Category — Tear Jerkers

From the moment you were born, I fell in love with you.

And I’ve fallen in love with you over and over again every single day.

Happy first birthday, little Amaia. Ama loves you so much.

Here I sit at 9:30pm. In just five minutes, it will be exactly three years since my first twin was born. Her sister followed 28 minutes later.

I am overcome with joy at these beautiful, wonderful little girls that I am privileged to call my daughters.

My girls. I hope you had a wonderful birthday. I can’t wait to celebrate many, many (many many many) more with you.

I love you THIS wide, and THIS tall, and THIS big around.

Love,

Ama

I’m pregnant and in hard labor, wandering the campus of the University of Florida at night and looking for a hospital where I can give birth to my baby. I’m certain I’m at the point of needing to push, but every time I look at my stomach, it’s nearly flat. I’m concerned that the baby is gone, but she kicks me violently in the ribs to remind me she’s still there.

Finally, I find a building that looks enough like a hospital. I find a bed, where I lie on my back and discover my stomach is indeed flat. The baby kicks me so hard that I writhe in pain. Soon, though, I realize I am no longer in labor. Instead, a giant python head pushes against my stomach from the inside. Through my skin, the snake tries to bite my hand as I scream and swat at it in terror.

This was the dream I had last night as I slipped in and out of consciousness, tossing and turning with anticipation of the twins’ first day of preschool.

My completely unqualified interpretation of this dream shows a great amount of anxiety over major milestones (birth, baby, school). There’s a conflict between feeling I have a baby, then fearing it’s gone, then realizing it’s actually trying to escape (and apparently eat me alive), but that my own skin is holding it back. Also, I have a fear of a giant, vicious snake taking residence in my abdomen.

I woke up extra early this morning to get everything in order. Chris came with me to drop the girls off. We took them to their classroom and kissed them good-bye. Althea was immediately distracted with drawing, but Elise saw us leaving and took off down the hall after us. The teacher nabbed her and we gave her one last kiss before she went back to the classroom, crying and howling.

I stood in the lobby, watching the girls on the cameras and hearing Elise howling at the top of her lungs. Then, I left.

The errands I’d planned to keep myself busy for three hours took exactly 25 minutes. So, I got a coffee at Starbucks and sat in the van with the sleeping baby. An unusual morning storm pounded water all around us. I checked my email on my phone. I listened to the rain.

Since I had no other plans, Amaia and I went back home. It was eerily quiet as we walked in. The vestiges of Althea and Elise’s presence were all around: a toy vacuum cleaner on the couch, an overturned basket of toys scattered on the carpet, toast crumbs fallen on the kitchen floor. My mind flashed forward 15 years, when the girls leave the house and the noises and the messes are gone.

I nursed the baby. I checked my email. I watched the rain clear up.

Chris and I were the first parents back at the school to pick up the kids. The building had calmed from that morning. The fear-filled cries of dozens of confused children were gone. In the lobby, I watched the video stream of the girls’ classroom. The kids were seated in a semi-circle around the teacher. Althea and Elise both were model students, singing and imitating the teacher. My heart swelled.

Our first day of preschool was pretty great.

I’m so excited.

I’m so sad.

It hit me that what I’m saddest about is that the girls are going to do all these awesome, amazing, fun things, but I won’t be there to see it all happen. I don’t mind that I don’t teach them everything, and I don’t need to participate in everything they do, but I just want to be there to see it. Until now, I’ve always been the storyteller of their lives. Now, they’ll tell stories of their own.

Over the past month or so, Chris and I have noticed a ridge forming in the center of Amaia’s forehead. At first, we both thought it was a prominent vein (Chris and I both have one). But recently, we realized it’s her skull.

In addition, ever since her birth, I’ve noticed that she has unusually small fontanels, especially the front one. Unlike most babies, Amaia’s fontanel is so small, it doesn’t pulse with her heartbeat or when she feeds. Her head overall is very hard. There’s almost no positional flattening from sleeping on the same side every night. She also has two very pronounced ridges on both sides of her skull. We call them her “horns.” It makes her head look very square.

