Nurse Ratched

Have I mentioned that Nurse Ratched has grown on me? Maybe I'm a secret masochist but I have really started to like her.

If my sonogram in the morning is good I "might" be allowed to go home this weekend when I turn 34 weeks. I have already been planning the things I am going to sneak and do - beginning with getting the nursery ready. If these poor babies came today, not only would the boy be nameless, but he would have no place to sleep. Sad state of affairs.

I joked with my OB that I was going to start walking the block while eating spicy food in order to bring on labor....but he reminded me that his partner lives on my street 2 blocks away. Might get caught! But seriously, if they did not want me to begin to get up and move about a bit, then they should keep me under lock and key and Nurse Ratched for longer.

32 weeks 4 days

After the big threat of delivering the twins at 21 weeks, now that I have made it to 32 weeks 4 days, I feel like I am out of the woods. I know babies are not supposed to be born at 32 weeks.....but I have been on bedrest for 12 weeks now. I had one small break where I went home for 10 days but other than that, I have been in the hospital since August. I have missed the season of Fall, which by the way, is my favorite season.

My perinatologist told me in one breath "you MUST not have these babies at 32 weeks, they will spend 2 months in the NICU" and in the next breath "I am recommending that we discontinue your Procardia (the meds that stop contractions) because it is having an adverse side effect on your heart".

So correct me if I'm wrong......Don't have the babies right now, but we are going to take away the meds that keep you from going into labor. Did I miss something?

The twins are growing like weeds. Up until this sonogram we had been warned that Baby A was not growing as fast and if she did not pick up speed it would be a situation we would need to discuss and maybe come up with a plan of action. Baby B has always been the bigger of the 2. On Wednesday's sonogram they measured Baby A at 4#15oz and Baby B at 4#7oz.

My poor cervix is hanging on by a thread, but it is the thread from the cerclage, and that in itself is nothing short of a miracle.

On another note, John had successful meetings in New York and provided nothing happens here in the next 20 hours, he will make it home in time for the birth. Miss Robin, Mary Catherine's teacher from last year, has been over to babysit and stay the night with the kids while John has been away. It would have been my Mom but she came down with H1N1 on Sunday and has been very, very sick. My father-in-law is due to have back surgery on November 16 and is in quite a bit of pain, so mother-in-law needs to stay with him, understandably so. So we hit "skeleton crew" if you will and we are very grateful Robin could help us - plus the kids have had a blast with her at the house.

Until Next Time!

Nurse Ratched

The nurses here at Presby Dallas are amazing. They have all been wonderful and I couldn't ask for anyone better. Except for that one that was on speed. Oops. She did work night so you have to wonder.....

And except for the one I have had for the past 2 days. For some reason I have made her very mad. I am not sure if it was me sneaking out to go to the ice machine, or sneaking a small walk to stretch out my stomach and ribs as much as possible, or the tylenol I stashed into my room so I could take it every 4 hours instead of six, like the bottle says for crying out loud.

Anyhow, she pounced on me and my parents as we walked to the ice machine at lunch today. "Are you allowed to walk" she demanded "Are you allowed to go to the kitchen"?? I told her yes, I was allowed to do that, and even better, I was allowed to go for a wheelchair ride once a day. Big stuff people.

About 20 minutes later my Mom tried to go get me some orange juice from the kitchen and found she was locked out! HA! Ten weeks of being here and the kitchen has not been locked once. Someone is declaring war here people.

I guess I screwed up when I told my doctor that I had to lean on the Hershey display today while in the gift shop (read...my one wheelchair outing) because as soon as I stood up I had some monster contractions. Now my doctor, being as nice as he is, of course did not tell me that I would no more roll down the halls again any sooner than I would smell fresh air. But let me tell you who skipped in here to break the news. Nurse Ratched, that's who.

All four feet of her practically shouted from the rooftops that I was not to leave my room again. And you know what? I felt like I was twelve all over again.

And since I am feeling twelve years old I will point out that nobody is stopping Miss Marlboro from going out to smoke every hour. And remember people - we are on the high risk maternity floor.

So here I sit to pout on a Friday night. I can't take a wheelchair ride anymore and John can't bring the kids up to visit because he is sick.

On a better note, Dr. Hunt came by and said, yes, baby girl is quite a bit smaller but we will review it again on Wednesday and decide if something needs to be done at that time. John leaves for New York on Wednesday and doesn't get back until very late on Friday so wouldn't it be my luck to deliver these babies while he is away??

