Car seats and other preparations

I began this blog post about a week or so after the boys were born. I never got around to finishing it and in the interim have managed to get the car seats into our car, thankfully! Anyhow, I'm posting this now since I've been so lax the last few weeks. Enjoy!!

In a couple of days, I’m going to try and stuff two more infant car-seats in our current vehicle. They have to fit on either side of a larger car-seat. I’m keeping my fingers crossed, because having to get another vehicle would be a significant challenge for us. If we could manage, having a minivan would be ideal. Expanding from a family of three to a family of five definitely involves some major re-adjustment. Since our two boys—Henry and Eli—arrived as early as they did, we have a little time to get things ready before they come home with us.

There are other preparations, too, that need to happen before they get home. Shelves have to be put up. A crib has to be assembled. Rooms have to be re-arranged. Baby shower gifts have to be organized and put away. Baby clothes have to be sorted and washed. Such preparations are important so that the transition is as smooth as possible.

Now, of course, I have the distinct feeling that no matter how many preparations we make—all necessary and all good—we will never actually be prepared; that is, the very reality of having two more human beings in your home is never something you can be fully prepared for. Because people—even infant ones—are messy, unpredictable, and human. That this is so means that there are always things you can’t plan for, contingencies you can’t anticipate, and events that you can’t foresee.

I do like planning—I prefer to have things together. But the more more people are involved, the less likely I am to have things all together. I feel like even if I do get the house all ready for the boys, it won’t be long before all the work I did will look like it didn’t get done! That’s true of life generally—we do housework, for instance, only to have to do that very same housework again. In any case, you can never be as prepared as you would like or think you need to be for such huge life-changes—I guess that’s part of the fun!

A Family Update . . .

Yes, it’s been awhile since I’ve posted. But this time I actually have very good reason! The last time I updated my blog was five days after my boys—Henry and Eli—were born, and with all of the travel of going back and forth to the hospital, which is some distance from our home, taking time to post thoughts or updates here just wasn’t that high on the priority list.

Thankfully, Alisha was discharged just over a week ago. That’s made things much easier at home and for Ella, our four year old. It means that I don’t need to run around as much and that we’re home. Before her release, I was splitting my time between living at home and at the in-laws (who are closer to the hospital and able to help with Ella).

It also means there’s that much more normality to life and routine, even if we are traveling to the hospital to visit the boys on a daily to semi-daily basis. As it is, I don’t travel there as much as Alisha. Her Mum takes her about half the time, freeing me up to stay home and work. Yes, in the midst of all this topsy-turvy stuff, life goes on and I still have a job (or, more accurately, a vocation, but that’s a different post!).

Because the boys are so far away still in NICU, Alisha and I have both commented that, strange though it may seem, it can sometimes feel that we’ve not become parents again. Most days, especially when I’m home working, feel like a lot of other days. She even joked once, “It’s like when we’re in infant limbo,” an amusing, if highly inaccurate quip using the name of a (biblically unsound) Roman Catholic dogma.

Of course, given what we’ve been through over the last three or four weeks, when the boys do finally come home it’s going to be a BIG celebration. It will be joyous. It will be a relief. It will be wonderful. And, yes, it will be an adjustment and a time of settling will be all-important for us as a family. I can’t wait!!

A (Belatedly Reported!) Groundhog Day Surprise!

And so it happened—unexpectedly, surprisingly, and in a way not at all planned by Mommy and Daddy: our boys, Henry and Eli, were born on Groundhog Day, 2009, via a caesarean section. Though it happened a couple of months early, they were healthy, a good weight, and were soon breathing on their own. I followed them as they were being whisked away to the NICU after the delivery.

Mommy wasn’t doing as well—or so we would soon learn. She had symptoms of something called pre-eclampsia (or similar syndrome, HELP), and would have been in even more serious trouble had she not had the boys either that day or very soon thereafter. She ended up in ICU herself for the first two and a half days. Thankfully, on the third day her symptoms began to abate. Now she is in maternity and nearer to the boys.

So it’s been a crazy week. I’ve been back and forth between the hospital, my in-laws (who live closer to the hospital than us), and our house. It’s been a strange but wonderful time, being able to finally meet the little ones who’ve been housed in their mother’s womb for the last seven months. It’s almost unreal, in a way. It takes time to adjust to this reality—to the notion of having two new children in your life. I mean, even though we’ve been expecting them, and have gone through it with our daughter before, only once they’ve entered into our world physically and we can see and hold them does it seem like a more concrete reality.

The journey, of course, has just begun for us. And in fact since they’re in NICU and will be probably for four or five weeks, it feels like, in some sense, the journey is postponed. Only once they’re actually home with us and we’re together—all together—as a family will it feel like we can truly begin our joint journey. But all good things come in time, and we’ll just have to be patient.

There’s no way I can imagine what lies ahead—the role of parenting has the biggest learning curve of any vocation, profession, or relationship. It’s at times exciting, scary, worrisome, joyous, and wondrous. Sometimes it’s all these things at once, like that oldest of human moments when you see your kids come out of the womb (through c-section or otherwise!).

So that has been our week: unplanned like much of life, but still, in the end, very good. It’s hard to say whether having two more kids will result in more blogging or less, but one thing is certain: whether or not I blog more, I will definitely have more to blog about!