My Faith and Joy… and Boys!

Yesterday’s baby shower, thrown by my co-workers, was a wonderful distraction from my normal hum-drum ceiling-tile-counting afternoons.  My mom and mother-in-law both helped to make the party a success.  My mom carted darling Winnie the Pooh decorations all the way from California, and Jan outdid herself with the refreshments, including one of my favorite pasta salads.  Food has become a central feature of my daily life; or more precisely, the search for non-hospital food has taken on an epic scope, and Jan’s menu satisfied my burgeoning appetite, as did a phenomenal 3-D teddy bear cake prepared by a co-worker.  It was so good to see my friends from work again.  I am fortunate to call all my co-workers dear friends, and although I may not miss the stress of being disconnected by an insurance company after arguing with the provider representative for 45 minutes to resolve an unpaid claim issue, I most certainly miss the atmosphere of working with such great people.    

Last night, my nurse was kind enough to take Jim, my mom and I on an “unofficial” tour of the hospital’s neonatal intensive care nursery (NICU), where our girls will be staying if I am unable to convince my uterus to hold out for another two months.  Because the tour was a brief one, we were whisked from room to room and introduced to the layout of the nursery.  We can set up an official tour if we schedule in advance, and then we will be able to see babies who were born at different gestational stages, so we can visualize how large (or rather, how very tiny) our girls may if they are born now or in the upcoming weeks. 

The highlight of the tour for me was a very silly brainstorm I had while we were scrubbing our hands at a sanitation station prior to entering the NICU.  I think I may have finally stumbled upon the key to ensuring Jim’s cleanliness prior to mealtimes: installing a digital timer next to the sink!  Jim diligently scrubbed his hands for the required three minutes without grumbling.  Now, there are several factors playing into his compliance, I’m sure – one being a vigilant nurse supervising the process, and another being the all-important goal of keeping babies healthy.  Yet I would wager that the underlying success of the operation lay in Jim’s fascination with competition.  Perhaps I will be able to get him to challenge our daughters to a hand-washing endurance marathon at least once a day, as long as there is a digital timer involved.   Now if only I could figure out how to install the hand-washing timer on his Blackberry….there’s an idea! 🙂    

My mom is here!  She flew in yesterday evening and she hasn’t stopped ooing and awwing over her granddaughters (well, more specifically, my belly) since she arrived.  She’s even sung to the babies – and judging by the ensuing volley of kicks, they were either pleading for an encore or trying to figure out how to cover their tiny ears!  I’m voting for the former option, as it made me very happy to hear her lullabies again. 🙂  The nurses have been just as pleased with her visit thus far, as she first wooed them with bags of San Francisco‘s own Ghiradelli chocolate, and then proceeded to relieve them of their more mundane duties, like making my bed and refilling my water pitchers.  We’ll all be sad when she has to leave!

I even got a phone call today from my dad, who is in Turkey on business.  He is taking me on a “virtual cruise” from my bed, so he sends e-mails describing different exotic scenes he sees on a regular basis, such as the “Topkapi Palace where the last Sultan of the Ottoman Empire held court…”  So while my mom is making sure I’m well-cared for in my hospital room, Dad is whisking me away to foreign lands! 

I am proud to report that both girls passed their “non-stress test” today for the first time, which is a test measuring their neurological maturity as evidenced by the frequency of heart accelerations in a given time frame.  The nurses have warned me that most babies don’t consistently pass all their twice-weekly non-stress tests until they are at least 30-31 weeks old, but their success today has convinced me that I have very advanced children 🙂  Hey, it’s a mother’s prerogative to be unreasonably proud of her kids, and I’ll take every chance I get!   

Tomorrow the girls turn 28 weeks – hooray!  I still haven’t settled in my mind whether they are starting or completing 28 weeks. The doctors said we’re beginning the week, but doesn’t it make more sense to be ending it?  If I’m counting weeks on a calendar, Day 1-7 equals Week 1, Day 8-14 equals Week 2, etc.  So when you get to Week 2, you’ve had 14 days under your belt, hence you’ve completed two full weeks.  Anyway, I’m sure the doctors have a logical way of explaining the division of weeks.  All I care about is that the Lord has granted us nearly a full month of pregnancy since we were hospitalized! 

Tomorrow is important for yet another reason.  We’re scheduled to have an ultrasound to further assess the girls’ growth and, by extension, to determine if they are receiving the proper nutrition in utero.  I’ve been attempting to “beef up” their little scrawny bodies by drastically increasing my intake of Chili’s and Red Robin’s hamburgers and Wendy’s Frosties.  If this works, you can bet I’ll continue to chow down until delivery day!  The doctors had informed me that my dietary habits were not significantly contributing to either the girls’ growth or lack thereof, but I’m quite willing to take the credit if tomorrow’s ultrasound reveals chunky babies 🙂   I have every hope that the girls are indeed growing, since my personal abdominal circumference is steadily marching outward – that’s got to at least partly indicate a similar pattern in the girls, right?  Like mother, like daughters?  At this point, I would be thrilled if one day my daughters find this blog posting and curse the day I ever prayed for them to have big bellies! 

Since I was very young, I remember my mom advising me of the importance of always wearing clean underwear, because you never know when you’re going to be in a car crash or some other accident which would necessitate a medical professional viewing you in your skivvies.  I usually viewed that piece of advice rather cynically, concluding that if I were in such a life-altering event, the state of my undergarments would be the least of my worries.  Yet now I am seeing the wisdom of the principle my mother was trying to convey, if not the specific application (thanks anyway, mom!).  That is to say, be prepared, because everything can change in a moment. 

There are profound spiritual lessons to be gleaned from such a realization, but as my eternal salvation is secure, I am contemplating much more mundane aspects of this truth.  What brought this adage to mind today was the reminder of how many incomplete projects I have at my house.  My mother-in-law called today and asked if I would like her to hang the curtains I had purchased several weeks prior to my hospitalization.  I had completely forgotten about them.  I had bought two sets of drapes, with the intent of choosing my favorite one and returning the other.  Yet I had never made a decision, and as a result, there are two opened packages of wrinkled drapes lying somewhere in the house (I don’t even recall where!).  These drapes only represent the tip of the procrastination iceberg.  There are clothes that need to be ironed or mended, pictures to be hung, and countless other household projects languishing in domestic limbo.  I had reasonably assumed I had many months to tie up these loose ends before the girls were born and my spare time would vanish along with uninterrupted sleep. 

Of course, these unfinished tasks pale in importance to my current project of “cooking” these babies until they are done.  Shortly after I went into labor, Jim and I observed how insignificant everything else became when compared with the crisis we were facing.  However, now that the immediate danger has faded, I am left with the realization that sometimes, it makes sense to hang the drapes, iron the shirts, and yes…wear clean underwear.