A Cup of Spoiled Milk

So we've been on a bit of a hiatus.  In truth, life got the best of me and I just couldn't find time to tell our tale.  However it has been quite an exciting time.  I'll try to play catch up over time (maybe) but to fill everyone in - on May 12th, 2014 we went from a family of 3 to a family of 5.  That's right - twins.  Identical girls, nonetheless.  And so I've spent the past 12 weeks on my maternity leave and thought that now would be the time to share our time with you.

So I was a planned Cesarean - not my idea of an ideal birth but baby A was stubborn and remained breech for the entire end of my pregnancy.  The day prior to my scheduled CSection (yes I made it all the way to 37 weeks) I decided to have Jacob paint my belly. It was an extraordinarily large canvas and I thought that he would enjoy doing it.

Of course, being an obstetrician, I had to put my creative juices to work and accurately depict the position of these girls.

So here we are the morning of May 12th.  For those of you that think that being an obstetrician made this process easier you are 100% wrong.  I was afraid every day of this pregnancy knowing what I know and having seen patients before me deliver prematurely.  The day I found out that we were having twins (I was about 6 weeks pregnant) I hoped that Will Smith would show up with his mind erasing taser and I could proceed through the next 9 months blissfully ignorant.  But he never showed up.  And we made it to the end.

I'll be honest - I was not your most compliant patient.  And when it came time to my spinal I threatened the anesthesiologists that I would aim my vomit on his shoes if he allowed me to vomit in the OR.  I cried during the time out while laying on the operating room table and offered to dictate the case while it was being done since I could picture exactly what they were doing (how gross).  But in the end...

Ryan Anh was born at 1218pm, 5lbs 15oz and 20 inches long, and...

Ava Mai followed shortly thereafter at 1219pm, 6lbs 11oz and 18 1/2 inches long.

We were truly blessed

and so began the next chapter in our lives.

Jacob loved his baby sisters from the beginning.  I was definitely worried about what his reaction would be to them, if he would be angry at me, angry at them, indifferent, etc.  But he asked to hold one of them and then when he decided it was time to go for a walk he realized that there was a second baby and said "I hold other baby?"

So here we are a family of 5.  By no means has this been an easy transition.  I remember my mom always telling me that going from 1 to 2 was the hardest transition.  What about 1 to 3?  These have been the hardest 12 weeks of my life.  Some days I just want to cry - maybe from sheer exhaustion, or from frank defiance by a 2 year old, or just outright frustration that everyone can't be happy (or sleeping) all at the same time.  Some days I look around my house and wonder if there will ever be any sense of order again.  And some days I wonder where that cup of milk went that I gave jacob for breakfast, only to have it resurface a few days later in the refrigerator of the toy kitchen.  But every day I am thankful for the beautiful family that Khoa and I have created and we are forced to laugh about the cup of spoiled milk.