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Multigenerational Mom Muses on Twin Toddlers & Twenty-Something Daughters

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Egg Donors

Eggs

Cackling farts — from the 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue. And I certainly love me some vulgarity. Anyone who knows me knows my propensity for my favorite four-letter acronym – one I’m trying to curb since I’ve got these two impressionable young lads soaking in vocabulary like spaghetti sauce (or pureed prunes, or masticated teddy grahams, or you name it) on your favorite silk blouse (but I’ll save the stain stories for another blog). Still, “cackling farts” is simply the grossest, funniest, most colorful, obscene, and obscure term for EGGS I ever did hear. And this post is dedicated to them.

Eggs. Such simple things, it would seem. But simple, or not, as humans, we are fascinated by them. We eat them for breakfast in numerous ways, from the simply scrambled or over-easy, to the fancy-schmancy eggs benedict or quiche. And the recipes go on and on…

We’ve also built idioms around them. Some to reflect personality: “you’re a tough egg to crack” or he’s a “good egg” or a “bad egg.” Others reflect embarrassment: you can have “egg on your face” or we’ll tell someone to “go suck an egg.” We can use them in terms of monetary metaphors: we build “nest eggs” or search for “the goose that laid the golden egg” or we’re cautioned not to “put all our eggs in one basket.”

Naturally, if there are idioms about eggs, there are bound to be books about eggs. Some of the greatest literature features them. From Gulliver’s Travels to The Handmaid’s Tale to “Green Eggs and Ham,” we celebrate and admonish, using the Egg.

So eggs are far more complicated than the chalky-white ovals of serene, life-giving perfection they might seem. They house SO MUCH POTENTIAL. In the afore-mentioned The Handmaid’s Tale, the narrator proclaims, “I think that this is what God must look like: an egg.” And then later, “If I have an egg, what more can I want?”

Interestingly enough, this novel is about infertility. An entire nation that has fallen on post-nuclear sterility. The narrator may or may not be infertile. She has one daughter. She, nor the reader, knows for certain if she can get pregnant again.

And just like Offred, six years ago, I myself didn’t know if I would be able to carry children again.

We had an appointment with our fertility specialist, Dr. Mark Perloe, at Shady Gove Fertility in Atlant. (I can’t sing his praises highly enough!!! If you are contemplating IVF or if you are struggling with infertility of any sort, go see HIM.) Anyway, at that very first meeting, Dr. Perloe informed us that a woman over 40 had nearly zero chance of getting pregnant with her own eggs, and that we would need to use a donor.

My eggs were past their expiration date.

Now, you know what? I knew that already. Of course I did. I’m an educated woman. I do my research. I knew it going in. Still, his words stung just a bit. Just for a second. Not, though, for the reason you are probably thinking (the use of donor eggs).

NOPE, it was the Advanced Maternal Age phrase he used. AMA, a three-letter acronym that isn’t nearly as fun as my favorite four-letter one, and a label that would go into my charts and follow me to delivery. I still feel twenty-two, after all. As Jimmy Buffet says, “I’m growing older, but not up…”

“Donor eggs,” though — I was already familiar with and prepared for that phrase. We were given a password and the privacy of our home to view the donor profiles and search for our potential anonymous Wonder Woman — a super hero of the highest magnitude. I am forever and ever in her debt.

It felt strange, perusing those profiles. A giddy, dizzy, feverish, frightening cyber-ride. We wanted someone as close to me as we could get. Not because we intended to hide the fact that we used donor eggs from the boys or anyone else, for that matter, it was just something we wanted.

We wanted someone who loves literature as much as me. Someone who excels in science like their big sister. Who swings a mean bat or tennis racket, like their other big sister. Who appreciates a mean game of football, like their dad. Oh, and we wanted height. A nice, tall drink of water. I’m 5’10 and so to combine that height with their daddy’s good genes, we’re hoping for a couple of defensive powerhouses one day.

“Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen,” said the mighty Ralph Waldo Emerson.

And our decision, our selection, set the Universe in motion, her cogs and wheels, parts and plugs assembling the various and sundry pieces, the stardust and cackling farts, the wood glue and lacquer and metal most attractive that would spark our little fellas into being.

Her eggs. My basket. And a gaggle of Y chromosomes from Mike. Now of course, it wasn’t nearly that simple… but more on that next time.

Cackling Farts: Finding and Retrieving Eggs for IVF

2

Our Hard, Hellish Journey through the Place Where Miracles Mature, the NICU

We got pregnant four years ago via IVF. We used donor eggs, fresh and locally sourced. I guess our pregnancy mirrored the current foodie trend, although it wasn’t quite farm to table. More like follicle to petri dish to uterus, with a five-day incubation in between.

