Update - 3 months

Ok so this update is a little old but better late than never, right?

Hannah learned how to roll from her back to her stomach at three months and about a week or so later Emily did it too. It's like once they figured it out, that's all they wanted to do. Roll, roll, roll. :)  I have a video but it won't upload (DARNIT!!) Trust me, it's adorable. It's a proud mommy moment.

My parents came up on my birthday to watch the girls so Jason and I went out to eat.

Emily - Grandma Lane - Hannah 

 

Grandpa Lane snapping a picture of Emily

 



Grandpa & Hannah

 

Halloween was fun. We didn't dress them up this year. I know, I'm a boring mom. But costumes were expensive and they either had to be a pumpkin or a skeleton (I'm not creative enough to come up with something original.) But luckily their awesome Aunt Laura and Uncle David sent them Halloween outfits that were perfect!

Emily Left - Hannah Right

 

The rest of the month was spent playing at home with mom. They love to...

 

Sit in their Bumpo chairs and play with their toys.

 

Play on the floor with Cesar.

 

Read books.

 



 I finally got around to taking some nice pictures of the girls in their pumpkin hats that Grandma Beth got them.

 

Hannah

Emily

 

 

Some other things that happened this month...

 

They got their first round of shots. 



 

They figured out where the tv is.

 

They found their toes (Emily)

They figured out how mommy's iphone camera works. (Hannah)



 

 

I'll post the 4 month update soon.  Hannah just woke up and she's hungry.
Love you all!!
~Laura, Jason, Emily & Hannah



Seeing Double

A few weeks ago my sister asked me if I had written down my birth story. I thought I'd remember everything but as I was writing this I realized that a few hours / days are foggy. I know I and my girls will appreciate me taking the time to write this all down someday.

After a few false alarms, we made it to my goal of 38 weeks pregnant on Friday, July 20th and headed into the hospital for my scheduled c-section. We were supposed to check in at 6:30 but we went in a couple of hours early because I was in labor (for real this time) I was in some serious pain. My back was hurting SO bad and every time I had a contraction it got even worse. I could not get comfortable no matter what I tried. The most frustrating part was knowing that the contractions weren't doing anything. The girls were both laying transverse (sideways) and weren't going anywhere no matter how intense my contractions got. We decided to go in early because I couldn't eat or drink anything I was hoping they'd be able to either give me something for the pain or move up my surgery time. Neither happened. The day before, I had gone in for my pre-op blood work and after checking in to the hospital, the nurse informed me that they wanted to run the blood work again because some of my numbers were off. My blood pressure was really high but I figured it was because I was in a lot of pain. Wrong again, but more on that later.  They tried to get the girls on the monitors but gave up after trying for over an hour. The girls were moving around so much they couldn't get a good read on them.

Around 8:00 am I was wheeled back to the operating room. My whole pregnancy I was nervous about having surgery but I was so ready to see my girls I didn't care how they arrived. My doctor, Dr. Eggers, was great. She knew I was nervous and while I was getting my spinal block she came in and held my hand and talked to me putting me completely at ease. Before I knew it, I was numb, Jason came in the room all decked out in his scrubs and the surgery had started. I could see the clock and it was just after 8:30. I started to feel sick a few minutes into the surgery, and then at 8:38 I heard Dr. Eggers say "Here's Emily!" Then I heard my daughter's beautiful cry for the first time. What an awesome sound! I think they held her up for me to see her but I missed it. Before I even had time to ask to see her I heard, "And here's Hannah!"  It was still 8:38.  I was shocked they were born so close together. Dr. Eggers held up this tiny little girl. Across the room, I could see Emily's little hands waving around as they were cleaning her off. They brought Emily over to me. She was just beautiful! I wanted to hold her so badly, but I couldn't. I settled for giving her a kiss and then they brought Hannah over. For some reason, they kept her by me longer than Emily. Hannah was crying and as started talking to her she stopped crying and just laid there looking at me. When I stopped talking, she'd cry again. It was like she recognized my voice. It was such a cool feeling to have that immediate connection with her.  Jason went into the nursery with the girls while the doctors finished putting me back together. Emily was 6 pounds 11 ounces and Hannah was 5 pounds 14 ounces. Both of them were absolutely perfect. Before I knew it, I was being wheeled into recovery. It was 9:15 am.

                                                  Emily on left, Hannah on right

 

While in recovery, I was shaking like a leaf. I was told this might happen so I wasn't surprised. I was trying my hardest to stop it but I don't think it made much difference. My blood pressure was still really high and on top of that, my blood work came back with the same bad results. I had HELLP syndrome.

H - Hemolysis (the breakdown of red blood cells)
EL - Elevated liver enzymes
LP - Low platelet count

They put me on magnesium sulfate to prevent seizures and had a blood transfusion ready just in case I needed it. I had to have my blood drawn every couple of hours and my vitals were taken every hour. My arm looked like a purple pin cushion by the time I was discharged. On top of that, my blood pressure was still too high.

