You may recall from this post that Colin's next step in his journey toward full access to sound is "aided testing," or "booth testing." During this test, Colin goes into a sound booth and sits on my lap, facing out. Sitting in front of him is an audiologist whose job is to keep his attention focused straight ahead. Then, sounds are piped into the booth at different frequencies and decibel levels. If he stops paying attention to the audiologist and turns his head, he heard it.
Brian and I fully expected Colin not to hear much at this test. But like he's done so many times before, Colin surpassed our wildest expectations. He did such a good job with his left ear that his audiologist said that she does not recommend a cochlear implant for his left ear! In other words, Colin's left ear, with his hearing aid, is currently hearing well enough for appropriate speech development. Brian and I were ecstatic. While cochlear implants are miraculous devices, not needing one is even better.
His right ear did not do as well. It looks like a cochlear implant is still the way to go on his right side, though we will test again in about a week to make sure.
Stay tuned, friends!
Friday, October 24, 2014
Wednesday, October 1, 2014
Meanwhile, in the Way Back
Elizabeth: MO-OM, Amanda hit me in the head! And it HURTED!
Amanda: Elizabeth, "hurted" is not a word.
Elizabeth: Yes, it is.
Amanda: No, it isn't. "Hurt" is a word. "Hur-TED" is a made up word and it's not good english.
Elizabeth: STOP IT AMANDA!
Just another day in paradise, friends.
Thursday, September 25, 2014
Il Padrino
Labor Day weekend could not get here fast enough. "What time is their plane landing?" Elizabeth asked impatiently, though hours and minutes have little meaning in her five year old brain. Anticipation of Danny and Jen's visit had helped sustain all of us through the slow, steamy days of August, but none of us more than Elizabeth. She claims a higher level of ownership over her father's best friend's attention. "He is my godfather," she says; "He is MINE," she means. The girls both stake a claim on Jen, Danny's beautiful wife. I don't blame them. Her calm contentment has its own gravitational force.
Two tee times were the only mandatory appointments of the weekend. The rest of our days were filled with lazy living room conversations, food, college football, and babies.
One visit a year is not enough, but right now it has to do. Plans for 2015 are already in the books. Danny and Jen have been generous enough to come to us for the past several years. It's our turn to make the trip. The Brantleys are going to take NYC. (Well, the Brantleys minus the babies. Grandparents -- are you reading this? Can you babysit? Thanks!)
Two tee times were the only mandatory appointments of the weekend. The rest of our days were filled with lazy living room conversations, food, college football, and babies.
One visit a year is not enough, but right now it has to do. Plans for 2015 are already in the books. Danny and Jen have been generous enough to come to us for the past several years. It's our turn to make the trip. The Brantleys are going to take NYC. (Well, the Brantleys minus the babies. Grandparents -- are you reading this? Can you babysit? Thanks!)
Tuesday, September 16, 2014
Colin's Ears
This post has been a long time coming. Most of you who read this blog have heard this in bits and pieces, but here’s the whole story of where we are right now with Colin’s ears and how we got here.
Colin and J.J. had their newborn hearing screens at the Texas Children’s Pavilion for Women NICU. J.J. passed. Colin passed in his left ear, but failed in his right ear. Protocol for the failed test in one ear dictated that he next get an ABR on both of his ears. This more sophisticated test measures brain stem response to sound. After this test we received a call telling us the audiologist wanted to speak with us the next morning in the boys' NICU room.
It can’t be that bad, we reasoned, because we know he can hear in one of his ears. I saw that green word “PASS” flash up on the screen with my own two eyes during his initial hearing screen.
Here’s what an ABR looks like. This is actually J.J., but you get the idea. (Why did J.J. get an ABR even though he passed his newborn hearing screen, you ask? When one baby fails a hearing test, doctors like to double check those with whom they share identical DNA. He passed).
The next morning one of the TCH audiologists gave us the news. "Colin has a profound sensorineural hearing loss in both of his ears." “Both?” we asked. “How can that be? He passed the newborn screen in his left ear.” “Sometimes the initial screen is not entirely accurate. That’s why anytime there is a failure in either ear, we do the ABR on both ears as a follow up.” “Okay….So…he’s deaf? Is that what you’re saying?” “Yes, that’s what I’m saying."
****
We knew Colin was going to have some challenges. Knowing everything he endured in utero and then immediately after his birth at 2 lbs 11 oz, it could be no other way. Deafness, to me, seemed, and still seems, a totally manageable challenge. Far more dire problems seemed likely. “He’s going to hear,” I told Brian. “He just will. I know it."
I could say that with such confidence because I vividly remembered hearing a speech at a charity event given by a profoundly deaf teenaged girl. She was more articulate than me and heard just fine. The charity event was for The Center for Hearing and Speech, which was our first visit after Colin was discharged from the NICU.
There we learned about cochlear implants and began Colin’s journey towards full access to sound. Here are the steps Colin has taken so far in that journey.