You see, I was too old to supply eggs of my own. I was two months shy of forty-seven when we began the process, and I was forty-eight when I had the boys. Everything in between went smoothly enough (relatively speaking), from embryo transfer to the thirty-fourth week. But that’s when things took a rapid tumble downhill. That’s when my “Advanced Maternal” body declared mutiny on the whole pregnancy thing by throwing some protein in my urine and slinging my blood pressure into the stratosphere.

I don’t remember a whole lot between then and the two days it took to bring the boys into the world because magnesium was introduced to my blood stream (Which is the Devil. Magnesium is the Devil). I recall a little ambulance ride up over the state line where our maternal/fetal specialist practiced. I recall fainting while lying flat on my back. I recall oxygen masks and my 300-pound husband tightly poured into the wrong size scrubs. I recall (fuzzily) my twenty-four-year-old baby girl sleeping on an orange couch in the corner of my hospital room with the cushions piled over her head. I vaguely recall talking to my eldest baby girl via FaceTime and her double and triple checking what actions the doctors and nurses were taking. And I remember kissing the boys on their wet little heads before they were wheeled away into the NICU. That’s pretty much all I remember about those couple of days.

Now we were extremely lucky with our boys. Thirty-four weeks is a solid gestation time for preemies. Hearts and lungs are developed and strong. Immune systems are decent. The only real issues we had to face were body temperature maintenance and feeding challenges. Boys are notoriously lazy eaters (you would never know it now), and because of that, Tate and Parker spent six days and nine days in the NICU, respectively.

For those of you unaware, September is NICU awareness month. That’s why I am revisiting one of the most difficult times in our lives. NICUs are hard places, one of the hardest places on this earth. Babies should never have to suffer. Innocence should know no pain. Innocence should know no struggle.

I think that’s why NICU families will always have a tender place in my heart. I don’t know if there is any situation quite like a NICU stay. Think about it – here you are, in what is supposed to be one of the most magical and perfect times of your life – the birth of your child. It’s the moment you and your spouse have prepared for since you first peed on the stick and got the news. And then something goes wrong. Sometimes horribly wrong. There is nothing quite like that kind of an emotional hijack.

And Mike and I had it relatively easy, all things considered. (Although at the time, it felt anything but.) Nine days in the NICU would be a Godsend for some preemie parents.  We were surrounded by cribs housing babies who had been there for months and months, parents loyally by their side. Babies who had undergone surgery after surgery. Babies whose cribs were peppered with personal items from home. Or worse. Babies who had been there for months and months with no personal items and no family members to be found. Crack babies. Unwanted babies. The world can be a cruel place for some of the most amazingly beautiful miracles ever made.

I can’t even imagine seeing the suffering day after day. I have no idea how the staff holds it together amongst that kind of injustice. My faith would waiver, I tell you. It would waiver big time. As it was, our babies were loved and they were relatively healthy and they were incredibly strong. All of those little warrior babies in the NICU are strong. Much stronger than the parents. Me, I was an absolute disaster.

Those nine NICU days, I felt like a giant, injured cuticle, stripped and torn, tender and exposed. I cried at the slightest provocation. When the elevator was too slow, I cried. When the hallway was too crowded, I cried. When I held the boys for the first time… I didn’t cry. I vomited — the anesthesia from the C-section. But that second time –oh, I cried.

I cried when I pumped for what felt like hours the very first time – my nipples stretched thin and angry and complaining like hell. I cried. And when all I got for my hard-fought labor was the tiniest, most miniscule amount of colostrum you ever did see, I cried. And when the nurse divided up that tiny little miniscule amount of colostrum and put it on two separate Q-tips and swished it around in the boys’ mouths, I cried.

When we bathed the boys for the first time, their wrinkly little alien bodies so slippery and small I feared they would slide right through my fingers, I cried. And when my milk came in and my chest rippled and ridged and cordoned itself off like a honeycomb, chamber after chamber flooded with liquid gold, I cried.

The worst, though, was if somebody was nice to me. If somebody smiled kindly at me, it was over. Or if I saw something beautiful. Like my boys. They did me in every time. But so did the long, sunny mural on the way to the NICU — a green and golden ant village, with ants sailing on leaf rafts, or ants raking their gardens, or ants swinging on tire swings or flying on butterflies. It was beautiful and whimsical and comforting. And it sent me into a bleary, teary, snot-filled mess every time Mike wheeled me down the hall.

And it wasn’t just me. This NICU time was also the first time I ever saw Mike cry. He’s big. He’s strong. He’s a meathead. And he’s a fixer. But this was something beyond his fixing abilities. This was all up to his boys — his tiny, fragile, five-pound boys. They had to decide when they would eat what they needed to eat – and on a consistent basis – to be allowed to go home.

