The Saga Continues

Thanks for all of the encouragement, folks. The good news is that life with the twins couldn't be better, thanks to some good medication management. The bad news is my wife decided to file for divorce this week.

Hell of a year, huh?

Signing Off

After my last post, it seemed that things were looking up. But it turns out things started getting worse again on the Paxil. Finally, on May 30, things were so bad that I left the house and attempted to commit suicide by overdosing on an entire bottle of sleeping pills, a large bottle of Nyquil and half a bottle of alchohol. Miraculously I awoke the next morning but was severely confused and incapacitated. Friends found me and rushed me to the hospital. A week later I entered a psychiatric hospital in Grand Junction, Colorado, but I made another attempt on my life after the first few days. Finally, after a new diagnosis (bipolar disorder, not depression) and new medication, I made some progress and was released after 12 days.

However, the task of dropping back into family life with the twins and my daughter is yet another challenge. For this reason, I have decided to let this blog go for good. There are some immense challenges ahead of me, and taking care of my sanity is going to require a lot of attention.

Dark Days

Hope you like roller coasters, because that is what the last 6 months have been. To put it mildly, the stress of having twins continued to build. I don't think I have ever been "put through the ringer" so thouroughly, emotionally or physically. I was trying to hold myself together as best I could, but I was cracking, and it was showing.

My wife and I tried to talk about this one rarely quiet afternoon, but I was pretty spent. The best I could communicate to her was that I just wasn't happy anymore. The more we talked, the more she thought I was trying to say I wanted to leave. It was incredibly hard to say it, but I finally confided in her that I had battled with suicidal thoughts since I was in high school, and at that moment I was flirting with the idea again (in fact, I had stashed a bottle of sleeping pills in preparation). We have been married for 15 years, but the secret I had lived with for so long was finaly out of the bag.

Within a few days I had apointments with a therapist and my doctor, and thus began my treatment for depression. I began regular counciling and doses of antidepressants in December of 2005, just a few weeks after the boys were born. The therapy helped me recognize that depresion was a disease, and I probably been suffering from it since middle school. Starting doses of Efexor had great effects for me emotionally, but brought some nausia every day. When we tried switching to a full daily dosage, I had such debilitating anxiety I had to leave work and go home, where I couldn't get out of bed.

After consulting my doctor, I switched to Paxil in January. After giving it a few weeks, I found it had fewer side effects but didn't seem to manage my symptoms as well (mood swings, flaring temper) as well. I went back to my Doc and we doubled the dosage. This seemed to help, and I convinced myself that it was working, and I was doing much better and had everything under control. By February, my thereapist and I decided I had reached some degree of resolution and left my counciling status on an "as needed basis". I can't say my mood and depression were where I would have liked them to be, but I felt some progress was better than nothing.

Things I'm Discovering With Twins

• Trying to keep our bedroom/nursery at a constant 70 degrees with higher thermostat settings and space heaters has doubled my electric bill
• Definition;
  "MY son" - the baby that is quietly looking at you with with wide, happy, alert eyes
  "YOUR son" - the baby that pooped immediatly after you changed him, then pees all over while you change him again
• Shaving is overrated. Sleep is not.
• I'm pretty sure the shelf full of stuffed animals we have been receiving (you get twice as many with twins) are staring at me. And I think they are multiplying.

Adjusting

Despite some ugly nights of too little sleep (and the ugly tempers of my wife and I to go along), life with the boys is becoming easier. After the jaundice and feeding scare, the boys regained their birthweight at two weeks - great news indeed. My Mom had been with us until yesterday, but the next shift of relief has arrived for a week in the form of my wife's best friend.

Tomorrow presents another daunting challenge - I have been summoned for jury duty first thing in the morning. I've dodged this bullet a few times before, but this time they called me in. I have thought for some time I wouldn't mind doing this at some point (see how the system works, civic duty, all of that). But trying to do it now, on too little sleep, with the boys to take care of, is the worst possible timing. Coffee is not an option for me, as I have found that caffine makes the previously mentioned temper often unmanageable - not something to be unleashed around newborns. So tomorrow morning, I plan on reporting exhausted, unshaved, unshowered and unkept (in other words, my usual state these days). I think after informing them I have premature newborn twins at home (I'll have birth certificates in hand) that need my assistance because my wife is still recovering from her c-section surgery, I'm functioning on an average of 4 hours of sleep (not 4 uninterupted hours, mind you), and a daughter in kindergarten that needs picked up at 3:00, they should release me post haste.

Salvation

The night after we returned home from the trip to the hospital after the jaundice treatment, things were still rough. We had the jaundice under control, but we were still having fits getting the boys to breastfeed. They seemed to be frustrated and unhappy, which was making us feel the same way. We went through two more nights of little sleep and frayed nerves, even resorting to bottle feeding them pumped breast milk on occasion.

Finally, we got some advice from a lactation consultant and we had a visit with the pediatrician (also a mother of twins). And I must say...

Medela Nipple Shields ROCK!!!

I know, it sounds kind of weird for a dad to rant about a nipple attachment (at least one that we... well, never mind), but anything that helps the twins feed and all of us get some sleep looks like a freakin' miracle of modern science at this point! The lactation consultant realized the boys' tongues were too small and a bit underdeveloped to draw Mom's nipple in fully and recommended these as an option. We also discussed it with the pediatrician, who thought it would be a good thing to try. I went out from the pediatrician's office and popped next door to the pharmacy to pick one up. I brought it back and we gave it a try right then and there in the exam room. The boys latched onto it so easily we almost cried. Thank God, breastfeeding is no longer a problem.

Setbacks and improvements

Well, day number two at home went somewhat better. I managed to get my temper cooled somewhat. But I think we felt like prisoners, never leaving the bedroom/nursery because all we did was try to feed the boys, change them, and maybe sleep. We had a great relief when on Saturday, four days after being born, both boys finally pooped! I never thought I would be so excited to see that black sticky goo.

Snagletooth's (Son #1) prenatal tooth had broken through and was not making Mom happy when trying to feed. But the thing was very loose (not really anchored to anything) and presented a choking hazard if it came loose, so after a call to the doctor we just pulled it. It was an honest-to-God tooth, now tucked away in his baby book. We had to keep the whole thing secret from our 5 1/2 year old daughter, who is still anxiously awaiting the loss of her first tooth and a visit from the tooth fairy.

We even got the boys down long enough to eat a belated Thanksgiving dinner with my parents. But in the evening, things got rough again. Breast feeding had started to get better and Mom and boys were all getting the hang of it. But now we just couldn't get the boys to feed. They would take a suck, then start crying and refuse more. We barely made it through the night without the help of a little formula and a little pumped breast milk in bottles.

The next morning things weren't looking better. The fleshy "socket" from Son #1's tooth looked infected, and their color didn't look right. We called our pediatrician, who told us to meet her at the hospital. By this point the boys were pretty lethargic, barely eating and sleeping all the time. While the tooth thing was OK, blood tests confirmed jaundice, so we were re-admitted to the hospital. I walked across the street to my daughter's school to tell her what was going on. She is amazingly supportive and aware of all of this. She stopped by my hospital with my parents to visit that evening, and before she left she asked "Mommy, are my brothers going to be OK?"

The boys spent the night under the special lamps, while we were put on a strict three hour feeding schedule. It was a little disconcerting, but we knew it wasn't anything too scary. We were convinced we were going to be there at least two nights, but the pediatritian said she had never seen billiruben (?) numbers drop so fast, so we were all able to go home the next day. The boys seemed a little better, but still tough to get them to eat.