months. The next six months, and all the months and years after that, will bring change and growth for all three kids. As certainly as we are on a road with our children, it is surely not a road to somewhere. The journey is the destination, and all that.

Meet my children: Bewildered, Pouty and Distracted
NB: Mira is not half Ian's size. She's being pushed down.

S'not No(se) Big Thing
Right now our journey is on a road paved with snot. (Wait, can snot pave something? Maybe I should just say that we are on a snot-slicked road. No, too evocative.)

The past few weeks have been illness-heavy. Chris, Ada and I got the H1N1 vaccine, and quickly got sick. Other than a fever, I had pretty much all the symptoms the CDC lists for the flu, while Ada, Mira and Ian all had fevers but not much else. That said, I am not sure what we had wasn't just a cold, and in any case the bad part passed fairly quickly. (And thank goodness for that - the five days Ada was at home with us without the distraction of play dates was fairly hard on all of us.) Mira seems to have inherited my tendency to end colds with a lingering runny nose, and she is not happy about it. Unlike Ian, she loves sleeping with a pacifier, which is hard to do when you can't breathe out of your nose. Needless to say, Chris and I have been up a lot at night to soothe her. And then just as Mira and Ian appeared to be leaving one cold behind, another one is starting up. I can tell because a new cold brings with it a day or two of heavy napping, which would be a blessing if it wasn't tied to crankiness, a reduction in good night-sleeping and the inevitable drippy yet plugged nose. Mira slept for 3.5 hours on Thursday. This was after an hour nap and a mere hour up between naps. Wow.

Even when she's stuffy, who could resist this face?

Physically, Ian and Mira are still not showing a lot of interest in movement. Ian scootches around in circles, and Mira will pivot while on her belly when she's motivated by a toy, but neither consistently flips over much. Except in their cribs, where Ian occasionally and Mira consistently flips over. While Ian is a little ahead of Mira in sitting, neither can really sit up for more than a couple of seconds. Based on my perusal of photographs from her six month mark, Ada was sitting up alone by this point. What is weird is I remember wanting Ada to meet each milestone and doing a lot to "help" her along toward those stages. With Mira and Ian, I am not at all worried about them getting new skills on any timeline. I know they'll get there at some point, and I have a lot less energy for trying to make it happen. (Plus, as I have mentioned before, WHY would I want to encourage things like crawling? It is going to be a lot of work for the rest of us when Ian and Mira decide to get mobile.)

Mira, for her part, has won the "first tooth" contest. I'm glad it Ian is still toothless, as he's been nipping at me while nursing. So far I've just used it as a signal that I am out of milk, and taken him off the breast when it happens. Once he gets a tooth or three this will be a lot more painful, so I'm hoping he doesn't get any soon.

Ian, looking very High Fidelity

I am going back to work in about a week, and the babies will be spending my work days with a nanny. We found someone with a good about of twin and infant experience, and I have high hopes. Hopefully she won't be too horrified by our messy lives and home.

An Unexpected Change

This past weekend Ada and Lila were playing upstairs. Chris and I heard a crashing noise. Chris went up to investigate. As he climbed the stairs he heard Ada say, "Get the grownups!" He found Ada barely holding up her dresser, which was close to completely crashing down on her. (The girls had opened all the drawers at once, so it toppled.) Chris helped Ada to right the dresser, and out of nowhere she told him that she'd peed and pooped in the potty. Chris gave her a high five and then asked about the dresser situation.

Chris related the story to me, and said that SOMEONE had clearly pooped in the potty, he could smell it. (It would be consistent with Ada not to flush. Then again, Lila doesn't always remember either. And I know Lila uses the potty, as it happens routinely at our house. What is it about preschoolers that they like to poop with other people around? I pretty much never go to my friends' houses in order to poop.)

When I went upstairs to put Mira to bed, and Ada told me she'd peed and pooped in the potty. I said "that's great!" and then moved on, figuring from past experience that where Ada is concerned it is not a good idea to over-do on the potty praise. A bit later Ada, Lila and I were drawing at the dining room table. Ada said "I peed and pooped in the potty." I said, "I know!" "how did you know?" "Well, Papa told me, and you told me." We talked about who told whom, tra la la, all very calmly.

Even later, Ada asked to see Chris' ipod, which he'd recently told her she could not play with anymore, until she was a big girl (as evidenced by her peeing and pooping in the potty). He let her play with it.

So what is going on here? How did my non-toilet user turn overnight into a no-problem-I'm-using-it kid? And who STARTS using the potty by pooping in it? Has Ada really turned the corner? I am not proud to admit it, but my first thought was that she is not telling the truth. However, it is not really Ada's M.O. to lie about this (or more specifically, to plot with Lila to pretend that Lila's poop is her own). It goes against the grain of Ada's potty obstinacy, which usually leads her to flatly declare that she is not going to use the potty ("ever", sometimes). And Lila has been talking to her about the potty more of late. (A couple of days before this first toileting, within Ada's earshot, Lila told me that Ada was going to pee and poop in the potty.) So there you go. As shocked as I was, I was forced to admit that we may have had a breakthrough, which may or may not be motivated by Ada's desire to play games on the ipod.

Since this all went down on Sunday, Ada has started to consistently and nonchalantly use the toilet for both urine and bowel movements. On Wednesday morning she declared that she wanted to pee before we left for school, and as I was in the bathroom at the time, she kept up her chatter while doing her business. I had to restrain myself from staring in shock at how nonchalant, how normal Ada was acting about this. She was so comfortable using the toilet that she was talking to me about something completely unrelated, as if she'd been using the toilet like this for years. No biggie, apparently.

Chris and I have been speculating about what caused this change. Besides the ipod, we have a couple of ideas. One is best summed up by a line from a book we recently borrowed from the library: "the princess will use the potty when it pleases the princess." I don't necessarily think that reading this book with Ada caused a change (though she did enjoy the book). But the sentiment, that a kid will use the toilet when (and only when) she wants to, really resonates with our situation. We have endured years of attempts to motivate her potty use, only to find that she'd rather give up all manner of things than get them as rewards for something she was not ready to do.