Jason met me in the recovery room and brought the girls with him. We immediately started skin to skin and breastfeeding. Eventually, I was wheeled back into my room. After that, I honestly don't remember much of that day. I think a combination of the drugs, lack of sleep, and joy of meeting our daughters all ran together and I was just on autopilot. What I do remember is Jason stepping into his daddy role like a pro. He took care of the girls while I was really sick.

My nurses were fantastic. I loved every single of of them. Although I had many nurses during my stay, it seemed that I always had the nurse that would give me exactly what I needed. While I was really sick the first two days, I had a nurse that used to work with really sick cancer patients (not that I was ever that sick) but she was very good. When I was finally time for me to get out of bed and walking around, my nurse was a no-nonsense kind of lady that kind of said, "Time to get up. Here's what you need to do. Let me know when you're done." Then our last nurse was a mom of 3 and was a great help when we had questions concerning the girls.  I've wanted to go back and thank them all again personally but I'm sure they wouldn't remember us.

While we were in the hospital, we had many visitors. My parents & little brother, and my older brother's family came up as well as Jason's whole family. A few of Jason's co-workers and the pastor at our church also stopped by. I was thankful for all the support but this was one time I was glad we lived away from family because let's face it, who wants visitors when they just had surgery, no shower or sleep and is drugged up? Uh, not me!

My dad

David & Laura

 

Dr. Eggers

 

We ended up staying in the hospital until Tuesday (4 days) because of my high blood pressure. To say I was ready to go home is a gross understatement. We dressed the girls in their KU gear and got the heck out of there before the doctors changed their minds.

Jason holding the girls as we were being discharged.

 

My mom and niece stayed with us our first few nights at home. I'm so glad we had someone there to help us. When we finally pulled in our driveway we were greeted by signs made by my sister-in-law. Thanks Laura!

The first few days and nights were not too bad. They ate every 3 hours and I was breastfeeding so that meant I was up every three hours. Actually, it was more like every hour and a half. It's amazing what you can do on little to no sleep. We had a lot of help though. More on the first few weeks with the girls in my next post.

First family photo

 



The Nursery

Now that the girls are 4 weeks away (yikes!) I figured I better finish the nursery in case they decide to come early. I wanted to stay with a gender neutral theme because I'm not really into the overly girly / pink explosion / pretty princess look. Looking at our registry we discovered that without realizing it, we had picked out things with a safari theme. PERFECT! What little kid doesn't like animals? Plus, the walls of the nursery were already tan and I did not want to paint and if you'll rememer from my previous post, Jason has done enough painting in the basement to last him a lifetime.

We bought our crib & changing table a couple of months ago and they been sitting in the boxes until we finished the basement. The day after we moved the furniture into the basement we started on the nursery. Jason was very excited...

We've decided to only use one crib for now because we've heard that twins sleep better together. It makes sense. They've been side by side for the first 9 months of their lives. Why not spend a few more months together?

We were planning on buying a wall decal that said "Born Together ~ Friends Forever" but I was lazy and also didn't want to spend the money on it so we settled for some wall decals to match the bedding we found at Target. I'm so happy with the end result.

As you can see, their closet is quickly filling up with "stuff." I can't wait to read all those books to my girls!

Finally, my awesome co-workers gave us this toy box that was hand painted to match our safari themed room and FILLED with toys, clothes, books and other goodies for our girls. We are truly blessed to know such wonderful people.

Well, there you have it. Now we just need our two little Jayhawks to make their entrance into this world...but not for a couple of weeks please. :)

Final Preperations for the Twins

Life has been moving so fast lately. We have finished the basement, almost finished the nursery, made one last trip back home for a couple of months, and even caught a Royals game all while anxiously awaiting the arrival of the twins.

In my last post, I showed the progress we had made in the basement. I'm very happy to report that we are finally finished. Well, almost finished. Jason, God love him, hates painting and was very nervous about edging the wall paint next to the ceiling. He did a great job but there are a few spots where wall paint got on the ceiling. An easy fix, but we are a little burnt out on painting so that will get done when it gets done. A couple of Jason's coworkers came over to help us paint. Mary Kay has been a total blessing to us. She has triplets and has given us lots of great advice. She's also an excellent painter and offered to help edge the living room so Jason wouldn't have to.

The carpet was installed and unfortunately the installers had to come back and fix a few seams that were very visible. The fixed most of them but there are still a few that you can see. It's disappointing that they didn't fix all of them but, I hate to say it, we were tired of working on the basement and just wanted to move the furniture in and be done with it. So we did. Fingers crossed that decision doesn't come back to bite us later on down the road...

