The Story of Chloe & Chase
Yesterday, Chloe and Chase turned 16. We went to Chase's soccer game & then went out to dinner. Friday, we will celebrate their birthday with family & Saturday, they get to have their Friend Party. Only once or twice in the last 16 years have we separated the birthday celebrations. The fact that they still are friends and still hang out with a lot of the same people makes their Mom very happy. When they were babies I had a conversation with someone who was a twin and she told me that she hated her brother and they hadn't spoken in years. Such a statement broke my heart & I have hoped and prayed that these twins of mine will remain friends, siblings & twins for all of their lives. Though they go through periods of being annoyed with each other, like all siblings do, they are still pretty close.
Finding out that I was going to have twins was a little bit daunting. Lie. It was a lot daunting. Life altering. Scary. Exciting. Scary. Overwhelming. I didn't know there were 2 babies until I was about 21 weeks along. I didn't have an ultrasound to "date the pregnancy" because it seemed like a waste of time and money. With a 25% share of cost, we decided to wait for the ultrasound that showed more than just a bean. Plus I was pretty sure the 'date of the pregnancy' since I started puking within days of conception. At 20 weeks, I had some blood work. One of the tests was the AFP test. It tests protein that the baby's liver is producing. Problems that it can indicate include Down Syndrome & spina bifida. In California, when you have a positive AFP test, you are automatically bumped into a state system for further testing. My doctor's office didn't even have a chance to talk to me about my results before someone in the state's office in Sacramento called me to discuss my AFP result and schedule an appointment for further testing. Talk about scary! My AFP was double the normal result. (With full knowledge, that makes perfect sense) I think I had to wait about a week before I could get into the clinic in Sacramento. Of course I read everything I could find while I waited for my appointment, tried not to freak out and hoped and prayed that it was a false positive.
My Mom and I went down to Sacramento for my appointment. Unfortunately, before they would do the ultrasound I had to do genetic counseling and answer a ton of questions about what conditions run in my family and Jake's. It really would have been simpler and less terrifying to do the ultrasound first. We finally got to go into the ultrasound. The tech jelled up my belly, stuck the little wand thing on there and said "Do twins run in your family?" while she took the wand off. I said "no". She turned the monitor towards me, put the wand back on my belly and said "they do now". I said "I can't tell Dawn". Dawn had been struggling to have a 2nd baby and had recently had a miscarriage. How unfair that I was getting 2 babies when she was trying so hard to just get 1. I was very worried and upset about how my twin pregnancy would make her feel. (The happy news is that she was soon pregnant with Matt who is 5 months younger than the twins and we sometimes refer to them, even now, as the Triplets)
What followed was a very, very long ultrasound. It had never occurred to me that measuring every little part of 2 babies would take more than twice as long as 1 baby. One of them would get in the way of the other, there's just double parts, it's harder to see everything, it's very crowded in there. We found out that day that we were having a boy and a girl. That was the first of several ultrasounds during the pregnancy. Doctors want to make sure that the babies are both growing well. Sometimes one baby thrives while the other doesn't although that is less common with twins that are in separate sacs as Chloe and Chase were since they (obviously) aren't identical. So much for saving money!
I went into labor the first time at 28 weeks. I was put on bed rest and medication to stop the contractions. I thought that being on bed rest was going to be easy. I like to read. I figured I would just sit there and read all day. Tanner was 2 1/2 and he could come sit with me & watch movies & read. As with most of the story of the twins, it wasn't what I expected and it wasn't that simple. The medication that they gave me stopped the contractions but raised my heart rate. So I basically sat there all jittery. As time went by I got uncomfortable. I couldn't breathe very well. I could eat tiny portions at a time. There just wasn't any room in there. A friend told me that when she would see me she swears she saw little elbows poking out. I was all belly. Chloe and Chase grew at almost exactly the same rate. Chloe always measured a little smaller than Chase but they were progressing well - as long as they would stay in there long enough to finish developing. At one point I was back at the hospital in preterm labor & I was just sick of it. They had me hooked up for hydration and were monitoring the contractions and the heart beats of the babies. (That was always fun, too, watching the nurses try to find both heart beats & get the monitors to stay on each one while making sure that they really had two different ones and not just the same one twice.) The nurses at this particular time I went into the hospital didn't even want me up to go to the bathroom, they wanted me to use a bedpan until they got the labor stopped again. I was not amused. Uncomfortable in the extreme, tired of going in and out of the hospital, tired of sitting in my chair in my living room all day, tired of other people having to take care of me and Tanner. Just plain tired. I said something about just letting them be born. The nurse that was there said to me "well, you can do that if you want. We will do a c-section, fly the babies to Sacramento to a NICU and you will have to stay here until you recover from surgery." Point taken.