I saw him break down for the very first time one morning at the breakfast table. His shoulders shuddered, his face folded under and crumpled, and there, above his cereal bowl at the Ronald McDonald House (I can’t EVEN tell you how much we owe to the Ronald McDonald House, but that’s another blog), he wept. And I cried. (Apparently there was another instance where he sneaked into the chapel across from our room and cried and cried and cried. I wasn’t there for that one. But I’m telling you, the NICU is hard on the strongest among us.)

Yes, the NICU is a hard, hard place, but the people there are far from hard. They are big-hearted and oh-so-capable. The nurses and doctors who work in a NICU are special people. They have to be, to work somewhere where innocent souls suffer so unjustly. To dedicate themselves to a life surrounded by the harsh realities of a cold universe…every single day… I don’t understand their endless capacity for TLC without frustration, but I am forever grateful for them.

Those nurses, especially, were our salvation. They instructed us, they comforted us, they listened to us. They rattled us sometimes. And sometimes they just made us mad.

I’ll never forget one NICU nurse in particular. I thought I hated her. I thought she was the worst one of the bunch. She was grouchy and my nerves were brittle, and I humbly admit I despised her. I thought she was so self-righteous. Turns out, she was just plain right.

That cranky, caustic nurse was actually an efficient, matter-of-fact caretaker who knew her stuff and took a no-nonsense approach to her little patients. She was the one who showed us the technique that finally got Parker to eat so we could take him home. She may have been cranky, but she was an absolute Christ figure. She sacrificed personality for patient progress, and she saved us from who knows how many more days in the NICU and how many more nights in the Ronald McDonald House. I will never forget her grumpy ass.

Yes, NICUs are hard places and special places. They are grueling. They grind parents down. But they lift babies up. They are a place of miracles, where miracles go after they are born, to heal up and head home – to their earthly home or their heavenly home.

NICUs may feel like they are Godforsaken places, where the innocent suffer without cause, but NICUs are far from Godforsaken. He puts His best angels there:  the gentlest, the ablest – and sometimes the crankiest angels there to do His work. They shelter those little miracles until they are ready for the world.

But sometimes the world is just not ready for some of them and they go back to Him. At least that’s what I have to tell myself. Otherwise I can’t. I just can’t.

Yes, NICUs are very hard places.

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Fertility Godmothers: Egg Donors (and Surrogates)

Some people claim the good old days are long gone. I call Bull Shenanigans. According to those folks, people used to be more trustworthy, more helpful, and more neighborly. You could “always depend on the kindness of strangers,” to borrow a Tennessee Williams’ quote. And speaking of borrowing, if your hens weren’t laying and you wanted to bake a cake, you simply garnered a couple of eggs from a buddy down the block. And if you needed some assistance — raising your barn or raising your kids — someone always came through.

Now I haven’t raised any barns recently, but I am raising twin boys – which takes a hell of a lot more strength and manpower, let me tell you – and folks always seem to come to the rescue. Take this past Sunday afternoon. We were at a local burger joint when one of the boys, who was curled up on my lap feeling crummy, managed to knock over my drink, giving both of us an ice bath. Before I could even react, a mother at the next table jumped to the rescue, swabbing us with napkins and then going for reinforcements when it became obvious we would need a warehouse-full. So don’t tell me chivalry is dead.

And while people have performed random acts of kindness since time immemorial, only in this day and age have those acts been granted an international day all their own. But kindness is not relegated to a single day. You constantly hear and read about layaway Santas, drive thru do-gooders, and animal shelter altruists.

What really elevates this era from the ones that came before it, though, is that the whole neighborly trait of lending a cup of this or a couple of that when you’re in need has moved beyond simple, farm-variety produce. In this beautiful, postmodern world, you can borrow eggs to bake up a cake or you can borrow eggs to bake up a baby. Seems to me that’s taking the whole “kindness of strangers” notion and knocking it up (you see what I did there?) a notch.

I like to think of the IVF process as a pantry to pregnancy revolution (rather like the farm to table one in food). And I guess that makes our boys a sort of revisited and reinvented version of the Cuppa Cuppa Cuppa classic:

Take a cuppa sperm, well beaten 😊 and a coupla eggs, borrowed.

Mix well.

Marinate 5 days. Transfer resulting coupla embryos to clinically preheated oven.