Maybe being locked up and feeling twelve years old isn't such a bad idea after all. If I act like a twelve year old will they take the diagnosis "advanced maternal age" off my chart??

So now I am just trying to eek out a few more days or maybe a week or two before I deliver. The babies will for sure have to stay here in the NICU (baby intensive care) because they are just now about 3 and 4 lbs. The doctors have been mentioning for the past week or so that the girl is not really getting any bigger, or at least she is getting bigger v-e-r-y slowly and that brother is taking up all the space and squishing her. I planned on talking with my dr about it tonight but this is the very only day he has not come by. It is rattling my nerves a bit and of course I cant take anything for that except Ambien. Here in a few minutes I'll order some up and try to call it a day.

The hospital is only about 2 minutes from our house so John brings the kids up almost every day. He has been amazing and he is going to deserve a big long vacation all by himself when I get out of here. We laugh that he is going to be a drunk on gin and tonics by the time I get out but I tell him don't worry, I've taken Ambien 2x a day for 10 weeks now so I'll be a wreck too. HA!

He gets up at 5:30, works a bit from home, heads to the office at 6:45 when my mom or his mom comes over to take care of the kids, gets back home at 6, feeds, bathes, and entertains the kids and then wrestles them to bed and repeat. And repeat. I don't know many people that could say their husband can/would do that so I am very lucky.

In the midst of all this Softy said "to hell with this place" and he hit the road. Nobody would tell me that he ran away because they were worried I would flip out. John finally set up a booby trap in the backyard with twine, turkey, and a crate and got him back inside after 8 days. He was a ratted up old mess with eye infections and a tick but we got him cleaned up and hopefully he is getting better. When I was home for that brief almost 2 weeks Softy would not come near me. He would stand at the door to my bedroom and make that Tomcat meow but if I tried to get up and pet him he would head for the dining room and hide under the table. Apparently he has taken a special liking to Mary Catherine and has been staying with her in her bed all night. Hopefully he'll come back around and forgive me for leaving him with crazy babysitters and in-laws.

The kids have been great and initially I was most worried about Mary Catherine and how this would affect her. She "gets it" though and it is poor Walter who I feel sorry for. He tries to be good when they come up here but the couch in my room is so tempting for him to jump on and the room doesn't have too many toys and so he gets really restless. Every few days I get a wheelchair pass and we go ride the elevators and (they) race up and down the halls hooting and hollering (after the offices are closed). We check out the new babies and hit the gift shop for candy. That seems to work better with him. On Saturdays and Sundays Mary Catherine comes up for a few hours by herself and we watch cartoons in the bed together. She gets bored after awhile and wants to go back home and be with her brother and toys. After being here for a few hours the mystery of this place is revealed to her and she can see that it sucks!

Some of my friends say "oh bedrest must be great, I would love it" but they are retarded. Who is the hell wants to lay in the bed all day and not get to see family or go outside or go to the bathroom without telling someone? Morons, I tell you.

Turkey Basting

Back for a little more history and I promise to pick up the pace.....

We were seeing Dr. Brian Barnett at Plano Presby for our fertility issues. We had decided to go ahead with the IVF and our insurance covered it, which is totally unheard of. It covers 3 cycles.

Lots of injectable meds, lots of trips to the office, one even on Easter morning and we were all dressed for church. Once the process starts you are pretty much directed by how well your body responds to the drugs and you must make the IVF your top priority for those few months.

I had my egg retrieval on the Tuesday after Easter. It went well, I don't remember the number of eggs they got, I really just wanted to make sure that I had enough to get through the cycle. After the retrieval I went home to rest off the meds from the surgery. Then the 5 days wait began. The embryologist would call us first thing in the morning to tell us the "grade" of the eggs. A being the best and D being the worst. We had a mix of all grades which they said is very normal. On day 5 we checked into the hospital at 6:00 am and began to prepare for the transfer. I was lightly sedated which was helpful since I was pretty nervous.



The Dr and the Embryologist suggested we put in 2 eggs based on the quality of each and my age. I am considered "advanced maternal age". HA! We were nervous about doing 2 but John and I had agreed that since they were the professionals and they had valid reasons to suggest 2, knowing we were looking for a single, then we would follow their advice. They were the professionals and we needed to trust them!

After the transfer I went home to begin 72 hours of complete bed rest. I could only get up to use the rest room. That can get boring pretty fast......

Preheated Oven..........Where is my Bun ??

I know this blog is a little confusing with my trying to fill you in on the last 4 years while also trying to keeo you up to date with my bedrest. Bear with me - the 2 paths will cross at some point!

