feminist blogs

One of the neat things about having infants is that they reach developmental milestones almost daily. My little Mark is really good with his eyes. He loves to follow things, and last week he found someone he really likes….

Yes, he found himself. He doesn’t know that baby in the mirror is Mark, but he sure likes to look at that baby. Actually, he likes to look at the baby until the baby frowns then he gets mad and starts crying.

My little Eli is really growing fast. He’s been making talking sounds for a long time, and he tries to imitate people who talk to him. He kept saying some word that sounded like okra, so we tried to get him to make a long O sound. Here’s a youtube video of my husband trying to get him to say Obama. He comes pretty close to saying it. Of course, according to my mommy ears he actually said Obama. He also likes to say uncle, good, and his favorite made up word is “enguh.”

Over the past 2 months I’ve been inundated with baby care. My life has revolved mainly around feeding and diapering 2 little ones, so needless to say I haven’t had much time to blog, but I promise I haven’t given up blogging. I haven’t checked my email or my site, so if you wrote me, I’m just now getting it.

A few weeks after the little guys were born I pledged that I would get back to blogging when they started sleeping through the night–that hasn’t happened yet. But I figure I can put up a couple posts a week until they actually sleep more than 3 hours at a time.

In the meanwhile, here are a few pictures from their first week. The first picture is of Eli in the hospital. We spiked his hair. I think it helps to get a perspective of how big/small they where when you look at them next to their Daddy’s hands. Like most babies, they lost weight in the first few days of life, but what’s more amazing is how much they have grown since then. In this picture, Eli weighed around 7 lbs, and in the picture at the bottom Mark weighs a little less than 6lbs. They were really big for twins, and I admittedly was really happy when I looked at them in the nursery and they didn’t look any different from the singleton babies. That was a great relief for me, because, being a mom of twins, I was at a greater risk for pregnancy related complications, which lingered in the back of my mind throughout the whole pregnancy. I was very fortunate to give birth at 38 weeks and have two big boys. I’ll add more recent pictures over the next few weeks.

And finally, Daddy, Babies, and Mommy want to thank everyone for their well wishes.

We welcomed our twins into the world last Friday via C-section. Eli arrived weighing 7lbs. 3oz., at 8:16 AM. He was 19 inches long. His Nigerian name is Emeka. Mark arrived weighing 6lbs. 5oz., at 8:18 AM. He was 18 inches long. His Nigerian name is Akholisa.

We made a video of their arrival. They may have broken the recorded for the loudest birth. The doctors and nurses were all laughing as were Dad and I. They screamed like this for the entire time it took to repair my my incision–I’m guessing about 30 minutes.

Hey folks it’s Rachel.  I figured I’d give everyone an update.

Yes, my posting has been limited lately. I’m slowly getting prepared for the babies, and then we had some computer trouble last week, so needless to say I’ve been preoccupied with other things.

I’ve been really lucky because I haven’t had any major problems. I’ve also had a total of zero contractions, no high blood pressure, no diabetes, and no other common pregnancy problems. My doctor did suggest taking time off from work at 34 weeks. I think that is fairly standard with twins since twin pregnancies are generally more taxing on the body than singleton pregnancies. Fortunately, my semester ended right at that time, so I didn’t have to worry about going to my job. It was just the right time to stop because I really can’t be on my feet for more than 10-15 minutes without having back, hip, and buttock pain.

The babies are doing well. Since “discordance,” which is basically large differences in size or growth of multiples, is a potential problem I have to get them measured every 3 weeks. I get an ultrasound, and the neonatalogist and ultrasound tech measure their size, heart rate, amniotic fluid, and several other measures of health and growth. At 33 weeks and a half weeks, they weighed 5lbs. 1oz. each. I was happy to see that their sizes are the same because baby A was getting ahead of baby B, but B finally caught up. At this rate, I may have two 7lb. babies. That’s not big for a single baby, but it’s pretty big for twins–I just keeping thinking, “My body will likely be carrying 14lbs. of baby.” The seem to be dropping, and right now they have their heads down, so I may be able to push both of them out without a C-section.