Bake 9 months, and… VOILA!

birthboys2

Now, I don’t want to mislead you — IVF isn’t that simple. And it certainly isn’t as failproof as the time-honored Cuppa Cuppa Cuppa cobbler recipe. It takes a carefully calibrated oven and experts who’ve undergone years of rigorous training to ensure just the right amount of salts, sugars, amino acids and proteins are in place during prep and baking.

Nor do I mean to make light of infertility or the expensive and excruciating journey that comes with it, a journey that is so full of loneliness and uncertainty. There are no guarantees. But there are options. If your fertility quest is hitting roadblock after roadblock, please remember that there are generous strangers out there — fertility godmothers if you will – ready to lend their eggs or even their wombs (one of my former students has offered her uterus as a surrogate on two separate occasions) for struggling couples.

Three years ago, I was able to bake up some babies with a fertility godmother’s healthy, young eggs, my husband’s sweet sauce, and my own reconstituted oven. The effect of one anonymous stranger’s generosity and the amount of gratitude in our hearts for her sacrifice  is impossible to put into words. She made our dreams come true.

I believe in the magic of kindness and the kindness of strangers. Put those two things together and miracles occur. Living, breathing, Cuppa Coupla Coupla miracles. If the glory days are in the past, then the hallelujah days are in the present. Don’t let anybody tell you any different.

Amen and pass the cobbler.

 

goldenembryos

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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C-Section Realities and Naked Mole Rats: the Birth of our Beautiful Twins

I was always jealous of those moms who had scheduled C-sections. They were always perfectly primped in their post-delivery pics. That was going to be me this time around. My hair and makeup spot on. No sweaty curls, no petechiae in the whites of my eyes and the flesh of my neck like I had with the girls — when I pushed so hard that tiny blood vessels burst all over my head. I looked like a voodoo doll’s target. The boys were going to be C-section babes at 37 weeks.  And I was going to be a glamour shot, post op, cover girl.

tatebirth

Yeah, that didn’t happen.

On a Wednesday afternoon three years ago today, I went in at 34 weeks for my prenatal specialist appointment. They took my blood pressure, did an ultrasound, and next thing I knew I was getting pumped full of magnesium and slung into an ambulance.

Let me tell you a little bit about the evil entity that is Magnesium. Not the magnesium you take as an over-the-counter supplement to prevent constipation or leg cramps. No, I mean Magnesium with a capital M, second cousin once removed from Beelzebub of the netherworld. It is given to women with preeclampsia as an emergency measure to prevent seizures when mom’s blood pressure gets too high, but it also has some nasty side effects. Like sending your BP plummeting so low you’re literally fainting while lying flat on your back. You feel heavy as lead… but MOLTEN lead. Because Mag is a stout, heavy devil that belches brimstone through an IV drip into your circulatory system, leaving you in a sulfurous state of confusion and heat. Sinners-in-the-Hands-of-an Angry-God confusion and heat. A great, fiery furnace of confusion and heat, flames and lava lapping at your body and soul for hours and hours. Hell hath no fury like a magnesium drip.

And it’s a hellish fury you tolerate because it’s saving you and your babies, but immediately after delivery, you beg, plead, bargain and bully to be taken off the drip. And if you’re lucky, really, really lucky – and really, really persuasive — your OB agrees.

Mine did. She probably regretted caving to my persuasive pressures because my feet continued to swell to the size of human lungs, and my blood pressure spiked, and my head pounded, and my vision sparked like Vulcan’s smithy. But she took pity on me nonetheless and yanked the mag bag.

But back to my first and only experience with a C-section and the delivery of our beautiful boy babies. My girls were born the traditional, squeeze and extrude through a narrow flesh funnel for hours and hours way, so I didn’t know what to expect. The OR was much smaller than I’d imagined. (They look so much larger on Grey’s Anatomy and House reruns.) And it was cold – ice cold. But that was a welcome respite from the MAG demon busily rafting rivers and tributaries of fire in my body. I also recall having a difficult time curling inward enough for the epidural because, let’s face it, YOU try curling your spine forward with double the fetuses and fluids in your frontal regions. NOT ideal.

I knew enough to expect a sterile sheet wall at my chin so I couldn’t see all the bloody shenanigans going on below my naval, but I didn’t expect my arms to be strapped, crucifixion-style, out to my side. To be perfectly honest, it made me feel a little out of control and vulnerable. (Like being paralyzed from the chest down and sliced hip to hip didn’t leave me vulnerable enough.) And I never expected to feel strange squeezing sensations coming from my lower extremities. When I asked the nurses about it, I was told I was wearing compression boots that were pumping my calves to prevent blood clots. Still, the ability to feel that regulated pressure and release was disconcerting. What if I felt the smooth blade of the scalpel slicing me open like a ripe cantaloupe?

