Family of Four!

It's official we are a family of four!  It is so weird.  Jeremy and I took the boys out on Saturday to run to Target.  We only had an hour but it was our first non medical related outing.  We were talking as we loaded the boys car seats onto the stroller about how weird it is that this is now our life, the four of us.  When we go places from now on it will involve a huge production to get us all out and about.  Everything in our life revolves around these two little stinkers and when they need to eat.  I know it won't be like this forever but for now it is a TON of work to get anything done.  We knew it would be a lot of work having twins but we didn't realize how much, I guess it's something you really can't prepare for.

The most surprising thing is how soon their little personalities are showing through. Our little Hayden is such a little spit fire.  Don't mess with this dude I'm telling you.  He may be small but he's got a lot of fight.  I call him my little meerkat.  If you ever saw that show meerkat manor that is why.  He just gets crazy and arches his whole body up, purses his lips together, gets all wide eyed and then starts swinging his head back and forth like one of those meerkat's on watch for attack.  It is hysterical, although not so much fun when he needs to burp and ends up spitting out all his food because he's flopping about like a fish.  The phrase, 'settle down' is said a lot during feeding time with this guy.

Then there is sweet, sweet Hunter who could not be more opposite from his fireball brother. He is just so sweet and calm.  He goes at his own slow and steady pace and doesn't get easily ruffled at all.  When he's awake he just calmly looks around and surveys his universe.  He is also huge!  The kid is a tank I swear, he's almost 8 lbs already.  I guess that's really not big but they were both so little he just seems like a little tank now.

More pics of the boys together.

I love this pic because Hunter is looking at Hayden like Dude what is your problem because he was squaking already.

A Long Two Weeks

I can definitely say that the first two weeks of 2013 were the longest, and toughest two weeks of my life.  It was exhausting in every way possible having our babies in the NICU.  It was so weird because we knew we had become parents but for those first few days it wasn't like we even had babies.  We couldn't hold them very much at first because it would stress them out so it was really hard to have that bonding moment everyone talks about.  We are so lucky that the boys really had nothing wrong with them besides being early and needing to grow a little more.  There were many more babies in the NICU that were in much worse situations.  

Our daily routine consisted of arriving at the hospital by 8:00, change diapers, and then hold the boys while they were fed or try to feed them if they seemed interested.  That usually took about an hour.  The hospital provided us a room to stay in while the boys were there so then we would go to the room and I would pump and then we'd try to rest before going back for the next feeding.  Basically we would do that same thing every three hours and then leave the hospital around 7:30 to go home.  It seemed like we were never going to get out of there and that time is all just a blur in my mind.  

Happy New Year!

You know how New Year's Eve always has tons of anticipation and you feel like you should do something really awesome and then it always turns out to be super lame? Well, if I had known on New Year's Eve that it would be my last night of a full night of sleep I would have spent the entire day in bed, asleep.  I basically did spend the entire day on my back as I had been on modified bed rest for almost a month but I would have cherished my last bit of uninterrupted sleep had I known what was coming the next morning.

I woke up New Year's Day ready to spend the day watching football and hanging out with Jeremy but as I got out of bed and went to the bathroom my plans for the day were quickly changed as I realized that I had large amounts of fluid flowing out of me for no apparent reason.  Even I was pretty sure my water had broken even though I was hoping that somehow I was just confused.  After a quick call to my sister to have another person confirm what was happening, and a call to the on-call Dr. Jeremy and I headed to the hospital arriving around 10:00, and by 12:43 we were parents, and by 12:44 we were a family of four.

We hadn't decided on names for the boys because we thought we had a bit more time, and Jer kept saying he would decide on the way to the hospital. . . he did not, we were too busy freaking out!  The boys were born at 35 weeks and both were immediately taken to the NICU.  Baby A who eventually became Hayden Mitchell Hart had a hard time maintaining his body temperature and had some blood sugar issues.  Baby B who is now Hunter Rodney Hart struggled a bit more.  They think Hayden is the one who was ready to come and ruptured the membranes or something like that so even though he was smaller he was more ready to be born.  Hunter was more just ripped on out and wasn't quite ready and his lungs were sticking and he was working really hard to breathe.

I had to stay in the recovery room for awhile so Jer went back and forth between the babies and I, it was a very stressful day for him.  Finally they wheeled my bed right into the NICU so that I could sort of meet the boys.  I was able to hold Hayden and that is when we decided on his name but I wasn't able to hold Hunter because he was under the bubble so he remained nameless because I wanted to at least hold him first.

I had to go to my room for the rest of the day and wasn't able to go back to the NICU until the next day.  It was definitely not the way I imagined this day to be.  Finally the next day they let me get out of bed and go down to the NICU and I was able to hold Hunter.

I blame myself for the boys coming five weeks early because all day on the 31st I was talking about how they should come so we could get a tax break or they should be the first babies of the year so that we could get the free stuff.  They did neither.  It's always my big mouth that gets me in trouble.  We are just so glad that they were healthy and just needed some more time to grow.