Updates

Babies have now passed their official birthdate and seem to be doing well. A little more about each:

Eli is very cute and is starting to pudge up. His face is already very round. He makes lots of grunting/straining sounds and seems to have some gas issues, but doesn't smell bad (compare with sister below). He is a pretty solid sleeper and a good eater. He has an intense look. He has little piercing eyes. Sam looked a little more curious or skeptical as an infant and Eva seems pretty mellow most of the time.

Eva is a good, if often stinky, kid. She feeds in little bursts and goes to sleep easier. She also has fewer gas issues.

Sam's playing hooky today because he has a light cold or sneezing. I think the grandparents just wanted to bust him out and play with him today. He is loving the attention and has already done basketball, tricycle and other fun things as of noontime.

Our sleeping system now is that Emily's parents give the twins a feeding as I put Sam down. Emily tries to sleep from early evening until middle of the night and I try to sleep from middle of the night to late morning.

Life has been a bit off lately. Our neighbors' house is being renovated, so we had jackhammers going next to us all weekend long. The internet has also been out for several days. We hope to have it back up and going again soon, which will make communication easier.

Last night we saw my old college roommate, Aaron, and his wife Sarah. They're newylweds, so it was fun to hear what they are up to and how things are going. He's here via the government. I don't think we'll see them super-frequently, but it's nice to have some familiar people around who are outside of this immediate community.

That's the news from here!

TMI

Every so often, someone posts something wildly inappropriate on facebook, like a picture of an open wound they have or something their pet regurgitated. This is kind of in that genre.

So, on Tuesday I had a vasectomy. It wraps up the pregnancy experience in some ways, since it cements us at three kids (give or take 00.5 failure factor%). I now round out the three of us who have had our bits and pieces messed with (Emily: pregnancy; Eli: circumcision; me: vasectomy). So far only Eva has survived intact.

I think it’s a good thing this is a once in a lifetime experience. It was more painful than I thought it would be and took longer, and may look worse after the local wears off. I definitely don’t recommend doing it in a foreign language, which makes the whole process a bit confusing (now what are they going to do to me?).

We decided on this for a variety of reasons. We have help now. Emily’s done the pill for longer than most. We’re youngish, and don’t want to have deal with fighting fertility for another decade. The ship sort of sailed on a tubal, a casualty of not great doctor communication and spousal delay. Vasectomy has several benefits: low failure rate, no chemicals, one-time deal, cheap, etc. We have reinforcements now, so it gives us support with recovery and transition. And it’s not something I wanted to think about a lot or read up on much, since pretty much every informational site is more graphic than this post.

To prep me, I was given two gowns, designed for much smaller people, which appropriately covered me front and back, although only to about mid-thigh (I felt like I was wearing a mini-skirt). I also was given a pink hat and blue socks and then wheeled into the room (I’ve immortalized the outfit with my iphone, but never plan to post the picture). The procedure itself, while described as “minor” and “simple,” was still pretty horrible. It began with shaving. Next up was local anaesthesia, which initially was not up to the job. After more poking and jabbing, there was cutting, pulling, twisting, clamping, and, apparently, burning. It took about forty or fifty minutes. It would have been nice if there was something (TV, radio, anything) to distract me from what was going on. Instead, I was fully involved in the whole experience. A positive is that I think I had a good doctor, a urologist at a hospital who has done a lot of these, so hopefully that is helping with recovery.

Eventually I believe I’ll be glad I had it done, but, wow, not a fun experience by any stretch of the imagination. Two days later, I’m doing fine and taught class this morning. I hope there are no follow-ups or after effects. Everything legit I read says it’s a reliable procedure with very low rates of complications, but every time I do a google search I end up with page after page of horror studies about lifelong testicle pain, gangrene, impotence, etc.

So, I hope this was helpful to someone! Be glad I had no pictures to post. If you get a chance to toss a tubal in during a c-section, I highly recommend it. If you go with the V, ask for as much pain relief as they’ll give you.

Week 3

Twins are both 2.5-.7 kg and around 16 inches (we have a metric scale but English tape measure). Both are cute, but are still feeding basically every two hours. I'm feeling a bit more put back together, but just as tired. The "put together" is my longterm effort to make sense of what has happened and how this will develop in the coming weeks.

We have so much to be grateful for: supportive families, good campus, day care for eldest, jobs, job flexibility. This also is only for a finite period of time. And we have (kind of) done it before.

I'm up now because I'm sleeping strange. I may take the kids and see if I can get Emily a block of sleep. Off I go...

Reinforcements have arrived

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.

Things are looking up this Saturday.

Eli

Eli

Eva

Eva

The babies are coming along. Twice today I dropped off milk and visited them. They're a lot more active now that they are out of their incubators. I held them for over an hour this morning, while they worked on the hearing test. (Which apparently involves some sort of hand held scanner and little sensors, but requires the babies to be asleep.) To get them sleepy for the test, I fed one while the nurse fed the other. They're up to 40-45 cc per feeding now, and are regaining weight. They are to come home Monday, which will let Emily's parents arrive and get partially settled.

The pictures above are phone pictures, but I will have better ones soon. Emily and I are both pretty tired, but hopefully will bounce back soon. I had a few hours to work this morning and time for a nap this afternoon, and together this, plus visiting the babies, seems to have improved my outlook dramatically. We still have a lot to figure out--car seats and sleeping arrangements, etc., but things have really come along. Today Sam was able to play with the neighbors. Folk on campus dropped off meals twice. We will get there. It helps to see their sleepy little heads and to enjoy a day with the big brother. All things in time...

Eva Video

And here's Eva...

Eli Video

A short video of Eli I took this evening