Then there's the impact of increasing peer pressure. In the past Ada has not really cared that other people know she uses a pull-up. More recently, she has interacted with a new kid who asked about her diaper, and some of her potty-using friends have encouraged her to do so. She seems to care a bit more what other kids think.

And speaking of other kids, we are now on the hook for a big girl party. A couple of months ago Ada went through a several week phase of asking about when she'd be 5. At the time we took the opportunity to offer a half-birthday party. We billed it as something she could do when she was a big girl who peed and pooped in the potty; we would have a party with her friends at which they could watch a movie and eat popcorn and cupcakes. This week Ada asked us about the party. (Another reminder that this kid forgets NOTHING.) So we'll be having a movie, popcorn and cupcake party with Ada and a few of her friends very soon. She's certainly earned it. (speaking of which, for putting up with all this, don't you think I've earned a big girl party with drinks and sushi and my friends?)

So where are we now? Well, at home Ada is peeing and pooping in the potty, with no tricks or bribes, when she feels the need to go. She is comfortable enough with it that if I am around she is happy to have me there, but when I am busy she'll go on her own. She has so far slept without a pull up and stayed dry. (No real shock there, we knew this wasn't a physical issue.) We are working with the teachers at her school to achieve toilet use there as well. (The head teacher is incredibly kind and patient, and I think this made a big impact on Ada's willingness to make a change.) The trick is getting her to feel the same comfort away from home that she feels here. I think that will come, and for now we will continue to use the same hands-off support that we have been using with her. We are not there yet, and I am sure there will be setbacks, but I for one feel a weight has been lifted from my shoulders with such progress on this issue. I also feel really proud of Ada for figuring this one out in her own way. It might not have been my way or on my time line, but she figured it out for herself. 

And now a message from the wonk portion of my brain

Over the past few months I have mostly had my fingers in my ears when health reform talk was in the air. This has been hard to do, as health insurance reform has been topic #1 for much of the past six months. It has been in the news for good reason. What other time in my lifetime has there actually been so much change actually likely to happen? Never. So, not a good time for me to be singing "la la la la" instead of listening to the news on this. Also, I am a health policy wonk, professionally, so I have a vested interest in health reform news. But for almost six months I've been a policy wonk on leave, so I have not really paid the attention I would have if I had been working the past six months.

(now that I know my mother reads the blog, I am a little embarrassed to admit this in front of her, policy/research wonk that she is. Oh well. It is still true.)

Even in my news gray zone, certain pieces of the reform process have gotten my attention. I can't help pay attention to news about a potential public plan, after all the discussions we have had here in Oregon on that topic. The idea of a health insurance exchange is also key for me. It looks like I will be doing some work on that when I return to my job in a couple of weeks. And the past week or two, I have been listening to the news about the Stupak Amendment, which would not allow insurers to offer abortion as a covered benefit in the insurance offered to people who access federal financial premium assistance.

This is a sneaky way to limit access to abortion, and not just for low and middle income Americans. Of course, it does limit access to abortion for people who will get federal subsidies for their insurance purchase (by refusing to allow it to be a covered service). But it actually goes further. As people who get help paying for insurance premiums will have to buy through a health insurance exchange, it effectively eliminates abortion as a covered service from any insurance purchased through exchanges, whether or not the purchaser uses a subsidy. Exchanges will be open to people buying coverage on their own, with no financial help from the government. But no insurance company is going to offer one package for people getting subsidies, and another almost-but-not-quite-identical-except-with-abortion-coverage to people paying on their own. Since insurers will have to exclude abortion for some, they aren't going to include abortion in an otherwise identical insurance package for others. It just doesn't make financial sense for the insurance companies.

Proponents of this amendment say that people could always buy a separate insurance rider for abortion. But who is going to do that? How many women think "gee, I'd better plan for the possibility of a catastrophic pregnancy that needs to be terminated at 22 weeks in order to avoid threatening my health or life!"? No one thinks that, and pretty much no one is going to buy this kind of special coverage. (Plus, people who - due to past health issues - know it is likely that they'd need this are going to be high risk, making premiums for such insurance costly, and further dissuading others from buying it.) This rule would shut down abortion coverage for a big chunk of Americans. Given that most Americans who purchase insurance in the individual market have abortion as a covered service, this will be a big change.

Yes, I am annoyed.

I expressed my annoyance by signing a petition sponsored by California Senator Barbara Boxer. Despite what the conservatives say, Boxer is a moderate, not a crazy flaming liberal (not that there is anything wrong with flaming liberals. I and some of my best friends are crazy liberals).

My fellow countrymen and women can sign a petition against the Stupak Amendment here. You can also write or call your legislators to let them know what you think about this. (Click these links for contact info for your senators and representatives.)

Maybe I am ready to go back to work after all.

When Tortillas Go Bad

or, Taco Night takes a wrong turn

I'm not usually crazy about the kids playing with their food, but the other night Lila joined us for dinner (shredded pork soft tacos). After the girls ate they started to get creative with the tortillas.

Lila

Ada

Oh What a Wookie

I heard Chris play a weird song on his computer, so asked how he'd gotten there. He said:


I was reading the Blazers' blog.

Then I decided to go to the Bobcats' blog, to see what they thought of the game.

The pre-game post has a quote from Clerks.

Watching the clip I heard this song in the background, so then I went to find the song.



And to think that some people think the internet is a wasteland.

Random Quote and Unrelated Photo of the Week

"It's hard enough to get kids to concentrate on an algorithm -- even without Jimmy sitting there in lipstick and fake eyelashes," said Kay Hymowitz

Jan Hoffman
Can a Boy Wear a Skirt to School?

Even the common cold can knock you out

Ada, Chris and I all got the H1N1 vaccine last Friday. On Saturday Ada played with a kid who subsequently came down with something (maybe the flu). I checked, and it takes a couple of weeks for the vaccine to protect you after you take it. On Tuesday Ada was running a low fever but was otherwise fine. I am coughing and phlegmy. Neither of us seems to really fit the flu symptoms enough for us to worry.

We are tired, however.