****
Step 1: Hearing Aids
The importance of early diagnosis of hearing problems cannot be overstated. Because Colin was diagnosed at less than two months old, even before his official due date, he is perfectly positioned to overcome the challenges of being deaf. It takes hearing babies almost a full year of hearing and processing sounds before they begin to speak understandable words. So every day that went by in which Colin wasn’t hearing anything, he was getting farther behind in his eventual ability to speak. Audiologists are in agreement: the quicker we fit him with amplification devices, otherwise known as hearing aids, the better. So that’s what we did.
Portrait of a concerned dad
Colin did great.
Tah dah! With a little toupee tape, the hearing aids stayed on his tiny head.
As a bonus bit of parenting, on that same exact day, Amanda was doing flips on some strange playground apparatus and fell flat on her face. So we got an emergency call from the school nurse and an emergency trip to the dentist.
That 24 hour period was an adult dose of parenting. So when the day was finally over, we cuddled.
And the next day I found this next picture on my phone. Somewhere in the chaos Elizabeth had managed to take a picture of my butt.
Step 2: Speech Therapy
Two month old babies can have speech therapy? Why yes! They can! Colin goes to speech therapy at the Center for Hearing and Speech every other week. He sits in a very quiet room and listens to interesting sounds and learns to pay attention to them. His speech therapist likes to joke that she went to graduate school to learn how to play with toys, but she is actually a miracle worker. She teaches Brian and me how to play with Colin at home to work on his hearing. Here are some examples of exercises she has taught us. We hold a toy out of Colin’s eyesight. Then make a noise associated with the toy, and when he turns his head toward the sound, show him the toy. We are teaching him to turn his head to sound, to understand that sounds mean something, and to concentrate on associating the sound with the meaning. And if he verbalizes to the toy, give him tons of positive reinforcement. But to the untrained eye it just looks like play. Also these videos make it very obvious that one of these babies hears better than the other. You can see that by how quickly J.J. turns his head. He’s our own personal, adorable control group.
Step 3: MRI
Hearing Aids alone very rarely, if ever, provide people with a profound hearing loss like Colin’s access to enough sound to speak even remotely clearly. Cochlear implants, in contrast, do provide that access. In very rough terms, a cochlear implant receives acoustical sound through a microphone, changes that sound into an electrical impulse, stimulates the auditory nerve, which transmits that electrical impulse to the brain, which can understand that impulse as sound. That description probably reads like nails on a chalkboard to trained audiologists and ENTs, but it’s the best I can do.
Cochlear implants will not help those who do not have an auditory nerve, however. Because we know Colin is hearing at least a little bit out of his left ear, we think it highly unlikely that he does not have at least one auditory nerve. But there’s only one way to find out for sure, and that’s with an MRI.
Colin had his MRI a couple of weeks ago. Because he is a baby and can’t hold still on his own, we had to put him under general anesthesia for the test. We were very nervous about our little guy going under general anesthesia, but he did great.
Here he is at the hospital bright and early in the morning.
And inhaling the anesthesia
Waking up hungry and angry.
Heading home. Total champ.
A few days later we discussed the results with his ENT. Colin’s anatomy “looks good for implantation,” meaning his cochleas look normal and he has two good looking auditory nerves.
"Then why can’t he hear?" you may be asking. We still don’t know, and likely never will. The anatomy of most deaf babies’ ears do not provide the answer to this question. We will do some genetic testing to see if that tells us why, but the odds of that providing the answer are very slim, given that his genetically identical brother hears just fine.
Step 4: Booth Testing
The next step in this process is making sure that Colin truly needs the cochlear implants. The procedure is not without its drawbacks, the main one being this: his hearing will become totally dependent on the device being implanted in his inner ear, and he will no longer be able to hear acoustically. So we have to be absolutely certain that the access to sound his ears currently provide is not going to be enough for him to hear and speak.
Brian and I initially thought, ok, just do an ABR with the hearing aids on, and that will tell us. But we were wrong, you can’t do an ABR with hearing aids on. Instead you do what is called booth testing. Colin will be put in a sound booth, and noises will be piped in through a set of speakers. He will react, or not react, to the sounds, and trained audiologists will tell us how much he heard and how much he didn’t hear. We will do Colin’s first booth test during the second week of October. We have been working diligently at getting him to turn his head and react visibly when he hears things, so I am confident that the booth test will give us reliable data.
Colin’s sisters have been his biggest supporters during this journey. I took the girls out for Mexican food while Colin was still in the NICU to break the news that one of their baby brothers couldn’t hear. Their very first question was, “How can we help him?” “Right now you can pray for him,” I said. “But when he comes home you’ll be able to talk to him. Talking to him and playing with him is the very best way to help him.” They have done all that and more. Here is probably my favorite video so far.
This boy is so loved.
