Bedrest Like A Pro!

Apparently I wasn't aware that if you stay in bed in the same position for too long, blood clogs can form and it could be seriously dangerous. Well fortunately I've been *somewhat diligently in giving Christy foot/leg/back massages.. The hospital obviously know what they are doing, check out these simple devices that compresses the legs periodically to help increase the blood flow!
*(I just found out that my colleague Damien Vizcarra, a design guru in Continuum worked on these!!)

Before you know it

On Monday we saw Dr. Weiss, and today we saw Dr. Silverman. Both doctors agreed that Christy's situation is rapidly worsening, and need to be admitted into the hospital for closer monitoring of contractions. I had no idea that this would be happening so fast! we're only 28 weeks!! The doctors prescribed steroids for the babies so their lungs can develop now before a potential premature labor, even though these steroids actually increase the risk of premature labor. Christy is now on the hospital bed completely plugged into the monitoring machines, and this 48-hr observation period will cost us a whopping $1,000!!!! (correction- Continuum actually supplements 1/2 of this copay! Thank you Continuum!!)

Twins Mobile

Currently we're still driving Christy's very first car her parents gave her as a college present, a 1995 Lexus ES300. Aside from the fact that it's rapidly deteriorating with lots costly repairs, the car just won't fit all the baby stuff. So, yesterday I brought the twin stroller and both car seats and bases to both Toyota and Mazda dealership to compare some cars. Hoping to take advantage of Toyota's historic amazing promotion - 0% interest for 60 months, I was hoping to walk away with a RAV4. True, RAV4 does it all, it has a big cargo space and I was able to sit between the two infant car seats very comfortably (test drive the back seat for our nanny). However it handled surprisingly poorly. I got a pretty good offer at $300 below invoice, but I decided to walk away.

Jun, also a new dad for twin boys, bought a Mazda 5 towards the end of 2009, for only $18,000! so I decided to test drive it. long story short, it was amazing. the handling is sharp, turning radius is surprisingly small. The only drawback is that our stroller goes in side ways and occupies one of the 3rd row seat folded down, and the middle of 2nd and 3rd row, which is less ideal if our nanny needs to tend to the twins in the 2nd row. Also, with the car seats in the 2nd row seats, my long legs end up colliding with the front panels. So, surprising small interior for the bulky look. but still a very promising candidate.

Mazda 5 interior

Parental Leave

Just found this!! http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/69587/maternity_leave_in_california_understand.html?singlepage=true&cat=25

California rocks! we're one of the best states in providing maternity benefits! As an employee in California, you get 4 weeks paid leave and 6 weeks (8 if C-section) after childbirth. plus a 6 weeks paid family bonding time after that. All at 60% of your salary (capped at $987/wk). Later on if you feel like to, you can get a 4 months unpaid leave from work, and your employer will need to guarantee your job security when you return. HELL YEAH!

Identity Crisis

After a day of coming out of denial, I woke up to smell the reality - kitchen

I got up to serve Christy breakfast, ate something quickly, and then moved onto doing the dishes accrued from days when I was away from business trip, then back to serve Christy, and onto thinking about what to feed her for lunch, and finally made some stuff for lunch, and onto cleaning up. Throughout the day I was repeating the steps of cooking, feeding, eating, and cleaning.. It's only the beginning of Christy's bedrest, but it's quickly wearing me out. I can now appreciate the importance of house maker role, but struggle to find a balance between my role at home vs. at work as expectations from both sides need to be met with complete satisfaction.

Pregnancy at 3rd trimester is no longer fun, it's all hard work from here on now, and I need to quickly find a formula that works.

Marching into wk 28

AT the beginning of wk 27 Christy was ordered to bedrest, and I had to shorten my trip to Boston from a week-long trip to 2 day 2 night trip. Thanks to accommodating colleagues in Boston I was able to not leave LA for too long. Before I left for Boston I cooked up a storm and stuffed the refrigerator with variety of delicious homemade Chinese food - 牛尾湯, 雪菜肉絲麵, 茶葉蛋, 餛飩, and lots of fruits and bagel and milk etc. When I returned from Boston most of them were fully consumed (wow!)

We saw Dr. Weiss on Friday for the weekly check-up, and it turned out the situation has worsened. Christy's cervix length is now at 23mm from 28mm last week. Dr. Weiss said either we really enforce the strict bedrest or we deal with premature labor and the babies in ICU. I jokingly proposed to Dr. Weiss to sew up her cervix, but if we do it now it will trigger contraction which is even worse...

So, this is it, Christy is officially entering the strict bedrest until labor (keeping our fingers crossed that we can get to wk32) As I was packing up for Christy in the office, she said to pack my stuff as well. Then I realized "oh shit!" This means I have to stay home with her too!