My water broke at 37 1/2 weeks. It was the middle of the night. Nataly was staying with us & I went downstairs to tell her that my water had broken, I wasn't having contractions & I was going to call the hospital. Nancy West was the OB on call & she was NOT amused when I said that I hadn't had contractions so I figured I could just stay home for awhile. Middle of the night, transverse twins, 37 weeks. We left within a few minutes of the call, I had one contraction on the way to the hospital which was a five minute drive from our house. When I got to the hospital and they checked me out, I was 7 cm dilated. My turn to be NOT AMUSED. I had to wait for the anesthesiologist, the c-section nurse, another OB, extra nurses because there were 2 babies, 2 pediatricians because they wanted to be sure that they had all bases covered just in case there was something wrong with one of the babies. I was so mad! Active labor & I couldn't even have the dang babies that way because they were SIDEWAYS. It seemed like an interminable wait but it was about an hour. The c-section itself was surprisingly fast - it surprised me for sure. I said "I think I'm going to go to sleep" while they were working on me & Dr West said "OK but you'll miss the baby part, I'm almost there".
Chloe was born first and Chase a minute later. Chloe was 5 pounds, 4 ounces and Chase was 5 pounds, 10 ounces. They gave each of them to a pediatrician to make sure that they were healthy and worked on putting me back together. Both of them were fine though they did end up in warmers at some point during the morning. I also ended up in a warmer. After being stitched up, I went to recovery while Jake was with the twins. I puked forever before a nurse came over and said "didn't they give you something for that?" Love the anti-puke stuff in the IV! Not being able to feel your legs or tell them what to do is extremely strange and scary. I lost a lot of blood and my temperature dropped. The microwave towels didn't work so they put me in a big space bag/sleeping bag thing that blew warm air on my whole body to warm me up. By the time I was warm and they were warm, it had been several hours. I FINALLY got to see them.
It was immediately clear that Chloe looks like me and Chase looks like Jake except that Chloe is dark. She was pretty bald but the little hair that she did have was dark while his was blond. Chloe didn't like the hospital and she didn't like not being with Chase. When I wasn't holding them, I put them in the same bassinet instead of separate ones and that did help her a bit. Nursing two babies is a crazy thing. Because Chloe clearly hated the hospital (I didn't know she was going to scream like that at home, too) I made them let us go a day earlier than they wanted to. I promised to bring them back the next day to check their bilirubin levels and took my tiny little babies home. When we left the hospital, Chase weighted 5'4 and Chloe was down to 4'6. Marin came to help me get them into their cute going home outfits. (His was blue & hers was pink but they were the same style of layette gown) Marin started being Chase's buddy that day but it freaked her out to get him dressed because he was so much smaller than other babies she had watched. When they were burrito'ed in their blanket, they were just babies but when you unwrapped and unwrapped and unwrapped, they seemed so little in there.
We didn't have very many clothes that were small enough and couldn't find anything for Chloe to wear for her blessing. Dan was leaving on his mission within a couple of weeks of them being born and we wanted to do the blessing before he left. Chloe ended up being blessed in one of my Grandma's doll's dresses.
Though small, Chloe could work up a serious wail. She was what is described as a colicky baby. Chase had his first ear infection at 6 weeks and had one almost continually. I spent most of my time nursing them. She didn't want to nurse at the same time as him, so it was feed one, feed the other. Juggle, juggle, juggle. I don't remember much of their first year - sleep deprivation messes with your memory. I had a lot of help. Tanner was a perfect angel of a big brother. He was helpful and more than that, he was such a good boy. Luckily, for everyone, I had a lot of help. Marin ended up moving in with us which probably saved at least one life. Chloe wouldn't take a bottle or a pacifier & spent a lot of time crying. Chase and Marin spent some quality time together for sure. My parents and Anna were next door. Sometimes in the morning between seminary and school, Anna and friends would come over and hold babies. Those mornings were the best mornings that I had.
Mothering multiples has its own challenges and it didn't stop when they outgrew the baby stage. When people have asked for my advice, what I say is that make sure that the babies have someone that they love besides their mom. Of course, they love Mommy best but because there is only one Mom and sometimes two babies in need, it is essential that there is someone else that the babies love. They loved their Dad, of course, but Dads work and are, well, Men. Marin, my Mom, Anna - these are the people who made it bearable and doable.
Chloe and Chase have been a challenge and a blessing from the beginning. There is so much that I could say about each of them. So many cute, sad, hilarious, touching, hard, fantastic moments over the last 16 years & they just keep making those moments for me! I'm so proud of both of them and we are so incredibly blessed that they came to our family - even if one of them was too impatient to wait his/her turn!
Among the general population, the chance of having twins is about 3%. I guess that puts me, as a Mother of twins, in an elite group. I don't have a bumper sticker that says Got Twins? but I did have one that said "I used to have time. Now I have twins." Happy Birth Week!
