A while ago, I posted this. And so many of you showed your support by sending in a square of fabric and a sweet note to our little family, before our boys were even on the radar. The notes were very well timed.

My mom and I laid out the quilt top while I was on bedrest during our IVF cycle.

My sister finished the quilt just in time for my baby shower.

The quilt hung in our hospital room when our boys were admitted to the NICU.

And now, the quilt is doing what it was always intended to do. Wrap up my sweet boys and cuddle them close.

So thank you for all of your support. All the prayers, notes, meals, tears, kindness we’ve received over the past few years means so much to us.

Here’s to answered prayers.

This morning, we woke up the boys at 7. Fed them as quick as possible (they were TIRED!) and left for the pediatrician’s office. My poor boys didn’t know what was about to hit them, but it was time to be circumcised… ouch.

I’ve never heard them cry like that.

Hard as it was, I loved being able to calm them down. It made me feel like a Mother. Diaper changes and getting up in the middle of the night and snapping pictures of these cute boys make me feel like a Mom. Really soothing my little ones and knowing how much they need me? That makes me feel like a Mother.

The traumatic experience helped them learn how to hold on to my hand pretty quickly. They used to hold my finger every now and again, but now both of them hold on tight. I love that they know me.

We drove around for about 45 minutes after the appointment to help them get to sleep, which resulted in stopping to pick up smoothies and croissant sandwiches for breakfast. After we got home, conference was about to start so Cam and I each cuddled a boy and hit the couch. All the crying has completely exhausted my poor boys. We’ve had to spend at least 20 minutes waking them up for each feeding and then a time or two during the feeding we have to wake them up again.

The first session of conference was incredible. I’m sure the second was too, but all 4 of us were knocked out for it. Deep, blissful sleep. Everyone touching another member of the family.

Our little family.

Lots of love in this little living room of ours.

On another happy note, I really struggle to find anything on these boys that looks like me. My sister mentioned the day they were born that Gray had my little toe. I know that sounds silly, but my pinky toe curls under itself completely, like an eagle claw. I finally noticed it again today. Little Gray has my claw toe! Makes me so happy. Also, makes me happy that I can actually prove to my mom that it is, in fact, genetic, and that I didn’t just wear too small of shoes all growing up.

What an incredible few days. I can’t believe how crazy everything was from my last update on…so really I’ll just pick up where that left off.

Thursday began the 24 hour urine collection. (Count yourselves lucky if you’ve never had to do that…I felt like a toddler in potty training). I was actually really frustrated because I had to spend all day Thursday in the hospital and they only monitored the boys for 20 minutes in the morning and 20 minutes in the evening. The boys had great heart rates and took contractions perfectly. They were PERFECT so why was I still here? Every time I saw the doctor, the only information we got was “I’ll come back to check on you in 4/6/2 hours.” So annoying. There was very little communication. I am quite capable of keeping my feet up at home, thank you very much. The nurses came in to check my blood pressure a ton and it was always within normal range. So I called my friend Julie, who is a labor and delivery nurse in Arizona. She explained to me that if I were her patient, I would be sitting exactly where I was and that you don’t mess around with toxemia. She was grateful I had a good doctor who understood the risks. And she finally helped me understand that the Dr. was worried about ME, not my boys.

Thursday night, I didn’t get a minute of sleep. Every time I started to doze off, a nurse or lab tech or housekeeping person would come in and poke and prod me. Then, if I ever went to the bathroom (which happens every 40 minutes or so…) I had to call the nurse and wait for them to add it to the collection to be tested in the morning. The collection ended about 1:30 am. Test results were expected to be back within a couple hours. At 6:30 in the morning, my nurse walked in. She had the most even-toned voice ever and said without any sense of urgency: “We got the results back from your urine collection. Normal protein levels are in the 150s. Your levels are well over 2 thousand, so a labor and delivery nurse will come down to get you and we’re going to induce you this morning.” And then she walked out.

Since we’d always had 2/4/6 hours in between being told something and it actually happening, Cam crawled into the bed with me and we cuddled and fell back asleep. 10 minutes later the labor and delivery nurse arrived, flipped on the lights and asked if we were ready to go. Cam jumped up and packed up most of our stuff. I got in the wheelchair and upstairs we went. I was hooked up to an entire tree of IVs by 7:15. I had a bag of regular fluids, a bag of pitocin to start the induction, a bag of magnesium sulfate to reduce my stroke threshold due to the toxemia, and a bag of zofran to help with the nausea caused by the magnesium sulfate.