I didn’t. But I did feel a whole lot of pulling and tugging and what felt like my uterus being stretched over the rim of the Grand Canyon. So much tugging. And I could hear a chorus of nurses and doctors, commanding and directing. And then, at 10:35 AM, the tiniest quivering wail rose over the sheet, and I heard Parker Isaac Candela singing heartily for his supper for the very first time, but certainly not the last.  My heart swelled to bursting at his voice. A voice that still trembles and purrs with sweetness to this day.

parkerbirth

One minute later, at 10:36 AM, Tate Michael Candela arrived. But this time, no song accompanied the entrance. Ironic, considering Tatebug sings constantly these days – a continuous refrain from sunrise to sundown: Itsy Bitsy Spider; Wheels on the Bus; If You’re Happy and You Know It… You name it, he sings it.

The NICU docs and nurses immediately shuffled Tate off to a corner of the OR and got to work. I couldn’t see a thing. All I could do was hear. And all I could hear was the sound of silence — for what felt like a millennium. It wasn’t though. Of that I’m sure. In a relatively short spell — one crammed with absolute horror and fear — the staff managed to coax and cajole his little lungs into song. His quivering wail joined his brother’s in a sudden, trembling hallelujah chorus, and Mike and I melted into a blubbering mass of unbridled relief and boundless love.

When they brought them round for me to kiss, they were beautiful. Beautiful, precious, tiny naked mole rats. Because honestly, that’s what all newborns look like, if we’re being perfectly honest. And that’s what got pulled out of my belly on March 20th, three year ago. Two of them. Only my naked mole rats had half-moon eyes. Beautiful, Korean, half-moon eyes. And Parker had lashes that fanned across his cheeks in the most magnificent display you ever did see. They still do, for that matter. And then there was Tate. Tate with the buttery-gold skin of an ancient temple Buddha. We oohed and aahed over his ancestral gift of a most-glorious skin tone. Come to find out, it wasn’t genetics. It was jaundice… But even after that bilirubin leveled out, he still possesses the most exquisite built-in tan you ever did see.Sadly, after planting a kiss on my long-lashed and beautifully-bronzed naked mole rats, they were whisked away to the NICU.

birthboys2

Now the NICU was not in my birth plan. Not even close. I had anticipated a glamour-shots delivery, remember? And then a saccharine-sweet bonding period full of soft, fuzzy snapshots. Me snuggling our newborns while they mewed hungrily at my breasts.  Mike slumbering with them on his chest in our overstuffed, deep-seated rocker. That was my vision. That was my dream. Our reality was nothing like it. At all. There were no nursing newborns at my breasts and no happenstance naps with Daddy. Instead there were incubators and oxygen lines and feeding tubes and beeping monitors and carefully measured mills of breast milk in the tiniest bottles you ever did see.

But I’ll address the NICU and its roller coaster of events and emotions next time…

 

 

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IVF Twin Pregnancy: Operation Double Doozy

Carrying twins was a blessing of tremendous proportions, as well as an eight-month war of attrition on my body. Despite reinforcing myself with some of the best defensive strategies of modern medicine and engineering, I delivered prematurely.

I had preeclampsia.

labor

But first, a little about those months leading up to delivery…

In all fairness, my body didn’t want to have twins. At forty-seven, it was biologically certain that the entire procreation thing was over and done with.

As a result, there was quite a lot of gestational gerrymandering involved in order to manipulate my hormonal constituency and ensure a victory.

We began with a preemptive strike of suppositories, injections and oral supplements, then recruited a donor’s eggs, an endocrynologist, an embryologist, and a nurse with steady hands and capable bedside manner. To seal the deal, we utilized a paper cup, a secluded chamber, a dimly lit procedure room and a straw. Okay, maybe it has some fancy, schmancy medical term, but for all intents and purposes, it was a straw. A straw meant to spit a couple of sticky buns into my baby maker. (BTW, if someone is looking to duplicate our successful campaign, it is important to note that there were five days separating the cup & the spit wads & the straw.)

So with these tools, we successfully raided my trench and left two embryos safely ensconced within my uterine walls. Now all that was left was to keep them there for nine more months.

The task was Herculean. Or, in keeping with my militaristic theme, the task was Spartan.

From nearly the get-go my body was pummeled with Braxton Hicks contractions that rocked my belly – as in, my belly was transformed to granite – close to eighty times a day. I took measures to reduce the contractions as best I could. A gallon of water a day helped. A gallon — no lie. I was supposed to drink 128 fluid ounces  of water. A day. Twins siphon off your liquid intake pretty much as quickly as you can pour it down your throat. Dehydration was a constant fear – and became a two-time reality. Two times my champion husband drove me to the hospital for IV fluids, a quick Doppler listen, and close monitoring.