Of course, I consulted Dr. Google and panicked. Apparently, these traits can be a sign of metopic craniosynostosis. It’s the premature fusion of the skull sutures and in this case, it would be the suture in the middle of the forehead, running down to the bridge of the nose.

From what I’m reading, best case, it doesn’t affect brain growth and no intervention is necessary. Worst case, they have to perform major surgery to cut open the skull from ear to ear and pull it forward to allow the brain room to grow.

Last week, I took Amaia to her pediatrician. I was expecting a referral to a specialist, but also halfway praying for him to take one look and tell me I’m completely paranoid and there’s nothing wrong with her.

Unfortunately, it was the former. He noticed the pronounced ridge in the forehead and the two “horns” on the sides, and definitely agreed that her anterior fontanel is unusually small. He said he’s never worked with a child with craniosynostosis so he couldn’t tell us much. He gave us a referral to a neurosurgeon at a children’s hospital about an hour away.

To top it all off, at around the time we became curious about Amaia’s head, we started seeing these lawyer commercials for ladies who’d taken Zoloft and other popular SSRIs during pregnancy and subsequently given birth to a child with cranial deformities, among other things.

I was on Zoloft when we conceived Amaia, though I stopped taking it after finding out I was pregnant. Worrisome? I don’t know.

Every time I think of what could be wrong, my stomach drops to the floor. I’ve never had to deal with any health issues beyond croup or a bad cold with the twins.

I’m mad that this is happening. I’m mad about my own mental issues that require medication that I’ve never wanted to take in the first place. I’m depressed that I feel like I can’t look at Amaia without worrying. I’m devastated that a fucking FOUR-MONTH-OLD BABY has an appointment with a NEUROSURGEON to begin with. Those words don’t even belong in the same sentence.

Probably the most frustrating thing is that I really don’t even know if I have anything to worry about to begin with.

So that’s why I haven’t been updating my blog lately. I’ve been freaking the fuck out a wee bit preoccupied. I’ve been feeling like I need to write at the same time that I haven’t been sure what to write.

Until our appointment on Thursday with the neurosurgeon, I’m trying desperately to keep my own head about me. . . And love on Amaia and her perfectly hard little head.

I came home from running errands this evening. Pulling into our cookie-cutter subdivision, I saw something out of place: the flashing red lights of two ambulance trucks.

We live in an area of Florida that is rife, replete, overflowing with senior citizens. Many live here full time. Many more are seasonal residents, dubbed “snowbirds,” who filter in around Thanksgiving to clog up the roads, stand in the middle of the grocery aisles, cause accidents, wear loafers without socks, and pump much-needed money into our local economy. They trickle out by Easter, leaving the roads once again navigable for the rest of the blazing-hot summer.

So when I saw the flashing ambulance lights, I was semi-not surprised.

Until I saw who it was. Until I heard what happened.

We met quite a few of our neighbors at Halloween when we took the girls door-to-door. Directly across the street from us is an older couple. The wife works two jobs. The husband helps her walk their three dogs. When we met them at Halloween, she told us to come over for anything at all, including emergency babysitting or a cup of sugar. We returned the invitation.

This evening, I stepped out of the van, tempted to walk across and asked what happened. But then I heard the wife sobbing violently.

“Why did he die? Why did he die?”

He. Died. He. Died.

Her husband. Dead. Dropped dead of a heart attack on the side of the house. His body still lay in the grass, awaiting the coroner. Police cars pulled up, flicking their flashlights around the garden. Other cars pulled up. Grandchildren sobbed. Children wailed. People hugged.

Chris and I watched with morbid curiosity and sadness. We turned to our children. We turned to each other.

Why did he die?

That poor woman. Her husband’s body will be carried away. Her dogs will go to sleep. Her family will go home. And she’ll wake up to an empty house, the shadows of her husband omnipresent in every corner, every scent, every simple action. And yet, she’ll be alone.