Colin and J.J. had their newborn hearing screens at the Texas Children’s Pavilion for Women NICU. J.J. passed. Colin passed in his left ear, but failed in his right ear. Protocol for the failed test in one ear dictated that he next get an ABR on both of his ears. This more sophisticated test measures brain stem response to sound. After this test we received a call telling us the audiologist wanted to speak with us the next morning in the boys' NICU room.
It can’t be that bad, we reasoned, because we know he can hear in one of his ears. I saw that green word “PASS” flash up on the screen with my own two eyes during his initial hearing screen.
Here’s what an ABR looks like. This is actually J.J., but you get the idea. (Why did J.J. get an ABR even though he passed his newborn hearing screen, you ask? When one baby fails a hearing test, doctors like to double check those with whom they share identical DNA. He passed).
The next morning one of the TCH audiologists gave us the news. "Colin has a profound sensorineural hearing loss in both of his ears." “Both?” we asked. “How can that be? He passed the newborn screen in his left ear.” “Sometimes the initial screen is not entirely accurate. That’s why anytime there is a failure in either ear, we do the ABR on both ears as a follow up.” “Okay….So…he’s deaf? Is that what you’re saying?” “Yes, that’s what I’m saying."
****
We knew Colin was going to have some challenges. Knowing everything he endured in utero and then immediately after his birth at 2 lbs 11 oz, it could be no other way. Deafness, to me, seemed, and still seems, a totally manageable challenge. Far more dire problems seemed likely. “He’s going to hear,” I told Brian. “He just will. I know it."
I could say that with such confidence because I vividly remembered hearing a speech at a charity event given by a profoundly deaf teenaged girl. She was more articulate than me and heard just fine. The charity event was for The Center for Hearing and Speech, which was our first visit after Colin was discharged from the NICU.
There we learned about cochlear implants and began Colin’s journey towards full access to sound. Here are the steps Colin has taken so far in that journey.
****
Step 1: Hearing Aids
The importance of early diagnosis of hearing problems cannot be overstated. Because Colin was diagnosed at less than two months old, even before his official due date, he is perfectly positioned to overcome the challenges of being deaf. It takes hearing babies almost a full year of hearing and processing sounds before they begin to speak understandable words. So every day that went by in which Colin wasn’t hearing anything, he was getting farther behind in his eventual ability to speak. Audiologists are in agreement: the quicker we fit him with amplification devices, otherwise known as hearing aids, the better. So that’s what we did.
Portrait of a concerned dad
Colin did great.
Tah dah! With a little toupee tape, the hearing aids stayed on his tiny head.
As a bonus bit of parenting, on that same exact day, Amanda was doing flips on some strange playground apparatus and fell flat on her face. So we got an emergency call from the school nurse and an emergency trip to the dentist.
That 24 hour period was an adult dose of parenting. So when the day was finally over, we cuddled.
And the next day I found this next picture on my phone. Somewhere in the chaos Elizabeth had managed to take a picture of my butt.
Step 2: Speech Therapy
Two month old babies can have speech therapy? Why yes! They can! Colin goes to speech therapy at the Center for Hearing and Speech every other week. He sits in a very quiet room and listens to interesting sounds and learns to pay attention to them. His speech therapist likes to joke that she went to graduate school to learn how to play with toys, but she is actually a miracle worker. She teaches Brian and me how to play with Colin at home to work on his hearing. Here are some examples of exercises she has taught us. We hold a toy out of Colin’s eyesight. Then make a noise associated with the toy, and when he turns his head toward the sound, show him the toy. We are teaching him to turn his head to sound, to understand that sounds mean something, and to concentrate on associating the sound with the meaning. And if he verbalizes to the toy, give him tons of positive reinforcement. But to the untrained eye it just looks like play. Also these videos make it very obvious that one of these babies hears better than the other. You can see that by how quickly J.J. turns his head. He’s our own personal, adorable control group.
Step 3: MRI
Hearing Aids alone very rarely, if ever, provide people with a profound hearing loss like Colin’s access to enough sound to speak even remotely clearly. Cochlear implants, in contrast, do provide that access. In very rough terms, a cochlear implant receives acoustical sound through a microphone, changes that sound into an electrical impulse, stimulates the auditory nerve, which transmits that electrical impulse to the brain, which can understand that impulse as sound. That description probably reads like nails on a chalkboard to trained audiologists and ENTs, but it’s the best I can do.
Cochlear implants will not help those who do not have an auditory nerve, however. Because we know Colin is hearing at least a little bit out of his left ear, we think it highly unlikely that he does not have at least one auditory nerve. But there’s only one way to find out for sure, and that’s with an MRI.
Colin had his MRI a couple of weeks ago. Because he is a baby and can’t hold still on his own, we had to put him under general anesthesia for the test. We were very nervous about our little guy going under general anesthesia, but he did great.
Here he is at the hospital bright and early in the morning.
And inhaling the anesthesia
Waking up hungry and angry.
Heading home. Total champ.