Another defensive strategy I employed was a battery of supplements: prenatal vitamins, calcium, folic acid, iron, fish oil and protein shakes. Not only would my little twin tenants deplete all my fluids, they could potentially steal my bone density, my red blood cells and my brain.(I think they successfully absconded with my brain.)

Epsom salts also became part of my nightly arsenal. I spent hours in a bathtub full of them. The salts contain magnesium, and some studies have linked them to a reduced likelihood of preeclampsia. They are also touted as a defense against restless leg syndrome – which plagued me incessantly while pregnant. I guess since I suffered from both RLS and, eventually, preeclampsia, the salts were probably a pointless maneuver. But, I do love a nice, long soak in a tub, so I’m saying, “No harm. No foul.”

Along with all the aforementioned strategies, I spent many a sleepless night sandbagging on pregnancy pillows and couch cushions with ice packs between my breasts. Not on my breasts. Between them. Why, you might rightly wonder? Because the rapidly growing juggernauts in my uterus were putting unconscionable stress on my rib cage. My sternum was ready to snap like a Butterball wishbone at Thanksgiving. Nobody told me about this horrific twin pregnancy phenomenon. I still haven’t heard of anyone else experiencing it. Maybe I’m the only one.

And finally, while pregnant, I suited up in armor designed specifically for safety and comfort. First, there were nylon compression stockings designed to combat swelling and provide support. Mike had to roll and tug and pull and pretty much squeeze me into them every morning. And then do the reverse every night. And he hand washed them. No small feat since they smelled like feet. Swollen, sweaty, pregnancy feet.  And then there was my Velcro and cotton maternity belt with an extra-wide back support and straps both above and below my giant, billowing baby bump. That belt could’ve saddled the Trojan Horse it was so big and wide. And indeed I felt like the Trojan Horse, housing tiny warriors in my belly just waiting to spill out and conquer the world. Or at least northwest Georgia.

And finally, our mechanized measures. We bought a blood pressure cuff and took regular readings four to five times a day. We were closely monitoring for any slight increase in diastolic and/or systolic pressure, or both.  Despite all our protective measures — along with meds to conquer and control the riotous numbers) — at thirty-four weeks, the nebulous, egregious  villainous Preeclampsia invaded, wreaking havoc on my body and my babies.

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Three years ago this week, I was forty-seven years old, thirty-four weeks pregnant, forty-three pounds heavier, and two cup sizes larger. My legs were the size of aspens and my ass was the size of Warren Buffet’s assets. I was an amniotic and edema filled cistern of IVF success. I looked like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. Or a stack of stratocumulus clouds. I was so fluffy I could die. Literally. And so could my in vitro twin boys. Preeclampsia is no laughing matter.

Three years ago, this week, I was about to experience a barrage of new and scary experiences, including: an ambulance ride, an emergency C-section, two five-pound, six-week-preterm twin boys and an up close and personal relationship with a NICU.

But more on that next week…

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An Exercise in Fertility

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Three years ago this week was a big week for us. Huge. Monumental, even. On August 3, 2013, bright and early on a Sunday morning we drove the forty some-odd miles down to the Georgia Perimeter to Georgia Reproductive Specialists because it was egg retrieval day and time for Mike to make his dutiful “deposit.” We were both nervous wrecks. It was a seminal moment – on so many levels. The other day, when reminiscing, I borrowed heavily from one of my favorite poets and penned a little “Red Wheelbarrow” parody:

so much depends

upon

a sterile dixie cup

glazed with hard

swimmers

beside the petri

dish

Because so much did depend on that day and that cup and that petri dish. And luckily, Mike’s swimmers were reliable little guys. And don’t get me started on the generous and steadfast nature of our donor and her eggs. I wish there were a way to explain to you and to her how truly indebted we are for her incredible sacrifice. I know it wasn’t easy. She endured hormone shots and blood draws, ovarian hyper-stimulation and surgical egg retrieval — which I understand was hardly, as the old song goes, “Easy Like Sunday Morning”– which was when she drove to our clinic, just after daybreak, to tender our eggs. She is my hero… and I will never know who she is.

But I know that she is strong. I know that she is selfless. I know that she went through pain and agony and tremendous risk to incubate new life for a couple she didn’t know, would never even meet. Ever. And she delivered – like the Stork; like Santa Claus; like the sunrise; like the rainbow . She delivered little bundles of promise and beauty and perfection and joy aspirated through a needle into plastic culture dishes. Science and nature. Miracles and medicine. Magic and mathematics. To God be the Glory – and talk about Amazing Grace. Our donor has it. She lived it. She is it.

