Survival Mode

When Tyler and I found out we were having twins we were so nervous, scared, overwhelmed, and so many other things mixed in between.  I mean, we had a 7 month old who we had barely just met!  Once the shock set in we went about our life- preparing for our world to be turned  upside down with 2 babies at a time instead of just one.

Easton

My pregnancy with the boys was healthy.  There were no warning signs that anything was wrong and they were growing, healthy and strong.  But at only 5 months along in the pregnancy things started to feel different.  Being a twin pregnancy I had a few more doctor's appointments than I did with a singleton pregnancy.  At one of my appointments the doctor examined me, did an ultrasound of the boys and told me I needed to go on bedrest at home.  He wasn't alarmed that anything was necessarily wrong, but noticed my body was more stressed than it should be at 5 months along (HELLO....I'm 5'1" and have 2 babies growing inside of me.....of course my body is stressed!).  Being on home bedrest also meant I had a lifting restriction....I could no longer pick up Easton as he was over my weight limit.  This made life a little more tricky.  Of course we had awesome family and friends that would come to help if Tyler was not around.  So, for a few weeks I was on home bed rest, trying my hardest to follow instructions.  Until one day, Tyler was out of town helping a friend and I was home with Easton on my own.  A lot of our family was busy with a birthday party that day but a friend came over with her daughter for a little bit to help.  After awhile Easton laid down for a nap and our friends left.  I hadn't been feeling the best and decided to lay down to see if I would feel any better.  An hour of resting and I still didn't feel right.  I decided it would be best if I went to Labor & Delivery to get checked out.  Better to be safe than sorry.  Tyler was still gone so I asked family to take Easton so I could go in to the hospital.

Seriously, can this kid get any cuter?!

Once at the hospital I was checked out and told they would be admitting me for hospital bed rest as my water could break at any moment.  NOT what I was expecting.  So, there I sat in the hospital willing my babies to stay inside as long as possible.  It was only about a week later, at 27 weeks, and the boys were born.  The boys' entrance into the world was a little chaotic and pretty stressful.  They required breathing support and were immediately hooked up to many wires and monitors to watch their vitals.  Immediately Tyler and I had to learn to live in survival mode.  I stayed in the hospital for several days recovering and when I was discharged we spent our days split between our home- spending time with Easton as much as we could and the hospital being with the boys as they learned how to breath and grow.  This was our routine for 3 months; getting up in the morning, taking Easton to daycare, Tyler dropping me off at the NICU, him going to work for the day and then coming to pick me up to go home and spend the evenings with Easton.  We did what we needed to keep life as normal as possible for Easton but also spend time with our babies and bond with them.  We were in survival mode.

31 days old and they were finally together again after being in separate isolettes

Then came the day for Christian to be discharged.  Charlie stayed in the NICU for a couple more weeks as there were some growing issues yet.  Boy was that a hard day to take one baby home and leave the other one at the hospital!  I would still go back to the NICU daily to be with Charlie and of course Christian would come with me.  A couple weeks later we had both boys home.  But even then it was near constant doctors appointments and check ups and about a month after being home Charlie needed surgery- so back into the hospital we went for another week.  Still, survival mode was our life.  We rarely slept.  I lived on coffee (who am I kidding, I still do) and was off of work for nearly 9 months.  When I did go back to work it was all about trying to find a new balance.  Luckily I was able to reduce my hours and go back to work part time.  That helped a little.

Size reference- 3 1/2 mos old- not much bigger than dad's shoe

As the boys grew and got a little older we started seeing little things in Charlie that worried us.  He never slept through the night, he was always fussy, constantly needed to be held- moved- rocked- you name it.  He got a little older and began having long-severe tantrums, head banging and putting holes into our walls.  We still didn't sleep- in fact it seemed to be getting worse.  We were still in survival mode.  Doing what we could to keep our house running as smoothly as possible as well as keeping our jobs and trying to figure out one finicky little boy.  I'll admit, we were stressed.  All the time. We were in survival mode.

It was when Tyler and I were talking recently that I realized we are still in survival mode.  5 years later and we are still just trying to get by, taking everything day by day.  We never feel like we are "caught up" either at home or at work.  Between school schedules, business schedules, church schedules, and therapy schedules we miss things.  Things get dropped- more frequently than I'd like to admit.  If you've been to our house recently you may have noticed the gigantic whiteboard calendar in our living room.  We needed to implement this to ever stand a chance at some-what keeping everything straight.  Add in meltdowns, sleep problems, eating difficulties and sensory issues and what do you get?  Survival Mode.

We'll be heading into summer soon.  I thought maybe this could be a time for us to slow down.  But looking at our calendar, we already have so much going on- and that was before I added swim lessons to the calendar!  Survival mode continues.