Faith

I've been thinking about religion a lot lately....especially in light of everything going on with my family right now. How do people have/keep faith? What kind of god takes away a beautiful baby girl long before her time should be up?  She was robbed of her life with a loving family and her parents have been robbed of a lifetime of memories with their precious princess.  I think about her when I wake up in the morning, when I go to bed at night, and all the time inbetween.  I think about how many people she touched in her short time here.  I think about how much I miss her and if I miss her so much I can't imagine what her parents must be feeling.  How will they recover?  How will they keep going on?  How will they find a way to move forward with their lives?  I keep putting myself in their shoes and it is devestating.  Why am I so lucky to have 3 healthy kids and they have to go through this? 

There are so many unanswered questions.  But through it all some are able to keep their faith.  I don't understand.  How do people believe in something that they've never seen?  How do people believe in a god that can bring such bad things to such good people?  It makes no sense.  I hate it when people say things like everything happens for a reason or maybe it was for the best.  That is all so insensitive.  There is no good reason that an infant is taken from this world at only 5 1/2 weeks.  There is nothing "best" about the devestation that is left behind.

One thing is for sure.  The love and support that our family has been shown is amazing!  You never realize how many people love you until you are in a situtation like this.  I hope that my family is able to find comfort in each other and in all of the wonderful friends we have.  And for those that are able to find/have/keep faith I hope they are able to find comfort with their religion.

In memory of Sophia Jane Smallwood. 

You are greatly loved and sadly missed.

This one is for Allie

I really suck at this whole blogging thing.  At first I started it as a way to keep family and friends up to date on our lives...then I had babies and quickly realized that time is now the enemy.  Not only are there not enough hours in the day but time also makes my babies grow.  The boys are already 8 1/2 months old and Miss Madison 9 going on 19.  In an effort to keep up with my blog, I have joined forces with my friend Allie.  We are both going to be updating our blogs at least once a week.  So this one is for Allie :)

This weekend was crazy!  Madison had soccer tournaments on Saturday.  The first game was at 9:15 and if they won, they had to play again at 2:15.  Guess what....they won!  So we had 3 1/2 hours to kill between games.  We had lunch and headed up to Kings Island to pick up our passes for next year.  We went back to the soccer field after that where the girls had a heartbreaking loss.  They played hard and should be very proud of themselves.

As much fun as hanging out at the soccer field was, it was time to get our pumpkins!  We went to Browns Farm out in Ross and took the kids out into the pumpkin patch.  Madison had a great time and really took her time picking out the perfect pumpkin.  The boys didn't seem to be too impressed but they hung in there like little troopers.

Carter 

Nolan

Forgot to have Madison take off her "rec specs"

After the pumpkin patch it was home to get the boys settled and to carve our pumpkins.  I wasn't feeling the best but we still had fun and Madison hasn't stopped talking about it.  It really is the little things in life. 

 I think that's about it for now.  I have plenty more to write about but it is past my bedtime.  Hopefully I can start to blog at least once a week.  Who knows, I might even get really good at this and find the time to go back and tell all the stories I want to tell.

Where does the time go?

The boys are 6 months old today.  Where does the time go!?  I thought this would be an appropriate time to post my birth story.  This might be a little rambling and all over the place...it makes me emotional.  In any event, here is my story...


I had a pretty uncomplicated pregnancy. Everything was going great until a regular weekly appointment (I think it was at 36 weeks). I got an ultrasound at every appointment because I was pregnant with twins. At this appointment they found that Baby B had high cord flow. Dr. Froehlich said that could mean the placenta wasn't working properly. He tried to get me into the Peri group that day but they were booked and it was already 4:00. So he admitted me to the hospital. Through my WHOLE pregnancy Dr. F. was so laid back. He never got worked up over anything and that really helped put me at ease (some docs put women who are pregnant with twins on bedrest just because, Dr. F. wasn't one of those doctors). So when he was a little worried about this it made me really worried! He told me not to worry because at 36 weeks I had made it far in my pregnancy and the babies had a great chance of having no complications if they had to be born at that point. I was in the hospital overnight and saw the peri group the next day. At the ultrasound the cord flow was still a little high but the peri didn't think it was high enough to warrant delivery. So they sent me home (big, fat, and miserable but that's beside the point). Dr. F. put me on bedrest and I had to see him twice a week to make sure everything was ok. Fastforward through a couple weeks of bedrest...