Things went slowly for quite a while. Apparently, magnesium sulfate is also used to stop preterm labor, so it counteracts the pitocin, which meant I was over the max dose of pitocin in about 2 hours and my contractions still weren’t regular or very effective. The dr. came in to break my water at around 1:30 hoping that would help move things along. It did, but barely. The dr. had told me that because of my toxemia, I had to have an epidural no matter what because we couldn’t risk me being in enough pain to spike my blood pressure and send me into shock/seizure/stroke. I got the epidural at around 4 pm, when they checked me I was at a 4…barely.

From then on out, things really picked up. I took a nap until I was 6 cms. The dr. came in and said that he was going to take his wife out to dinner at a chinese place down the street, but would be back to check me soon. He came back, I was an 8. And my epidural wore off. Not fun. Because we really couldn’t have me at risk for a blood pressure increase, the anesthesiologist had to re-dose my epidural 4 times before things got under control. So…many….drugs! About 20 minutes after my Dr. announced that I was at an 8, I turned to Cam and said “Nash just dropped. I want to push.” And Cam called the nurse. Sure enough, I was a 10 and completely effaced. I pushed through about 4 contractions, the nurse announced she could see the head and off we went to the operating room. I was on a serious adrenaline rush by this point.

Suddenly, there were people everywhere. Teams of nurses flooded the room, my dr. and another OB from his office were right next to me. Cameron was suited up in a white jumpsuit, the ultrasound machine was to my left. I caught sight of two bassinets and things became far more real.

After pushing through the next contraction, the nurse told Cameron to look because you could see the head. I asked him how far away the head was and he said it was right there. One more contraction and I got through all 3 pushes, the nurse said I was still contracting and could push a fourth time if I wanted to. I said lets go for it and the entire team bore down with me. Nash was here! The doctor turned him to face me. Oh he was beautiful! I watched Cameron cut the umbilical cord and a team of nurses took my little boy to run a few tests to make sure he didn’t need any immediate attention.

My focus immediately switched to Gray.

It was a little weird at this point, because my uterus was half empty. There was so much room in there and Gray hadn’t dropped yet. I was contracting but I couldn’t feel a thing because my uterus wasn’t pushing against anything. A few minutes later, Gray dropped and I was good to go. The dr. broke my water again. Two contractions later, my little Gray was here! He came out with his fist above his head and the Dr. had to turn him between the two contractions. That was probably the most painful part of the entire labor. Cameron cut his cord and a team of nurses took him to check his vitals.

Around this time, one of the nurses brought my little Nash back to let me hold. Meanwhile, I delivered the placentas and started losing a lot of blood. My adrenaline was dropping. I handed Nash off to Cameron and assured Cameron that I was only closing my eyes because I was tired, and that he shouldn’t worry. There was plenty of reason to worry. Because of the conflicting medications and the extremely high dose of pitocin I was on to get labor going, my body didn’t react to the dose of pitocin I was given to shrink my uterus down and stop the bleeding. The next thing I knew I was flat on my back with an oxygen mask over my face and really fighting to stay awake.

The nurse got me some juice and tried to prop me up in the bed, but I was far from ok. I got stitched up and they pumped up the fluids in my IV. Once I was stable, they wheeled me around to the elevator and took me downstairs to the nursery so I could see my beautiful boys. I wasn’t able to sit up so they wheeled my entire bed around the nursery. I touched Gray for the first time and said hello to Nash again. And then I went back to my recovery room for the night.

Things weren’t good. I had to stay on the magnesium sulfate for 24 hours to watch my blood pressure. Nurses came in over and over again to check my fluids, blood pressure, reflexes, and other vitals. I didn’t get a bit of sleep, but I was so tired. The magnesium sulfate apparently does that to you, exhausts you but keeps you from sleeping deeply. The next morning, the nurses brought my boys in to see me. They were healthy and pink and perfect. I still didn’t feel very good, but a few hours of being with the boys lifted my spirits so much. We enjoyed our first Saturday morning together (amid more vitals checks and blood draws).

I still wasn’t improving, though, so breastfeeding was not an option. It broke my heart. Saturday night I had a 6-hour blood transfusion and got off the magnesium sulfate. Things are much better now. Like all newborn babies, they dropped a portion of their body weight over the first day. Because they don’t have a great deal of weight available to lose, they’re in the NICU right now to get extra help with feeding. Scary as it was to get the news that they needed to be transferred there, it really is a great situation. They have no other issues and I know my babies are getting enough to eat now. Also, it’s more of a breastfeeding bootcamp for me. I get 1 on 1 help from the best lactation specialists and nurses at every feeding and they’re working with me to overcome the effects of the magnesium sulfate from the first 24 hours of my babies’ little lives. We’ve already made tons of progress and I am so thrilled.