Yup, that's me, asleep with a not-quite empty tea mug in my lap. Ada and I slept upright, using one another as pillows. It felt great.

The first day of winter

I know that "real" winter is still about six weeks away, but for me winter started last Thursday. That was the evening I looked out the window and saw the red light. The light is a stoplight a few blocks from our house. It is weird that we can see this stoplight at all, but from the top of the stairs things line up just right so that the houses between us and the light do not block the view. All summer and well into the fall the trees make the light invisible. Once enough trees have lost their leaves, the light is again visible. 

Before Ada was born, I did not notice the light much, and when I did, I didn't place much importance on the sightings. But then Ada came along, and I learned all about the magical thinking that comes along with parenting an infant. You know, "I will  hold my baby for the count of 100, then slowly, slooowwwly get up and she'll stay asleep as I put her back in her bed." Total insanity if taken too seriously, but necessary in those early, sleepless months.

During Ada's first winter I spent countless hours nursing her while sitting in a rocking chair in her room. From this position, at night I could look through the gap in the curtains to the distant stoplight. Rocking and nursing, I attached special significance to the color the light showed. Red was the norm, as the light presides over a side street that runs into a bigger road. Red was okay, but it offered no special protection. Looking up to see a light green was good. It meant that I would have a relatively easy time putting Ada back to bed. Even better was a yellow light; it was a sign Ada would definitely fall back asleep with no problem. (oh, if only!)

After a while, I could not keep myself from staring out the window with the hopes of seeing a green or yellow light. Realizing that whatever magic I'd ascribed to those colors could not be counted on if I watched the light (instead of taking an occasional glimpse), I started using the light as a magical timer. I remember thinking "If I rock Ada for three more cycles of the light, then sit still for another three, I can then safely get up and put her back in bed without her waking up."

After that first winter, I did not need the light the way I had before. Ada had become a good sleeper and there were few 2 am rocking chair sessions. But I still looked to the light for signs. Now that I no longer sat in Ada's room looking out the window, I mostly saw the light as I walked up the stairs. If I saw a red light, bedtime was not necessarily going to be rocky, but I still hoped for the green or yellow that would portend good luck.

And now I am back in the days of night-waking and magical thinking. Ian and Mira's room does not face the light and in any case I kind of forgot about it over the summer. Now that the leaves are falling, I am happy to report that the twins get up a bit less than Ada used to. Chris and I still wake to feed them in the hours that most sane people are in bed, but except when bothered by a cold or a phantom or a neighbor's incredibly loud muffler, they sleep well for fairly long stretches. Seeing the light the other night reminded me of how hard it had been with Ada. I recalled that at this point with Ada I was still crying a lot. I can not really express how much the color of the light meant to me, even as I knew that it was just a stoplight, and not a parenting sign meant only for me.

I cry a lot less with Ian and Mira. Even with two, I find the experience of parenting newborns less stressful the second time around. A green light still buoys me a bit in the evening, but these days I don't need the reassurance of an inanimate object the way I used to. Now the light tells me that winter is coming, and with it my twins are getting older and more capable. Soon we will face new challenges, as they learn to roll, and crawl and (heaven help us) stand and walk. I look forward to these challenges, and to the joys of winter. 

Her Favorite Game

Mira has developed a little quirk. Whenever a towel, diaper, blanket, sheet or other flat, soft item is within her reach, she grabs it and does this:

When I pull it off, she looks amused. So then we do a little peekaboo, which she finds highly entertaining. I suppose I should not encourage this behavior, but she has so few entertainments at this point, I hate to take one away. (She does seem able, though not very inclined, to take the diaper or other item off her face. I figured this out when I let her sit like this for a little to see if she'd take it off or panic. It took a while before she peeked out, but eventually she did come out of hiding.)

The Odd Couple

I saw two books on the floor in the playroom and asked Chris about them. He replied that Lila and Ada each wanted a book. "This is what they picked."

Since neither Ada nor Lila can really read, I am sure Lila was attracted to the Heimel book by the heels. Both girls are really into heels right now. Did Ada choose the Gogol because she has a thing for Russian writers or for herringbone?

The perfect stroller I can't afford

You know how sometimes you go wandering blog to blog, looking for something or someone entertaining or interesting? I did that this week, and wandered over to a mother of twins in Canada. She is giving away a beautiful, lovely, heart-stoppingly expensive stroller, a Bumbleride Indie Twin.

Let's face it, even when I am not in the middle of a 6 month leave from work, an almost $700 stroller is not in the cards for me. But if I could win it? That would be nice. So in a vain attempt to win this stroller, I am blogging about it. This is a little embarrassing to me, but it is a measure of how much I would like to win this. So there, we've found my price, huh? Did I mention it comes in orange? Sigh.

Embarrassment aside, here is a link to the giveaway.

Random Quote and Unrelated Photo of the Week

"Let's just put it this way, he says. "There is a very large demand for eyelash enhancement."

John Mack, Pharma Marketing News

Thank Goodness it Wasn't Raining

The wood delivery truck arrived

and to Ada's delight, dumped a cord of wood in our driveway.

She was more excited to help than seems reasonable

Ian and our pal Juniper didn't actually help move the wood out of the driveway, but she is so beautiful I had to include this shot (and she did do a lot of dinner prep that night)

Untweeted

I have a twitter account. I don't use it much, because I don't have a desk job or an iPhone. (Okay, I HAVE a desk job, but I won't be at it for another month.)  But the other day I thought, "things must be getting better. I cleaned a toilet for the first time in 7 months." Then I thought, I would tweet that, if I wasn't cleaning the bathroom. Some of the other things that I would have tweeted recently if I had been near the computer when the thoughts occurred to me:

Who set the rule that at least one of the 5 of us must be crying at all times?

care.com is better than craigslist for finding a nanny. but is it $30 better?

Am I the only one who gets a name or phrase stuck in her head for a day, only to have it replaced by some other word the next?

Ian thinks it is hilarious when I mock his crabby cries. Good to know.

Who keeps googling "scroti rhode island" and finding me? What is that about?*

I told Chris we should keep the temp cooler in the evenings, but now I'm cold.

