Saturday and Sunday

I’ve just been to see the two. Sister is doing well. She had her eyes closed and was sleepier this time, but was still chewing on her moisture stick. She was doing the baby “frog” position (is this what it’s called?) with her arms above her head and her legs bowed. She’s actually the one in the pictures with the blue towel.

Brother had his eyes open this time, which was a first. He clearly responded to my presence and seemed to be doing well. I also sang to both of them, held their hands and feet and rubbed their bodies, and they both seemed responsive. They’re very red—surprisingly red—which surprised me, but the nurse said that this is a good thing. It was fun to see the boy look at me. I was wearing a mask, so I don’t know what he’ll make of that. I remember I shaved my beard with Sam in part because I wanted to be more expressive with him.

Earlier today I got home for a while. I had lunch with the family watching Sam, then came home, and promptly fell asleep. Sam was very enthusiastic about lunch because they made a big tilapia, and gave him lots and lots of fish. He ate pretty much all fish. It was nice to have a home-cooked meal. Sam fell asleep as I was leaving. As of tonight at 9, I haven’t heard from those he’s staying with, but hopefully he’ll be able to sleep there okay. I felt a bit guilty heading back this afternoon because it meant leaving Emily alone at the hospital for a few hours. She is sleeping A LOT, which I think surprised her. However, after a mostly sleepness night following a full day and major surgery, I expect she has a lot of sleeping ahead of her. (And I probably do too.) I don’t usually sleep great at hospitals. We may have a single room tonight, which would be very nice.

I like the hospital situation in Taiwan. I was realizing how challenging it was with Sam, when we were both busy and struggling to learn something totally new. In many ways this is a comparable challenge, but the community is a bit smaller and probably knows us better. I really loved the community in NJ and we still miss it, but this community is also pretty impressive. It’s nice to know that we’ll have more than 2 days here, and the nurses are more hands on with the babies. This means they have stronger opinions, but they’re also more encouraging and engaged (perhaps just because there are more of them). Every time we go there’s a resident or doctor to talk to and I get to spend a nice amount of time with each. It’s also nice to be in this location, which is a $4-5 cab ride from the school and where there are lots of restaurants, 7-11’s, etc. I may actually go catch a late dinner here in a little while.

In a few hours, they can start feeding the babies. This is a good improvement. We have to pick a formula, which I’m not thrilled with, but we’ll do our best to get them formula.

4am I am having trouble sleeping now, probably a consequence of two earlier naps and a fair amount of time resting. Or, maybe, it’s the biological expectation of waking and sleeping? Either way, it’s hard to concentrate. No wireless in the hospital, no one to talk to, and I don’t feel like doing real work.

Things are basically okay. I always struggle some with medical systems. I see several challenges in the system: (1) medicine relies in large part on a law of averages—what works best for the majority of patients; (2) the prioritization of physical health sometimes come at the expense of the spiritual, inner, or even just community life; and (3) medicine is fundamentally work, so the normal challenges of human relationship and culture apply. Per #1, I think that the system has to establish baselines, which are always frustrating for the individual. Example: I would like to be feeding them myself at this point, but this is regulated by nurses and doctors. This is frustrating, but I also understand that in a NICU you have to limit the number of people just “hanging out.” I don’t really like this, but I am trying to live with it. I also think that since the babies look healthy and well-cared for, and I get some time with them, this is probably a reasonable system. For #2, I feel like minute risks often trump general health and well-being. Hospitals here often include a required period of observation, sometimes one or more days, where the babies don’t stay with the parents. Don’t really like this. Our hospital is accommodating, but being in the NICU puts us back into a more complicated, regulated system. Here this also means that I couldn’t be at the c-section, which freaked Emily out some, and in general am more limited than I’d like. Ideally, they’d have found a way to have at least the sister in Emily’s arms for feeding now, but between catheters, pain meds, and different floors it will probably wait until tomorrow. #3, I think people here really are exceptional, but they’re still basically doing a job. It’s a job they’re good at, but sometimes they are pushing an idiosyncratic preference or ideal.

