A tWinell Life: December 2012

Well my faithful followers...Here is the post you've been waiting for! We've all been waiting for this post! :)

The babies are here safe, healthy, and strong and we are so thankful. It has been a long journey and it will continue to be a journey; we covet your prayers!

Let's start from where we left off at 35 weeks.... Thanksgiving was wonderful. Jared and I enjoyed our families and I was able to get up and around a little bit that week. I didn't do any crazy black Friday shopping or anything like that but it was good just to go to the grocery store with Jared and do something 'normal' again. During the week of Thanksgiving I started to have frequent seizures. I have Epilepsy and this is something we've been monitoring closely throughout the pregnancy. These seizures were frequent enough to cause alarm so promptly after setting up our Christmas tree and decorations on Saturday, the 24th, I called the Dr.'s emergency line to ask about the seizures and to see if it was concerning enough to come in to be seen. My Dr. didn't want to take any chances so we went to the hospital around 8:30pm on the 24th for monitoring. While there the Dr. explained to us that sometimes seizures are related to a condition called pre-eclampsia. This is a serious condition so we ran some blood work and other various tests to see if that might be the case with me. It's still not clear whether or not I was pre-eclamptic or not but they treated me as if I was.

Sunday morning, November 25th, my Dr. came in to discuss the situation with Jared and I and by the end of the conversation we decided it was best to take the babies via C-Section that morning and not wait any longer. So after about an hour of getting everything ready I was taken back to the OR about 9:00am by 9:32 our little girl, Joline Alyse, was born! 5lbs 13oz and healthy as can be! 9:35am our big boy was born, Anders James! 7lbs 2oz!! the procedure went great and they soon got us all wrapped up and into recovery.

Soon after going to recovery we noticed that Anders was having a hard time breathing. His breaths were short and frequent and he seemed to be working really hard to breathe. The Dr.'s consulted our pediatrician and decided that Anders needed to go to the Neonatal ICU (NICU) for some additional assistance. At this point Jared and I were separated as he went to NICU with Anders and I was taken to a regular room with Joline. This was extremely difficult because our now family of four was split up and I didn't see Jared again until around 5:00pm. This was a long day of not knowing what exactly was going on and feeling very helpless and strange as I had one of our babies but not the other with me.

Anders spent a total of 11 days in NICU; 5 days on CPAP which is a breathing machine to help put pressure on the lungs to get them to work properly on their own. He was such a trooper with all those wires and cords! Joline and I were released from the hospital on the 29th to go home. This was very bitter sweet for us as we knew we were leaving Anders behind. We didn't know how long he would need to continue to stay at this point. Once off CPAP, he had to prove that he could take all of his feedings by bottle in under 20 min. for 48 hours. If he took one but then the next one needed to have help via feeding tube we started all over from square one. He was a trooper here though too and proved that he could do it!

In the meantime, I started to have some significant swelling in my feet and legs that I had not had before so again, I called the Dr. This time I got some news I really did not want to hear; we had to go to ER because the swelling could be a sign of a post delivery variety of the pre-eclampsia I was thought to have had during labor. We were already on our way to the hospital to see Anders when we got that news and I really had a breakdown. After all we had already been through the last thing I wanted was to be in the hospital again as a patient myself. I really just wanted to be able to take care of my kiddos and focus on getting all of us home and into somewhat of a new 'normal'. Wishful thinking I know! :)

So back into the hospital I went for monitoring. I was kept for 2 nights. During my stay the one upside was that I was close to Anders and we could go see him whenever. Since he was doing so well we knew that his stay would be coming to an end soon too. As it turns out I was released a day before he was.

SO what now!? Now we have twins at home and both are doing fantastic. Life is incredibly busy and at times frustrating because of lack of sleep/trying to figure out their feeding pattern. For the first 2 weeks I was told I had to feed them every 3 hours around the clock because they were premature. Now we are on a feed on-demand schedule but they are still so used to every 3 hours that we are pretty much doing that still with an occasional stretch during the night of 4 hours. I'm sure this will only continue to get better as they grow and get stronger. I hope anyway! :) Jared and I are doing good. We're slowly learning and I'm so thankful that I have him with me through this! What a blessing he is to me especially when I'm feeling overwhelmed and frustrated; which seems often.

We have been so blessed by so many people praying for us and taking care of us either with a meal, a visit, cards, gifts, etc. Thank you so much! I will try to update again soon. I'm sorry I haven't been able to write this until now. It's been quite a ride! Here are some pictures of our journey so far.