A few days later we discussed the results with his ENT. Colin’s anatomy “looks good for implantation,” meaning his cochleas look normal and he has two good looking auditory nerves.
"Then why can’t he hear?" you may be asking. We still don’t know, and likely never will. The anatomy of most deaf babies’ ears do not provide the answer to this question. We will do some genetic testing to see if that tells us why, but the odds of that providing the answer are very slim, given that his genetically identical brother hears just fine.
Step 4: Booth Testing
The next step in this process is making sure that Colin truly needs the cochlear implants. The procedure is not without its drawbacks, the main one being this: his hearing will become totally dependent on the device being implanted in his inner ear, and he will no longer be able to hear acoustically. So we have to be absolutely certain that the access to sound his ears currently provide is not going to be enough for him to hear and speak.
Brian and I initially thought, ok, just do an ABR with the hearing aids on, and that will tell us. But we were wrong, you can’t do an ABR with hearing aids on. Instead you do what is called booth testing. Colin will be put in a sound booth, and noises will be piped in through a set of speakers. He will react, or not react, to the sounds, and trained audiologists will tell us how much he heard and how much he didn’t hear. We will do Colin’s first booth test during the second week of October. We have been working diligently at getting him to turn his head and react visibly when he hears things, so I am confident that the booth test will give us reliable data.
Colin’s sisters have been his biggest supporters during this journey. I took the girls out for Mexican food while Colin was still in the NICU to break the news that one of their baby brothers couldn’t hear. Their very first question was, “How can we help him?” “Right now you can pray for him,” I said. “But when he comes home you’ll be able to talk to him. Talking to him and playing with him is the very best way to help him.” They have done all that and more. Here is probably my favorite video so far.
This boy is so loved.
Wednesday, August 13, 2014
Summer 2014: Spit Up, Sisters, and Something Resembling Sanity
The other day Amanda joked about the entry she would write for the inevitable "How was your summer" post in her second grade journal.
Possible Journal Entry Titles:
Summer 2014: The One with All the Diapers.
or
Summer 2014: TV doesn't fry your brain after all.
or
Summer 2014: "Amanda! Bring me a burp rag!"
or
Summer 2014: SOMEBODY GET THAT KID A PACIFIER!!
Here are some choice entries she's considering:
"I woke up and made my own breakfast every day because mom slept late. She says she had to get up in the middle of the night and feed the babies and pump breast milk, but I never heard her so who knows if that's really true."
"I went to the pool maybe five times all summer. And on one of those times I threw up."
"I went on only two vacations, first to Yogi Bear Park with my cousins during Memorial Day weekend, which was BY FAR the best thing I did all summer. Mom and Dad and the babies stayed home. Second, we went to Clear Lake for two nights for my cousin's wedding. Clear Lake doesn't even really count as a vacation, but we stayed in a hotel so I guess it does."
"I got to go to gymnastics camp, but then got strep throat after the second day so missed the rest of the week."
"Basically this was the most boring summer of my entire life."
My dear dramatic daughter makes some valid points. Having two babies to take care of has amounted to what some might, perhaps a bit hyperbolically, call house arrest. But we did have some fun. Here are some of my highlights:
Homemade cinnamon swirl bread. Isn't it beautiful?
We even had a Chopped party with some of our very game, and very culinarily talented relatives. Chopped is a competition show on the Food Network involving mystery baskets, time limits, and lots of dramatic commercial breaks.
A few Chopped party pics:
As for HGTV, you ought to hear Elizabeth walk you through a kitchen remodel or talk you through the relative merits of remodeling your old house versus cutting your losses and moving to a newer home outside of your current neighborhood.
Yes that's a ginormous box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch. I am not ashamed.
Possible Journal Entry Titles:
Summer 2014: The One with All the Diapers.
or
Summer 2014: TV doesn't fry your brain after all.
or
Summer 2014: "Amanda! Bring me a burp rag!"
or
Summer 2014: SOMEBODY GET THAT KID A PACIFIER!!
Here are some choice entries she's considering:
"I woke up and made my own breakfast every day because mom slept late. She says she had to get up in the middle of the night and feed the babies and pump breast milk, but I never heard her so who knows if that's really true."
"I went to the pool maybe five times all summer. And on one of those times I threw up."
"I went on only two vacations, first to Yogi Bear Park with my cousins during Memorial Day weekend, which was BY FAR the best thing I did all summer. Mom and Dad and the babies stayed home. Second, we went to Clear Lake for two nights for my cousin's wedding. Clear Lake doesn't even really count as a vacation, but we stayed in a hotel so I guess it does."
"I got to go to gymnastics camp, but then got strep throat after the second day so missed the rest of the week."
"Basically this was the most boring summer of my entire life."