These things play out in the context of things like breastfeeding. The hospital has done essentially zero training or work with us. They have a lots of signs and posters, but on a one-on-one level they’re not a huge help. They seemed a bit annoyed, or maybe just surprised, that we wanted to avoid a pacifier and bottles at first. They also don’t really seem invested in getting colostrums to the twins. Emily is expressing milk now, but it’s all in little tiny amounts, one or two milliliters every few hours. Over the course of a day, this is a fair amount, certainly enough for one infant and possibly for two. I also was surprised that NICU babies don’t get any liquids for the first 24 hours, but after this I think they will be pushing formula. All hard to figure out. Anyway, we are doing okay. We’ve found a way to get the milk to the babies, but at some point we’ll have to figure out how to work out feeding, formula, etc. I think Emily probably capable of feeding twins, especially since she was nursing Sam until a few months ago. Nonetheless, it may not be in her (or our) best interest to have her trying to feed two infants eight to ten times a day for a half-hour each time. It may not even be possible. But we’re going to try to keep up on the pumping and hopefully head towards more breastfeeding soon.

I know this probably seems like way too much reflection for fairly standard topics. I think I’m trying to figure out all the new life permutations here. Family transitions compounded by culture, more people, etc. Sam seems very happy, but I probably won’t know until tomorrow exactly how he’s doing. Emily is doing well, but I know what she’s doing/has done/ will be doing is just monumentally difficult. Our twins still look like a bit like they’ve taken up scuba diving, what with all of the pipes, pumps, and machines. And we’ll have family here soon, which is good but brings its own challenges. A lot to take account of. I hope that things improve in the coming days. I probably need to do a lot of sleeping on Monday and/or Tuesday.

Some positives: everyone is basically healthy; the hospital is near the church we attend; we have a great supportive community; one class was already off this week and the other one I have a back-up activity I can use; support is coming, and in the mean time we’ve helped bring some co-workers into the process… It’s all coming together, but still hard to sort out at the exhausted husband and dad level. Thank you all for the well wishing and support. Thank you also for listening to me as I try to work out the mysteries surrounding us.

7 PM Sunday

A good day today. I slept in the afternoon. Emily was able to hold the boy for a while this afternoon. I saw them this morning and we can both go to see them again in about a half hour. They are looking good and their breathing is smooth. We can do “kangaroo care” skin-to-skin contact in a few days, and Emily’s be able to feed them directly after that. Her milk seems to be coming in soon. She went from one cc yesterday per session to five cc at the last one. Here they feed 40/day x 2 kids, so it will still be a while, but she may be able to do most or all of the breastfeeding (which would be nice, but may be a bad idea given the nature of twins). Our doctor checked in this morning, which was nice. So, all in all, we are doing well.

I’ll check in shortly once I see how Sam did today.

1 AM early Monday

Sam is great! He was playing with our friends and seemed very happy. He was almost reluctant to go home. He seems to have briefly forgotten he has a mother—not sure what to make of this. I will take it as a sign that we are raising a child who loves the world and is fairly trusting that things are okay, and is happy to enjoy new friends and deepen old friendships in the interim. Is this too much to imagine of a toddler? He really is doing very well.

Our apartment, however, is a bit of a wreck. It’s good that there’s no protective services for apartments, because they would definitely take this one away because of neglect. It has a fruity smell, owing to fruit left in the sink, and clothes are strewn throughout the house. I’m catching up on all the detail work now—finishing dishes, boiling water, starting or finishing laundry, etc.

I’m pretty much toast right now. I’ll post this then head to bed. There’s a lot more I could say. I haven’t written about Sam running around naked as we threw together the bags we took to the hospital. I haven’t described Emily’s, um, interesting postpartum meals at the hospital. I haven’t described the process for entering the NICU or the quality of hospital convenience stores. All topics for another evening.