Day 12

Timeliness

I have a pretty significant backlog of daily pictures to post, and a handful of posts I started while we were in the hospital but that I somehow never got around to finishing. (I wonder why?) Over the next day or two I’m going to be catching up, so expect to see a few new posts come up, backdated so they slip into the correct point in the chronology.

Take a stroll back through the archives, won’t you? Maybe you’ve missed something!

Day 11

Day 10

Day 9

Day 8

Pictures

I’m falling way behind on uploading the best of the thousands of pictures I’ve taken over the past eight days. In the meantime, Rachel’s stepfather Mark took some amazing pictures in the hospital that I thought I’d share.

Day One

Day Two

Day 7

Disconnected

Over the course of our hospital stay, I had a bunch of little ideas that probably aren’t each worth their own post, so here they are, all jumbled together:

—

The food at the Women and Infants’ Hospital cafeteria isn’t bad, for cafeteria food, but the food that gets delivered to patients’ rooms is actually quite good, for hospital food. My advice to partners of post-partum women: ask the Food and Nutrition people for a menu to order a guest tray up to the room while you’re hanging around. It only costs $6.

Also: if you’re planning to stay overnight in your partner’s room, do yourself a favor and get an air mattress. The nurses will happily provide you with a spare set of sheets. The fold-out chair thing that they provide has only a passing resemblance to a bed.

—

You find a good number of men wandering the halls of the hospital. When two of us found ourselves waiting for the elevator, we would greet each other with a furtive glance towards the other’s left wrist. On seeing the tell-tale hospital bracelet, we give each other a comradely head-nod (what a friend from college calls the “Pez-head”) or, if we’re feeling more gregarious, a world-weary, “Hey, man, congratulations.”

In such encounters, when I pulled my hand out of my pocket and flashed my two bracelets, I confess I felt like a total bad-ass.

—

A hospital is a noisy place. Pretty much every piece of machinery in the building hums, buzzes, trills, or beeps. On a number of occasions (such as listening to Rachel’s IV pump loudly beep in a futile attempt to tell us that her saline bag was empty) I wondered how the staff would ever be able to tell when something urgent came up. Wouldn’t all the beeping just drown in the general clamor?

One evening on a stroll back from the bathroom (Rachel’s room had a bathroom, of course, but it was separated from the main room by nothing more than a curtain, which didn’t provide the level of privacy I require) I found out. A loud three-note tone sequence like nothing I’d heard before came over the intercom, followed by a woman’s calm voice:

“Code blue. Labor room eighteen. Second floor. Infant.”

The tone and message repeated three times and then went quiet. Now, it’s too early in this parenting process for me to pull any crap about how, as a parent, I found the announcement especially harrowing. I’d only been a parent for a few days, and I think I’d have felt a chill up my spine even if I didn’t have two tiny babies waiting for me just down the hall. But I’d be lying if told you I didn’t rush back with a little more urgency to scoop them up and make sure they were OK.

Day 6

Day 5

Day 4

Homecoming

Bringing the babies home was actually a really exciting experience. Worlds collided as these two little beings that we’d only ever cared for in a hospital room suddenly ended up in the house we’ve spent months preparing for them. Weird!

We also got our first taste of the attention you draw when, for instance, carrying two car seats through a hospital.

(More pictures up on Flickr, too.)

Homeward

I had several more things I wanted to post about while we were in the hospital, and plenty more pictures to put up, but time has a way of running away with you when there are two babies about. And now there’s no time to get all that stuff up, because we’re going home today. If time permits this week, we may work on backfilling some posts about the fantastic experience we had at the hospital, but for now, to quote Eric Cartman, “Screw you guys, [we're] goin’ home.”

Woo!

Day 3

Appreciation

Just a quick note to tell you how much we appreciate the outpouring of congratulatory emails, comments, and calls. We’re hoping this post will stand in for the personal response we’d like to send each of you.

Huh. This is starting to sound like one of those “contact us” disclaimers on a corporate website:

Thank you very much for contacting us. Although we read every email, due to the high number of emails we cannot promise to reply to each and every one. Be assured, your thoughts are very important to us. Thank you again.

Day 2

Fatherhood

I was thinking about trying to write something about how it feels to become a parent, about what it’s like to change from some dude with a pregnant wife to a father but I realized that I can’t really do much better than Tycho did, so go read that instead: he speaks for me.

