Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Love is....
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Repost of Triplet Discovery
It's even more fun when your wide-eyed, uncomfortable-in-his-own-skin husband decides to accompany you at the last minute, and you feel responsible for his nervous fidgeting of foreign design. The only fixation taking his mind off his discomfort is studying the breast exam posters in the room, every so often uttering a collegiate giggle. I sigh, wondering why he is there, yet strangely enjoying his camaraderie.
Waiting to find out if our baby was alive and kicking made me more than a little anxious. Discovering we were pregnant a month prior, we arrived to ease our fears of a potential miscarriage. A condition, known as Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS) wreaks havoc on my reproductive system, and some studies claim the disorder to harbor a 45% chance of losing a pregnancy. I was a little worried. Hell, I was freaking out. Even though we needed no help in getting pregnant, PCOS also causes massive rates of infertility. If this baby didn't make it; well, let's just say I worried for the state of our future family.
We waited, surrounded by patients, cracking nervous jokes. We poked fun at the whole idea of pregnancy and kids; nothing was sacred. At one point, he looked at me sharply and said with mock horror on his face, "What if it's twin girls?" I involuntarily gasped. Thinking about twin teenage girls in our household one day did not sound appealing; coming from a house with just my sister and me; many shared, destroyed belongings and vicious fights ending in dismembered Barbie dolls.
Quickly regaining my composure, I reacted as I knew best - I threw the horror back at him. I put my hand gently on his arm, feigning a dramatic and somber tone. "No, no, honey. See, my grandmother was a triplet, and with something like that running in our families, combined with our 'luck,' it's going to be three girls! Just wait and see!" He did look genuinely shocked then, for the first time pondering the family history and the actual feasibility of it all. I only giggled in satisfaction because I had just won the shock contest. He looked up at me, a little green in the face and seemed as though he was about to ask me a serious question. Luckily, we didn't have to wait around to contemplate our imagined fate, with the nurse calling us in.
Ultrasound underway, the nurse blithely asked me, "How are your nerves?" I thought she was having a problem with the machine. I wondered if my nervous trembling was interfering with the readings; the trembling only a moment of truth could bring; was our baby alive? Lying through my teeth, I told her I was fine and she only looked at me, turning the monitor our way. She traced her finger along the black and white abstract on the screen and calmly delivered the word, "twins."
I don't think my brain wrapped around that description, that we were having twins, because I knew in my heart that this was not the real thing. It hadn't clicked yet. Looking at the two circles, each holding a jumping bean, the wonder of it all seemed to be waiting for the other shoe to drop; curiously, I don't know why I was immediately questioning their existence without another look. A momentous weight hovered on the air and both of us instinctively knew that there was more to the story.
We looked at each other, eyes locked, both recalling the recent joking conversation with bated breath, and respectfully asked if she was sure there wasn't another one. I had instantly felt "three" in my heart and soul after her discovery, I knew it already, there on the exam table, and wasn't leaving without confirmation of our eerie premonition. It was all too coincidental to be unrelated; the family history, the waiting room jokes, the long wait for a family, not knowing if there would ever be more.
Mike delicately pointed to the monitor and underneath the connected circles of two sacs was an elongated and curved black hole. It looked like one of those long, thin balloons made by a traveling clown, arcing into a smile just after inflation. It wrapped under the other two, like a cupped hand, cradling them. He asked if maybe that might be another baby, just waiting to be discovered. She looked perplexed and skeptical; maybe thinking to herself how she could have missed it, but more likely just how rare three really was. She moved the wand around a bit to placate us, unimpressed. Trying for a difficult view, she broke out the heavy equipment, the internal ultrasound; Da-Da-Da . Via this new (and awfully invasive) toy, she immediately realized that he was right. From a different angle, there bounced Baby #3, directly beneath the other two.
In one swift movement, her hand flew to her mouth and she croaked loudly. I remember that she was in the throes of laryngitis, and her voice sounded painful. The Frog Lady was yelling, I realized, in her diminished and damaged voice, yelling "Oh, my God!" over and over. It sounded downright awful and I wondered why she was getting so excited.
Let me just say that we were in shock. Who wouldn't be? In this slow, perceptive state, we were suffering from the effects of brain fog. Looking at our lives from the outside of the bubble, wide-eyed, faces pressed to the glass in rapture, right before it gave way and imploded from the pressure. We were simply watching an uber-exciting soap opera, or we were dreaming, surely. Nothing like this happens in real life! The mesmeric quality of the moment was surreal, we had to be watching someone elses' lives, or we were being "Punk'd", I was sure of it. I felt slow on the uptake, a blur of light following behind everyones' movements made me feel like I was suspended in a thick liquid. My brain was doing the equivalent of a "huh? say what?!" Understanding, even in its simplest form, had not yet arrived.