I think of Joan Didion’s “The Year of Magical Thinking.” I think of my mom. I think of my grandma.

I don’t often ponder what would happen if Chris died without warning, but when I do, the lack of ability to process this possibility is overwhelming. What would I do? What would the girls do?

What would we do?

I’m grateful that tonight, my husband is solidly asleep on the couch and my kids are breathing peacefully in their cribs.

My darling daughters,

Happy birthday to my two favorite people in the world. You have made me a better person by being my daughters. As long as I am your mom, you will never be alone. I’m so excited and humbled to be able to hold your hand while you discover who you are.

Enjoy the ride, my sweet girls.

Love,

Ama

I’m starting to feel disgusting.

There’s really no other way of saying it. I feel gross. I have a layer of fluid that is accumulating under my skin. My face, my neck, my chest and shoulders, all feel puffy and fluid retention-y. My fingers look fat. My feet bones are becoming less defined, disappearing under a thickening layer of nastiness.

It’s just not pretty.

And you know what else? I’ve identified a new body part: the vulvagina. This is the area encompassing the vulva, vagina, pubic bone, ass crack, etc. You know, the nethers. And mine hurts. Between the separated pubic bone, the hemorhoids (did I spell that right?) and the vulva swollen to the size of a Nerf football, my vulvagina is a sad lady.

(I guess that little bit of info should have been preceded by a courtesy TMI Alert. Sorry ’bout that.)

Add to this some crazy mood swings and you’re looking at a woman in the latter stages of pregnancy for sure. Man, I’m really starting to get weepy and whiny. I couldn’t find my sunglasses. I burst into tears. I burned a hot dog bun. Wept like a child. Chris was breathing too loud. I punched him in the face.

All of this is going to become a problem in the coming weeks. You see, toward the end of this pregnancy, I’m going to want to do the dirty with my husband as much as possible to try and get the baby out. And at that point, I’m going to be such a huge, weepy, puffy, purple-vagina-ed mess that Chris will want nothing to do with me, even if I do offer him my warm and willing, if gigantic, vulvagina.

Sob!!

I hesitate to write this post because it implicates me as a terrible mom, but it’s important enough that I have to share.

We bathe the girls in one tub of water. When Chris isn’t home to help, I’ll take one child out of the tub and plop her on the counter to put on her lotion and brush her teeth while the other child plays in the tub. Then I put the dry baby on the ground and extract baby #2 from the tub, letting the water drain while I do lotion and teeth for her.

Tonight, I had Elise on the counter while Althea was in the tub. The bathroom is fairly small, so the tub is no more than two feet from the sink. Elise was being stubborn about brushing teeth, so I was really absorbed in the task.

I don’t know what happened, but Althea was suddenly coughing up water, struggling to gasp for breath while sputtering and choking  in the water.

She was submerged under the water. I don’t know how much time had elapsed. Maybe it was only for a second. Maybe it was three seconds. There were only three inches of water in the tub. Maybe she couldn’t really have drowned. Maybe she could have. But she was clearly choking on water that she’d inhaled while I was two feet away from her.

I WAS TWO FEET AWAY FROM HER. In the same room. Alive and conscious and sober and able to pay close attention to her, but I wasn’t.

I snatched her up and held her body close while her lungs struggled to expel water and inhale oxygen. I let my mind go there — her life, my life, flashing before me in an instant, overwhelmed with fear and gratitude that the unthinkable hadn’t happened. God and Christ and every other deity existed in that moment because my child was alive.

I don’t know if I’m overreacting, but what happened was fucking terrifying enough for me to have learned a horrible lesson:

The instant bath time is over, DRAIN THE TUB.

Do NOT assume that being in the same room means you’re paying attention.

I thought I was ultra cautious with the girls around water. I’ve never even left them unattended for four seconds to run into their room for a washcloth. I’m just too paranoid.

So what the fuck happened tonight???

People, you CANNOT be too careful around water when children are involved. In my mind, my 20-month-old girls are big and strong and smart enough to extract themselves from a couple of inches of water. Apparently not. Don’t fall into that same trap!