I had a scheduled induction for Feb. 9 but that was when we had a big snow storm coming. Dr. F's office called me the morning of the 8th to see if I would be interested in being induced that day due to the incoming storm. I was thrilled! They told me to eat lunch, pack my stuff, and get to the hospital around noon. We got there, checked in and settled, and they started the pitocin. I had been contracting through most of my pregnancy and was Brethine for it for a long time so at first the contractions didn't seem to be any worse. I was hanging with my family, playing cards, and just waiting on the babies to make their debut. Around 4 my contractions started picking up (they kept increasing my pitocin a little at a time) and I got my epidural shortly thereafter.  Dr. F came in around 5:30 and broke my water. He said he was going to go home and to have dinner with his family and he would be back to deliver me in a few hours. About 10 or 15 minutes after he broke my water all hell broke loose. One of the babies heart rates dropped into the 50s. I saw it drop but thought the monitor wasn't picking it up properly and that it would rebound. It didn't. My nurse came in to try to adjust the monitor but that didn't help. She pushed a button or made a call (I can't remember which) and there were a ton of nurses running into my room. I had nurses all over me! One with her hand in my who-ha, 3 trying to get heart rates, 1 calling the doc, someone else trying to calm me down, someone else giving me oxygen, etc, etc. I was a mess! They put a scalp probe on Baby A to get a better heart rate reading. After a few minutes Dr. F came in, they came me a shot of Brethine to stop my contractions and the babies heart rates went back up. He did an ultrasound and said everything was looking ok for now and he didn't think he needed to deliver me right then but that they would keep a really close eye on me and would take me to the OR if this happened again. Dr. F really took the time to put me at ease and we joked about how we almost ruined dinner with his family. The plan after that was that he would try (again) to go have dinner with his family and that he would be back to check on me as soon as he was finished. He said I was still ok to try a vaginal birth as long as the boys were tolerating everything ok.

Not 5 minutes later the babies heart rates dropped again...this time into the 20s. I knew something was wrong and this time there were doctors and nurses in my room. Dr. F hadn't even made it out of the hospital. They came in, gave Eric a bunny suit, and prepped me for surgery as they were wheeling me to the OR. I have never seen Dr. F look as serious as he did at that moment. I knew we were in trouble if the laid back, funny doc had a look like that. He said he would be to the babies in 10 minutes from the time he started surgery. Eric had to wait outside until they got me ready. They gave me more meds in my epidural to numb me and had even made the incision before they brought Eric in. From the time he started to the time the babies were born was maybe 5 minutes. It felt like an eternity. Dr. F was reassuring but really took more time to focus on the babies. The person at my head (I would guess the anethesiologist) was like an angel. I had a panic attack because I felt like I couldn't breathe. She said it was a side effect of the medication and that even though I was breathing I was numb so high that I felt like I wasn't. She put her hand up to my mouth and nose so I could feel my breath coming back on my face. She also gave me some anxiety meds. Those didn't take the edge off enough so they gave me another dose (at my request). The 2nd dose really did me in. I remember hearing something and asking Eric if that was the babies crying. He said yes. That is really the only thing I remember about them being born....hearing them both cry, the terrible anxiety I had, and worrying like crazy that they weren't going to make it. Both of the boys were fine. They didn't have to go to the NICU and spent the first hour or so of their lives with me in recovery. No one really knows what caused all of our problems but we do know that if we had waited any longer to deliver them they might not be with us. I really feel like we owe everything to Dr. F. and the team at B-North for their actions in getting our boys here as quickly as they did.

I can't say enough good things about B-North. Everyone, including Jerry (our cleaning lady), was awesome! We are done having kids but if we weren't I wouldn't hesitate to deliver there again! That's a pretty big thing for me because all along I thought I should be delivering at Good Sam because of their NICU and was kind of mad that Dr. F. would only deliver at Good Sam if the babies were very premature (either 30 or 32 weeks). In the end, I couldn't ask for a better experience given the scary circumstances.

So after all of that, this is what we ended up with...

Carter (left)  Nolan (right)

It was totally worth it!  And in just 6 short months they have gone from that to this...

Carter (left)  Nolan (right)

I still can't figure out where the time has gone but I know that I am very lucky to have my family.  Eric, Madison, Carter, and Nolan are my world!