Give Peas A Chance

Last week was our 6 month check-up. I am always worried about being judged by the nurses and doctors when we go to the pediatricians' office. Probably because they seem to like to judge me. The night before, I request Larry's help to hold each baby while I scrub every crack, crevice, and fold that might hide splattered baby food, stray dog hair, or exploding diaper remnants. I inspect their ears, noses, and mouths for any unsightly hangers-on, then clip their nails and brush their hair. Somehow, though, the one nurse always seems to find some neck cheese or diaper rash and she will point out what a bad mother I am.

"You need to keep this area clean," or "It's important to pull back the folds of skin to apply the lotion." 

You think? Wow, thanks for advice, Dr. Spock. And how many babies did you have at once that makes you feel qualified to pass judgment on me? What's that? You aren't even a mom yet? Back off. If only I were as brave and mouthy as my inner-Vicki. I usually leave the office feeling like a teen mom rather than an educated, well-read, overly-concerned 37 year old mother. Oh, how I miss my perinatology office. They knew me well enough to take my file out of the "Dumb-Ass" pile and treat me like human being instead.

But I digress. The boys checked out well! They both had a growth spurt, and Grayden not only jumped onto the height chart but he landed squarely in the 50th percentile. He's still heavier than 90 percent of the kids his age, but who expected my kids to ever be little? Ren still isn't on the height chart and he's in the 25th percentile for weight, but his surge shows he is growing quickly. He just has a lot to make up for after weighing only 4 1/2 pounds!

Meal times have become an adventure as we introduce more and more new foods. Their first taste of turkey was priceless, and if Larry's laptop ever gets fixed, I'll attach a video. They are not too sure of meats at this point, but they weren't sure of peas or bananas at first, either. Luckily they are adventurous little eaters and will try anything once!

They are now interacting with each other and it's amazing to watch. I caught their first conversation on film (again, broken laptop). They were in their high chairs looking at each other and talking as if they completely understood each other. They even took turns and allowed the other one to reply. Now, every morning we spend 5 minutes visiting on the couch. This usually involves face touching, hair pulling, and even some eye-gouging, but all of it is accompanied by excited talking. I can see where having two children the same age may just have its advantages in the future.

We made a return trip to the orthotist in Charleston last week. The good news is that the boys did wonderfully well on their first overnight trip to Uncle Will's and Aunt Nicole's, but the bad news is that their heads are getting flatter. We will be in helmets next week. I hate that they have to be in them through the heat of the summer and I hate that their pictures will be "ruined" for the next 4 months and I hate that people are going to stare when we're out in public. But I am thankful that they will never look at me in the future and ask "Mama, why didn't you fix my head?" 

I am in for a long battle with my insurance company, though. If anyone has tips for seeking coverage of durable medical equipment, please shoot me an email. I am currently gathering information on plagiocephaly and working on a letter for the doctor to sign. I hope to be the first United Healthcare patient at Level 4 Orthotics to get coverage. Watch out insurance company! I just may unleash my inner-Vicki on you....

Half Birthday

I am having a hard time believing that the boys are 6 months old today, but the proof is in the pudding. I mean in the pictures:

 

 

SIX MONTH SUMMARY:

130 cans of preemie formula: $2080

1820 diapers: $520

32 sleepers,16 rompers, 40 onesies: $426

2 highchairs, 2 car seats, 3 strollers, and gear: $1200

Feeling I get when they smile at me: Priceless

Nonni's Birthday Trip

I gave my mom a U-Haul for her 60^th birthday. With it, I provided a driver (me) and a hotel room in either Charlotte, Atlanta, or Orlando, where she could relax and unwind after an all-day outing at the local IKEA.