A note about language: I’ve been thinking about the words we use to describe the act of having and caring for children. It’s strange to think of myself as a “father” but I’m getting more comfortable with the idea of myself as a “parent.” “Parenting” and “mothering” are, more or less, synonyms (if there’s a difference, it’s that mothering takes on a negative connotation when used figuratively—nice going, sexists). To “parent” or to “mother” a child is a lifelong process, an ongoing, never-ending, fairly selfless act of nurturing, caring, and sustaining another human being.

But to “father” a child? You can father a child in an instant, and that’s the end of it. Our stupid sexist language makes fatherhood a discrete act—an achievement rather than a process. I don’t want to make any impossible promises or any lofty claims, but I would like to try, for these two children, to make “fathering” something better.

Unexpected

I did not expect the Red Sox to win Game 5 of the ALCS, so I certainly did not expect to be watching Game 6 until after midnight. And I definitely did not expect to be woken two hours after going to sleep by Rachel calling to me from the bathroom.

“Matt? I think my water broke.”

The predictable half-hour of frantic scrambling ensued. By a happy coincidence, we had spent the day Saturday packing our hospital bags and installing the car seats, “just in case.” In fact, I had confidently predicted to Rachel that by packing the bags in advance, we were ensuring that the babies would wait until their scheduled date to arrive. It’s the same theory that holds that by packing an umbrella for your vacation, you can guarantee that it won’t rain. I guess the principle doesn’t apply to babies.

So: bags, pillows, and an air mattress got thrown in the back of the car, food was hastily poured out for the cats, cameras and a laptop were stuffed in their bags, and off we went to the hospital.

The nice part about rushing to the hospital at 2:30 in the morning is that you get your choice of parking spaces, and there’s not much of a wait at triage. By 3:30 at the latest, we were in an exam room, Rachel was gowned up and on monitors, and the all of the preparations were underway. Rachel was pretty nervous, but I was able to keep myself upbeat and confident—until the nurse decided to put Rachel’s IV in the arm that I happened to be sitting next to and I nearly passed out. (Dramatic tension! if he can’t handle watching an IV go on, how will he manage in the operating room? Stay tuned!)

As mentioned previously, we were reasonably pleased to have the C-section scheduled because it meant that Rachel’s doctor would perform the surgery, and her midwife would attend to help keep us both calm and comfortable. (In fact, both of them planned to come in on their day off for us, which we can’t help but find flattering.) Coming in early meant that we got the doctor on call, who happened to be very nice, very professional, and very French Canadian. They also paged the midwife on call, but due to a communications breakdown somewhere along the line, the hospital staff forgot to wake her up from her nap to attend the surgery. I suppose if anyone was going to sleep through the surgery, a midwife we’d never met before was probably the best candidate.

After a seemingly interminable wait in the exam room, they finally wheeled Rachel up to the second floor and into the OR. This is the part Rachel (and I) were especially nervous about: neither of us liked the idea of being separated while she got on the operating table and had her spinal block. I’ll let Rachel relate the story from the woman’s perspective, but I can say that, from the male perspective, waiting to be called into the OR for your wife’s C-section will be the most boring and nerve-wracking fifteen minutes of your life.

Once they wheeled Rachel through the double doors, they handed me a bag of scrubs (size XXL) to pull on over my clothes, pointed me to towards one of two sad little chairs in the hallway, and told me to wait. I had time to experiment with self-portraiture:

After what seemed like hours, I was finally called into the OR. I had no idea what to expect, really, having never been in an operating room. What I saw was Rachel’s head poking out of a blue curtain, and two baby receiving stations just to her left. To her right was, essentially, the machine that goes “ping!” manned by her anesthesiologist—a man who had less personality than the aforementioned blue curtain. (He seemed like the kind of person who has never in his life been greeted with, “Hey! Good to see you!” I’m guessing he gets a lot of, “Oh. Hi, Bob.” The guy walked past be twice while I was waiting out in the hallway and was the only person out of more than a dozen not to congratulate me or, you know, acknowledge me sitting there in my oversized scrubs.)

Rachel was nervous, but brave. I was definitely holding it together, and was determined not to look over, past, or around that blue curtain, because very very gross things were going to be happening over there. My problem was this: I was told that as soon as the babies were out, I was free (and indeed encouraged) to go over to them, take pictures of them, and touch them. What complicated matters was that the room was laid out as follows:

Going over to Baby B was going to require edging past the curtain, making absolutely sure not to turn around, even for a second. After my misadventure in the exam room downstairs, I was determined not to screw this one up.