My dear dramatic daughter makes some valid points. Having two babies to take care of has amounted to what some might, perhaps a bit hyperbolically, call house arrest. But we did have some fun. Here are some of my highlights:
- Introducing Amanda and Elizabeth to Ramona Quimby. Several late nights spent reading Ramona Quimby age 8 had the three of us girls doubled over laughing until we cried.
- Sending Amanda to her very first volleyball camp. She liked it!
- Finding joy in the kitchen again. About two hours into summer vacation, I hit my NickJr. limit. (Yes, we already had the TV on two hours into the first day of summer. Did I mention I have four kids? Don't judge me.) So we did something remarkable: changed the channel. I introduced my kids to two non-cartoon channels: The Food Network and HGTV. And they liked it! The Food Network rekindled my love of cooking and got the girls interested in eating real food!
Homemade cinnamon swirl bread. Isn't it beautiful?
We even had a Chopped party with some of our very game, and very culinarily talented relatives. Chopped is a competition show on the Food Network involving mystery baskets, time limits, and lots of dramatic commercial breaks.
A few Chopped party pics:
As for HGTV, you ought to hear Elizabeth walk you through a kitchen remodel or talk you through the relative merits of remodeling your old house versus cutting your losses and moving to a newer home outside of your current neighborhood.
- Finding pleasure in the little things. An afternoon of shopping for school uniforms? Girls' day out! Trip to Costco with me and all four kids? OLYMPIC FLIPPIN' EVENT.
Yes that's a ginormous box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch. I am not ashamed.
- Watching my girls take such good care of their brothers. Amanda and Elizabeth made this summer so much easier for me than it would have been with just two babies alone. They helped me out with everything from distracting the baby who is hungry but needs to wait to eat, to feeding hungry babies, to making them laugh like crazy, to burping, to pacifying, to running all over the house finding this or that, to entertaining me. School starting is in many ways not a welcome development for me. They sure do love these boys, and these boys love their sisters so much they are not going to know what to do when they're gone all day.
Thursday, August 7, 2014
TEN YEARS!
Finding time to blog is something I haven't quite figured out since Colin and J.J. came home. It's a shame because life has gotten very blogg-able again. Lots of domestic excitement. Lots of things to write about. My girls have been my best, most fun, and most patient companions during their thoroughly home-bound summer; my boys have been thriving thriving thriving.
I'm so behind. I don't quite know why, because I've found time to read a book or two, to cook a lot of pretty great meals if I do say so myself, to watch a fair amount of bad TV...
Anywho, I've found my way back here today because.... Brian and I decided not do one of those "I love you" Facebook anniversary posts, but I am even more in love than I was ten years ago and I just have to shout it somewhere so I am shouting it here. Happy Anniversary to my better half! Year Ten has been one for the record books. Has it really been TEN YEARS?!?
If I write any more, I'm going to sound like a bad greeting card, so I'll just stop there.
Plus I mean, isn't he getting even better with age? That's J.J. in his lap, on a rare night out to celebrate the babies' six month birthday.
We're celebrating our ten years together on Saturday, with a day date, having enlisted all the grandparents for a full day of babysitting (thank you Grandparents!) so we can spend TWELVE WHOLE HOURS alone together. We're going to get back to our roots as school nerds. First we'll see the Magna Carta at the Museum of Natural Science, then we'll stay there to see the D-Day IMAX movie, and then we're going out for an awesome dinner at a restaurant I've been wanting to visit for ages, Underbelly. (with a couple of stops to attach myself to my breast pump along the way.) Can't Wait!
I'm so behind. I don't quite know why, because I've found time to read a book or two, to cook a lot of pretty great meals if I do say so myself, to watch a fair amount of bad TV...
Anywho, I've found my way back here today because.... Brian and I decided not do one of those "I love you" Facebook anniversary posts, but I am even more in love than I was ten years ago and I just have to shout it somewhere so I am shouting it here. Happy Anniversary to my better half! Year Ten has been one for the record books. Has it really been TEN YEARS?!?
If I write any more, I'm going to sound like a bad greeting card, so I'll just stop there.
Plus I mean, isn't he getting even better with age? That's J.J. in his lap, on a rare night out to celebrate the babies' six month birthday.
We're celebrating our ten years together on Saturday, with a day date, having enlisted all the grandparents for a full day of babysitting (thank you Grandparents!) so we can spend TWELVE WHOLE HOURS alone together. We're going to get back to our roots as school nerds. First we'll see the Magna Carta at the Museum of Natural Science, then we'll stay there to see the D-Day IMAX movie, and then we're going out for an awesome dinner at a restaurant I've been wanting to visit for ages, Underbelly. (with a couple of stops to attach myself to my breast pump along the way.) Can't Wait!
Tuesday, April 22, 2014
Let it Go!
We too have a Frozen obsession. In fact, we may or may not have two copies of the DVD. Yes, okay, two. One for the house and one for Big Sub (as the girls Christened our Suburban).