A little background - After the birth of my son if you would have asked me if I wanted another child it would not have taken me ten seconds to tell you no way. Not because I don't love my children but because Walter's first two years were so unpredictable and wild. To call those years scary is a huge simplicity of our feelings. However, because the good Lord inflicts all of us mothers with amnesia of our previous pregnanies and deliveries, after about eighteen months or so I started to put the hard sell on John. He really was not on board with another child at first, at all. After a few months and many deep discussions he began to know the exend of my desire for more children. Since he is from a family of 2 children, his mom and dad are both from families of 2 children, his sister has 2 children, it was hard for him to think outside the box. My family is crazy and loud and always in everyone's business, wildly loving although unfortunatley immune to boundaries. But I would not have it any other way. In fact, the movie "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" has always reminded me of my family, even if we are not Greek. We might be nuts, we might argue at times like stray cats stuck in a shoebox, but that is us.

So John came around. He said he could tell how much it meant to me to have a third child and if the desire was tha strong, who was he to deny me? So off to work we go.
No luck! What is going on? My daughter was practically a honeymoon baby and with Walter, as soon as we found out about the clotting antibodies and I began Heparin therapy, I had no problems with my pregnancy. What gives? Every month more and more negative pregnancy tests. I just couldn't get it.

We first tried Clomid. Talk about a roller coaster. That drug is something else. I would wake up feeling like I was stuck in somebody else's skin and I had ocular migranes. It was absolutely awful and we did three rounds of Clomid with IUIs with no results. I was getting very frustrated and worried. I guess it is fair to add that by this point I was 34 and my husband was 42. My clock was beginning to click but his was like a grandfather clock. He really did not want to be "walking with a cane to this child's graduation" as he liked to put it.

After the three rounds my regular OB said there wass really nothing else he could do to help me. He felt that I was suffering from high FSH and PCOS and that I would benefit greatly from a reproductive endocrinologist. My sister had done IVF after a similar path so she referred me to her doctor, the absolutely amazing Dr. Brian Barnett at Plano Presby. He had a wait list, like every other reputable RE in the world, but it was only 4 months. Soon my number was up and I met with Dr. Barnett. We started off doing "medicated IUI" cycles which involves taking injectable drugs to stimulate follicle growth. Three rounds, big fat negatives every time. I was not responding to the stimulation from the Gonal-F.

So we were faced with the big question of IVF. I never thought our path to another child would lead us down this dark route. But God did, because he had provided us with an insurance plan that covered three successful rounds of IVF. By successful, they mean a erm pregnancy with live birth. I had never heard of such a thing. I had the office call three times to verify this absolutely amazing news. I couldn't believe it and it seemed as if the door to IVF had been opened to us. We never would have been able to afford it had we not had the insurance.

I had to take two months off from medications to let my ovaries settle back down to normal. Even though they were not stimulated enough during the IUI cycles, I guess Dr. Barnett wanted there to be a rest between the IUI cycles and the IVF cycles.

A Little More History

Once we were able to take Walter home from the hospital we were instructed to show up at Children's Medical Center of Dallas at 8:00 the following morning. There we met a few of the doctors that would be taking part in Walter's care. We became part of the "Vascular Abnormality Clinic" which consists of doctors from both Children's and Scottish Rite Hospital who work on cases together to determine the best route of maintenance and care. Since his condition will never go away it becomes a situation where we work together to maintain the pain associated with it. The doctor we spent the most face time with, Dr. Burns, actually lives only a few blocks away and went to the same high school and my husband and me. Small world. Once I get back to my house from the hospital I will upload pictures of what his leg looked like. Ha! I have no idea when that will be!

So we began to settle into the idea that he had this congenital condition and the shock began to wear off and we were able to settle into our own skin a little bit. Not for long, though. He came down with what I thought was a nasty cold when he was 7 weeks old. I took him to the pediatricican who told me very calmly, "I would like you to take him to Children's hospital. Do not go home and get anything, just go there. I don't want to scare you, but I want you to go quickly". What? What in the world?

So off we went, back to Children's, and of course this time I knew the way. We were immediately taken into the ER by wonderful doctors and nurses. They quickly determined Walter had a pretty severe case of RSV. I had heard horror stories about RSV, mainly from my sister, whose twins caught the virus when they were 4 months old. We were quickly checked into a room, which I learned during my stay there was nothing short of a miracle because of the numbers of children affected with RSV. It was absolutely terrible to watch my baby once again hooked up to all kinds of machines to help him breathe. Once again I questioned how we had ended up there, why my sweet baby was once again begin poked and prodded by doctors. We were there for seven days before we were released under strict orders to try our best to keep Walter inside the house as much as possible.