Unless they want to come sooner, I’ll probably be delivering them at 38 weeks.

Here’s Sydney and Bean at PSU today, where Chelsea Clinton was appearing. Sydney: Grrrrr!

Look under the fold for more pics… It’s worth it, I think.

In case you haven’t noticed, my blogging has been lighter than usual since October. Well the main reason for that has been because I’m pregnant. I told my co-bloggers, so they wouldn’t think I was abandoning the site..

Now that I’m in just out of month 4, I’m finally happy to report that my life doesn’t revolve around the fear of throwing up on strangers. :) For a while, from months 2-4, I was battling morning sickness, and the usual first trimester sleepiness. I’m still concerned about a few things like the fact that at almost 19 weeks I weigh the same as I did when I got pregnant. In fact, one of the most fascinating things about pregnancy is the way it has altered my eating habits and my metabolism. When I was in the throws of morning sickness, for some unknown reason the more unhealthy the food the more likely it was to stay down. I’ve never eaten so many McDonald’s Big Mac’s in my life. What’s even funnier is the fact that I ate that kind of food and lost 6 pounds. I felt like I couldn’t possibly eat enough food to maintain my weight, and I was even more shocked when I read that I was supposed to eat 2600 calories a day (300 extra calories per fetus). I’ve always been a person who loves eating and food, and by medical standards I’m in the overweight category, but suddenly, I didn’t want to eat, and these two little fetuses were performing liposuction on my thighs and butt. My husband kept joking about the fact that I had the incredible shrinking booty, which he thought was bad and my mother and brother thought was great. (Now, there’s a cultural difference if there ever was one–West African ideas about booty beauty and White American ideas about booty beauty.) Fortunately, I’ve gained my 6 pounds back, but I seem to be stuck right at the same weight. I promise I’ll write more about this since it really seems to be the one issue that is bothering me the most–I keep wondering how I’m going to gain 30 lbs in 20 weeks.¹

Of course, I’m going to write about the pregnancy because there are so many juicy issues. The gender issues are obvious, but other issues like body image (which I alluded to above), medicalization, racism, and the rampant classism/materialism that surrounds birth and children. I already have some good stories to tell already, so be prepared. Plus, when the little ones are born, I’ll even have some baby blogging to do.

1. For those who don’t know the weight gain recommendation for twins is higher, but doctors also seem to be all over the place in terms of what they suggest. My OBGYN suggested a 44lb weight gain for a woman of my height who is of average weight. Since I’m overweight, she suggested 30-35 lbs.

I’m feeling too lazy to put a baby blogging post together today, so go over to Damn Cool Pics and check out their annual “Parent Of The Year” photo celebration. A couple of examples:

This has nothing to do with the photo, but did I tell you about the time that Maddox first vomited all over her mother’s shoulder and lap while mom was at the computer? She had a stomach bug, and took ages to fall asleep while being held by her daddy. She then woke up and vomited in daddy’s hair. In the midst of all this, Sydney had the same stomach bug too, and was also vomiting copiously. Oh, and this was the same day the washing machine died, so there was no handy way to wash all the vomit-sotted towels.

Anyhow, I just thought I’d mention that there’s more to the parenting gig than just dressing them up in cute outfits. :-)

Chicago Pop, one of the bloggers at the excellent Daddy Dialectic blog, has more on the general subject of small children vomiting on their parents.

Maddox is simply animal-mad. Both the girls enjoy animals, but Sydney just enjoys animals as much as she enjoys a lot of other things, whereas nothing captivates Maddox more. Especially baby animals. Maddox’s favorite blog is Cute Overload, of course.

By the way, what would people think of switching the title from “Monday Baby Blogging” to “Tuesday Toddler Blogging,” so we could keep the alliteration? Or should I just jettison the alliteration thing and make it “Monday Toddler Blogging?,” so that people could keep on looking for this feature on Mondays? Clearly, the “baby” thing is getting less fitting all the time.