We had arranged with GRS to do a shared cycle, which meant that the clinic would receive half of the eggs she produced and we would receive the other half. It was kind of a BOGO deal with a twist: Buy One, Give One — the only IVF plan we could feasibly afford on teachers’ salaries. It was a gamble that paid off beautifully, thanks to our donor and the quality of her fierce follicles. We ended up with five beautifully round and robust little embryos. And it turns out we only needed two. Our donor was THAT good. And to give credit where credit’s due, so was Mike’s baby batter.

We received our first pictures of our boys on August 8, 2013. Their bubbly little personalities shining through, even in that first portrait. Every anniversary, I’ve stacked that first photo on top of a current one, and this year is no exception. It’s amazing how two such distinct and brilliant little people can come from such microscopic origins.

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Parker Isaac and Tate Michael.

We knew we wanted names with symbolic heft. From the moment we decided to pursue IVF, we christened a boy Isaac, as a nod to the grace of God and the Old Testament story of Abraham and Sarah. If you aren’t familiar or in case you’ve forgotten, it is the tale of God’s promise to a barren couple that they would have a son, even though Sarah was ninety at the time. If not for modern medicine and miracles, I would’ve been beyond childbearing age myself (though nowhere near 90, thank you very much). So Isaac was a given from the get go. We also knew we wanted a Michael — to pay homage to Mike and his father and grandfather before him. And Tate was my grandmother’s brother and a name I have always loved, so that was an easy one, too. The fourth one, though, was a bit harder to come by. We rooted and rummaged through Nameberry, voting and vetoing as our little guys grew from the size of newts to arctic puffins before finally deciding on Parker — a tribute to Mike’s Korean heritage, where Park is a common surname. So there. We had names. Now to decide who would be whom…

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We didn’t want the firstborn to have Michael attached to his name for a very important reason. There is a tradition in many Asian cultures (and to be fair, Judeo-Christian societies as well) where the Number One son receives the birthright and the blessings and Number Two plays second fiddle (or second gayageum, I guess, if we’re talking Korean here…) Anyways, we were more than willing to part ways with such unjust, blatant favoritism. So we knew that Baby B would be Tate Michael and receive the honor of his father’s name. And Baby A would be Parker Isaac and receive the honor of biblical promise. Both boys would receive beautifully perfect namesakes.

Now apparently the boys battled it out in utero to determine who would be — not firstborn — but last. In typical “the first shall be last and the last shall be first” fashion, Tate, who had been Baby A (which simply means, the baby closest to the cervix) for more than seven months, scrambled up my ribcage like a set of monkey bars at the last available second and grabbed tight, therein winning the title of Tate Michael. Parker, who had been Baby B for almost the duration of the pregnancy saw the world a whopping one minute earlier than his brother and won the moniker, Parker Isaac.

In keeping with that Korean surname first name, Parker’s eyes are more Asian, like dark-roasted almonds. His smile is deep and wide and his skin is the color of moonstones. He is our gentle giant, giver of bear hugs, open-mouthed kisses and truck trivia. He can tell a backhoe from an excavator, a car transporter from a semi and he LOVES to share his knowledge. And he is his father’s mini me.

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Tate, on the other hand, looks like me (or at least that’s what people tell me, and I’ll take it– even if it is technically impossible). And just like me, he loves books. From the time he could clutch one, he’s had a book in his hand. And a song on his lips. He sings from sunup to sundown – or at least AT sunup and sundown because we hear it on the monitor. There is no sweeter alarm clock than hearing such classic toddler tunes as “Itsy Bitsy Spider” and “Wheels on the Bus” … although hearing them at 2:20 AM if he accidentally wakes up can be a wee bit spooky.

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So this week is always a huge week for us. On August 3, 2013 Mike did his fatherly duty with a few minutes of hard labor and a plastic covered remote control. Five fizzy, fertilized, egg-splitting days later, on August 8th, our beloved fertility doc, in his white coat and hair net, siphoned our embryos into the core of my being, where they immediately took up residency in my heart and soul. I became a mother again for the third and fourth time. And for the first time to boys. Mike became a father. The girls became sisters to brothers.

August 8th is legendary.

