It's Great to be Eight!

It was about this time of night 8 years ago... I was still working on my endless to do list and had an appt to check into the maternity ward at the hospital at 5:30am the next morning. I kept thinking about how my midwife told me over and over to get a good night's sleep because the next day could be a long one. We were inducing the twins because they were overdue and didn't seem to have any plans to come on their own. I wasn't dilating - at all. But I had this list, all these unfinished things, and I still had my Type A personality with no other babies yet to care for that kept driving me to finish every last thing I could.  I also had this total fatigue with which to contend, but I was squeezing every last drop of the adrenaline I was feeling over the impending, all-consuming life change that was hours away from me. To do justice to the feelings and the worries I had about going to the hospital with the babies in my belly and leaving with those babies in my arms... it's just next to impossible to describe. I was excited, yes, so excited. I was terrified, yes, to my core. Could I do this? Could I give everything that my babies needed? How? Two of them? At the same time? Could I function on months of no sleep? Would I get the hang of nursing them both at the same time? What if one or both had colic? What if I never got them on the same sleep schedule? What if they were always miserable because I wasn't doing a good enough job? What if they cried all the time because I wasn't capable? What if I inadvertently gave one more attention than the other?


Rewind to a couple months prior... discussing birth plans with my midwife. She's telling me about the risks of trying to deliver twins naturally but leaves it to me to decide whether I wanted to try or just schedule a c-section. I'm being respectful and letting her finish, but I'm having none of it. I waited 35 years to have these babies, and I was having them naturally. Somehow it would work out. I didn't even have a real reason why I was so set on this, but I just set out from day 1 of my pregnancy after a successful IVF attempt to try to do everything as naturally as possible. I was still having to do daily injections to ensure my body would maintain the pregnancy, and there was no way I would mess with that. But I had so many worries after years of infertility and after being labeled high risk by my obgyn that I would miscarry these babies that we wanted so badly that I just went straight and narrow, not knowing how else to deal with my fears. I stopped consuming caffeine, I refused things that had anything artificial in them, I would not have taken any medication if not for my inability to function without Zofran... man, I was so sick. And when it came time to discuss the birth plan, I knew my babies were both head down, and there was really no need to discuss any other means of delivering them. My midwife told me we would continue to watch them and their movements and she would support this birth plan as long as all continued to look good.


Long story short... just kidding, it's still long..., I checked into the hospital the day we were scheduled for induction, because, for being a high-risk, advanced-maternal-aged mother-to-be of twins, my biggest fear of the boys coming too early ended up being the last thing I needed to worry about.  Here I was past my due date, as wide as I was tall (or at least it felt like it), I hadn't seen the bones in my face, legs, or feet for months, and I hadn't had so much as a contraction, so much as a centimeter of dilation, nothing. So they started the Pitocin. And 14 hours later, after hours and hours of contractions, after the midwife finally broke my water, I was finally starting to dilate. Push time was coming.


Since I hadn't had any experience giving birth before, I didn't realize then that everything I was about to endure giving birth to the twins was not the norm. It was a good thing for me to think that it was all par for the course, because had I had an easier delivery as I did a year and a half later with Adrian, I might have wanted to just wave my white flag and give up. But I hung in there, pushing over and over, nearly delivering Javi so many times only for him to go right back in with all progress lost. And then Dominic's heart rate started getting concerning, and at that point, my midwife looked at me and started explaining what was happening and I knew by her eyes and tone of voice that my birth plan was no longer the plan. And I didn't argue. I just wanted my babies out safely. And then the needle in my spine was migrating. And then I had to have a spinal tap. And then I felt I was suffocating to death because the spinal was so high. And then I was hemorrhaging. But the boys were born and were perfect. I was so grateful.


Fast forward to the morning after the boys were finally born just after 10pm, and you'd see what I see when I cringe looking at pics of me from that day... with a broken vein in one eye and broken blood vessels all over my face, the ringing and echoing in my head caused by the blood loss giving me a loopy expression, my messy hair still matted from when I vomited all over the place... I was a mess.  But these boys, my excitement, my fear, my feelings of ineptness, my obsessive need to do right by them, to do the best for them, to love them and give them everything they needed if it killed me... they made everything else go by the wayside. I didn't care how I looked or felt. I didn't care if I slept or ate. I just needed to know every second that they were ok. I marveled at seeing Jose Rendon with them. Veronica was already 9 when I'd met her. I hadn't seen him be a father to a newborn before. My heart was so full I was sure it would burst. 


And honestly, not much has changed since then. Gradually I was able to get myself together again as moms all try to do... some do it better than others. Most seem to do it better - or at least more quickly - than me. But I still have the distraction of needing my kids to be ok more than I have the need to be pretty or well rested or well fed. On the other hand, I feel like I'm staring at the next challenge more and more closely in the face with each year that passes... it's that need they'll have for me to start letting go of the reins some. To let them make more decisions (and more mistakes), to let them be more independent (but be close by when they fall), to let them stretch (without telling them *how*). And I tell myself I have to face these years with patience and grace, the former not a strength of mine despite all my desires and efforts. But I have to dig deep and find those qualities in me anyway, because 8 years have already passed. And in just 10 more, they'll be high school seniors. It'll be a blink to me, but it'll be their entire childhood memories, and it'll be their foundation for adulthood, the basis for nostalgic experiences later. So as I do every night before their birthday, I resolve to be the best mom I can be this next year... may I make fewer mistakes, be more patient, keep the good things, show all the love and grace I can, teach them to love and show grace back, continue to learn from them, as they teach me every day also. And I still worry whether or not I am enough, whether I'm capable, whether I'm leaving them with unfulfilled needs. But these last 8 years have shown me that, while I'm not perfect and I fall short every day, I am capable of giving them what they need... it's the figuring out what they each need as individuals that's the toughest. I hope to look back on these years one day and see that I met the challenge well and that, at a minimum, they know and feel how fiercely they've been loved. Happy 8th Birthday to my first born boys who turned an already over-thinker into this thing I am today. I'm so lucky to be their mommy.

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