Meet the Meschkes

I love blogs. I loved them for a while now, since a number of my friends started them. I love checking in on them and seeing pictures of their kids. I have even been known to read a blog or two of someone I don't even know. So you would think I would have had one of my own long ago. And I have been meaning to...really. But it took a little nudging from my good friend Liz in the form of an entry on her blog to get me to actually do it. So, thank you Liz...here we go!

Emma and Ellie are 8 months old now. But I am going to back up a little bit to tell the story of their arrival into this world...it was a little rocky but all is well now.

Being a twin pregnancy, I was monitored very closely with lots of ultrasounds to monitor the girls' growth. Here is the ultrasound photo that clued us in to the fact that there were in fact TWO babies coming:

At about 30 weeks, I went in for a routine ultrasound and found out that Twin B (Ellie) had hardly grown in the previous month. She was tiny and met the criteria for growth restriction. I was sent home on bedrest and we started even closer monitoring. I had ultrasounds twice a week and we measured their size every 2-3 weeks. At 36 weeks, we decided it was time to have the babies. Ellie needed to be born. So a C-section was scheduled for January 10th, 2008.

This is what I looked like a few minutes before we left for the hospital.

The C-section went fine and I got to see the girls shortly after they were born for a few minutes. The girls were then whisked away to the NICU; twin A (we still hadn't decided on a name for her yet; or rather, Andy decided at the last minute that he might want to change the name we had picked out months earlier!) was having some trouble breathing and had to be put under an oxygen hood for a while. She weighed in at 5 lbs 14 oz. Ellie was doing great but only weighed 3 lbs 7 oz and was in an isolette to keep warm. Andy went to be with the girls while I was put back together.

I didn't feel well enough after the delivery to go to the NICU for more than one 5 minute trip and the babies weren't doing well enough to come to me. So I only saw the girls in pictures at first. But at about 10 PM that night their awesome nurse "snuck" them out to visit me and we got to be together as a family. It was awesome! Just as importantly, I was able to get my first good look at "twin A" and we finally settled on her name : Emma Patricia. Little sister's name stayed the same: Eleanor Jacquelyn.

How the girls came to my room

Emma (left) and Ellie (right)

Emma (left) and Ellie (right)

The next week is a bit of a blur to me. I developed pre-eclampsia and was put on magnesium sulfate for 24 hours. Then I started bleeding in my incision. By the third day after surgery, I needed a blood transfusion and to go back to the operating room to stop the bleeding. I was very sore and had a lot of bruising, but slowly started to feel better after the second trip to the OR. I was finally ready to be discharged from the hospital a week later. The babies, however, were not able to be discharged...leaving them in the NICU was the hardest thing I think I have ever had to do. But I waited a long time for these girls and I knew I could wait a few more days!