Rest of June and July

Well, a lot has happened since the last chance to post. On 16 June, my friends at work gave me a great shower, the generosity of so many well wishers was quite a surprise. I'm sure the twins pram and other items will be to good use for a long time to come. See some picture below. I was also able to meet up with Renata, Bella, Inga and Al at Stanford Shopping Center for a nice lunch before things heated up around here. And my parents went to PA for a 50th High School Class reunion!

The July heatwave, which they assure us is on the way out, started almost with the beginning of the month. Today is the 11th day in a row we've had over 100F heat in Los Gatos/Almaden. Thank God my parents put in AC last year, after 22 years in the house without. No such thing as global warming, right? Church and childhood friends here in the Bay Area had yet another shower for me on 15 July. I continue to be amazed at the amount of friends, family and family type friends we have here... and their excitement for the boys is great. I can't really find the right words to express how much the support and love from all these people mean to me.

Anyway, on July 19 my sister Brenda in Rochester NY was due for an operation. So, even though my parents had just been on the east coast a couple of weeks ago, they returned to help her and her family out during this really hard time. They left on 18 July, the operation was very successful. We're still waiting for some of the pathology results to understand the course of continuing treatment, however the surgeon was very pleased with the procedure itself. Which is good news. On 20 July, I had what was quickly becoming my standard Thursday schedule: Nutritionist in the morning (to help manage my gestational diabetes, diagnosed in week 29, basically the week I got here in June. Good news is that I've been able to control with diet, thanks to much work on the parental front!), Non Stress Test for the babies and a standard OB appt for me in the afternoon. This Thursday was looking like any other, expect that my parents were with Brenda instead of me and the heat, of course.

The news at the nutritionist was good, I could even start eating more variety, which is what I was dying for! The NST went very well, but the OB noticed that I was really holding a lot of water (edema), my blood pressure was a little high and my belly was HUGE. She was confident that I was going to be fine, am sure it had nothing to do with her going on holiday the next day, of course, and ordered some standard blood tests. Ralph and I had been talking at this point about him changing his tickets to come out earlier to San Jose, from Cyprus, as I was sure I couldn't make it to 17 August.

Friday morning I called the dr office to see if I could move up the scheduled csection and left a message. When the mobile rang and it was the Ob office, I assumed it was for that... how wrong I was!!! They had my blood panel back, my liver counts were too high (read: failing), my platelet were too high, my blood pressure was through the roof etc etc. The call said to go to the hospital and pack a bag just in case... I totally freaked out! Called Norma who started on her way over. At that moment Ralph happened to have called. He'd been working like 15+ hour days trying to get Americans out of Beirut and was pooped. When I was a tad panicked about it all, he started to look for tickets to SFO. Norma came and got me...

We got to Good Sam hospital about noon and sat waiting for the dr (recall mine is on holiday, so it's the back up Dr I've never met) until about 14:00. They admitted me and started to explain the rush, Norma would be my support person and I was going to have those boys NOW! She called NY to let Pop and Farf know what was going on and I relied on Yasmin, as I knew I could, to get ahold of Ralph. I got a spinal block at about 17:00, and the babies were born at 17:23. Baby A was 5 pounds 9 ounces and Baby B was 4 pounds 15 ounces, both 19 inches long.

My parents rushed back from NY, got here about noon on Saturday and Ralph was able to get to the hospital at about 15:00 Sunday. The boys are in and will be in NICU for a while, since they were born at 34 weeks they have some goals to achieve (ie: taking all nourishment through a nipple, maintaining their own body temperature and a couple other items). The good news is that Good Sam has a level 3 NICU unit and they are well taken care of, thank God for insurance.
I was released from the hospital on Tuesday 26 July at about 15:00, the only issue is that I had a blood clot in some skin under a staple so I have about a 2 inch open wound which Ralph has to clean out 2x day and is slowing me down a little. He's doing a great job with it, it freaks me out!!!I now understand why a csection recover is 8 weeks while a natural birth is 6 weeks... trade off either at the birth or throughout the recovery.

Here are some photos, hope you enjoy and would love to hear from you... in the meantime, I need work on a lot of thank you notes for that church/friend shower!!

PS somehow on the operating table I asked for a pathology test on the placenta to know if they are identical or fraternal, the result is that there is a 99%+ chance they are identical!