In Like Twin

As Oakley and I packed our things to leave the hospital, I was feeling such a relief. I finally felt like I could be in full on mommy mode. The environment in the hospital made me feel so trapped and crazy. Everything that I went through just gave me anxiety and being there for six days did not help. Over the course of the past week, I had gone into labor, had a C-Section, had three blood transfusions, and I had barely slept. I was ready to leave the hospital. As bad as things may have gone, everything seemed to be on the upswing. My iron levels stayed steady, and I wasn’t having any more symptoms of any sort. Oakley and I couldn’t wait to get home, be in a peaceful environment and love on our babies. Before leaving the hospital we had to sign a bunch of papers, and take one last picture of the babies before we headed out. My nurse brought my wheelchair in, handed me both babies and we were off. Holding Beckham and Haven in my arms felt so comforting as Oakley pushed all three of us down the hospital hall in a wheelchair. My little babies were perfect and healthy. I finally felt like everything was coming together. As we brought out the baby’s car seats for the first time, Oakley and I had a difficult time securing them in there. Considering how small they were I felt like we were doing it wrong, so our nurse gracefully helped us. We had no clue what we were doing at the time, but looking back on it, little things like that make me smile.

 Driving home was surreal. I was sitting in the back, the middle seat between our two beautiful babies and couldn’t believe this was going to be my new life. As I was watching my babies sleep peacefully I knew that this is all I’ve ever wanted. Being a mommy was a dream of mine, and now it’s finally here, but with TWO! The drive home from the hospital was about an hour, so it didn’t take us long to get home. When we arrived, our house was decorated with welcome home signs for us and the babies. Pink and blue balloons were lined up all the way to our front door and our families were there. We felt so grateful. Our family knew as soon as we got home that all we wanted was peace and quiet. As much as they wanted to stay, they politely left us alone and told us that if we needed anything to call. Oakley and I walked into our house and unpacked. The babies were sleeping so we decided to put them in their bassinets for a nap. As I sat on our rocking chair I instantly felt a huge dark cloud of emotions come over me. While the babies slept Oakley tried to make the house a bit more baby friendly, and not so decorative. Originally, our plan was to have the babies nursery upstairs, but that wasn’t realistic. So, Oakley decided to bring down everything he thought we might need for them. I remember sitting on our rocking chair feeling so upset.  I spent so much time rearranging and arranging things to be so perfect for when we came home, but the vision I had was wrong. I was clueless to how it was going to work with two newborns. Everything needed to be downstairs to accommodate for our  babies. I felt overwhelmed and nervous that this was my reality. The pressure of taking care of two babies and the emotions I was feeling were all over the place. I thought I was going to be fine, but I was wrong. On top of that, I was still in so much pain from my surgery and then I began to develop a fever. This was the worst. I felt horrible physically and horrible mentally. I couldn’t stop crying. As hard as I would try to act normal, I did not feel normal.  I was so excited to get home and finally do my job as a mother, but I couldn’t. I felt helpless. As the day went on my emotions and how I was feeling were getting the best of me. Oakley decided it would be best to call his parents to come over and help as he was also to his limits. Lucky enough, they lived directly across the street.

Oakleys parents came over and jumped right in. At the time, I was feeling so upset that they had to come help. I felt like I couldn’t do my job. I couldn’t help but to feel like I was incapable of being their mother and taking care of them. I questioned myself. Can I really do this? Will I be a good mother? I was so emotionally unstable that I couldn’t help but to feel jealous that they had to take the role of caring for my babies. While they took care of the babies I decided to take a nap. Laying down was not the most comfortable considering I just had two babies in my belly. When I layed down I felt like my organs were flopping around and not secure. That was the weirdest feeling I’ve ever felt. It was so uncomfortable I had to sleep upright.  I slept for about an hour and woke up with a high fever. My temperature was 101.2 and I was not feeling well. I was having flu-like symptoms. The body aches, a fever, headache and chills. One thing I did recognize was  my breasts hurt so bad. We called our hospital  to let them know that I got discharged a couple hours ago and that I was having a fever. The nurse proceeded to say that it was my milk coming in and to pump to relieve the pain. I did that for a few hours but I just felt worse. My family began to worry considering what we went through in the hospital a couple days ago. I had just thought that my milk was coming in so fast I was developing mastitis. Mastitis is  inflammation of breast tissue that sometimes causes an infection. The inflammation results in breast pain, swelling, and flu-like symptoms. I was convinced that was the problem. But my family thought otherwise. They were worried I was internally bleeding from my C-Section. The last thing I wanted to do was go back to the hospital to get admitted again, but our families insisted I go get checked. 

We ended up at a local hospital, and went into the emergency room. We got right in and waited for the doctor. As I layed on the hospital bed I couldn’t help but to cry. All I wanted was to be home taking care of our babies, but that wasn’t the case. At the time, I felt so awful. I felt like my brain and breasts were going to explode. My breasts were super warm and irritated. Finally my nurse came in and I explained my symptoms and proceeded to tell her that I think I have mastitis. In frustration, I told her I was recently discharged this morning from birth and all I wanted to do was to go home. She said she would relay everything to the doctor and he would be in shortly. Before she left she pricked my finger to check my iron levels, took a look at my incision and checked my breasts. Soon enough the doctor came back in with the nurse and explained that he believes my milk is coming in. He continued to say that I need to pump as much as I can to express my breast to relieve the pain. The doctor left the room and my nurse said she would be right back with discharge papers. When she came back she seemed to have a sense of what I was going through. I remember her looking at me in the eyes encouraging me that everything is going to be fine. She also said that “You’re going to feel crazy but remember, you’re not crazy.” Knowing that she had gone through the same feelings and emotions at some point in her own life, made me feel a bit better. I really needed to hear that. 

Coming home from the ER knowing that I was healthy was such a relief, not only for myself but for my family. The babies were swaddled up and asleep when we walked in. Oakley’s parents offered to stay up until 3 A.M. so Oakley and I could get some sleep. You can imagine we took the offer. It was so nice. Oakley’s mom would just bring the babies into our room with the bassinets and we took over. THE ROUGH PART WAS HERE! Waking up every two hours to feed the babies was draining. I had to pump because at the time we were bottle feeding both babies. Then we had to fill up their bottles, feed the babies and burp them. This was an everyday all day thing. Oakley and I were constantly on our feet. It was completely exhausting. Trying to figure out a routine with the two babies was a bit rough also. They both were on their own schedules. We had endless nights of only three hours of sleep. Thankfully we had our parents that offered to help.  As much as I knew we needed help, I didn’t want to accept it. I wanted to be able to do it on our own. It seemed like we had someone over helping us everyday, and that was hard for me. I felt a bit overwhelmed because I just wanted to be able to do everything ourselves and not accept the help. I just wanted to do my job and be their mother because in the hospital I couldn’t help much at all. As Oakley insisted on getting help or having someone come over I was always against it. I felt like it was my job to take care of my babies, and having our family come in made me feel like I wasn’t worthy of being their mother. On top of that I was an emotional rollercoaster.  I was picky about anything and everything that had to do with our babies. Truth be told as hard as it was to accept the help from our parents, I knew we needed it. We were not sleeping at all, which caused more issues. Having one baby is a lot, but having two is complete chaos in the beginning.

The days continued to get harder and more tiring. Looking back at the time I was in the hospital, I remember Oakley and I were about to leave as I was informed by a pediatrician that if I pee my pants to not be surprised. At the time I didn’t really know what she was talking about. Now, I do. I was laying in bed one afternoon, the babies were sleeping, and I instantly felt the urge to pee. I got up and felt SO much pressure on my bladder, it was painful. I remember yelling Oakley’s name. As I tried to get out of bed, I felt my bladder fill up. I didn’t even know that it was so full or that I had to pee that bad. I told Oakley “I need to pee right now”, “i’m going to pee my pants.” Thankfully he hurried up and carried me to the bathroom. I peed for at least two minutes and it was painful. My bladder was filling up so much because of how much water I was retaining with the babies. I was also given a water pill before I left the hospital to help release some of that fluid. I just didn’t think about the fact that I was going to have to pee it all out.

Going through the first couple weeks of being a mom, life in general was really emotional for me. I seemed to struggle a lot. I had a hard time being comfortable with taking on the role of being a mommy. I felt like I was going crazy. The thought of being alone with them gave me anxiety because I was scared I was going to do something wrong. I was excited to be a mom, but I knew I had so much to learn. I loved them so much, yet I was scared to embrace them. Along with that, my body had changed so much from the pregnancy that I didn’t recognize myself in the mirror. I cried everyday. I felt sad, depressed, overwhelmed, and anxious. You name it, and I felt it. The woman looking back at me in the mirror, was not the girl that I had once known so well. I felt so deep into my own head and my emotions that it was taking over my ability to be happy. I was in a dark place, a place where I felt lost trying to figure out the new me. Being pregnant affected me in so many different ways. I felt at the time I had destroyed my body during the process of carrying the twins. Physically and emotionally, I was ruined, so I thought. Some of the things I experienced I never even knew were a possibility. 

Thankfully, with the support of our families we decided it would be best if I went to counseling. As I got my emotions under control, more challenges arised. The poopy diapers were endless, the breastfeeding was challenging and the sleepless nights were debilitating.

Oakley and I had no idea what we got ourselves into, being parents to twins was no joke. Little did we know, it was only going to get more interesting. 

-Annalissa ❤