A huge thank you to Jason's coworker, Brian, that helped us paint and move furniture (twice.)

 Living Room

 Guest Bedroom

 Office (I love the built-in bookshelf)

Bathroom

I love how each room turned out. The bedroom and office have plenty of space and the living room is very roomy. It would be even more spacious without our huge sectional but we didn't want to spend any more money and it's really comfy so it's staying put for now. The bathroom is huge! I'm sure our future house guests will appreciate having a full bathroom all to themselves.

We are enjoying the basement living room on these hot summer nights and can't wait for our family to come stay with us when the girls arrive.

Making room for the babies

When we found out we were having twins there were a few things we knew were going to have to change.The first was that we had to get Jason a different car. A few months after we got married, Jason decided it was time to get rid of his quarter life crisis car, a Nisson 350Z like this...

for a more "Kansas weather friendly" 2 door Honda Accord like this...

Not too different, right? Still sporty & powerful.  I tried to convince him the smarter choice would be a 4 door since he said this would be the last car he buys for a while. That was my not-so-subtle way of saying I wanted to start a family in a few years and putting a car seat in a 2 door car would not be fun. I specifically remember him saying "No, it won't be that bad."  Not even one hour after finding out we were having twins Jason admitted he needed a different car. So about a week later he found one he liked. Guess what it was.

That's right. It's the exact same car I told him to get. A 4 door Honda Accord. As soon as we signed the papers I got to say something I've been waiting two years to say. "I TOLD YOU SO!" Oh, it felt so good to say that!

The next change was slightly bigger and more expensive. We had to finish the basement in our new home. We were eventually going to finish it but we decided that with the twins on the way we would need a little more living space. Our current guest bedroom upstairs is going to be the nursery and the other room upstairs is a little too small to be a bedroom and we've been using it as an office and it works great. We want our family to be able to stay with us when they come to visit so a guest bedroom is a must. 

Since the basement wasn't finished, we could pretty much do whatever we wanted. We talked to a few contractors and finally decided on one we liked with a floor plan that was exactly what we wanted. Here's what we started out with.

The utility area is right in the middle of the basement which created a little problem when deciding on a floor plan but we're pretty happy with what we designed. Another weird feature of our basement is the John Deer garage. Pretty much every house up in this area has one and I love it. It's a small garage on the back of your house where you can store all your crap. You know, your lawn mower, freezer, bikes, etc. so that your real garage only stores your cars. Genius!! Right now ours is storing all of our basement furniture and unpacked boxes.

Yes, after six months I'm still not completely unpacked. Give me a break! I've been busy growing two humans!!

On April 2nd Phillip (our contractor) showed up and started framing. I always have a hard time making out the rooms before the actual walls are up. But for those of you who have no problems seeing rooms without walls...

A couple of days later, the dry wall went up and Jason started painting!

Our contractor will be done tomorrow and we just have some touch up painting to do and carpet to install. Another update and more pictures will be coming soon!

And then there were two...

Jason joined me on my first appointment with my OB where we got to hear the heartbeat!

After my exam, my doctor said she wanted me to have a sonogram because she thought I was measuring a little bigger than she expected. I told her "as long as you don't add weeks onto my pregnancy, I'm fine." I was also excited because we were only scheduled to have one sonogram in our pregnancy and that wasn't going to be for another 9 weeks or so. A couple of days later, we went in to see our baby for the first time. When the sonographer began, she asked us if we were ready for our first baby. We both said yes then she said "Well, how about two babies?" Wait...what?

I couldn't believe it, but there they were, plain as day. If you're having trouble seeing them, Baby B is laying sideways with it's head under the "B" and it's butt is in Baby A's face. The sonographer told us that everything she said we wouldn't be able to remember...she was right. I remember nothing after she said there were two babies in there. I started crying immediately. I felt so blessed! Jason just laughed and held my hand. We couldn't take our eyes off the screen. One of the babies made a big movement and waved it's arm at us as if to say "Hi Mom & Dad!"

That was easily one of the most memorable moment of my life. The excitement of seeing my baby for the first time was was good enough. Then I find out that I've been blessed with two children and Jason was there right by my side... it still makes me tear up.

We didn't wait long to tell our family. In fact, Jason called his mom as we were waiting to talk to my doctor. He said "Well, you're going to have two grandbabies." and then his phone dropped the call. I'm sure she thought we were kidding but when we finally got a hold of her again we told her again and swore we weren't joking.

I called my dad at his work. I said "We were having twins!" and he said, "What? Hold on a second. I'll have to call you back." Seriously?  When he called back a minute later he said, "Now, tell me the truth." I said "I am! We're having twins!"  He was tickled.

My mom was the same. I knew she was going to be busy with the lunch rush soon so I wanted to tell her before she got too busy.  I couldn't think of anything clever to say so I just said "We're having twins!" She said "What? No way! Oh my God!" Then she proceeded to tell everyone at work. I knew word would spread fast now that mom knew so I called the rest of my family quickly.