We said nothing, just watched the circus show with an air of detached amusement. Mike with his back pressed firmly into the wall for stability and me, trying to contain my own body parts under the thin piece of paper they called a gown. After a while, I felt like I was floating on a cloud, high up in the air, feeling nothing but slight curiosity. Wafting and delicate, floating closer to the precipice of a fathomless abyss, a major development, breaking news, but so far, all I felt...was numb. It seemed as though we were hearing and watching the festivities from the other end of a long tunnel. My vision was now only capable of black and white tones. The light had a texture bleeding on to the edges and sounds seemed ancient and crackly. I wonder now if this is what it feels like to almost pass out. People shouldn't ever have to get news like that lying on your back, half-naked.
They were screaming, grabbing our hands and squishing our faces, dancing around the room, as if someone had hit the lottery! Little did we know that we had hit a lottery of sorts. Spontaneous conception of triplets only happens in 1 of every 8000 pregnancies¹. Is that luck? If it is, I'm not sure of what kind. Strangely, I started to wonder what the other waiting patients were imagining of all this carrying on.
With our lukewarm desire and commitment to becoming parents, mostly unsure and conflicted, these 3 babies, this "all-in" development seemed cruel and unusual. I was hoping that this first look at our little hand in creation, residing inside of me, would instantly bring us both on board, would miraculously cure our worries and insecurities, and would right our life's picture frame which seemed so crooked without the inclusion of children. But three? Three seemed as harsh as a blow to the face, a KO from God himself, sending us some sort of encrypted message. We were so confused. But there we were, our path set and inextricably paced; from zero to sixty in 9 months.
Lying on the table, in a compromising position, all pride dropped, the screaming nurses had an idea. They wanted to call my doctor, who was attending a conference in NYC. He wasn't to be interrupted, unless there was an emergency. They figured this would make the cut. The clue for us that spontaneous triplets were rare, the piece of info that had us get on board the crazy train, was that he had only treated 1 other woman in the same condition in his fifteen years of practice.
Frantically dialing the phone and then connecting, First Screaming Nurse talked rapidly in what sounded like a different language. Then, she handed it to me, the cord stretched all the way down the long hallway, me lying on my back, just chatting on the phone, as if I wasn't half naked with an internal ultrasound still in place. I told you, surreal.
He was so worried, and happy, and shocked, but worried. His first comment after the high energy subsided was that we were definitely having a c-section now, no doubt. He continued that with my history of problems, my body might not handle 3 babies well. I was only 8 weeks along and 36 weeks is considered "full term" for triplets (since they develop at a faster rate than singletons) and that made for a long road ahead. 32 weeks is the average gestation, with many a mom found on hospital bed rest for the duration. Then he delivered the shocker; all of the babies may not make it.
He advised us not to tell anyone until the end of the first trimester, at least, since there was a possibility we may lose one of the babies in these early stages. He said, "go ahead and tell them you're pregnant, if you want, but save the big news for later, when we are out of the woods." He was cautiously optimistic.
We left that day, a flurry of emotions in tow; Serious Mental Baggage. We weren't going to be great conversationalists that day, and we had a family party to attend, pretending all was status quo in our happy life.
I was growing fast, too fast to not tell anyone, they all already suspected by studying my growing belly, even 8 weeks in.
Leaving the building, the most frequent thought we would have in days to come invaded our cozy shock. "What are we going to do?" I vividly remember sitting down (more like collapsing) on the steps outside the office, feeling too weak to hold up my heavy thoughts, trembling, the news starting to sink in a bit. The tornado taking up residence inside my head swirled voraciously.
We decided to wait one more month to share the news, on Thanksgiving; for by then, I was hoping we would have come to terms with our new life and perhaps even be, well, thankful for it.
After a long visit in the vestibule, we headed out to the convenience store for a drink, feeling parched and cotton-mouthed, all available moisture rushing to lubricate the cognitive gears in overdrive. I stared at the ultrasound copies in disbelief, tears coming for the first time. These were our babies. These shapes were actually three lives inside of me. So momentous, I wished my grandmother were alive to see this.
We had some real shopping to accomplish, but we only hopped from store to store, never buying anything, just repeating to each other in different ways our newly formed mantra "What are we going to do?" And more, "How are we going to handle this?"
