One Year Ago

How different today was from one year ago. For one, I remember all that happened today. Last year I was out at 11:30 AM until night time, I think.  Maybe I was in and out.  I just remember being awake early in the morning because it was hard to sleep, anticipating how things were going to go that day.

One year ago I had laser ablation surgery to disconnect the blood vessels on the placenta running between Chloe and Faith. When had arrived in Milwaukee at about 8 or 9 on the 16th and would meet with Dr. DeLia in the morning. The room was pretty big with a microwave, refrigerator, and big screen TV. Joel had the futon-like couch next to my bed. The next morning Dr. DeLia came in at 6, he said he was taking advantage of us being on Eastern time where it was 7AM. As I said, I was awake.  He took me right away for an ultrasound to make sure both girls were still alive and to get an idea of placenta placement. I had an anterior placenta which meant he had to make a big cut to get to the vessels and that thankfully he started to perform on anterior placentas about 10 years ago. (He's been helping women with TTTS since the early 80's.) Then we ha to wait for an operating room to open up and away we went. They gave me an epidural and anesthesia. I do remember waking up after surgery and freezing. They couldn't put enough blankets on me. I think I had about 10.  During that night I was so afraid the girls didn't make it because I couldn't feel them moving.  The nurse had come in because I was having contractions so she had to call the Dr. to see about moving up the next dose of the medicine that stops contractions. After she told me she did that I felt God telling me that I wouldn't feel the girls because of the epidural that I had and would continue to have for the next 20 or so hours. I calmed down after that and the contractions drastically lessened.

We spent another 5 days in Milwaukee and then came back home. I was on complete horizontal bed rest and nutritional therapy (sipping Ensures throughout the day).  If being on horizontal bed rest meant saving my girls, I would do it and not complain.  I kept pretty busy with reading, sewing, TV and Farmville on Facebook. It was hard to eat lying down so I did have to sit up for that. I wasn't really on bed rest that long.  It started on Dec 15 and the girls were born on Jan 22.

Last year, when we first found out at TTTS on Dec 14, 2010, I at first didn't take the doctor seriously. I thought "I am a healthy person, this can't be happening to us. This doctor is joking when he says I need to be on bed rest immediately and drinking Ensure. God won't let the horrible things we are being told happen to us."

Sometimes, especially lately, no matter how many people tell me or how many times I read that this was random and I did nothing to cause it, I can't help but feel like I did something wrong. Was it taking a plane ride, walking too much, the wine I had when I didn't realize I was pregnant? Why did this happen? Only God knows the answers, I can only speculate.
I feel there was a higher purpose to what we've been going through, but what?  I don't want to miss it. At Faith's funeral the deacon talked about how God sees the whole picture and we can't, we only see little pieces at a time. Maybe next year or in 5 or 10 years, I can look back and put those pieces together to see more of the puzzle and say "I see."  It's just hard right now.  It's hard but getting better, my counselor has been a great help to me.

I'm as much my old self as I'm going to be. I can laugh, I can joke, I am there for people. But I still cry, sometimes for just a little bit and sometimes for longer. I don't like people to see me cry, not even Joel. I feel it's a very personal thing. Of course earlier this year I cried a lot, about anything.

The journey's been long and still goes on.

Today, we have our beautiful Chloe with us and healthy as can be, thanks to God. She is heavy to carry around. We went to see reindeer at Meijer Garden today and forgot the stroller, so Joel put her in the Baby Bjorn (not sure if a 22 pounder should be in one of those). The reindeer were fun to look at and there was also a wedding going on so Kylie got to see the pretty girl in the wedding dress - or as she says "the married girl."  We also saw the trees for around the world, the train, and the village of Grand Rapids  at the gardens. It's a great time. Afterward we were going to go to Subway to get $2 subs but it was a bit early so we drove around and looked at Christmas lights.  Kylie fell asleep so it was more for my benefit but I loved it. My family did that when I was little so I like to do it today as well.  We have our Christmas tree on our first floor this year, usually it's in the family room on the 3rd floor, but this year because of Chloe we put it on the first floor in front of the window.  Our first floor is still in the process of conversion and it's only 30% complete. (That's out of 5 rooms, kitchen, dining, living, den, and bath.)
So we don't use the downstairs too much but Joel suggested we eat our subs in front of the tree and that was a brilliant idea.  There's also a fake fireplace in the room where our stockings are hung, it was cozy.

I was glad to get out of making Christmas cookies today, Kylie wanted to make more.  We had made a lot last weekend. I was only going to do gingerbread and sugar cookies. I had mixes for both, but when I opened the sugar cookie mix it wasn't sugar cookies. The mix was in a plastic bag with a cloth covering it and tied shut with string. The card on the string said "Sugar." I poured the mix in the bowl and there were some black chunks in it. At first I thought the mix had gone bad and then I looked more closely and saw it was oatmeal raisin.  So I had to mix up some sugar cookie mix for the cookie cutters.  We have oatmeal raisin, gingerbread, and sugar cookies.  I froze some of them as that's a lot of cookies to try and eat in a few weeks. I checked the "Sugar" cookie tag for the ingredients and it was sugar cookie ingredients, no mention of oatmeal or raisins.  Good thing no one is allergic.

I'm going to try and take a picture of the tree and post it.