I am slowly exiting the cave of baby exhaustion. I think this has actually been a much easier transition than it could have been. At the same time, the cycle of
get Sam readyàgo to hospitalà return from hospitalà get Sam à return to hospital (do some work sometime)àgo home and get Sam to sleep
was getting old quickly. The two were in the NICU for ~ 10 days. Things were relatively smooth, but navigating a hospital in a foreign language is a pain. The good thing is I can now say words like: wheelchair, injector, ultrasound, surgery, and anesthesia.
The babies are amazingly cute. Eli looks liked a cloned Sam, but smaller. Eva reminds me a bit of one of her cousins. They are both now sleeping in Emily’s snugglenest, which sits in the bed next to her. Sam and I share a room, and he is mostly a good sleeper. Emily will probably repeat the pattern of last time, where she gets twelve hours of really bad sleep every night. Emily is producing a prodigious amount of milk and rapidly shrinking to her former svelte self. (Me, not so much.)
The grandparents are here, which is a big help. They are great during gap times (getting Sam off, arriving home) and help tremendously with all manner of household problems (changing lightbulbs, cleaning dishes, etc.). Surprisingly, I’ve cooked dinner the last two nights. They are enjoying this cool, green, and sunny city.
OK, but I’ve gotten just a bit of backtalk from people about the sleep complaints, linking to the articles on paternal postpartum, etc. At this point, I want to clarify that this is that rare breed of a blog, written by a quasi-at-home, but really should be working a lot, dad, and that as the de facto translator, transporter, and baby diarist, I will be doing a lot of complaining. Emily had her own blog post once, and she wrote six basically six mini-novellas over a year and then stopped. If you want regular updates, it’s got to be, mostly complaining about sleeplessness and how hard I am working.
OK, about the names. Names were hard for us to decide. I think I was looking for something in the prophet family, but then none of them seemed quite right. We liked Elise for a girl, but then something didn’t seem quite right. We wanted assonance for the names. I liked Eve; Emily liked Ava. Ava is ridiculously common in the US now and I didn’t really love it, and Emily didn’t like Eve, which would have been only one syllable. In the end, we picked two-syllable names starting with E. We liked Eli a lot because it continues a run of figures from the Samuel books: David (brother), Jonathan, Samuel, Eli. We appear to be going in reverse order. If my kids have kids, maybe some Judges or Joshua figures? The middle names are both family names. All three of our kids have a grandparent name for the middle name. We’re sorry we couldn’t do all eight, but we like the three we’ve used, which are all classics.
So, we did settle on the names and I hope that our logic makes sense in explaining how we came to them. Since we didn’t finalize them until the babies arrived, we are still only learning them ourselves. Yesterday I took a beautiful video of Emily singing a favorite song to Eva, but then she botched it at the end by saying “Samuel” instead of “Eva.” I am remembering that we often mixed up Sam’s name with the cat. I hope that Eli and Eva are different enough that people won’t be continuously confusing them.
There are other continuities I am finding. I'm very grateful for Emily, Eva, and Eli. (And Sam too!) I think the names will lend themselves to translation. Literary and historical versions will no doubt appear over time. And now that they have the names, they can make them their own.
Monday
A good day so far. This morning Sam slept until almost 8:30, after staying up quite late last night. He’s actually doing very well. I quick did a load of laundry this morning. Our house is still a wreck, but will improve soon I hope. A friend came over again and played with Sam while I put trash out and got Sam’s bag ready for school.
At the hospital, we are doing well but are just very tired. My eyes have that exhausted feeling to them. I think we’re all a bit out our element. On the flip side, Sam is adapting well and Emily and I (okay, yes, mostly Emily) are recovering. She can stay until Wednesday morning, it seems, which gives us another day of easy proximity to the twins and a better rest location for Emily. We have a nice room here, but our roommates are getting a huge flow of guests, and they like to leave their light on at night. I think Emily and I are already into the “awake for a while, then sleep a couple of hours.” I don’t know if this is because of the roommate situation or just biology getting us ready for the weeks and months ahead.
Tonight I’m going to get Sam from daycare a little late and then take him to a neighbor’s for a few hours. I’ll quick pop back in this direction and check on Em and see the kids.
This morning was very nice. After I dropped Sam off I came directly to the hospital. Today I was able to hold Eva for quite a while, which was just very nice. When I came in she was fussing some. After I held her and repositioned her she seemed to have some gas and then fell asleep immediately. I usually sing to them or try to explain how the day has been. They’re still such little creatures at this point. Eva’s already off of the bigger tubes and now just has the plastic tube to the nose. They’re both eating well and will go from 40cc/day to 80 cc/day. They get 10 cc/ milk + formula every three hours. The nurses, doctors, and other staff are all very nice. Emily has enough milk that she is starting to pump today. I think all of the signs are pointing towards progress. Emily’s only problem now is high blood pressure, which she didn’t have before but which sometimes appears after giving birth. It may just resolve itself naturally with time, but it means she was a little dizzy earlier and needs a lot of rest.
Tonight I’ll pick up Sam a little late and then take him to our friends for dinner. I’ll come back and be with Emily and we’ll both go to spend our evening time with the babies. Then I’ll return and stay with Sam again overnight. That is the plan at least.