Whenever I read a post about some newly potty-trained kid my stomach does a sad flip-flop.

Keeping the leftover Halloween candy in the freezer is no impediment to me eating it all. 

Is it terrible that I want to hire someone because they said two kids were "as different as chalk and cheese"?

Ada and I have been talking about trees a lot lately. 

Writing this post is making me wonder "so why didn't I just post these to twitter?"


*I figured it out. Rhode Island School of Design's mascot. 

Halloween is for Suckers (and Peanut Butter Cups)

Despite my concern that people would mistake her home-made ghost costume for a bride costume, no one asked her if she was getting married. (Maybe it was the blue felt letters spelling BOO! I sewed to her skirt.)

Onward, to CANDY!

Predictably, by the end of the night Ada had shed her costume. She did it bit by bit, handing pieces to her grandmother and me as we walked the neighborhood in search of sugar. Yet another reason I am glad I didn't make her a traditional, one piece, over the head ghost costume. In any case, by the time we headed home she looked like this:

Note the sugar-fueled twirling around every pole on the street. Whee! Impressively, there was no sugar-meltdown. Ada enjoyed the special treat of getting tucked in to be by her grandmother, and we heard not a peep of complaint as the sugar left her system. Even better, at about 7:30 I got a text from Ellen noting that things were well with my other favorite sugar fiend: "Monkey Boy has not vomited yet." So all around, a successful Halloween.

Oh, and Mira and Ian's first Halloween passed as I would have predicted: they enjoyed being carted around to the neighborhood pre-trek party, got cranky, drank some milk and went to sleep. Who could ask for more?

Heavy, for skeletons

Happy Birthday Motherwoman

Just a little electronic love for my pal Mother-Woman, who is celebrating the anniversary of her birth today. I may not have it together enough to send her a real card, but it is the thought that counts, right?

Happy birthday Mo! I am so glad to know you.

Random Quote and Unrelated Photo of the Week

He and the interviewer realized they shared the most happy bond: a prejudice.

David Mamet

Birth Story, Finally

I wrote this pretty much right after the delivery, but I needed to put it away for a bit. Now Mira and Ian are 5 months old...

Monday, May 18 started with a non-stress test during which I had a contraction that caused "Baby B" (Ian) to have a heart rate deceleration. This led to a trip to Labor and Delivery for extended fetal monitoring, during which all went well and I was sent home.

That Thursday started with work and another non-stress test. Both fetuses had heart rate decelerations during some long (6-7 minute) contractions. This activity caused the OB (in consultation with the perinatologist) to suggest I go back to the hospital for a trial of induction, to see if (a) the babies continued to show “decels” or other signs of stress or (b) these long contractions could be nudged into something productive (and labor-y).  This marked my first laboring moment of "thank goodness Karen is with me."

I want to stress the doc said this was a trial, because this became important once we got to the hospital. Actually, before that even. After a quick chat with Ellen (her day job is midwifery and she acted as translator and reasonableness-checker throughout my labor) I called the hospital to get a little clarity on the plan.  I got this clarity (and a few metaphors from the OB on call) and Chris, Karen and I headed in to L and D.

Evidence that my labor was not yet in full swing: I stopped to document this on the door of the first room we were given. We were quickly moved next door.

The first L and D nurse on duty made it clear that not everyone was clued to the "trial" part of the plan. She kept saying things like “you are here kind of late” or even “with inductions…” until Chris brought her up to speed on our sense of this as a trial, not an induction. From there things were smoother, as I was hooked up to fluids and fetal monitoring. Apparently the hospital’s wireless monitors won’t work with twins, or at least no one could figure out how to make them work for me.

As a side note: my first labor occurred mostly at home without much intervention and no invasive monitoring. (Chris and Ellen were there with me, but not invasive.) I went to the hospital fully dilated and resisting the urge to push while we drove. Neither Chris nor I remember any monitors during that hour between our arrival and Ada’s (though more than one nurse assured me that there must have been monitoring once we got to the hospital, because that's just what is done).  All this is to say that the drip and the monitors set a very different tone for the labor, and I felt a little nervous.

After some time (hours? I can't recall) waiting and watching the monitors, we talked to the OB and anesthesiologist on service. The OB served up more metaphors, including some incomprehensible sports analogies that I don't think the OB himself understood. The anesthesiologist threw me off by talking about the pain relief benefits of epidurals. I get that many people use epidurals for pain relief, but I wanted to talk about how an epidural could be used in the event that I needed a c-section (which after a few scary contraction/decel combinations was looking like an increasingly likely outcome). The docs were trying their best to help us get the information, but it wasn't until they left the room and Chris, Ellen and I talked that I felt fully comfortable with the idea of an epidural set at a low level. The idea was to have an epi in place so that it could be ramped up later when we started moving toward a cesarean.

By this time a new anesthesiologist was on, and she hooked me up and connected me to what she referred to as "water" (a little anesthesiologist's joke about a low-dose epi). After some chatting, the new anesthesiologist (reluctantly) agreed that I could stand up in the room, but not go out into the hall. As I was wearing only a hospital gown, I was fine with this limitation. It was weird to feel like I'd "won" something by being allowed to stand up, but I appreciated the doc's willingness to work with me.

About 5 hours after we arrived at the hospital, the nurse got her orders to start the pitocin. The drip was turned on, and after 10 minutes I had a long contraction (again in the 5-7 minute range) that caused Ian's heart rate to dip noticeably.  Suddenly the room was frighteningly full of people, the pitocin was shut off and everyone was in a flurry that ended once it was clear that Ian's heart recovered with the end of the contraction. So okay, no pitocin. The timing may have been coincidental, as the pitocin apparently doesn't take effect for about 15 minutes. 

Even without pitocin, I then progressed fairly rapidly from 2 - 5.5 centimeters. With the epidural, I did not feel any of the contractions, though I could see them on the monitor. There were a few more decels, but nothing as scary as that first one.