If you’ve been to an IKEA home furnishings store, you understand the need for a hotel room. It’s like an adult adventure park, only instead of rides, the attractions are bargains and gadgets and textiles, oh my. The building itself is huge, lumbering in the distance long before you pull into the parking lot, and you almost expect parking attendants to be waving you into your spot when you finally make it to the furniture mecca. Then, when you enter, you are greeted by minions of blue vested characters who are willing to chaperone your kids in playland or provide you with a map (yes! A map!), a ruler, and large yellow bag for all of the items you find while following the yellow brick road through the furniture showrooms. Standing in the lobby in front of that single escalator that leads to adventure, you feel like anything is possible.

If you’ve been to an IKEA but live far away from the store, you understand the need for a U-Haul. You cannot walk out of IKEA with a small shopping bag. No. You will see more things you didn’t know you needed in 5 minutes in an IKEA than you will see in your whole lifetime at Wal-Mart. Those blue-vested greeters give you a big yellow bag knowing you’ll upgrade to a big silver shopping cart halfway through the store and that’ll you’ll upgrade to a big blue furniture cart by the time you hit the warehouse.

So last weekend, Mom, Dad, Lissy, and I threw our luggage into the back of Larry’s truck and towed a U-Haul to Charlotte. This trip wasn’t entirely altruistic; I needed some new bedroom furniture and garage storage shelves, and more importantly, I needed a full night’s asleep away from my twins. And it didn’t hurt that Larry had to play primary caregiver to the twins for 36 hours, either. We were coming off of a week of very little sleep (for me and the twins, anyway), and I thought it would be good for him to see how difficult the nights could be (ironically, they both slept through the night for the first time in 2 months that evening. Go figure).

We spent four hours in IKEA. I easily had another hour or two in me, but we knew when we brought a member of the male species that there was a time limit on our shopping fun. But in that four hour period, we bought enough stuff to nearly fill a 5 x 8 U-Haul. It’s probably a good thing that Dad reigned us all in; the Children’s IKEA had so many more things I wanted to buy. I got the boys a kids’ table and chairs, an easel, a bathmat, outlet protectors, plates, bowls, bibs, and most importantly, highchairs.

I had been researching highchairs for a month, as it was clear that I could not feed the boys in their bumbo seats forever. Grayden’s legs are so chubby he barely fits in the seat anymore, and we really needed something with an attached tray that he couldn’t force his way out of. I was not excited about spending $200 to $300 on highchairs, but that’s what two were going to cost us. Until I got to IKEA and discovered their $20 Antilop highchair. Plain, simple, sturdy, cheap. It’s easy to clean and it gets the job done.

 

Now if IKEA only made convertible car seats….

Daddy Day Care

In an effort to limit the amount of time the boys have to spend away from home, I am working on Sundays. I spend Friday with the boys and Saturday is family day. On Sunday, Larry has the babies all to himself. 

This morning I was in at my desk (working at home is both a blessing and a curse) and Larry came in and whispered "Come here!"

When I made my way to the living room, Grayden was asleep in his jumper. Only this time, he wasn't just sleeping. He was sleeping and bouncing at the same time:

I told you he loved that thing!

Adventures in Solid Food

We started the boys on solid foods as soon as they turned 5 months. The experts at the American Academy of Pediatrics actually disagree on when to begin feeding babies solid food, and their best recommendation is between 4 and 6 months. Then, at our last pediatrician visit, we were told to wait until 6 months, but if we decided to go ahead and feed solids, to start with vegetables. Since the doctor expressed absolutely no confidence in her own recommendation (and since another pediatrician in the office told a friend that starting at 4 months was fine), I wasn't too worried about researching the topic on my own and making a decision based on that research. What sold me on starting sooner than later was a recent study in the British Medical Journal that stated withholding solids until 6 months of age can result in children rejecting leafy green vegetables later in life. However, by presenting vegetables to my boys' developing tastebuds now, I may possibly end the "I'm not eating my broccoli" war before it even gets started.


First up were the orange vegetables (carrots, squash, and sweet potatoes), which didn't go over so well the first feeding, but by the second or third sampling, were a huge hit. I bought a special spoon that actually holds the baby food inside so I simply have to squeeze the food onto the spoon, thus eliminating fussiness while loading the spoon for each baby. When you are feeding two hungry mouths, you don't have time to reload! By the time we made our way to yellow and green vegetables, the boys were expert eaters, although not the cleanest or most polite diners to ever share a meal at our table.


