…Geoffrie, A Work In Progress

Yesterday we were finally able to bring Caulla home. Talk about a happy day. Sarah and I both had this silly little grin on our faces on the drive home. We could finally stop being polite to the people who wanted to tell us that having the twins at home was a bad decision, and who insisted upon telling us all about the proper way to care for our little ones. We actually had to sit through an education session at the hospital before they would do the release. Still, we escaped and brought our treasure home.
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Reposting an email that I have been sending out to folks…

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Not a great deal to post about today. Caulla successfully fed directly from Sarah today. Her blood sugar levels are much better, and she is off of the IV and the Tylenol. The minor tremors she had yesterday are now gone, and she has an appetite. She isn’t quite eating as much as they would like, but she is eating quite a bit, and it is showing in the frequency of the changes they are having to do. The swelling around the incision has gone down tremendously, and is now no larger than a silver dollar. You can actually clearly see the stitches now, and she looks like she has a bit of a knot on her head. She was much more active today as well. I even got an opportunity to feed her by bottle before we left to come home tonight.

Sarah is getting around much better, but she really should be getting more rest. Have you ever tried to tell a mother who’s daughter is in the hospital to say home and rest? Yeah, it doesn’t work very well does it? She is doing much better though, so that is always a good sign.

I don’t have a great deal of new pictures, but Sarah did take a few of me feeding Caulla. I uploaded those to the same gallery as the pictures from yesterday: http://geoffrie.smugmug.com/gallery/3808217

Please feel free to send this around to others you feel may be interested. I tried to get as many people in the distro list as possible, but I am also sending this out via a blind carbon distro list to protect the privacy of some of the people on the list.

Right, I am pretty much done in. All of my energy is going into staying strong for my family and dealing with the stress of Caulla being in the hospital. I will post more later as things progress. Eventually I will finish writing up my version of the birth story and post that as well…

The babies are here, but only one is at home. Both Tiernan and Caulla were born as breech babies the morning of November 8th. Tiernan came first, and presented fanny first. Caulla came next, but she presented feet first, kicking Tiernan’s placenta out on her way out. What a fighter! That fighting spirit is serving her well right now as she works hard to recover from surgery. Yes, our little girl had to undergo surgery. She had a cranial fracture that the believe happened in utero, and it was dangerously close to one of the major veins in the brain cavity. The neurosurgeon performed a procedure the morning of 11/9 the relieved the pressure and corrected the divot in her skull. The procedure only had a 20% chance of success, but it worked like a charm.

Right, basics, Tiernan was born first at 9:45 am, and Caulla was born at 10:10 am. Tiernan weighed in at 7 pounds 7 ounces, while Caulla weighed in at 7 pounds 11.5 ounces. My apologies, but I just don’t have their lengths available or I would document that as well.

More details will be forthcoming soon. I will try to make daily updates as I have time, and at some point I will be putting up a new page with the story of the birth as seen through my eyes.

 In the meantime please content yourselves with these pictures that were taken while at the hospital. If you take the time to read the description for the gallery you will find a link to a gallery put up by a friend who was there with her camera.

 http://geoffrie.smugmug.com/gallery/3808217