And like a flash of lightning, the obligation of multiplicity hit us, escalating out of control; three Halloween costumes, three learning to drive at the same time, three proms, three weddings - whoa. Three.college.tuitions. And then we really did wonder; "what if it is three girls?" Holy Crap! It was all too much to process standing up and even more, on an empty stomach. I was already suffering from "evening" sickness those days, with the multiple doses of hormones swimming in my system. Becoming very ill every night, I could not eat after a certain time. It was now past this certain time, but I desperately needed something in my belly. I needed to counteract the urge to regurgitate in response to the surprise God threw at us that day. So we ate. And we walked some more, searching for answers in the organic food aisle, hoping to unearth an epiphany behind a package of dried noodles or chocolate sandwich cookies.
We drifted aimlessly for hours, like mental patients wandering the neighborhood, lost in their own mind, speaking incoherent sing-songy sentences, wafting from place to place, not really accomplishing anything but remaining conscious. It's a marvel we even stayed side by side, each drawn inward, processing thought and emotion, perhaps drawn together by the wispy ties of our shared shock.
Telling our family and friends was only a little more exciting than it was exhausting, and by the end of it all, after a few weeks, the reality was beginning to finally sink in to the very core of us. Deep seated feelings started to root, feelings that if I were to be honest, were unfair to the children growing inside of me. We wanted to test the waters, not jump into the deep end! When will we ever have freedom again, to do the selfish things we want to do? Travel, go out to eat, play video games deep into the night, see a movie, make love, be us ...just us. How will our marriage handle this immediate taxing of resources and emotions? Will we have enough to go around and support our new soccer team? How will we be devoted to and deeply love all three at once, having the patience to teach and discipline them together and also the fortitude to handle the screaming and sicknesses and hard times? If we're not good enough, we run the risk of screwing up three kids, not just one; what.are.we.going.to.do?
Another month passed, and the healing ritual of Christmas shopping commandeered our lives. We let the season wash over us, trying to forget the difficult future in store, ready or not. Concentrating on our 22 nieces and nephews, we raided the toy store. 4 Tired feet and 2 sore backs later, we were still as elated as when we walked through the door; we were finally catching the bug! Inundated with toys for all ages, we started to move past the worst and imagine now the best of times; the times when having a family is all worthwhile; and it all began with Christmas. With the exhilaration, dawned a new chapter of our family and the worry abated, if only slightly.
Registering for our baby shower shortly after, we became aware of all that one needs to care for a baby or three and scanned away. Stopping at a seemingly innocuous bath toy, Mike paused and looked profoundly thrilled. Watching him act as a child would, stealing over me was the realization that he was picturing life beyond those tough infant years. In a flash, he had stolen a glimpse of the fun times we would have as they got older. This forgettable toy was an effectual dam, holding back the flood of terrible predictions and anticipated difficulties, the awful advice and the fear of failing. I laughed and cried witnessing this evolution because when he found it, the look on his face beamed pure joy and excitement. Even if triggered by a mere toy, he was now truly ready to be a "Dad", even better; a dad of triplets.
In that instant, under the fluorescent luster and warehouse air, I just knew everything was going to be... okay. We were ready.
¹The odds of conceiving "spontaneous" triplets (i.e., without the aid of fertility enhancements) is about 1 in 8,100. (Note: These statistics are estimates, gathered from several sources, including a 2001 National Vital Statistics Report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Odds - Twins from BabyMed.com, Facts About Multiples: Twin Basics Page 2
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Screaming, Anyone?
Monday, July 6, 2009
Our Fourth
Nooooo, that does not mean we are having another baby! So stop thinking that!
Monday, June 29, 2009
In the Moment
"All my babies are gone now. I say this not in sorrow but in disbelief. I take great satisfaction in what I have today: three almost-adults, two taller than I am, one closing in fast. Three people who read the same books I do and have learned not to be afraid of disagreeing with me in their opinion of them, who sometimes tell vulgar jokes that make me laugh until I choke and cry, who need razor blades and shower gel and privacy, who want to keep their doors closed more than I like. Who, miraculously, go to the bathroom, zip up their jackets and move food from plate to mouth all by themselves. Like the trick soap I bought for the bathroom with a rubber ducky at its center, the baby is buried deep within each, barely discernible except through the unreliable haze of the past. Everything in all the books I once pored over is finished for me now. Penelope Leach., T. Berry Brazelton, Dr. Spock. The ones on sibling rivalry and sleeping through the night and early-childhood education have all grown obsolete. Along with Goodnight Moon and Where the Wild Things Are, they are battered, spotted, well used. But I suspect that if you flipped the pages dust would rise like memories. What those books taught me, finally, and what the women on the playground taught me, and the well-meaning relations –what they taught me, was that they couldn't really teach me very much at all.