It's important to run through the gamet of vegetables first; if you start with fruit, you run the risk of having veggies rejected after a baby develops a hankering for sweet foods. This became quite clear when we moved to bananas. It didn't matter that I had a special spoon--I could not shovel the food in fast enough for either baby's liking! Apples and peaches have been received equally well, and I again feel like that mother robin, only this time because I have two opened-mouth babes in my nest who have pitched their heads back and are crying for more!


While it's great to see my children enjoy something so much, there are some drawbacks. What goes in, must come out, and my how the exiting vegetables and fruit have changed the game! UGH! But what's worse than what comes out is what doesn't come out. Right about the time we moved to apples, the bananas worked a number on Ren for a day or two. It was nothing a few spoonfuls of prunes couldn't fix, but the poor baby suffered terribly in the meantime. While it broke my heart, it gave everyone else a good laugh:

I am happy to say that Ren is feeling much better these days!

To Helmet or Not To Helmet?

At the boys' two month wellness checkup, one of their pediatricians said, "Grayden has a flat spot on the back left side of his head." I nodded like I understood, but I didn't. I haven't slept in 8 weeks. We need more Size 2 diapers. Did I pump 40 ounces yesterday? They will eat in 25 minutes, so please hurry up. That's pretty much how my thought process went for the first 10 weeks, so when someone suggested there might be a problem with one of my children, it just didn't register. I was like an old computer programmed to run simple functions, unable to process any new information.

A few days later, Larry was holding Grayden on the couch and said, "I'm worried about his head. It's really flat on this side." Ren only ate 1 ounce this afternoon. I should order those bottles. I wish there was a sleep fairy. "Um-hmm," I said. "The doctor said we should move his head when he falls asleep, but he obviously doesn't have twins, because I am not going in there and waking up two babies."

A couple of weeks later, after the fog had lifted, I was holding Grayden on the couch and looked down on his head from above. I was shocked by what I saw. His head was FLAT! Why hadn't I noticed this before? Why didn't the doctor do something about it? I set him down and grabbed Ren. His head was flat, too! How did this happen? I had been vigilant about both boys spending at least 30 minutes a day on their tummy.

As soon as they went down for their nap, I ran to the computer and called up Dr. Google. Grayden clearly had deformational plagiocephaly, while Ren had a nice mix of plagiocephaly and brachycephaly. I learned that preemies are especially susceptible to flat heads because their skull bones are still so soft at birth. Twins tend to have issues more often, too, simply because one baby is almost always lying flat when the other is held. And the "Back-to-Sleep" campaign of the 1990s had been successful in reducing the number of crib deaths due to SIDS, but it was directly responsible for an extreme increase in infants with head deformities.

I read that babies with torticollis often end up with plagiocephaly, too. When I googled "torticollis," I got the following result:

"Torticollis is a twisted neck in which the head is tipped to one side, while the chin is turned to the other."

Huh. Ren always looked to the right. He had since he was born. Was that torticollis?

Plagiocephaly and torticollis were not only a cosmetic concern. Children who were left untreated tended to have chronic ear infections, misaligned jaws, and vision problems. The thought of Ren and Grayden having to deal with such issues broke my heart.

I wrote down all of my questions for their four month wellness visit and studied a pamphlet on repositioning techniques. I rearranged the furniture to help encourage them to look in the opposite direction of their flat spot. I bought pillows to put in their swing, carseats, and bouncers. And for the next 6 weeks, I forced them to lay on the rounded part of the head---when they were awake and when they were asleep.

But their heads were only getting worse. Plus, it was starting to affect the symmetry of their little faces. Ren's right ear protruded farther than the left, and both boys had cheeks and eyes that were smaller than their counterparts. You could also see where their foreheads were protruding; their heads really were starting to resemble the parallelograms that classically define plagiocephaly.