I could have sworn. SWORN. That I was carrying boy bits in me.

So when Chris and I opened the envelope containing The Ultrasound Photo that would reveal our third child’s gender, I fully, 100% expected to see only three letters.

Instead . . . Well, you can probably see where I’m going with this.

I won’t deny it. I cried. I cried and cried. I was disappointed. Shocked. I wanted a boy. I felt nothing but boy. I really had my hopes up.

As “insurance,” we had the tech take a photo of the baby’s bits and put it in an envelope for us to open later. We joked that we didn’t want to cry in front of everyone if it was a girl.

And when the tech told us that, in case we would later wonder, he was 100% sure of what he saw, I thought YES!!! It’s definitely a boy because he saw the undeniable.

As the tears streamed uncontrollably down my face when I saw the word “GIRL!!!!” I was simultaneously filled with shame and pain. Yes, I was disappointed. But the idea that overwhelmed me was that I could be at all disappointed in this tiny little baby, this innocent little girl who is completely welcome and wanted and loved.

I thought of my perfect daughters and how much they’ve improved our lives, of how endlessly I love them, of how the last thing I feel in them is disappointment or shame. So I was embarrassed and mad at myself for feeling what I felt.

I know, I know. As a mother, I’m not supposed to feel these things. And even if I do, I’m certainly not supposed to admit them. But the deal is, it’s over. I was disappointed. I’m still kind of in mourning.

But I love my daughter. Like Chris said, the sadness is in the idea that it’s not a boy, not that she is a girl.

So. On the bright side:

• We are experienced parents of girls.
• We don’t have to buy anything new for a while.
• Surely with three girls, we’ll get some grandkids out of them somewhere.
• She’ll have two awesome older sisters who will dress her in silly costumes and carry her around like a baby doll. Or a rag doll. Or a football.
• Who says we’re done, anyhow?

(Okay, that last one was a bit premature. I AM NOT THINKING OF #4.)

I think at this point, I’m mostly dreading the reactions from the general public. I’ve gotten enough negative BS about having twins — I can only imagine the shit we’ll hear about having three girls. “Blah blah blah three prom dresses,” “Yadda yadda three weddings,” “Yap yap yap you’re really in for it.”

Ugh. Like we haven’t already thought of that? Like we can do anything to change it?

“Girl” is not a four-letter word, even when multiplied by three. (Because that would be 12. Right? I took math. YES I PASSED.) There are plenty of four-letter words that aren’t bad — words such as good, luck and love.

Also, ulna.

Here are the rest of the photos of our darling doll of a daughter. We’re pretty happy now that it’s sinking in. Her profile looks a lot like the girls’.

Besides, if she’s half as wonderful as her sisters, we’re set.

(Man, my blog post titles are getting stupid.)

It’s been eight days since I last nursed my girls.

::sob!::

Since I first started writing about weaning last month, I gradually reduced the number and frequency of nursings. We’d skip a day, then two days, then three. The couple of times we went for three days, my boobs ended up insanely uncomfortable — not really engorged, but heavy as bowling balls and very sensitive.

Then the tantrums started.

When it became obvious that we weren’t headed to my bedroom to nurse, the girls would start throwing a tantrum. That wasn’t worth it to me, so we’d nurse.

And then one morning, they didn’t freak out.

And they didn’t freak out the next morning either.

And here we are, eight days later, and my boobs have not freaked out and the girls haven’t freaked out and we’re all doing just fine, it seems.

My boobs have changed already. The last vestiges of hormonal brown discoloration are finally fading away. My nipples have regained their non-stretched-to-hell appearance. The aereola seem to be shrinking and looking less Nat Geo.

I think I’m doing okay with it. For a silly, superstitious reason, I kind of wanted to make their last time nursing be on the 17th, when they’d be 17 months old. You know, golden birthday nonsense.

But we did good. Sixteen-and-a-half months of nursing twins ain’t bad, in my book. We’re happy. We’re healthy.