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Building the Best Nest

Belly Bruise

My fertility specialist: the grand wizard of long shots, the war-horse of reproductive endocrinology, the fertility fairy godmother of happily-ever-afters in the greater Atlanta area, and more. What can I possibly say about him that doesn’t make me sound like I worship the ground he walks on? Then again, why should I try to NOT sound like I do, when I quite obviously do? Now don’t get me wrong, I am a firm proponent of “To God Give the Glory.” Were it not God’s will that I have my two little miracle men, I know and understand that my cupboard would have remained bare. However, I also believe God grants certain individuals the ability to know His miracles, to recognize and harness the power and potential of those miracles, and to use that knowledge to propagate and multiply even more miracles in His name. I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that God works through Dr. Mark Perloe and the team at Georgia Reproductive Specialists. They have been granted the ability to tame the wild and natural, sometimes ticklish, nature of the birds and the bees, and as a result, rain manna from Heaven via test tubes.

So, yes, I sing Dr. Perloe and his team’s praises. They helped me feather my nest, so I’m happy to put put a feather or two in their caps.

But, back to building the best nest… Dr. Perloe took my forty-seven year old incubator – well preserved mind you 😉 but still – and began refurbishing it to ensure ample brooding conditions. He plumped up the lining with the hormonal and dietary equivalents of all the hay, and all the straw, and all the string, and all the stuffing, and all the horsehair, and all the… well, you name it, he used it.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s talk for just a bit about all that metaphorical hay and straw and string and stuffing … Let’s talk needles. Let’s talk shots. Let’s talk pills. And vaginal suppositories. And time. Lots and lots of time. It was quite the process.

First, the needles. In the beginning, the needles weren’t too bad. And that’s saying a lot because this girl has always had an aversion to shots of any type. But the first ones, the tiny jabs to the belly, those were nothing (not nothing, obviously. They played a critical role in readying my nest), but they didn’t hurt. They only even bruised me once, just below  my naval. Those shots always hurt Mike more than they hurt me. I have to give him credit. He was, and continues to be, amazing throughout this entire journey. He would cringe every time he had to stick me, but stick me, he did. Because he knew I couldn’t do it to myself. He would dutifully fill his syringe, then penetrate and deposit the baby-making fluid of the day in this synthetic birds-and-bees mating ritual we were fulfilling.

But then came the nightly ritual of shots to my hindquarters. Now THOSE were a pain. (I won’t say the clichéd phrase, but you get the picture.) We did learn a trick (a little later than I would’ve liked) thanks to a nurse at GRS, and we began to ice my ass first. Still, they bruised and burned and even caused an allergic reaction, to add insult to injury. Now we were required to give those shots as close to the same time every single evening as possible to ensure maximum effectiveness; therefore, we arranged those shots to fall between 8:30 and 9:00 nightly for a very good and compelling reason. My husband is a football coach — and come Friday nights, rain or shine, the gridiron seizes center stage. That means that every Friday night during halftime, we had to find a private (or semi-private in multiple instances) place for me to drop trou so that Mike could thrust a needle into my bruised and angry buttocks. These locations were myriad and, let me tell you, less than ideal. I got shot up in the hallway of a gymnasium within audible distance of the opposing team. I got shot up in the back of a Kia Soul, my legs and torso contorted at a highly irregular and uncomfortable angle whilst a sweaty outside linebacker hunted for his mouth guard in the parking lot (and, thank God, blissfully ignorant of the slightly pornographic scene) not fifteen feet away. I got shot up in the floor of a coach’s office on a jacket chivalrously laid out by my husband across the spongy decades-old carpet. Let’s just say my arse was a pincushion that found itself jabbed in the strangest of locales.

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Beyond the shots, I took oral medications and vaginal suppositories that turned my underwear a slight periwinkle if I forgot my pantie liners, which I was wont to do, since the hormones seemed to make my mind all fuzzy and floaty . It would seem I had contracted the infamous pregnancy brain — the chemical cocktails doing their job, just like the doctor ordered.

There were days when all of the hormones got to me. Once I wept openly when I cleaned the ceiling fan and huge, clumpy caterpillars of dust dropped from the blades. I decided then and there that there was no way I was fit to be a mother again. I couldn’t even take proper care of a ceiling fan, for God’s sake. Publix commercials, awash in rose-colored hues and sentimentality, regularly had me on the floor in a puddle of Kleenex, tears, and goo.

There were other instances, and another type of shot, a trigger, they call it, that I could recant, but this is getting to be a long post, and so, I’ll cut to the chase. Once all of the hay and straw and string and stuffing, etc. was assembled in the proper order and proportions, Mike made his requisite deposit and our truly selfless donor (who went through far more painful and labor-intensive procedures than I) contributed her part, Dr. Perloe and his wonder team tenderly laid our two precious, perfect 5-day blastocytes inside this biddy’s nest and coaxed it into successfully incubating two beautiful, bronze baby boys, hatched just shy of 35 weeks gestation.

To quote one of my favorite childhood books by PD Eastman: “There’s no nest like an old nest, for a brand new bird” – or two.

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