The Gabriel & Elias Blog: Speaker's Fee: 2 Boobs

We don't have any new photos for this week because we were SSSSOOOO busy this weekend! Saturday morning was our local twins club Clothing & Equipment sale. We went early for the member sale and did some hardcore bargain hunting. We left with an exersaucer, a bag of clothes, a BIG set of foam pads, and 2 baby hiking backpacks -- all for a grand total of $108. While we were there, a mom came up to us and said her boys were 2 years older than ours, that she had two boxes of 1 y/o clothes at her house around the corner, and did we want them now? WE SURE DID! And it was a TON of terrific stuff for twins -- all in good shape, or unused. WOW! We literally had the truck loaded to the ceiling with gear by 9am.

We had the boys' NICU reunion Saturday afternoon in town -- so we decided to burn some time rather than try and go home and back into town. We stopped by a coffee shop and window shopped for a while -- then we went to a local zoo for local animals injured and unable to return to the wild. For a small town zoo, it was very cool. They had wolves, coyotes, tigers, bears, and monkeys in addition to racoons, farm animals, birds, squirrels...even ferral and domestic cats! :-) I think the boys enjoyed it -- mom and dad certainly did! After the zoo, we had lunch out and then headed to the reunion. We saw a couple of parents we recognized -- as well as a nurse and our social worker. The boys were total hams with everyone who saw them. They laughed and smiled and flirted so much that everyone wanted their picture. It was pretty emotional to return to the hospital -- even though it was for a happy reason. We felt so proud and blessed to be bringing the boys back so healthy and happy -- it was great to see other kids who were born with low birth weight and had grown into strapping kiddos. At the same time, there were many other children who clearly had long-term physical challenges. We didn't stay long, but were glad we had gone.

On Sunday, Chris went to his company's golf tournament. I (Kathy) took the boys and went to downtown Sacramento for part of the Northern California La Leche League Conference. I went to see one session on Mothers with Multiples and then sat on a panel of moms sharing their experiences with Lactation Consultants and Nurses. For both sessions, the boys sat on their nursing pillow and eat, slept, and talked as appropriate. Being on the panel was AWESOME. There were 5 other moms with twins from age 3-8. It was so affirming to see these competent, fun, and funny women who had all survived raising and breastfeeding twins. And it felt good to hear that "survived" is sometimes the appropriate term. At one point, someone pointed out that every woman on the panel had been in or near tears at some point while describing parts of their birth or nursing experiences... and these were not tears of happiness. Karen Gromada (a twin mommy who literally wrote the LLL book on mother multiples) stood up and said that even though her boys are almost 20 years old and she works with hundreds of mothers, she still has emotional "flashbacks" after talking with new moms. I think the panel had a strong impact on everyone who attended. It definitely had a positive impact for me.

We worked so hard to get the boys to the breast -- and we don't talk about it much with other people now. We did this insane cycle of nursing, bottle-feeding, and pumping every 3 hours around the clock for both babies -- this went on for weeks and weeks -- 11 weeks to be exact. Finally, at the point where we were ready to give up, the boys figured it out. I still look back and can't believe surivived the exhaustion, the hormones, and the sheer overwhelming feeling of it all. But we did it. And we are so proud of it. It was awesome to be at a conference filled with people who understand and recognize what an accomplishment this is. I nursed the boys with pride while talking on the panel!

On that note -- some proud-if-you-don't-like-it,-don't-look nursing photos to show how far we've come: