{Noble Warriors}

We had a really hard time deciding on names for the boys.

With Judah, it was really easy. We both loved the name and had decided on it before we knew whether or not we were having a girl or a boy. If it was a boy, with out a doubt it would be Judah.

And the name fit him perfectly.

Judah means "praise"--and our little guy is so full of joy and life & he just loves to experience life to the fullest, he fits it to a tee.

This time we had a whole long list of girl names and just a few boy names that we kind of liked. We were sure it was a A girl...as in ONE, just one little girl.

We were so wrong :)

When we found out we were actually going to be having TWO babies, we still assumed that there had to be one girl in there...

So, we got to work on choosing two names.

Two girls names? No problem.

A boy & a girl's names? Not too difficult.

TWO boys names? We could not decide.

SO, when we found out we were having TWO boys...we were at a loss for quite a while as to what we would name these two little babes.

We knew we wanted to name one after my family and one after Andrew's.

We kind of tossed some name combos around for awhile. We really did not want them to sound "twinny"--no matchy matchy names, nothing that started with the same letter.

Then we found two that we both could agree on, but we were not completely sure if they were "the ones" :

Ryder Elwood & Will Albert

Ryder was a name that Andrew came up with & I liked it more than any of his other suggestions :) Elwood was Andrew's paternal grandfather's middle name. Will was something we came up with after struggling to find a way to name one of the babies after my dad. My maiden name was Williquette & my dad has always gone by "Willy" as a sort of nickname. So, we decided that Will would be the perfect way to honor my dad :) And Albert was my very special grandpa.

We had not looked into name meanings much in our quest to find the perfect name for our boys, so just out of curiosity we decided to see what the meanings of the first and middle names we had picked out were...were were shocked at what we found!

RYDER- warrior on horseback

ELWOOD- noble forest

WILL- strong-willed warrior

ALBERT- noble & bright

We couldn't believe it. It was then that we knew these were the perfect names for our sweet boys. Our two little noble warriors :)

{And then there were 5}

Wednesday 2.1.12--the day we went from parents of 1 to parents of 3 :)

We could not have hoped for a better experience. My doctor has said over and over that she has never had a twin delivery go so smoothly. We are so thankful for this after a LONG and difficult pregnancy.

This is Will & Rdyer's birth story :)

On Wednesday (2.1.12) morning I called triage and quickly got the SAME response I had gotten the Saturday before..."we are full right now, call back at 9am and we should be able to get you in this afternoon."

I had just gotten out of the shower, dried my hair was READY to head over to the hospital. The bags were all ready (AGAIN) and I was not about to be told I had to wait another day!

I had just told Andrew the news and was holding back tears when my phone rang. It was triage calling back, less than 5 minutes later. They "suddenly" had room for me and told me to come in at 7am. I later found out that my doctor had called in right after me and found out they were not taking me. She was NOT happy! Love my doctor. LOVE.

As we left the house to head for the hospital we snapped one last picture of us as a family of 3. I started to tear up as we said goodbye to Judah. I was so worried about how everything would affect him. Would he still know how much we love him?! Would he know it would never change?

We showed up at 7am sharp and were escorted to one of the beautiful new birthing suites. We just kind of hung out with our nurse for an hour or so, answering lots of ridiculous questions. Then at 8:30 my doctor strolled in to give the go ahead to start my antibiotics (I found out I was step B positive). I had to have 4 hours of antibiotics in before they could break my water. I was already 5cm with stronger contractions, so they were hoping I could make it the 4 hours.

The morning was pretty uneventful. Judah came up and hung out with us a few hours. He was pretty scared of the big hospital room and seeing me in the hospital bed. He quickly warmed up when the nurses started talking to him & gave him a big brother sticker :)

At around 1, when the antibiotics had finally gone through one round, my doctor came back and said it was time to break my water! She was sure once my water broke things would move quickly.

And they did.

Within an hour and a half of breaking my water I told Andrew I thought it was time! I paged my nurse and the resident doctor came quickly to check my progress. I was 10cm! Andrew had a HUGE smile on his face and grabbed my hand and said, "here we go!"

My heart was beating SO fast. Suddenly the room flooded with people. They had to get me to the OR to deliver. Before I knew it Andrew was dressed in scrubs and we were rolling down the hall to the OR.