While I was in the hospital I made a video of Walter with my cell phone. It shows what a RSV coughing fit looks like. I took this video to show to my friends with newborns because I had no idea what I was seeing when he began his coughing. Had I known what to look for, maybe we could have caught the RSV earlier? Again, once I am home from the hospital I will upload the video.

Roll Back the Clock

A little about me. I have lived in Dallas all of my life except for my college years when I attended the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. I was in Fayetteville for quite a few years doing victory laps. After I finished college I moved back to Dallas.

My husband, John, and I went to the same high school but did not know each other because he was a few years older. We met in Dallas in 2000 and I knew from the miute I met him that I would marry him. Pretty cliche, I know, but it was true. I fell in love with his laugh.

We bought our home in 2002 and were married in November of 2003. Our wedding was an absolute blast and a real blow out for his friends because they were sure he would never make it down the aisle. We had a wonderful honeymoon in Maui and returned back to Dallas after 10 glorious days.

In January I didn't really feel like myself. My head was very groggy and I was oh so tired all the time. I took a pregnancy test and we were surprised and very excited to know we would be expecting our first baby in October. I had the regular sickness and spent many months with my head over the toilet. Other than the nausea, the pregnancy was fairly uneventful and I happily spent the months planning the nursery and awaiting the arrival of our daughter, Mary Catherine.






Let me tell you, Mary Catherine had her daddy wrapped right around her finger from day one. Every day when he came home from work he would ask "where's my girl" but now was meaning where was Mary Catherine, not Mommy! He is such an amazing father!

John has one sister that is two years older than him. I have one sister, Brooke, who is seven years older, a brother, Rob, who is five years younger than me, and a little sister, Windy, who is thirteen years younger than me. Almost 21 years between my older sister and my younger. Same parents! Make for a pretty wild household but I wouldn't have it any other way. That being said, we knew we wanted to have our children pretty close together. I had my heart set on having my babies eighteen months apart but God had other plans for me. I had three miscarriages before we welcomed my son home in October of 2006. Up until the first miscarriage I had never really experienced a great loss like that and I had no idea that it would ever happen to me. I was devastated. After the first came another, and then another. I was furious at my body and did not understand why this was happening. After the third miscarriage my OB tested my blood and I tested positive for anticardiolipin and antiphosophilipin syndromes. I was actually relieved to know that there WAS something wrong because at least there would be a plan of action.

So I began to take heparin injections and finally was able to carry another pregnancy. Again I was sick and hung my head over the toilet for a few months. Thank God we had gutted and remodeled the house in 2005 because I had a much nicer bathroom to spend my first few months in. During the second trimester I began to relax a little and think that I might actually bring a second baby home.

Fast forward to his birth....our son John "Walter" was born on October 5, 2006, exactly one day and two years behind his older sister. It was a scheduled C-Section and we checked in early on the morning of the 5th and awaited what we thought was going to be a normal birth. Big mistake.

As soon as my OB took Walter from my stomach he said something was wrong. Immediately a team ran in from the NICU and grabbed for my sweet baby who was blue. The last thing I remember was someone saying there was something wrong with his leg. After that point I remember nothing for about 3 days.

My son was immediately taken to the NICU where he remained for a week. He was intubated to assist with his breathing. He could not eat. And his leg looked like he had elephantitis. It was so awful and so surreal to see my baby lying there in the NICU looking so huge compared to the other babies but being so sick and not having any idea what was wrong with his leg.

At one point, the head doctor told my husband that he was fairly certain that Walter was born with lymphoma. John was doing his best to look out for me as I was a tad bit fragile at this point, and he decided he would not tell me this until the doctors had decided for sure what was going on. In the meantime, though, the doctor came to my room with his concerns. I remember my father was in the room and I began to scream. I tried to sit up and tore open my staples from my C-section. I just looked to my father who had crumpled. I was absolutely terrified and felt that God had forsaken me.

Soon began a battery of testing to try to determine what was wrong with my son. Doctors came from all over to see this baby who was born with such a bizarre condition. They took him away every morning to do more and more MRIs. After five days the doctors told us they believed he was born with Klippel Trenaunay. This is a vascular and lymphatic congenital condition that spontaneously occurs in utero and will not go away. At this point, as long as my sweet baby was going to live, I felt I could handle anything.