The next step was getting a referral to an orthotist, who would measure their heads and then recommend a plan of treatment. The most common "cure" is a molded helmet that puts pressure on protruding sides and leaves space over the flat parts for the head to fill out. The earlier you seek treatment, the better. Babies who start wearing helmets before 6 months of age tend to graduate in just three months, while older patients have to wear the helmets much longer. I became a woman possessed. The second to last thing in the world I wanted was for my babies to wear a heavy helmet in the hot South Carolina summer for 23 hours a day. But the last thing in the world I wanted was my teenage sons asking me why I didn't do anything about their flat heads.

The helmets are rarely covered by insurance and run about $3000 each. We have contemplated several ventures in the last three years that run about $6000; a fence, a deck, landscaping, hardwood floors, a fishing boat. I have vetoed all of them with "We don't have that kind of money." Oddly, I didn't think twice about spending it on our sons. They may not go to college, but they'll have perfect heads!

Through the Soccer Mom grapevine (which is so valuable in a small town), I learned that my current pediatrician refused to refer babies to an orthotist for helmets. But there was another pediatrician in the practice who was more willing to acknowledge plagiocephaly, so I quickly switched our appointment to the new pediatrician. When she saw the boys at 4 1/2 months, she agreed that there was an issue. I assumed she would recommend an orthotist in Savannah or Charleston, but instead she referred us to Physical Therapy. She said the Physical Therapist would refer us for helmets. Hmmm.

We then had to wait 2 weeks to get into the therapy clinic. I felt like I could see my boys' heads getting flatter each day. I was trying to be so proactive and seek treatment as quickly as possible, but I was running into countless delays!

The Physical Therapist agreed that they had torticollis and plagiocephaly (SHOCKER!). She requested that they return twice a month for therapy on their necks, and that an orthotist would come in at their next appointment in two weeks to take a cast of their head for a helmet fitting. I knew from my research that it takes about 2 weeks to get a helmet after a fitting if you don't involve the insurance companies. If you do involve insurance companies, it can take 4 weeks! So I was looking at another MONTH at the minimum before the boys would be in helmets.

I also knew from my research that the best way to measure their heads was with a special scanning machine that took computerized images in just 2 seconds. Why would I make my babies endure a plaster cast molding if I could just take them to a place with a scanning machine? I got home from their therapy appointment and called a specialist in Charleston.

It proved to be a great decision. The orthotist in Charleston took their measurements, showed me their pictures, and then did the most amazing thing: he didn't sell me helmets. He knew that I was a concerned mom who was willing to dish out thousands of dollars on the spot. But he said "Let's wait 5 weeks and remeasure them. If they are getting worse, we'll get the helmets. If they're getting better, then I saved them from having to wear helmets and I saved you from having to pay for them."

If the pediatrician or Physical Therapist had told me to wait, I would have (and probably did) bulldozed right over them in an attempt to get a second opinion. But when a person who specializes in the field tells you to wait, you can breath a sigh of relief and know that you're doing your best as a parent. My TMJ has cleared up significantly since this appointment.

I still worry that by waiting I will have postponed the helmet wearing until the worst part of summer. Or that they might have to wear the helmet an extra month. But if we go back and prove that their heads are indeed getting worse, at least I'll know I am making the right decision. And if their heads are getting better, then maybe Larry and I can get that new fishing boat. Okay, okay, we'll set up the college funds.

The Hazards of Having Twins

My boys are beating me up.

It started with a thrown back. I was worried about back problems, as I've been prone to them ever since I out grew most of the boys in the 8th grade. Plus, I spent the last 16 weeks of my pregnancy flat on my back, letting those precious back muscles atrophy while putting on loads of baby weight. Then, boom!, your children are born and you're sent home to tote around baby weight and two children all day. I was a thrown back waiting to happen. I wish I could say it happened while I was exercising, or moving a crib, or carrying two kids, but it didn't. It happened when I lifted Gray's arm to put the car seat strap over it. Yep, that's it. A 6 ounce baby arm was all it took to stop me in my tracks.