Raising children is presented at first as a true-false test, then becomes multiple choice, until finally, far along, you realize that it is an endless essay. No one knows anything. One child responds well to positive reinforcement, another can be managed only with a stern voice and a timeout. One child is toilet trained at 3, his sibling at 2. When my first child was born, parents were told to put baby to bed on his belly so that he would not choke on his own spit-up. By the time my last arrived, babies were put down on their backs because of research on sudden infant death syndrome. To a new parent this ever-shifting certainty is terrifying, and then soothing. Eventually you must learn to trust yourself. Eventually the research will follow. I remember 15 years ago poring over one of Dr. Brazelton's wonderful books on child development, in which he describes three different sorts of infants: average, quiet, and active. I was looking for a sub-quiet codicil for an 18-month old who did not walk. Was there something wrong with his fat little legs? Was there something wrong with his tiny little mind? Was he developmentally delayed, physically challenged? Was I insane? Last year he went to China . Next year he goes to college. He can talk just fine. He can walk, too.
Every part of raising children is humbling, too. Believe me, mistakes were made. They have all been enshrined in the, "Remember-When- Mom-Did Hall of Fame." The outbursts, the temper tantrums, the bad language, mine, not theirs. The times the baby fell off the bed. The times I arrived late for preschool pickup. The nightmare sleepover. The horrible summer camp. The day when the youngest came barreling out of the classroom with a 98 on her geography test, and I responded, "What did you get wrong?". (She insisted I include that.) The time I ordered food at the McDonald's drive-through speaker and then drove away without picking it up from the window. (They all insisted I include that.) I did not allow them to watch the Simpsons for the first two seasons. What was I thinking?
But the biggest mistake I made is the one that most of us make while doing this. I did not live in the moment enough. This is particularly clear now that the moment is gone, captured only in photographs. There is one picture of the three of them, sitting in the grass on a quilt in the shadow of the swing set on a summer day, ages 6, 4 and 1. And I wish I could remember what we ate, and what we talked about, and how they sounded, and how they looked when they slept that night.
I wish I had not been in such a hurry to get on to the next thing: dinner, bath, book, bed. I wish I had treasured the doing a little more and the getting it done a little less.
Even today I'm not sure what worked and what didn't, what was me and what was simply life. When they were very small, I suppose I thought someday they would become who they were because of what I'd done. Now I suspect they simply grew into their true selves because they demanded in a thousand ways that I back off and let them be. The books said to be relaxed and I was often tense, matter-of-fact and I was sometimes over the top. And look how it all turned out. I wound up with the three people I like best in the world, who have done more than anyone to excavate my essential humanity.
That's what the books never told me. I was bound and determined to learn from the experts. It just took me a while to figure out who the experts were."
Friday, June 19, 2009
10 Years
10 years...where did it go? 10 years ago today, I married an incredible man – though I didn’t really understand how lucky I was at the time. I was caught up in the courtship phase, the tingling happiness, full of butterflies and laughter and fun. Life was good; high on the promise of an incredible life together. Little did I know that the first year would be so hard for us, so hard to live together and mesh our lives seamlessly; what each of us brought to the table: the baggage, the life experiences, the habits, preferences and traits - and BOY did we clash for a while…but eventually we came to realize that this is what life is all about, what marriage is all about – the BIG compromise.
I have loved journeying to find out that we are even more perfect for each other than we ever knew possible… compatible in almost every way, and the ways we aren’t we have learned to compromise or even complement one another [ie, the slob(me) vs the organizer(you) and the relaxed(me) to the uptight(you)]. I love that we make each other better people; you make me want to be more, every day! I have learned oodles about myself through you and I hope the feeling is mutual. You have changed me (in a good way!) in almost every definition of the word -you could say I feel more… evolved; definitely more alive. We fit together like puzzle pieces – and dare I say it? It's total cheese, but you do – “you complete me.” We have found in each other just that which our souls were missing.
You appreciate the world around you and the impact you have on it, good and bad – and I love that about you. You are caring and considerate, kind and unselfish, a good friend, family member and husband; always giving. You are hardworking and careful, smart and sensitive and philosophical – you have learned to step back and realize that there is more than one perspective in every situation…all this you have taught me and more.
I can’t think of anyone I would rather be with, to “grow old with” and watch our babies flourish before our very eyes. This is our life! And it makes me so happy to be here in it with you, forever. Our souls were imprinted onto each other long ago and we were lucky to have made the match, even before knowing how perfect the match was going to turn out to be. Everyone should be this lucky! You are stuck with me forever, baby!
Happy 10th, my sweet... you are my “dream” man.