I truly can’t believe they’re here and that they are ours! I feel like the luckiest girl in the world, and while things didn’t go exactly as I dreamed they would, I couldn’t be happier. We are all here. We are all healthy. We are all happy.

This post is coming to you live from the American Fork Hospital mother and baby unit. Things have been the most boring kind of exciting the past 24+ hours.

I woke up at 3am yesterday having contractions. The doctor asked me to call in if I had more than 6 in an hour. I had 6. From 4-5 I had 9. From 5-6 I had 9. And so on. They didn’t hurt at all, they were just strong enough to get my attention and make me uncomfortable enough to keep me awake. I woke up Cam around 4 just to let him know. Neither of us went back to sleep. I went about my day, tried to sleep again and managed to take a 2 hour nap from 9-11. Cam went off to work. (trooper).

I called my sister and my mom and after listening to me breath hard through a couple contractions they convinced me to call the doctor. I just really didn’t want to cry wolf if I wasn’t in labor and they weren’t very painful, but I also wanted to give the doctor a chance to stop labor if he wanted to. These boys definitely aren’t done cooking yet.

I called the dr. and was told to come in for a labor check. I am 2 cm dilated at 80% effaced at this point. They also took my blood pressure and a urine sample. Blood pressure was 170/110. Not. good. and there was protein in my urine. Add the swelling that’s been going on and we’ve got ourselves a recipe for toxemia and/or preeclampsia (still not sure if those are the same thing…) The dr. sent us right over to labor and delivery at the hospital to be monitored.

Once we arrived, my blood pressure had dropped to a much better 140/80, but I was having contractions every 6-7 minutes. The doctor said that since I was past 35 weeks he wouldn’t do anything to stop labor if it really got going. This was at about 2:30. I had only eaten breakfast and was starving, but because of the potentially dangerous situation I wasn’t allowed to eat anything. Stupid.

We waited around until 7 when the doctor came back to check on me. He checked my cervix again. Still 80% effaced and *maybe* 2+ cm dilated. Not terribly encouraging. I was still having pretty normal contractions, and they were coming about 5 minutes apart (some were 4) but they weren’t hurting and if I didn’t watch the monitor I didn’t even know they were happening. There were maybe 1 or 2 that really got my attention.

The dr. was still concerned about the other symptoms I have of toxemia and said if I didn’t improve drastically by the time he came back to check me again that he would have to induce me to avoid a terrible situation for me and the boys. He said that if that happened to count on a NICU stay and to be induced in the morning.

After talking to the dr, I asked if I could please have something to eat since things weren’t progressing and he said yes. Off Cam went to get me a veggie sub and a red mango. Genius. Food has never tasted so good. While he was gone, I had a grade A meltdown. I need these boys to stay put. It is too early for them to come. I don’t mind being uncomfortable for a while longer. It’s really nothing when you think about it. I have had no complications up until this point and all of a sudden I need to be induced? It all fell apart so quickly and I felt like a failure as their mom. My mother reminded me that I have done everything I possibly can for these babies and if my body is done, it has done its job. And the boys will be fine. A NICU stay does not mean months on end. A NICU stay does not mean the boys will not be OK. It just means they’ll need a little extra help because they ran out of room a little early. And honestly, me having toxemia makes complete sense. It comes from the placenta and I have two of them, double the chance for an issue.

The dr. had 3 deliveries at another hospital to attend to and assured us he would come back to check on me again. He is extremely concerned about the toxemia. At around midnight he came in and my blood pressure was perfect and the contractions had died down completely. I was really hopeful that we’d get to go home, but that doesn’t look like it’s going to happen. They checked us in to another room to do a 24-hour urine collection (yuck) and more monitoring today. The doctor came in this morning around 7:30. My blood pressure is elevated again. I have contractions every time I move, be it rolling over, sitting up or walking to the bathroom. I can feel my feet filling up with water when I stand up to brush my teeth. Clearly, there is a problem.

From the looks of things, we’re hoping to buy me and these boys as much time as we can without endangering my life. (sounds dramatic to me too…not my words). And I got visited by the case worker for longer term hospital patients this morning, so I’m pretty sure I’ll be on bedrest here until the boys are in our arms.

Things could definitely be worse.

I have never been so grateful to wake up and still be pregnant than I was this morning.

Thanks for giving us a fighting chance, body!