BabyMooning

The twins and I are spending our days nursing, sleeping, and getting to know each other. I cannot believe how opposite they are in personality and looks. The older kids are doing fairly well adjusting, but they're not their normal selves. Izzy is having a harder time. She's out of sorts and cries a lot. She misses me (I've been spending most of my time in bed) and she's been hitting and throwing and basically making us all miserable. I knew to expect that though, and we're trying to be patient and work her through the transition.

Ben is the spitting image of Noah except he's nearly two pounds smaller. Same eyes, nose, mouth, chin, same blond hair (what VERY little he has--he's nearly bald just like his brother was!), little hunch back, build....everything. It's like looking at my Beanie as a newborn all over again. Oh, he's just precious! He's way more laid back than Claire but when he gets going, his cries are much more forceful than hers. He sleeps for long periods and then camps on the breast for a couple hours.

Claire's hair is darn near black and it's so soft. I think it will be curly. She's just SO tiny and perfect. She has little rose bud cheeks and lips. I think she's just built smaller than my other babies and her size is not because of being a twin. She likes to nurse every couple of hours and will only really sleep well on top of her Dad and I or in the swing.

I had my first postpartum check today. Claire is down to 6 pounds even and Ben is 6 pounds 15 ounces. They've both lost 10% of their birth weight and should go up from here as my milk came in today. I hate this day postpartum because when the milk comes in I spike a temp and basically feel like I have the worst case of the flu ever. I've spent my entire day in bed, shivering, aching, and feeling like poo. I should be better tomorrow.

So far, I've lost 20 of the 39 pounds I gained. I expect as I really begin to lactate the other 19 will fall off as well. My health looks great! I'm sore and a bit tired but otherwise I'm doing OK.

We did the first PKU this afternoon and I need to call and make an appt for a well check next week. Ben's got a weird spot on his sternum I want to have looked at. We think it's from Claire laying her head on his belly all that time.

As for the birth story, it's been pointed out to me that if I post the journey of having a Baby A footling breech home birth I will get reamed up one side and down the other by certain home birth detractors in Blogland. I'm still musing, but I think I'll probably post it anyway. Other than spewing vile hatred at me those folks have no impact on my life. They're entitled to their opinions and me to mine. Honestly, they wouldn't approve of having two vertex babies at home, either. It's disturbing to me that if I were with an OB I would have been pushed to have a c-section at 36 weeks for a double breech. That was 3 weeks before they were to be born. Can you say NICU?

But let me be clear, lest you are reading this and think I'm SO cool for having a footling at home. Claire's health was forefront on everyone's mind the entire time once we realized she had slipped those feet past her bottom at the end. Every single thing that had to go right to keep her safe lined up perfectly. Not everyone could have done what I did, but because I'm a future midwifery student and I've done a lot of study already I understood what was at stake better than your average lay person. I knew that ONE push meant a transfer. I knew that if the bag broke before I was complete it meant we were going in for the c-section. I knew that if any cord, even a little bit, came down when the bag broke it meant I was on my chest with my butt in the air and we were going to have a crash section at the hospital around the corner. I knew we were going contraction by contraction. I knew that I HAD to get the cervix out of the way or it was over. We were very careful. I had 5 pairs of experienced hands present and there was a LOT of intervention. It wasn't a blissed out, peaceful, serene birth. It was down-in-the-trenches hard birth work. It took every single bit of determination and strength I had. And it took the Holy Spirit standing in that room. I did not do this hard work alone. I felt His presence the entire time, giving me strength, holding me up, giving me the knowledge I needed.

I gave up a lot of the "feel good" birth stuff we talk about over on MDC. I pushed Claire out on my back, legs pulled up, chin to chest, so that they could easily do a breech extraction. Which wasn't actually ever required since I pushed her out in less than 50 minutes from the time I was complete and less than 20 from when the bag broke. Heart tones stayed stable, cord stayed out of the way, and she was nearly 2 pounds smaller at birth than my biggest baby, Noah, who was 9 pounds at birth and I spit him out in three contractions.

So. This is all to say that while I'm apparently becoming a bit 'famous' on the net for this birth, it wasn't some walk in the park. At no point would I have put my daughter at risk. Because I progressed so incredibly fast (the entire labor was 8 hours and the time from when we found the feet had slipped past the butt to birth was less than 2 hours) we were able to hang in there and make the moment by moment decisions that allowed me to have a vaginal birth. If any one thing had not fallen in to place I would have had the section. If we had seen the footling at the sono the day before I would have gone in at the first contractions. I would not suggest having a footling unassisted, as I could *not* trust my body to tell me what to do like I have in my past births and like I was able to do with Ben's posterior vertex birth. It's darn possible that I would have been able to push her out at 7cm since she was so much smaller than her brothers and sisters but I also might have had a head entrapment and that's not so much fun. If it hadn't been for the three very experienced midwives present things may have gone very, very badly. Before having Isabella unassisted I knew with certainty that I needed to have her that way. Just as with this birth, I knew from the very beginning that I was going to need more help.