After a few hours the contractions faded. We went from thinking that labor would progress quickly and maybe lead to a cesarean that night, to realizing that not much was happening. Chris, Karen, Ellen and I all tried to get some sleep, and the next morning decided to try the pitocin again. As the pitocin was gradually increased, I started contracting more, but rather than having the mega-contractions that had caused problems earlier, I was having shorter ones that weren't creating decels. I was still really amazed that I was contracting and not feeling any pain. (So ok, I get why people might want this.) I could sort of feel that a contraction was happening, but without the pain I was still kind of in the boredom phase of labor, waiting for something dramatic.

Some time after nine am, I felt something dramatic. All of a sudden the contractions went from "hmm, I guess I feel something" to "wow, THAT'S a contraction." With the onset of intense contractions, the docs were back in the room to ask if I was ready to push the epidural to cesarean strength. (As it takes 15 minutes for the drugs to work, if these contractions led to fetal distress that led to needing a c-section, I would need to pump the drugs up immediately in order to use them should I need surgery at a moment's notice.) I agreed to this, and as I was 8 or 9 centimeters dilated and ready to push, after getting a kiss from my sister I was wheeled down the hall to the operating room. (for those playing along at home, twins are generally delivered in the OR, just in case a cesarean is needed quickly)

Once on the operating table, I started pushing. I have to say that while pain in general is not such a great thing, I was really glad to feel the desire to push. Following my body's natural urge really moved me along, and Mira was delivered at 10:20 am, after about 15 minutes of pushing. Pushing with Mira felt a lot easier than it had been with Ada. Maybe that was because I knew where we were going this time, or maybe it was just easier. Mostly I remember looking up at Chris standing above me as I pressed my palm into his.

I saw the doctor pull Mira into view. She cried and was taken by the nurses to the other side of the room. She was brought back to me for a moment (I am a bit fuzzy about this time - maybe this was while the doc was coaxing Ian into a head-down position, convincing him that his foot could not come out alongside his head, and insisting that his chin needed to be tucked before he came out. And again, THIS was certainly a good use of an epidural. I don't think I would have wanted to feel what the doctor was doing to make any of that Ian-wrangling happen.) Once Ian was properly aligned, it was time for me to push him out. It was at this point that the epidural was in full effect, and not only did I not feel any urge to push, I could not feel the contractions. I relied on the nurse to tell me when each contraction started, and on Chris to be with me as I tried to push with no feedback from my body.

Eventually Chris called Ellen over (she had been watching over Mira). He recognized that I needed some additional help. The emotional effort of pushing was more intense in this pain vacuum, and I had stopped looking at Chris and started staring at the overhead light. Making eye contact was too hard. 

Ellen turned up the heat by telling me that I needed to push more. She told me to push, take a little breath when I needed to and then quickly get back to pushing. Her drill sergeant "no rest" message was what I needed, and I started working harder. After pushing through some number of contractions (6? 12? 30? I can not recall at all) the doctor alerted me that this was to be my last chance, saying something like: "we're going to try this one more time, then we'll try something else." It was clear what this meant, but what I did not know at the time was that while Ian's heart rate had dipped during each contraction, it had bounced back once the contraction ended. Now it was not bouncing back and I only had one more chance to make this work. I pushed and pushed, and (with some help from a vacuum extractor) out came Ian. A little blue and floppy, but he pinked up pretty quickly.

It wasn't until both babies were out that I started to cry. In a rush I felt how hard and scary it had been, and how close we'd come to something bad happening to Ian. In a few dark postpartum moments I retrospectively worried about the birth. Did I take too many risks? Should I have just gotten a cesarean earlier, and not allowed Ian to go through multiple serious heart decelerations? What if his heart had stopped? What if he'd suffered brain damage? Before going too far down this path, I worked to remember that we were surrounded by doctors and nurses. They could have advised us to act differently if they'd thought it was necessary, and I assume they would have. The doctor who caught the babies is a serious guy and I trusted his judgment. I still do. When he poked his head into the exam room at my postpartum visit, he was quick to tell my doctor that my birth had been a scary one. His response surprised me a bit, because I assumed that if we'd needed to act earlier he would have advised us to do so. When he told us I had one more chance to push before he moved to cesarean, I knew this was based on his best medical judgment. (I recognize this paragraph has gone from "what if it had gone bad" to "I trusted my providers" but this is the kind of experience that does not easily fit into an "all is well" or "wow that was terrible" mold.)

Re-reading what I have written, I recognize how inadequate (yet long-winded) this is. What I have written fails to convey how scary the process was at times, especially at the end. I also can't quite explain how the knowledge that a c-section was coming (at points it seemed an absolute certainty) affected the process. With Mira on my lap as I edit, I am amazed how vigorous, beautiful and healthy both she and Ian are. Their arrival was a bit bumpy, but once they came out, they quickly became normal healthy babies. I would like to think that even if they had come via cesarean, I would feel as happy with the birth anyway. Or at least, I would not care so much about the birth, given the outcome was so overwhelmingly good.

A mere 5 months ago

Re-reading this again at 5 months, I still feel happy about how things turned out. I know it is crazy, but this birth story feels like a necessary response to the recent New York Times article on how IVF is increasing the number of twins and how this leads to all kinds of crazy and expensive pregnancies, births and babies.

A post, about US?

Random Quote and Unrelated Photo of the Week

A court can't tell the man, You've got to do more than carry out the garbage.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg

Five at Five

When I was pregnant, I had this song stuck in my head. With a little tweak to the words (the original includes the words "a sister and two brothers") it describes my family pretty well. We are a family of five, though we are not yet muppets. And now the twins are five (months).

Ian and Mira are increasingly becoming more fun as they move out of the infant stage into babyhood. They are interested in one another and in the world around them. While they clearly know and like Chris and me, they reserve special status for Ada. She walks in the room and the babies light up. This evening I was holding Mira while Ada and I talked. Mira started laughing and within a minute was in hysterics, just watching Ada and taking great joy in her.

The babies have also gotten REALLY drooly. As evidence, check out the following photograph, in which Ian and Mira are linked by Ian's spit.

Nice, huh? We are still holding out on the bibs, by the way.