The OR was really intimidating compared to the softly lit, comfortable birthing suite. It was HUGE. The lights were bright and there were SO many people in the room:

-MY OB

-2 Resident doctors

-My birthing room nurse plus 4 others

-4 NICU nurses

-2 Pediatricians

-An anesthesiologist/ photographer :)

-A few other random people that I am still not sure of why they were there, but at that point I just didn't care anymore!

The bed in the OR was so narrow and uncomfortable. I was afraid I would fall off when I started pushing!

The nurses were all loving Andrew and his enthusiasm :) He was all smiles and just so excited to meet his new little boys.

My doctor seemed annoyed with all the people hustling around and kept insisting that we really did not need them all there, even though she knows they have to be. She's too funny.

Within 10 minutes of being in the OR my doctor gave me the go ahead to start pushing. All I could think about was how badly I just wanted to BREATHE again! That was my motivation to push the first baby out :)

The anesthesiologist quickly turned photographer grabbed our camera from Andrew and told him to enjoy the moment and he would take care of the pictures! What an amazing guy!

About 15 minutes later Ryder was born. I could not believe how sweet and small he was. He looked so much like Judah did, but a lot tinier. As Andrew and I were cuddling our new son my doctor reminded me that we were not done yet! :) What a strange feeling...to deliver you baby and realize that there was one more still to come!

As they were weighing and checking Ryder over I had to concentrate on pushing again. It was so hard to do when all I wanted to do was look over at what was going on with Ryder. Andrew had followed the baby over to the warmer and seemed to have forgotten his job of helping me :) One of the nurses ushered him back to my side.

Before I started pushing I asked my doctor how long it usually was between births. She said "anywhere between a couple minutes to 6 hours."

I was not about to push for 6 more hours and started to push as hard as a I could. Everyone was saying, "whoa! WHOA! Slow down, hold on just...here comes another baby!" It seemed like only a few seconds went by, but from the time of Ryder's birth to Will's birth it was 17 minutes...so I maybe pushed 5-10 minutes! It was awesome. I swear delivering twins was EASIER than my delivery with Judah! It just happened so fast.

When I first saw Will I was blown away by how different he and Ryder looked. He was SO precious and so tiny too. Just as he was in the womb, he was so quite and peaceful with the sweetest little cry. We were in love.

As they took Will to be weighed everything finally felt real. We just had twins. We have two sweet little babies! After 9 months of an incredibly difficult pregnancy I had my reward...and it was SO worth it. I would do it again in a second.

Here is our first picture with both boys:

{Andrew is holding Ryder & I have a just born Will}

Both boys were 6 lbs 13 ounce! The whole room started laughing when they announced it! They were also only 1/4 of an inch apart in length!

Everyone in the room was beaming. We were so thankful of such a smooth, easy delivery. It was the perfect start to our family of 5 :)

I felt great afterwards and was walking around really quickly. I remember feeling so much more tired and sore after having Judah. This time I hardly felt like I had given birth.

We called my dad, who was not able to be there, first and told him the babies' names. We wanted him to feel special and be the first to know their names. We had named Will after him. (More on why we chose their names in a later post).

After talking to my dad, my mom , sister, Andrew's parents and Judah came in the room to meet the babies. Judah was thrilled! Shortly after they came in a few friends followed and Judah exclaimed, "BABIES! BABIES! BABIES!" He was jumping up and down and so excited to show off his new brothers. Thank you Mandy, Carolyn and Mitch for coming to meet our boys!

When everyone left and we moved to our recovery room we finally had a moment to stop and be thankful for what a blessing the day had been. We were just in awe of our 2 sweet boys and stayed up way too late cuddling them. One nurse scolded us and told us we better get some sleep while we had a chance. But, we didn't care, we were so happy and would have stayed up all night.

To celebrate we ordered Chili's take-out :) I had been craving it for so long and was not able to enjoy it because of my gestational diabetes...it felt SO good to be able to eat what I wanted again!

Thank you to everyone who kept us in your prayers that day and for so much of my pregnancy. We could feel God answering them all along.

{Beautiful Disaster}

This is our life right now. We are a mess. But we are beyond blessed.

We welcomed our two sweet boys into the World on 2.1.12 at 6:25pm and 6:42pm.

Ryder Elwood- 6 lbs 13 ounces, 19 3/4 inches long

Will Albert- 6 lbs 13 ounces, 20 inches long

We could not have hoped for a better birth experience. Everything went so smoothly and both babies were very healthy. (Birth Story to come).

