Let's try this again

Because that last post was lame. :-)

I realize that first of all, what is needed here is more photos. Because to me, photos tell the story better than words so often. But my words last time were failing me, so I'm going to try this again. I'm not going to go back to the hospital stay that I hated, or how badly I felt for the first week when they were in the NICU. I have heard preemie moms talk about how experiencing the NICU can lead to Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. While I don't think it was anywhere as bad for me as it was for other people, I still feel like the first week of my children's life wasn't the first week I was a Mom. I feel cheated out of the experience, and would change things if I could.

But there were high points, and I don't want to forget them either. The first moment I heard my daughter cry. She came out screaming and wailing, shrieking her indignation at the top of her lungs. She appeared briefly above the curtain for us to see her red and angry little face before being swooped off to get cleaned up and checked out. I remember my husband squeezing my hand and kissing me and telling me I did good. We laughed. We didn't cry, it didn't seem right to cry. I remember thinking something along the lines of "Oh my God, she's real. She's here. And she's breathing on her own." We did that, we made that, I nurtured that in my body for 9 months. She weighed in smaller than I was expecting, but had a good solid 9 on her Apgar. Good girl.

The time in between babies was brief. Our doctor works fast. I was more amazed at the weird half empty feeling in my stomach and the shift I could feel as my son stretched out and was pulled out. He also came out crying, but much quieter and less angry than my daughter. His cry was all baby, all sleepy sounding, and as predicted, deeper than hers. Again, the confused looking baby appeared above the curtain and was whisked away. Another 9 on the Apgars. My babies rock. Sometime during all of this, they handed Maggie to Andy. And then Ben. And so there we were, the four of us, a family. It was completely surreal, and it had nothing to do with the anesthesia.

The next few hours after they were born, we were in the recovery room, and in came all of the family assembled. The Moms, the Dads, the Sisters, the Brothers, the Aunt and the Grandma. There were tears, there were ear to ear grins, and these babies of mine were welcomed into the family by people who adored them. We took photos. Lots of photos. Marvelled over tiny hands and feet, and noses and lips. They were kissed and cuddled, and passed around.

My husband beamed from ear to ear. It reminded me of our wedding day, when everyone said that the two of us grinned all day long. His face lit up, he handled our babies like an old pro, but a proud new papa, and I fell in love with him all over again.

Once the babies were taken to the NICU, we had some highlights along with the parts I know I mentioned that were so hard. I wanted to share a few of those, the moments that happened between the every three hours on the dot feedings that we attended all but two or three of.

One of the nurses who turned out to be the first completely understanding one who realized how much I wanted to hold both of my babies together. For the first time (I think she was our third or fourth nurse) someone heard me, and easily moved the monitors they were tethered to so I could hold my babies. Thank you.

Watching Andy with the babies. He had more freedom of movement, so he learned to diaper, swaddle, cuddle for a tube feed, and bottle feed them. Everyday, a new sticker that said Daddy, and one who wouldn't leave his babies for longer than a few hours. Any feeding that I might have needed to sleep through, he went to. He took care of them and he took care of me. The first day we graduated to open air cribs. We stayed there almost the whole day, holding them, snuggling them, and dressing them up in real clothes. We also were able to wheel their little cribs together so we could put them together for the first time since the recovery room. They snuggled in nose to nose, and we took a million photos. They remembered each other, and it made our hearts melt that their days apart didn't affect their relationship. The night that Andy came back to our room and said that one of our favorite nurses was giving the babies the car seat challenge. This was after we had been moved downstairs to our new room, so I was able to walk right on down and take these photos at 1:00 in the morning. They looked so cute, and so big, and in their carseats it really hit home that these little tiny beings were going to be going home with us. And then on this day, Friday April 17th, this was the day we came home. Maggie looked so tiny in her car seat, and they both looked so freaking cute in the sleepers that we had picked out so many months before, the ones that had hung in the closet that we had looked at so many times trying to imagine what our children would look like in them. It was so much better than we ever could have imagined. They were adorable, and they were ours. Going home with us, finally, and starting our lives. And then we were home. In the glider I had been rocking in with them for months. They were hungry, we had a few other complications with our homecoming, but we were home. Margaret JaneBenjamin Andrew

And about half an hour after that last photo was taken, we had to leave them at home with their grandparents so Daddy could take Mommy to the ER. But that's a story for another day. :-)