I called my brother's wife, Kim and luckily, my brother and their kids were with her. I told her we just had our first sonogram and everything looked great. She said she was so excited for us to which I replied "You're going to be really excited for us now then because we are having twins." They all went nuts. My nephew Carson said "That's a LOT of diapers!"

Next up was my little sister, Katie. She knew we had our first sonogram today so she asked how it went and I started at the beginning and told her what the sonographer said (how about two babies) and she didn't believe me!! I had to tell her over and over that I wasn't kidding. I even had pictures to prove it. She said she'd believe it when she saw the pictures. I couple of hours later I emailed her the picture and she was still in shock.

It took me FOREVER to get a hold of my sister Sara. She's a teacher so I knew she would be in class and couldn't answer her cell phone so I called the school and asked if I could talk to her on her classroom phone. She answered right away and I apologized for interrupting. I told her everything was fine and I was calling because I had good news. After I told her she yelled "What? My sister's having TWINS!" and then I heard her whole class start cheering! That was awesome.

I feel really bad that I didn't call my little brother, Jon but I knew he would get in trouble if he answered his phone at school so I just let mom & dad tell him that night. I should have called him. That stinks. I feel like a bad sister..

I called my sister-in-law Laura and told her. She's always wanted to have twins so she was very excited for us. Her husband, David got a call from Jason. Now, if you know Jason at all you know that he jokes a lot so naturally, David thought he was kidding until he saw the picture. He said "Either you guys are really good a photoshop or you're really having twins."

Kevin & Kaylee had the same reaction. Jason told them that there were going to be two new babies instead of one and both of them thought that David & Laura were pregnant. It didn't even dawn on them that we were having twins.

Like the videos of us telling our family, I want to be able to share with the twins how our family reacted when they found out we were having twins. Forgive me if this goes on and on but 1.) We have a big family and 2.) each person's reaction is very special to us and I want to make sure I document all of their reactions while they are still fresh in my mind. 

As of today, I'm 26 weeks pregnant. Twelve more weeks and they will be here and we'll be making many, many more memories. I can't wait!

Start Spreadin' the News

I know that Christmas was months ago but I wanted to document us telling our families we were pregnant for the first time. Again, I think it would be cool to show this to our baby someday. I would have loved to be able to see my grandparents and aunts & uncle's reactions when my parents announced they were pregnant with me.

On Dec 23rd we headed home to celebrate Christmas with our families. We were home just 4 weeks earlier for Thanksgiving but this was the first time we'd been home since finding out we were pregnant. We were staying with my parents and I was so worried that I was going to be sick and they were going to suspect or even worse, ask me if I was pregnant before we had a chance to pull off our surprise. Luckily I was able to hide my morning sickness pretty well thanks to Jason sneaking a bowl of cereal downstairs for me.

First up on Christmas Eve was the Friedberg's. Ours will be the first grandchild in Jason's family and Jason's mom has been not-so-mildly hinting that she wants a grandchild for years now (yes, years) so we knew this was going to be a fun surprise.
This year we celebrated over at David & Laura's with a Mexican fiesta. We arrived around 9:00am to help make the food. I always have so much fun cooking with Laura. I feel like we've really become sisters over the past year. (love you Laura!) After eating our delicious meal we opened gifts. I bought a onesie that said "What happens at Grandma's stays at Grandma's" for Jason's mom, Beth. We saved her gift until the very end so everyone would see her open it. What we didn't plan on was having the Chief's game on tv and them getting ready to kick the game-winning field goal right when she was opening the gift. Needless to say, none of the guys (except Jason) were paying attention to Beth's gift. :)

I could watch this video over and over! I love watching everyone's reaction. From Laura's "Eeee!!" to Kevin's "Uncle Kevin is in the building!" Everyone was so excited. I'll never forget it. We ended the day by playing the lottery game. This is a tradition in his family and last year Jason & I added a little twist to the game. Instead of just drawing numbers to see what lottery tickets you got we added charades that had to be performed before you could get your tickets. 

Next up was the Lane's. My parents always have a nice dinner after everyone goes to church on Christmas Eve night. This year, mom overdid herself once again and made prime rib. It was DELICIOUS! Last year Jason & I played the lottery game with my family for the first time and everyone seemed to enjoy it so we decided to play it again this year. Only this time, we rigged it so I would get a charade and that's how we would tell everyone we were expecting. I pulled up each grandkid along with my sister, Katie who was going to have her first child in 2 days. I pointed to each one in order of their birth and then pointed to my stomach, held up 5 fingers and waited for them to figure it out.

We also went over to both of my grandma's houses and told them. They were both so happy for us! It was so much fun telling everyone. It was a Christmas we'll never forget!