On the road to recovery

So there I was, healing in the hospital. Bobby just ended up stayed with me for all of the days and nights after the babies were born (poor guy stayed in the hospital almost as long as I did). It was sort of an endless stream of feeding the babies, sleeping, trying to walk around as best I could. We had all of our nurses stop by for a visit at one time of another. Turns out, I was the longest patient there at the time, and I think they developed a special fondness for my girls. It was a little sad saying good-bye to all those wonderful people.

Anyway, so we are thinking "whew" - We had made it through. Everything was looking great. Until my blood pressure was checked when I got off the magnesium sulfate. It was through the roof! I mean really high. Higher than it has ever been. Plus, I was retaining so much water it felt like my feet would bust open. I couldn't even bend my ankles at one point - ouch! Here is a little visual for you all:

They decided to monitor my bp at more regular intervals and informed me that if it didn't go down, I wouldn't be released as planned. What!?! I swear I thought there was a conspiracy to keep me at that darn hospital. They wanted me to make minimum movements - so basically back to bed rest and to keep the lights low and basically try to remain stress free. Uh, I just gave birth to 2, count them, 2 babies. Yep, stress free was gonna be easy.

Needless to say, my bp just kept rising and rising. They did keep us an extra day and finally agreed to let me go home, with a prescription of bp medicine and a promise that I would have my bp checked by my local dr 2 days later. I agreed, and I did have it checked...still high. This is something that I will have to talk to my doc about up my follow up appt this week.

Anywho, the girls did great on their Apgar, hearing tests, and jaundice tests. Emma was given a fully clean bill of health. Briar on the other hand had a little heart murmur. In fact there were 3 issues with her heart. The first two were heart murmurs. One that should clear up within 72 hours and the other was something that normally cleared up on it's own within a couple of weeks. Last checked it looked like both of these had cleared up.

The third thing was a little different. It's called Ventricular septal defect (vsd) and basically Briar has 3 teeny tiny holes between 2 of her heart chambers. They saw these on an ekg. Sometimes this clears up on it's own (here's hoping!). Otherwise they will monitor it and may possibly have to go in through a vein in her leg, up to her heart and patch it. If it gets worse (unlikely) then she may have to have actual surgery. The dr. used the term "open heart surgery" which frankly I think should never be used around new parents, even if the possibility of it is not likely. That's just a scary thing to hear. So, right now we just watch it. She has an appointment with a cardiologist in about 5 weeks and hopefully the little holes will have healed.

That's about it for the birth story. They finally let us leave the hospital, and we made the 2 hour trek home. I had been gone for 25 days and was thrilled to get back to my house. My mom has been here helping us out (thank goodness), and my dad was given a reprieve from taking care of Connor for the past 3 weeks.

The nights have been long, and the girls seem to like to tag team their crying, but we are figuring each other out slowly but surely. Breastfeeding started off pretty great, but the girls had lost weight so we had to supplement with formula and now we are having all kinds of issues. Half the time I am tempted to throw in the towel and go to formula, and half the time I feel inspired to see it through. It takes a lot more of a commitment than I realized and I'm not sure what I will end up doing.

Things with me are slowly going back to normal. I am losing weight at a pretty good pace - almost back to my pre-prego weight. Now I just need to get down to my pre-IVF weight and then my pre-infertility weight. (looks like I have a ways to go). I still look 5 months pregnant regardless of the weight loss, and I am not loving what I've been told is called "twin skin". You see, when I was pregnant my skin was stretched so tight that now it just kind of hangs around my middle. Oh and to make things a little more cruel, spots where I never saw stretch marks are showing stretch marks - how the heck did that happen?

Bobby keeps reminding me that it was only a week and a half ago that we had these babies and to give it time. But when you have put your body through all I have these past 7 years, you kind of forget what you used to look like, and then you get a little anxious to get back to that place.

Alright, I suppose that just about sums it all up.

Till next time.....