Many clouds have silver linings, though. This lining was sleep. Valium and I snuggled like new lovers for the next 36 hours in the cool sheets of my bed. It was absolute heaven. Mom, Susan, and Larry took care of the babies and I took care of me. While I would not wish those first 3 hours pre-Valium on anyone, I would wish the next day and a half on every new mother of twins. Hint, hint.

Next came a clicking thumb. Every time I used my right thumb (which was about every 10 seconds), it would emit a strange cracking sound. Change a diaper--pop, pop, pop! Open a formula container--click, click, click! It got to the point that I couldn't even change the channel to PBS Kids without my thumb popping when I pushed the buttons on the remote. It didn't hurt, but it was certainly annoying. Even to Larry. "That's disgusting," he complained. I would have liked to show him all the things in my day that were truly disgusting--like soiled diapers, nose suction bulbs, and regurgitated milk--but I was too tired to put him in his place.

Then one day I woke up and the thumb was swollen and tender to the touch. It hurt to even screw the tops on baby bottles. As all new moms know, there is absolutely no time to take yourself to the doctor, so I asked Doc about it (he is so much more than a grandpa and a retired veterinarian!). "It's trigger thumb," he said. "You're using it too much."

Hmph. How do you stop using your thumb? According to Dr. Google, you must splint your thumb for 6 weeks to cure trigger thumb and avoid surgery. SIX WEEKS! Does Dr. Google understand that I must care for two infants? Or that I need to bend my thumb in order to change diapers, open formula, bathe babies, wash bottles, pick noses, button clothes, zip sleepers, and plug screaming mouths with pacifiers? Apparently not. Luckily, Walmart has this snazzy splint that I can slide on and off as needed. And it appears to be working, as the swelling and tenderness are gone and the annoying clicking is back.

The popping thumb was followed by a popping jaw. I started waking up with the sensation that I had been clenching my teeth at night and this seemed to be true when my jaw began popping with every yawn or large mouthful of food. It progressed to popping when I talked and then started to get sore. Fortunately I had scheduled my next dentist appointment when I was still pregnant (because let's be honest--I wouldn't have had time to actually make an appointment once the babies arrived) and it coincided with the strange popping.

I told my dentist about it and he asked, "Are you stressed?"

Hmm. Does a bear make dookie in the woods? "I just had twins and haven't had a full night's sleep in 4 months." And I say things like 'make dookie' now. Okay, so maybe I didn't say that part about making dookie, but you get where I'm coming from.

"It's TMJ," he replied. "It may go away on it's own when you start getting some sleep. But if it gets worse, we can get you a splint." What is with me and splints???

So far, I am powering through it. I am pretty sure my level of stress won't go down until Ren and Grayden graduate from college, and even then I'll probably spend my days worrying about them marrying floozies who are just after them for their a) money b) green cards c) fishing boats d) autographs e) all of the above.

My final insult (and injury) occurred yesterday. Tired of toting around this extra baby weight, I daringly went searching for the lost Nordic Track in Larry's garage (those of you who have seen this Man Cave know just how brave I was to venture in there. For those who haven't seen it, let's just say "neat," "orderly," and "clean" are not in his vocabulary). After finding the Nordic Track, lugging it into our dining room, and setting it up, I was excited to get started. Hello energy, goodbye belly! Hardly. The Nordic Track is a cross-country ski machine with a large padded support right at your waistline. This support rests against you and keeps you stationary. Or in my case, it rests against my c-section incision and keeps me stationary on the couch. I must have developed some scar tissue because it hurts to lean against this pad. My outer incision is still as numb as a drunk on payday, but there is a pain deep down inside when I do sit-ups, lift too much, and now, exercise on a Nordic Track. Yea, me.

And I thought the boys were rough on me before they got here. Turns out they are way more abusive now that they are here. But you know what? When Gradyen grabs my cheeks and gives me a slobbery kiss or when Ren is overtaken with the shivers when I walk in the room, I have no doubt it's all worth it.