While both Ian and Mira have shown the ability to get from their backs to their bellies, neither kid is routinely rolling over. This is fine with me. It is so different to be doing this a second time. I remember getting really excited when Ada was close to a milestone (rolling over, sitting up, programming the VCR). With these two, I frankly don't really relish the idea of them becoming mobile. They are enough work as it is, but once we can't just lay them down and walk out of the room to grab a coffee or a burp rag, we are screwed. This will be especially problematic because Ada has gotten really into building with Legos. Thanks to my thrift store purchase of a giant tub of them, we find tiny pieces all over the playroom. living room and pretty much everywhere else. I am thrilled that Ada is so into building, but getting her to put away her carefully constructed houses, cars and airplanes is turning out to be fairly difficult. So, the longer the babies are unable to motor themselves over to the myriad choking hazards that surround them, the better.

The past week or so, both kids have stepped up their vocalizations. They have gotten loud, and they want to talk a lot. Ian was warbling the whole time I was taking 5 Month pictures, much to the amusement of the assembled adults. (Okay, it was only me and our helper Caitlin, but we were pretty darn amused.) The photo below shows the moment at which the singing and talking turned to unhappy complaint. Mira is giving me a nice "what the hell is wrong with him?" look. I think by age 2 she'll have perfected the faux angel shtick, especially at moments when her brother is acting a bit wild.

No officer, I have never seen this man before in my life.

 
Also, she's a ham. (Look at me! No, look at ME!)

Ian, for his part, is getting very directive. Here we see him piloting Chris around the neighborhood:

Turn Left. I said LEFT, Papa.

All in all, life is pretty good. We still don't get enough sleep, but the couple of times the babies have slept through the night* have us hopeful for the future. Plus, it helps to remember that at this point with Ada I was still getting up twice a night to nurse her.

*by "slept through the night" I certainly do not mean "did not wake up at all during the night." I meant "didn't eat during the night even though they woke up and cried enough to wake us up at least once"

And speaking of Ada, she continues to be interesting in dressing herself, to interesting effect. One day she wears tights on her head:

and another she puts together this outfit, much to her own amusement:

How come it never occurred to me to turn a turtleneck into a tube top?

November's big task is finding a nanny. Juniper (Ada's old nanny and our good friend) has promised to help us with this. She's even offered to write a Craigslist ad. After seeing the incredibly wide range of people who responded to our mother's helper ad in September (from an over-sharing welfare mother to a woman with a master's degree and 12 years experience) I wonder how this process will go. Juniper set a pretty high bar, so we'll see. 

Neighborhood Pigs

Spotted within a seven block area:

The Good, The Bad and the Sleeping*

Good morning. (I am typing this at 6 am.) You might ask: why are you up and conscious enough to be blogging at this early hour? Good question! I am up because Miss Congeniality (formerly and no doubt again soon the Snotmaster General) woke up for the day at 5:20. I nursed her in bed for a while, but (unlike her brother) Mira does not like to drift off to sleep after nursing. (When she agrees to nurse at all.) The girl is still a little testy about taking milk from the source sometimes, but this morning she was hungry and decided to cooperate. So she nursed. And after a half hour, she was ready to face the day, or at least go downstairs for a diaper change and some quality time with her giraffe rattle toy.

BUT. She woke up for the day at 5:20 for a reason. That reason is: she slept all night, from about 5:45 pm until 5:20 am without eating. This is not to say she did not wake up at all. (We are currently trying to train her not to wake up every time the pacifier slips out of her mouth, with at least some limited success.) But she did not wake up after 2 am, which is our current marker between "too early to feed you" and "okay fine we'll get up and deal with your pathetic cries." This is great, right? We are on our way to happy sleep-filled nights, right?

Oh, except for one thing. There is a brother. And Ian's sleep patterns are not exactly aligned with hers. Another fantastic element of our glamorous life with twins. Even when Ian sleeps until 7, which he seems likely to do, having woken at 4:30 for a bottle, at least one parent is up way too early with Mira. I'm not even sure which kid to praise, the one who did not wake us during the night, or the one who let (one of us) sleep in a bit. (Or would have, if Chris hadn't needed to get out of the house early today. And for the record, Ian slept until 7:45. Wow.)

This not-eating-all-night was first for Mira. Usually Ian wakes up to eat, and a short time later Mira rouses and is fed. Very often Ian is the first to wake in the morning, but as he allows me to take him into the bed for nursing (and then we both drift into sleep for a while), a 5:30 wake up can turn into a 7:00 get up. (Occasionally it is even later, but I won't dwell on this for fear of depressing Chris, who - due to his total lack of nursing ability - never gets to drowse in bed with Ian. He definitely gets the short end of the stick on this.)

Yesterday I complained on facebook that Ian was refusing to nap for longer than a half-hour. Whenever people ask me who is my favorite, I reply "whichever one is sleeping better." Needless to say, Ian was not winning any popularity contests yesterday. Today? Today he's going for the gold. It is now 2 pm and Mira and Ian have done a personality swap today, apparently. Really - this morning Mira had a half-hour nap, while Ian snoozed nicely.  Crazy.

I guess that shows me for thinking I know something about these two. Sure, Mira smiles easily and Ian makes funny noises when he's annoyed. But what do I really know about them yet? Once they are more able to express themselves, I am sure Chris and I will look back and see their personality traits in their baby selves. But while they are inhabiting those baby bodies, it is still a bit hard to know what is going on.  I need to remember not to label them as "the good sleeper" or "the funny one." It always comes back to bite me in the ass, and in the end it does not mean much anyway.

*I considered using the title The Sleeping and the Dead, but that seemed a little macabre.

Random Quote and Unrelated Photo of the Week

He's got that unmistakable graduate-student look of having just climbed out of a root cellar.

Andrea Lee
Altered State: Pennsylvania, blackness, and the art of being foreign

Two Birds

Chris and I recently decided that each week we would try to do something with one of us and Ada. Just Ada. Not "a baby and Ada" and not "take Ada on an errand." (Okay, so we still take her on errands, but an errand doesn't count as the "fun thing" of the week.)