Let it Go! is my theme song for dealing with life with four kids two of whom are infants:
1. A month ago, during an attempt at an actual cooked dinner, I got an email notification that Amanda's third quarter report card was ready to be viewed online. A week went by before I remembered that I had gotten said notification and read the report card. Let It Go!
2. Elizabeth has a Friday Bag, a cute book bag with the school logo on it that all the preschoolers get. It is to be brought to school on Mondays and filled with her work throughout the week and brought home on Fridays. Elizabeth's Friday bag has been returned to school maybe two times since the babies were born. She brings her work home in whatever plastic grocery bag the teachers can find for her. Let it Go!
3. Diapers. A wet (and, full disclosure, probably poopy) diaper used to be a command to change said diaper. Now it's an invitation. Let it Go!
4. Baby Feedings. I think I could probably easily count the number of times my daughters got bottles. By the time they were four months old, even if I left them with a babysitter, they would both rather wait six hours for me to return to them than take a bottle. This time, I'm pumping. Woah Nelly am I pumping. 99% of the time, the babies get bottles. They have been fed by so many different family members that I sometimes wonder if they know who their mommy is. But they are gaining weight like champs, which, when your big baby was 4 lbs 9 oz at birth and your little one was 2 lbs 11 oz, is the only flippin' thing you care about. Let It Go!
5. Big Girl Feedings. Are they eating food? Yes? Great! Let it Go!
6. Baths. Hmmmmm. I think the babies had one about a week or so ago. And the big kids are definitely getting in the water every night but beyond that I have no idea! Let it Go!
7. This was supposed to be a list of 10 things but there's only 7 things on it and now a baby is yelling at me so I'm going to have to get up! But not right away! Sometimes crying babies stop crying before you can get to them. Who knew? Let it Go!
Let it Go! is my theme song for dealing with life with four kids two of whom are infants:
1. A month ago, during an attempt at an actual cooked dinner, I got an email notification that Amanda's third quarter report card was ready to be viewed online. A week went by before I remembered that I had gotten said notification and read the report card. Let It Go!
2. Elizabeth has a Friday Bag, a cute book bag with the school logo on it that all the preschoolers get. It is to be brought to school on Mondays and filled with her work throughout the week and brought home on Fridays. Elizabeth's Friday bag has been returned to school maybe two times since the babies were born. She brings her work home in whatever plastic grocery bag the teachers can find for her. Let it Go!
3. Diapers. A wet (and, full disclosure, probably poopy) diaper used to be a command to change said diaper. Now it's an invitation. Let it Go!
4. Baby Feedings. I think I could probably easily count the number of times my daughters got bottles. By the time they were four months old, even if I left them with a babysitter, they would both rather wait six hours for me to return to them than take a bottle. This time, I'm pumping. Woah Nelly am I pumping. 99% of the time, the babies get bottles. They have been fed by so many different family members that I sometimes wonder if they know who their mommy is. But they are gaining weight like champs, which, when your big baby was 4 lbs 9 oz at birth and your little one was 2 lbs 11 oz, is the only flippin' thing you care about. Let It Go!
5. Big Girl Feedings. Are they eating food? Yes? Great! Let it Go!
6. Baths. Hmmmmm. I think the babies had one about a week or so ago. And the big kids are definitely getting in the water every night but beyond that I have no idea! Let it Go!
7. This was supposed to be a list of 10 things but there's only 7 things on it and now a baby is yelling at me so I'm going to have to get up! But not right away! Sometimes crying babies stop crying before you can get to them. Who knew? Let it Go!
Thursday, March 27, 2014
Monday, March 17, 2014
Zero Percenters
Our babies had their two month check-up this morning! Their doctor said they both look fantastic and that I don't need to return until they are four months old. Two months without a pediatrician visit?! It's a miracle!
They have each been gaining about an ounce per day, which is pretty much perfect. Here are their stats:
Colin: Height: 19.5"
Weight: 5 lbs 10 oz
J.J.: Height: 21"
Weight: 8 lbs 5.8 oz
Neither of their weights are even sniffing the growth chart yet, but we could not be more proud of our little zero percenters.
They have each been gaining about an ounce per day, which is pretty much perfect. Here are their stats:
Colin: Height: 19.5"
Weight: 5 lbs 10 oz
J.J.: Height: 21"
Weight: 8 lbs 5.8 oz
Neither of their weights are even sniffing the growth chart yet, but we could not be more proud of our little zero percenters.
Saturday, March 15, 2014
Wednesday, March 12, 2014
Monday, March 10, 2014
On Being Prepared
Sitting in my babies' NICU room with a breast pump strapped to myself seems like the perfect place to write these boys' birth story. Where to begin the story is a tougher question.
Should I start it that morning in the ultrasound room when we learned that Colin was likely anemic, had very little amniotic fluid left, and had not grown at all in three weeks, unlike his brother who had gained at least a pound?
Or six days before that at Aunt Caroline and Uncle Ward's wedding, when we thought we were still weeks away from delivering?
