Reminiscing

So I have been disconnected from the blogging world for nearly a week. We moved into our house on Sunday, and just reconnected yesterday. It's been a full,busy week! All of us adjusting to being in our new house, the kids in their new rooms, a new schedule free of the helping hands of my family, and unpacking a multitude of boxes.

I have always thought of myself as a person who doesn't have very much "stuff". I hate clutter, I hate collections. If I'm not using it, I throw it out, give it away, banish it from the house somehow. However, over this last week I have discovered that even people who do not have much still have a hell of a lot of crap to unpack. So that is what has been consuming my time-unpacking all our crap. It's been very productive, because the little we have accumulated over the last two years of marriage I am sorting through and boxing up to get rid of! I love it. Organization is hugely satisfying for me.

So something that I wanted to blog about this past week was the anniversary of the start of my labor with C and A. It sort of surprised me how effected I am on the 7th of January each year. Well, this year and last. So I am going to reminisce a little here...

Two years ago, on the 7th of January 2006, I was 25 weeks pregnant with twins. The 7th was a Saturday, and since it was January and the heart of wrestling season, Carl was away at a match. I went to dinner with my parents and some friends, and all during dinner had a stomach ache. Slight, no more than a tightening in my stomach. I just figured that I needed to go home and lie down for a little while.

My parents dropped me off at our house, and I immediately settled down on the couch to wait until Carl got home. I started to wonder if I was having contractions, but didn't really know because I had never had them before, and I was not in any pain whatsoever. I finally decided that yes, I was having contractions, and they were pretty close together-about four or five minutes apart. I called Carl, and he came home as soon as he got into town, but that wasn't until around 11:00 p.m. He called my then-doctor (a terrible women, really) who told me to just take a warm bath. He ignored her and drove me to the hospital to make sure everything was okay.

Things were not okay. I was dilated to 5 c.m. and they weren't able to stop the contractions, so the flew me to Missoula about 4 a.m., fearing that I was going to deliver en route. I was so drugged up on a million different anti-contraction drugs I couldn't even comprehend the terror of what was going on. We did make it to Missoula, and once there they were able to stop my contractions with magnesium sulfate, a horrible medication that made me so dizzy I couldn't keep my eyes open, and felt like my entire insides were going to be displayed all over my hospital room.

The next two weeks were so hard-I wasn't a mother yet, so I don't think that I was really feeling the whole "I'll do anything for my babies" instinct yet. I was so selfish, felt so selfish lying in that hospital bed. I wanted to go home, for things to go back to normal. I wanted the next three months to prepare for these babies, I wanted the next three months with Carl. We were supposed to have four months together before they came-instead we had one. One measly month of marriage, and suddenly we were parents. We didn't even have cribs yet! No clothes, no blankies, no baby lotion, diapers, or wipes. Carl and barely knew each other. How was he going to handle this? How was he going to handle me handling this?

Those two weeks in the hospital did phenomenal things for our marriage. Not quite as phenomenal as what we were about to face in the NICU, but still pretty damn great. We spent 24 hours a day together, in a tiny room, in the dead of a Montana winter. How could you not bond with anyone you're stuck there with. He supported me, he took care of me. We talked, we laughed, cried, played games, prayed... got to know each other. We may not have had the next three months, but we had those two weeks, and we may have learned more about each other in those weeks than in months at home.

I have so much more I have been reliving this week, but if I am going to put it in writing it'll have to wait until later. My kids are all sleeping at the same time, and I have to get in the shower: )