Two weeks ago I took Ada to the Children's Museum. Last week she and Chris went to the waffle window. And for the past two weeks, I have picked up Ada from school and biked her over to a local photo booth.

Two Birds, 9/30/09

Taking Ada to the photo booth kills two birds with one stone; it is a special activity that only she and I get to do, and it allows me to indulge regularly in something I love. Even better, we've been biking on these little jaunts. Ada loves to be carted around in the trailer, and it is yet another thing she can do that the babies can not.

10/5/09

I am going to keep doing this with her as long as she wants to keep going with me.

An alternative to crabs

I was going to post a crabby post borne out of an annoying but completely ordinary day. Instead I am cutting you a break, and offering this instead:

Rachel sent us a tiger costume (along with a ton of other clothes). I immediately put the costume on Ada's Mira's head and took a picture.

She doesn't look entirely thrilled, but otherwise all is well.

I got up to grab something in the other room and when I returned 20 seconds later:

Don't call the cops, she was only like this for a moment.  
She hadn't even started to complain yet.

Walk the Walk

NB: Somehow this got resaved as a draft, then reposted here, even though I originally posted it in September. Oh well. Technology burp. 

Did anyone else read this article? It is about how many parents won't allow their children to walk to school (or other places), even when the walk is a block or two. Parents are too afraid that their children will be abducted. Included in the article is a bit about a mom who let her 10 year old son walk a mile to soccer practice. Not only did several people call 911 to report a child walking alone, but the officer who found the kid drove him to the park (before chewing out the mom). I'm knocked out that (a) multiple people found the sight of a kid walking alone worrisome enough to report it to police, and (b) they called 911, the emergency number. The kid was 10, not 4.

The article upset me for a couple of reasons. To begin with, it busts into the fantasy I have had since we moved to this house that my children will get to walk themselves to school. We live 5 blocks from our local elementary. Of course I will be walking Ada to kindergarten, but will I be expected to walk her to and from school until she graduates from 8th grade? When Ian and Mira are ready for kindergarten Ada will be entering 4th grade. At what point can she escort them without me along for the stroll? Why couldn't a 4th grader walk her younger siblings to school?

The other thing that really bugs me is that refusing to let kids walk to local schools is an environmental nightmare. The article may have picked out really extreme cases to make a point about modern, fear-based parenting, but wow. A mom let her kid walk the five houses to a friend's place, only to have the kid driven home at the end of the play-date. Really? Driven? The host mom was what - too busy? Too lazy? to walk the length of five houses?

Honestly now

Dad Who Writes tagged me for a meme. The rules are: post 10 honest things about yourself and tag 7 people to do the same. Annoyingly, DWW would definitely be one of the people I would ask to do this, if he hadn't just asked me.

And now for some honest things: 

1. I am simultaneously thrilled and horrified to get tagged for any meme, no matter how interesting or inane it is. I am thrilled because the inner pathetic teenager in me cares a lot about things like comments and hits and whether people like my blog enough to tag me for memes. I am horrified because I fear that I will tag people, only to have them ignore me or loudly refuse to participate. (Again, thanks inner teen!) The upshot is that I worry more about what people think of me than I would like to believe about myself.
2. I was pleasantly surprised when Ada told me I am lucky, and when I asked her why she thinks that, she said: "because you have three kids." I am glad she sees this as a good thing. 
3. One of the reasons I don't want to give up breastfeeding is that when I stop I may have to start real exercise again (beyond daily walks) and won't be able to eat as much. While it is true that I will be able to drink more, I don't drink so much that this seems like a good trade-off. Plus, alcohol is fattening, leading to the need for more exercise.
   
4. I often tell one of two close friends what is bothering me before I tell Chris. This is especially true when I am annoyed at Chris. This helps me a lot, because by the time I tell him what is going on I have thought about it more and am less likely to get irrationally angry. My many years with Chris have taught me that irrational expressions of emotion don't lead to meaningful dialog with him.
   
5. I was recently very embarrassed that a coworker I really respect knew what a slip-shod job I did keeping track of documents for a grant I worked on a couple of years ago. This coworker very kindly made it clear that it was no big deal, but I still felt horrified that she would see what a slacker I'd been.
6. I sometimes think I chose the wrong profession, not because I do not enjoy or care about what I do, but because I know I will never make much money. Especially with additional mouths to feed and bottoms to clothe, this worries me. 
7. I am an intellectual, but I am lazy about it. 
8. I get totally sucked into a game and then play it all the time for a few weeks before getting bored. Right now I am obsessed with the Boggle-like Scramble on Facebook. Both my sister and Chris are kicking my ass, high-score wise. I have beaten Chris in head-to-head games, however. 
9. I wish there was a way to explain to a four-year old that when she is crazily needy, I want to withdraw. I know there is no way for her to understand this, but it does not stop me from wishing. I feel like a shitty parent for wanting her to back off a little. I love her loving me, but sometimes it is so exhausting to be needed all the time. 
10. Ada is exploring the idea that she could be something or someone else. When she says she wishes she was Lila or Avery, it makes me wonder who I would like to be. For all my complaining, I am not sure I would really want to be someone else. I have barely figured out how to be me without having to learn someone new.
    

And now, a quick ridiculous picture of Mira:

What?

Tagging. Oy. Okay, here goes:

Magpie Musing, because she will certainly write something interesting
Mayberry Mom, who wrote very honestly about her (hopefully finished) hard year
Cartoon Goddess, because she comes up with great visuals for what is in her head
Mad.Momma, the kindest, most generous almost-stranger I know
Planet Nomad, whose posts from abroad are so interesting, even the mundane details
Lumpyhead's Mom, since she can post pictures of stuff on her son's head
Heathen Family Revival, because I love her blog title and her photography skills

The Unexpected Joy of Parenting

2:26 A.M.

Mira had been crying on and off for an hour. I got up and fed her, then rocked her and put her back to bed. On my way downstairs to pump, I stopped in Ada's room to make sure she was warm enough. She has taken to sleeping on top of her down comforter, covered only by her baby blankets. Sometimes she kicks off the covers early in the evening and spends the rest of the night without blankets. Tonight she was covered by two of her favorites, but her toes were sticking out. I laid a third blanket over her so that her feet were covered. She stirred, and as I was leaving, said, "I love you Mama."