Or way back when we first found out there would be two babies?
It would be easy to say we were not prepared to deliver on January 17th. But that would not be true. We had been thoroughly prepared, though not by any of our own efforts.
In the fall, after we moved, we got next door neighbors with twins. Not just twins, identical twins. Not just identical twins, but identical twin boys. Not just identical twin boys, but spontaneous, monochorionic, diamniotic twin boys. In other words, the mother right next door to me had experienced the exact same high risk pregnancy that I was experiencing. She knew all the medical terms that had been thrown around during my numerous visits with specialists; all the potentially scary outcomes; all the calories I was being told to ingest; everything. The chances of conceiving identical twins is about 0.4%. I have no idea how to calculate the odds of two sets of identical twin boys living right next door to each other, but common sense tells me that they're probably not too high. My faith leads to only one explanation for this incredible coincidence: To prepare me to carry these babies, God knew I needed a guide and gave me one.
Including the six year old twins next door and their seven year old brother, there are about twelve children on our block within one or two years of my girls' ages. Nearly every afternoon on our very low traffic, dead end street, you will find serious games of scooter tag, secret backyard meetings, and hours long hide-and-seek competitions. There is no doubt in my mind that we landed on the best street in the neighborhood to raise our growing family.
(Only a small group of kids was playing outside on this 40 degree day...)
Now let's back up even further, to Amanda's birthday: November 18, 2006. I had been enduring an increasingly painful labor at home for about 12 hours when we finally went to the hospital. There we were assigned a labor and delivery nurse named Jada. Jada, as it turns out, was not only a very skilled and very kind nurse, but she also was a classmate of mine from Teague Middle School. Somehow, in that moment, after laboring for that long only to find out that I was dilated to a whopping 1 cm, having this person from my past show up on my team gave me this incredible feeling of peace. I don't know why, but it did.
Two years later, I was delivering Elizabeth. It was a scheduled induction at the same hospital. And after not being in contact with her since we left the hospital two years before, who was assigned to help me deliver Elizabeth? Jada, again. And again she brought with her a feeling of peace and calm that everything was going to be fine.
For this pregnancy, I had switched hospitals. I would be delivering at the new Texas Children's Pavilion for Women. Five years had passed since I had last given birth. And on Friday, January 17, about an hour after my maternal fetal medicine specialist had calmly but resolutely declared that my babies needed to be delivered that very day, and no, there was no time for a vaginal birth, I was upstairs getting prepped for a c-section when a nurse was assigned to me. And who was this nurse? Jada, again. Jada, who I had not been in contact with since she helped me deliver Elizabeth. She had switched hospitals a few months prior; she only works two shifts per week; and she was an hour and a half late to work that day. Had she been on time, our paths would not have crossed. I would be having my first c-section, which was more than a little bit scary for me; I would be delivering at 32 weeks because Colin's life depended on it, which was terrifying; and again, Jada appeared. She would be the calming influence she had been on my two previous deliveries. My faith leads to no other possible explanation for this than that to prepare me to deliver these babies, God had brought us together again.
Jada is behind me in this supremely horrible photo:
So about four and a half hours after my ultrasound appointment, we are in the operating room. Dr. Bolt is performing the surgery, and Brian is sitting in a chair next to my head. Two teams of neonatologists wait to work on each baby when each is delivered, and two flat screen tv's flank my head with a video feed to these groups of doctors so Brian and I can watch them work. After a few minutes of action on the opposite side of the curtain, Colin emerges first. He is pale as a ghost, completely silent, and limp. He is immediately passed to the neonatologists who begin the process of getting him to breathe.
Here is a taste of what I was seeing:
Eventually they stabilize Colin enough to take him upstairs. There is no time to bring him to me for a moment; there is no time to get a measurement of his length. We still don't know how long he was when he was born.
Less than a minute after Colin was born, J.J. emerged. He was bright red and screaming. The contrast with his brother was stark. Their difference in color alone eliminated any remaining doubts that twin to twin transfusion syndrome had been happening. They worked on him briefly and brought him over to me for a picture:
I told Brian to follow the boys to the NICU while Dr. Bolt finished up with me. Colin would end up needing several interventions to stabilize him. He would get two tubes in his sides, to drain air that had collected between his lungs and his chest wall. He would be put on a ventilator. And he would need a blood transfusion. When I saw him for the first time after he left the operating room, he looked like this:
After two days he no longer needed the ventilator; after three days he no longer needed the tubes in his sides; and after four days he was breathing room air completely on his own, and he looked like this. Meanwhile J.J. spent a few days under lights to deal with jaundice, but beyond that he was just a low priority "feeder/grower" baby, as the NICU parlance goes. Colin is on the left, J.J. is on the right.
We could not be more thankful for these two little miracles.
Should I start it that morning in the ultrasound room when we learned that Colin was likely anemic, had very little amniotic fluid left, and had not grown at all in three weeks, unlike his brother who had gained at least a pound?
Or six days before that at Aunt Caroline and Uncle Ward's wedding, when we thought we were still weeks away from delivering?
Or way back when we first found out there would be two babies?
It would be easy to say we were not prepared to deliver on January 17th. But that would not be true. We had been thoroughly prepared, though not by any of our own efforts.
In the fall, after we moved, we got next door neighbors with twins. Not just twins, identical twins. Not just identical twins, but identical twin boys. Not just identical twin boys, but spontaneous, monochorionic, diamniotic twin boys. In other words, the mother right next door to me had experienced the exact same high risk pregnancy that I was experiencing. She knew all the medical terms that had been thrown around during my numerous visits with specialists; all the potentially scary outcomes; all the calories I was being told to ingest; everything. The chances of conceiving identical twins is about 0.4%. I have no idea how to calculate the odds of two sets of identical twin boys living right next door to each other, but common sense tells me that they're probably not too high. My faith leads to only one explanation for this incredible coincidence: To prepare me to carry these babies, God knew I needed a guide and gave me one.
Including the six year old twins next door and their seven year old brother, there are about twelve children on our block within one or two years of my girls' ages. Nearly every afternoon on our very low traffic, dead end street, you will find serious games of scooter tag, secret backyard meetings, and hours long hide-and-seek competitions. There is no doubt in my mind that we landed on the best street in the neighborhood to raise our growing family.
(Only a small group of kids was playing outside on this 40 degree day...)
Now let's back up even further, to Amanda's birthday: November 18, 2006. I had been enduring an increasingly painful labor at home for about 12 hours when we finally went to the hospital. There we were assigned a labor and delivery nurse named Jada. Jada, as it turns out, was not only a very skilled and very kind nurse, but she also was a classmate of mine from Teague Middle School. Somehow, in that moment, after laboring for that long only to find out that I was dilated to a whopping 1 cm, having this person from my past show up on my team gave me this incredible feeling of peace. I don't know why, but it did.
Two years later, I was delivering Elizabeth. It was a scheduled induction at the same hospital. And after not being in contact with her since we left the hospital two years before, who was assigned to help me deliver Elizabeth? Jada, again. And again she brought with her a feeling of peace and calm that everything was going to be fine.
For this pregnancy, I had switched hospitals. I would be delivering at the new Texas Children's Pavilion for Women. Five years had passed since I had last given birth. And on Friday, January 17, about an hour after my maternal fetal medicine specialist had calmly but resolutely declared that my babies needed to be delivered that very day, and no, there was no time for a vaginal birth, I was upstairs getting prepped for a c-section when a nurse was assigned to me. And who was this nurse? Jada, again. Jada, who I had not been in contact with since she helped me deliver Elizabeth. She had switched hospitals a few months prior; she only works two shifts per week; and she was an hour and a half late to work that day. Had she been on time, our paths would not have crossed. I would be having my first c-section, which was more than a little bit scary for me; I would be delivering at 32 weeks because Colin's life depended on it, which was terrifying; and again, Jada appeared. She would be the calming influence she had been on my two previous deliveries. My faith leads to no other possible explanation for this than that to prepare me to deliver these babies, God had brought us together again.
Jada is behind me in this supremely horrible photo:
So about four and a half hours after my ultrasound appointment, we are in the operating room. Dr. Bolt is performing the surgery, and Brian is sitting in a chair next to my head. Two teams of neonatologists wait to work on each baby when each is delivered, and two flat screen tv's flank my head with a video feed to these groups of doctors so Brian and I can watch them work. After a few minutes of action on the opposite side of the curtain, Colin emerges first. He is pale as a ghost, completely silent, and limp. He is immediately passed to the neonatologists who begin the process of getting him to breathe.
Here is a taste of what I was seeing:
Eventually they stabilize Colin enough to take him upstairs. There is no time to bring him to me for a moment; there is no time to get a measurement of his length. We still don't know how long he was when he was born.
Less than a minute after Colin was born, J.J. emerged. He was bright red and screaming. The contrast with his brother was stark. Their difference in color alone eliminated any remaining doubts that twin to twin transfusion syndrome had been happening. They worked on him briefly and brought him over to me for a picture:
I told Brian to follow the boys to the NICU while Dr. Bolt finished up with me. Colin would end up needing several interventions to stabilize him. He would get two tubes in his sides, to drain air that had collected between his lungs and his chest wall. He would be put on a ventilator. And he would need a blood transfusion. When I saw him for the first time after he left the operating room, he looked like this:
After two days he no longer needed the ventilator; after three days he no longer needed the tubes in his sides; and after four days he was breathing room air completely on his own, and he looked like this. Meanwhile J.J. spent a few days under lights to deal with jaundice, but beyond that he was just a low priority "feeder/grower" baby, as the NICU parlance goes. Colin is on the left, J.J. is on the right.
We could not be more thankful for these two little miracles.
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