I sat down on the “dad” stool, the doctor started doing something behind the curtain, and less than ten minutes later, we heard Dr. Caron shout over the curtain, “I’m taking out Baby A! Do you want to know what it is?” Rachel and I replied in the affirmative, and the doctor sang out, “It’s a boy!” What seemed like a whole herd of blue-suited nurses sprang up around the Baby A table and before I could decide whether or not to get up off of my stool, Dr. Caron was telling us that the second baby was a girl.

(I didn’t care, much, what the sexes of our babies were, but I’d be lying if I didn’t say I was hoping for at least one girl. The more I think about it, the more it seems like we got absolutely the perfect combination.)

All in all, the “getting the babies out” portion of the event took maybe twenty minutes. Julian, Eloise, and I hung out for a few minutes, and then the three of us were ushered off to recovery to wait for Rachel to get stitched back together. So there I found myself, sitting in a warm, dark hospital room at six in the morning, staring at two helpless, pink, and crusty miniature persons. I did not expect to be doing that at all.

Eloise

Eloise: Six Hours Old, originally uploaded by mharvey75.

Julian

Julian: Six Hours Old, originally uploaded by mharvey75.

Arrival

We are very excited to announce that our twins have decided to make an early entrance!

Julian Spaulding Harvey was born at 5:27 a.m, October 19. He weighed 4 pounds, 15 ounces. Julian is named in memory of his maternal great-grandfather, John Julien McCoy.

Eloise Spaulding Harvey was born at 5:28 a.m. She weighed 5 pounds, 1 ounce. Eloise is named in memory of her paternal grandmother, Lois Rappoport Harvey.

Rachel is recovering nicely, the twins are healthy, and we’re ecstatic, if a little stunned! We’ll be camped out at Women and Infants’ Hospital for a few days, but we’ll hopefully get some more pictures up soon. We look forward to introducing you to them!

Bringing the Babies into a Better World

Four years ago I remember thinking, “This is going to be an exciting fall! We’re getting married, a Democrat is going to get elected president, and the Red Sox are going to win the World Series!” Two out of three proved true. Well, here we are four years later, with a similarly exciting lineup of fall events, and I’m hoping to go three for three this year. (If we can only have two, though, I’m really sorry, Red Sox, but you just don’t quite make the cut.) In an effort to help bring that to fruition, I mailed in my absentee ballot today. (I am also happy to pitch for the Sox in long relief if called upon by Terry Francona.)

True, Rhode Island does not make most political analysts’ “swing state” lists, but I really didn’t want to miss out on voting in this historic election. And with Election Day coming nine days post-surgery (assuming the babies wait until their scheduled delivery date), I could imagine a scenario in which I didn’t feel up for going to the polls, particularly given Rhode Island’s assured navy blue status. So I went the absentee ballot route.

Let’s hope that does the trick! It would be very hard to give the babies up for adoption by Canadians if McCain wins, but we’d have to seriously consider it.

Today I’m 36 weeks and 4 days pregnant. Three days until the babies are officially full term, and nine days until they are born (again, assuming they cooperate with our schedule). I am so happy and relieved that we have made it this far. We’re getting awfully close to being ready for them. This weekend we’ll put our hospital bags in the car and install the infant car seats. I will also try to knit them some little hats to wear home. I don’t want to finish everything, because I feel as though that will somehow send them a signal that they can come any time, and I’d really rather they wait, both for their own sake (the longer they cook the better) and for ours (we really want our awesome OB and midwife to attend the c-section). So I will knit their hats very slowly.

I can’t believe that we will watch Game 4 of the World Series (not to mention the late-night election returns) with babies in our arms.

Countdown

In the first of what I’m sure will be a lifetime of instances of these children disappointing their parents, our twins have decided that they will not be turning around, thank you very much, and so both remain in the breech position. This is a problem for two reasons:

First, Rachel is walking around with two human skulls under her ribs. I’m given to understand that’s as uncomfortable as it sounds. Secondly, it means that the twins are no longer eligible for a conventional vaginal delivery. (I know that some of my friends have expressed discomfort about using a simple medical term like “vaginal” to describe childbirth, and so to them I say: get over it. Vagina vagina vagina.) Most doctors give up on attempting a vaginal delivery if even one twin is breech; ours, because he rocks, was willing to attempt a vaginal birth if Twin A was in the vertex (or “head down”) position. But at this point, the game’s up, and we’re (mostly Rachel) having a Cesarean section.