The first days at home have been the most challenging days of our lives. We hardly sleep, forget to eat & talk without making sense.

Day one at home was great (Friday). The night was fairly good, we had a good routine down between me nursing and Andrew changing diapers. I think we got a good 3 hrs that night. It felt great :)

Saturday morning I woke up with one of my legs being extremely swollen and painful. I also found that I had developed 2 ulcers in my right eye. I called my doctor immediately and she to me to get to the ER as soon as possible, for concern of a blood clot. The ER was the last place I wanted to bring my newborn babies, but we had no choice. After 3 long hours in the ER and an ultrasound on both legs, I was discharged blood-clot free. Praise the Lord! They had also weighed the babies in the ER because we missed our pediatrician visit that morning. We found out that Ryder had lost too much weight and was down to 6 pounds 1 ounce. So, from there we rushed over to the peds before they closed at noon. WE WERE EXHAUSTED at this point.

Come Sunday morning things seemed like maybe they would settle down. We had some wonderful visitors for most of the afternoon and just enjoyed sharing our new babies with them.

Then I started to have extreme pain nursing. So much so that I could not bare to do it and had to start pumping. It was miserable. I was a mess and in so much pain, rendering me almost useless to do anything other than pump and feed the babies (which, apparently is ALL I should be doing...but, oh my, it is HARD for me to give up control to other and ask for help!)

That evening as we were getting ready for bed and I was finishing up feeding a baby Andrew walked in the room white as a ghost holding the other baby. He said he felt really nauseous all of a sudden. I quickly prayed that it was nothing. But, no it was something...about 10 vomiting episodes later Andrew emerged from the bathroom looking like the picture of death. At this point my sweet (AMAZINGLY helpful sister) had already gone to bed. I didn't want to wake her and tried to pump myself up for a very long night.

Andrew spent the rest of the night dying on the couch, completely helpless while I rushed back and forth all hours of the night trying to care for two newborns. I counted, down to the minute how much sleep I got that evening....10 minutes. TEN minutes!!!

When Monday morning hit I felt like I was in a cloud. My sister yelled at me for not waking her to help. STUPID, I know. But, I really have a hard time letting go of my need to get things done myself. Another mom of twins told me, "The number one rule of being a mom of twins is, -NEVER turn down help." She could not be wiser.

So, I sent out my first Facebook SOS. I knew my sister and I could not take care of the babies and Judah (who had also been sick the night before) alone. My incredible friend Christy responded literally with in seconds and rushed out the door to our rescue.

Meanwhile pumping and nursing were becoming increasingly painful.

My sister and I fumbled through and afternoon pediatrician visit and a Target run for much needed supplies. Both babies were amazing and slept almost the whole time.

On a good note, both babies had gained 5.5 ounces in two days...AMAZING! It really lifted my spirits.

Christy spent almost the ENTIRE day with us, caring for Judah and the babies so my sister and I could nap. I could not be more grateful for her love and support.

That evening my sister slept on an air mattress in my room to help me with the babies while Andrew tried to get better out on the couch. Our babies had been quarantined to our room. The night was SO much better than the one before, I could not have made it another night like that. I am so thankful for my sister! I got 5 total hours of sleep last night in-between feeding and changing the babies. I was sure I would feel better in the morning.

But, alas, this morning I woke up to the unmistakeable feeling of being run over by a semi. I have never felt worse. I could not pick myself up off the bed. It hurt literally everywhere and I was running a high fever. I was sure I was dying. I called my doctor right away and she was sure I had mastitis, a serious breast infection that renders you completely useless with what feels like the worst flu of your life.

She had me come in in the afternoon to check and sent me home with instructions to call back if it got worse---how could I feel WORSE?!

So here I am, tonight, surrounded by dirty diapers, bottles, mounds of baby clothes and in so much pain....and I am smiling. I promise you, I am smiling. I am so filled with love for my two new babies, so thankful that God would choose to bless us so immensely, that He trust US with these two sweet boys. I am beyond thankful for this mess, because it is the result of hours and hours of loving and caring for our babies.

Our life is a disaster. But, it is beautiful.

We will come out of this so much stronger, understanding even more what love really means.

If God is love and love is God than everything that is is everything that ever was...