I love you too, Ada.

Random Quote and Unrelated Photo of the Week

"If we weren't making decisions based on marketability, John Malkovich would be in every movie,"  a top studio marketer says.

Tad Friend
The Cobra

It bears repeating

Two years ago I wrote a post about a friend, and why you should do breast self-exams. Last year I linked to the post, and wrote about friends I'd made who were living with and living through cancer. This year I thought I might mention a resource, in case you take my advice to do self-exams and then end up needing insurance to deal with something you found. Oh, how I hope you will find nothing wrong and need no assistance. I also hope you have good health insurance. But if any of that is not true, there are resources available, including the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention's National Breast and Cervical Cancer Early Detection Program. The NBCCEDP helps low-income, uninsured, and underinsured women gain access to breast and cervical cancer screening and diagnostic services. These services include:

• Clinical breast examinations.
• Mammograms.
• Pap tests.
• Pelvic examinations.
• Diagnostic testing if results are abnormal.
• Referrals to treatment.

In Oregon, you can contact the state's Breast and Cervical Cancer Program. For resources in other states, check out CDC's NBCCEDP web site.

In the mean time, here is my friend Stephanie's story.

When I moved to Rhode Island in 2000, I left a job I loved and a close group of friends, in a city I'd come to see as home. Chris is an academic, so he made friends at work, but I struggled to meet people in a place where most of the residents are natives. Almost everyone I met had lived in Rhode Island their entire lives, had the same friends they'd had since before kindergarten, and though they were kind, it was clear that they were not looking to make new friends. I really struggled to find friends, and in the end one of my favorite people in Rhode Island did not even live in the state.

Stephanie Williams was the girlfriend of Dan, one of Chris's colleagues. Every other weekend she would take the train from New York City to visit Dan. A journalist, Stephanie was interesting, funny and smart. Some of my favorite moments in Rhode Island were spent in the company of Stephanie and Dan. Chris and I liked them enough that we we saw them in New York too. We went to NYC regularly to see family, and we'd meet up for brunch or pizza.

Shortly before we met, Stephanie was diagnosed with breast cancer. She was 30. One of the things that impressed me about Stephanie was that despite dealing with cancer (surgeries, chemotherapy, radiation), she was always interested in other people. Maybe because she was a journalist, she tended to look out into the world rather than retreat into her own pain.

Stephanie fought her cancer for three years. She ultimately died, but not before fulfilling a dream to write a novel. Her book, Enter Sandman was published in 2004, the summer she died. Stephanie's story, including her struggle with cancer and her decision to use her limited time to write a book, was featured in a number of national and local publications. She herself wrote an article for Glamour that was published after her death. Her alma mater wrote a a very nice article about her.

It is terrible that Stephanie died so young, but you can do something to help ensure that you and your loved ones do not. Please do monthly self breast exams, and please get an annual exam every year. This is a great start for young women, especially those of us who are generally healthy and do not see ourselves at being at risk for cancer. If you do not know how to do a monthly exam, click here. Most insurance covers annual exams with either a very low or no copayment. It is more than worth the $10 doctor fee and an hour of your time. I know you are busy, but really, this seems like a good use of time. I hope the men in my readership will urge their loved ones to do these exams as well.

I thought to tell you this because October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, but you should do an exam every month. Even though I admit that I have not been so good about this in the past, I'll promise if you do too.

Found

Found, while cleaning up and culling items from the playroom:

Two birthday candles (one pink, one blue), saved since Lila's birthday party in early June.

One handful of chestnuts and smallish rocks. Date of entry into the house is uncertain.

Numerous Stumptown "coffee cards." These are the little cards our coffee store uses to identify the type of whole bean coffee we've purchased. Ada believes they are very valuable, and has a sizable collection.

Two plastic hippo pellets from Hungry Hungry Hippos game. Retrieved from under bookshelf, probably lost in the spring when pellets were used as food for the dolls.

One baking powder container, empty of original contents but housing a mid-sized lumpy rock.

A plastic top to a yogurt container, an empty honey bear, an empty lemon juice bottle and several ribbons. To be fair, the bear and lemon juice have been part of her kitchen play, but having found them under the bookshelf I declared them no longer in active rotation and eligible for elimination.

I wonder where she gets this penchant for collecting?

We May Need to Eat Our (Incredibly Soggy) Words

Chris and I have always been very anti-bib. Or rather, we have a long-standing practice of making derisive comments about people who put cloth bibs on their kids in order to catch drool.* The fact that Ada was not especially drooly cemented our belief that this all-day bib thing was pure parental vanity. Plus, if your kid was going to drool, didn't the use of a bib just create more laundry?

As recently as this weekend I stared in confusion at the bibs a friend included in a huge box of clothes her boys have outgrown. Should I put them in the drawer or take them to Goodwill? We wouldn't use them, right? But this morning Chris said, "I'm beginning to have more appreciation for why people put bibs on their kids. I've changed Ian's clothes three times today."

It was 10:04 am.

Ian had been up since 7, with an hour nap at 8.The boy is a drool machine.

We have not busted out the bibs yet. Thanks to the generosity of our friends and their hand-me-downs, we have a ton of baby clothes. But now I see the advantage of bibs. Instead of taking off a whole outfit and dealing with the attendant squirming and crying, you can quickly swap out a soaked bib with minimal fuss.  I get it, but I am still resistant because it just seems so fussy.

We'll see.

Apropos of nothing, I finally got around to taking a 4 month picture. After 500 tries in which one kid wasn't smiling or wasn't looking at the camera or was drooling profusely, we got this one with them both at least kind of smiling. Don't be fooled into thinking Ian is reticent. We have a lot of photos in which Ian is smiling broadly while Mira stares at him in disbelief.

* I am a huge fan of the mealtime use of bibs made of oil cloth or plastic. We made heavy use of such bibs when Ada was a messier eater.