This has its upsides, though! For one thing, scheduling a C-section means that we can be sure the birth will be attended by our doctor and our midwife, both of whom we’ve really come to like and rely on. Secondly, it means we know the date our babies will be born, which makes planning a lot easier.

So, the countdown to October 26 has begun.

Having a date makes this thing super real. Now, of course, these little guys could always decide to come early, resulting in a scramble to get to the hospital, a delivery by whichever doctor is on call, and, quite possibly, a short stay in the NICU. (If that happens, they are so grounded.) But we know the latest possible date they’ll arrive. It feels like that’s both no time at all and also ages away.

And as weird as becoming a parent is in general, a Cesarean delivery is particularly surreal. They estimate about fifteen minutes, tops, between the time they get Rachel on the operating table and the moment we’re holding babies. That’s a pretty sharp transition from not parents to parents. I suppose, though, that whether the transition is accompanied by twenty hours of screaming labor or twenty minutes of antiseptic surgery, it’s something you can’t quite imagine until it happens. Not for lack of trying: we spend a lot of time talking about how excited we are and what we’ll do when they arrive, and I spent at least a few minutes every night before we go to sleep trying to picture what our babies will be like when they arrive, how I’ll feel about them, and how our lives will change. How can I imagine what it will feel like to wake up at 3:00 A.M. to change a diaper, or see an infant seat in the rear view mirror, or to hold a tiny, helpless baby and know that it’s my responsibility? I can’t imagine, yet; it’s a hopeless task.

And a pointless one! Since they’ll be here in 18 days! To help us count down until the arrival, Rachel regressed to childhood undertook a craft project. We’ll remove one link each day until we’re left with a sad little paper bracelet that, on Sunday morning a few short weeks from now, just before we get in the car at 6:00 A.M. to go to the hospital and meet our babies, we’ll toss reverently into the recycling.

Decorated

Hey, so, when you have babies, turns out you need a place to put stuff. Also, turns out there’s tons of adorable stuff out there to decorate a babies’ room. It can be a little overwhelming, which is why it took us forever to get the room put together. Of course, now that it’s all set up, we have nothing to do but sit in there and say to each other, “When are the babies getting here?” I suppose we should enjoy that “new room smell” for as long as we can.

A tour? Sure!

We never got around to picking a theme for the room. Well, that’s putting it mildly: we spent hours at Babies “R” Us arguing about which bedding set we should get, and whether we needed a bedding set, and whether any of the bedding sets would match our paint color, and whether we should buy a set (because did we really want the crib bumpers?) or just individual sheets (but are they less cute?), and debated the names of patterns long enough that “Bunny Meadow” stopped sounding ridiculous. Finally, we remembered that we’re not really “matching” people. Our home decor can probably be generously described as “eclectic” rather than “well-thought out,” or “coordinating,” or, you know, “tasteful.” It’s fitting, then, that our babies’ room reflects our hopes for them: adorable, but a little crazy.

The toughest decision, furniture-wise, was a changing table. We spent quite a bit of time going back on forth on our options here (and by this I mainly mean walking back and forth between showrooms at IKEA), and finally decided that the changing tables, per se, were not the best option for us. Instead, we got an IKEA HEMNES dresser, plopped a changing pad on it, and hung an IKEA LACK shelf above it for supplies and things:

The bins are from Land of Nod, and, of course, no changing table is complete without a giraffe to watch over the scene.

Other highlights of the changing table area include Jefe the Heffalump and Chippy, my stuffed chipmunk whom I’ve had since I was three, and these awesome nightlights Andre and Meghal got us. (And seriously, how awesome is that giraffe?)

Let’s talk about these cute cribs (thanks again to Rachel and Liz) now all decked out with monkey decals, and monkey sheets, and a rather spectacular mobile:

We’re going to put them in the same crib to start out, and you can see the little “sheet saver” pads we’ll park them on to sleep.

The glider is from Dutallier, and is ridiculously comfortable. (The handmade quilt is from Rachel’s college roommate, Liz):

Other décor highlights include these cute nursery rhyme thingies from Rachel’s mom, four incredibly cool prints from Etsy, and some kick-ass parachuting sheep decals. Yes, parachuting sheep.

Oh, and look who wandered in! It’s Rachel, at 34 weeks pregnant!

So, that’s the babies’ room. (There’s more detailed notes on some of the pictures if you click through to Flickr.) Stay tuned for breaking news about the twins’ arrival date…