Cool website

Check out this site. It has week by week fetus growth in 3D, as well as what to expect! Pretty useful website!

Oh shit moment of the week (wk26)

Last Thursday we got some bad news from our OB Dr. Weiss that Chrisy's cervix length is retreating too fast. (right now it's 27mm, only 3mm away from danger zone) Dr. Weiss gave Christy two options: A - bed rest immediately, hopefully she can keep them in for at least 4 more weeks. B - If she doesn't, he'll put her in the hospital. Within 5 minutes, Christy and I went from "pregnant is beautiful" to "WTF!?" This all came so suddenly. On the way back to work from the doc's office we didn't speak a word with each other for 20 minutes, trying to absorb what this means.

This actually gave me a slight panic attack. "Holy Shit! Are we ready?" According to Dr. Weiss if she doesn't take it easy the twins can arrive too early and cause lots of problems. "What if the twins arrive in the next two weeks?" "Will our insurance cover the infant ICU cost?" Luckily we've got the baby room pretty much set up. but from here on now I'm gonna go buy/return all the baby stuff on my own! Also, since Christy's on bed rest, we both need to figure out what this means for our work...

D-day is getting close, and I still haven't finished all my readings!! AHHHHHHH!!!!!

New Photos!!

So we went to get our wk26 ultrasound done today. it was our first time getting a clear view of their faces. Here they are:

This is Baby A, it looks like he has my lips and jar bone. Seriously this picture looks so much like my sister Liz.

And here's Baby B, I can't quite tell, but I think he has Christy's nose and forehead.

SO EXCITING!!!

Week 26

Wow. time flies. It is week 26. Christy started to really feel the weight at this point and it's extremely difficult for her to flip from one side to another during the bed time. Also, she must walk extremely carefully to avoid muscle tear. It's very common for her legs to feel numb because when she sits for over an hour, the blood circulation get cut off badly. Oh and she finally can't cut her own toe nails anymore!! Progress.. Progress..

Recipe during pregnancy #11 - Stuffed Shells

Here' s my attempt to make stuffed shells with bolognese sause. Christy specifically requested this dish after the Michaud family warmly treated us delicious stuffed shell dinner. The sauce took forever to make, but it turns out the baby spinach mixed ricotta cheese was way tastier than the sause. it's a success!

Recipe during pregnancy #10 - Korean BBQ

We went to Korea Town with the office colleagues the other night for some K-BBQ cravings. ummmm... Delish & nutrish.

The real DWR (design within reach)

Dwell Studio for Target is THE BEST!!! the quality and design are both top notch. though not everything is budget friendly, if you pick and choose and pull the right pieces together you can achieve the right look for the right budget. We bought two crib sets, and they are both awesome!

Melody in the belly

This week we finally got serious about playing music for the twins, we figure they've got nothing better to do and no where else to go, we may as well get them started on the path to becoming the next American Idol! By the way, special thanks to my sister Rita for giving us this Belly Sonic belt speaker systems. we loaded the iPod nano with all the great baby music CD's you gave us too!!!

A very cool visualization here:



To get this awesome gadget from Amazon here:

Forgetfulness during pregnancy

This morning Christy nicely offered to make coffee for me. I said okay and proceeded to do some household chores. About half an hour later she came to me and started laughing. I didn't understand what happened until she told me this:

1. as she was putting ground coffee into the funnel, she couldn't understand why they kept coming out at the bottom, until she realized that she had forgotten to put in a filter first!!

2. she managed to clean up and put in a filter and tried again. this time she forgot to pour the pot of water inside the reservoir, so for the next 20 minutes she was staring at the pot and wonder, why isn't the pot turning dark already??

Classic. real classic.

Found good deals in Walmart!!!

Christy found this BIG SECRET that Walmart online store is carrying this brand called Baby Mod that is EXACTLY identical to Amazon's Babyletto, which is a sub brand of DaVinci. For exactly the same quality, you save a lot of money depending on what you buy. their cribs are exactly the same as well!

Baby Carrier

So along with the infant car seats we got one Baby Bjorn carrier from the seller. she's a graphic designer as well, and she hand made this beautiful cover that she generously gave us. Anyway, Christy insisted that I put a dummy (namely her bunny doll) in it. It looks like it fits. Nice!

Thank you Jenny & Zepher!

Good friends of ours Jenny and Zepher gave us their wonderful pack-n-play, now that little Clifford has outgrown it. This Chicco model is super thoughtfully designed from the assembly point of view, and it looks awesome! even I want to sleep in it!!

wk 25

The twins are getting more and more active inside their mom, constantly fliping and turning and kicking and dancing. it feels soooooooooooooo strange to feel them kicking through the belly. The other night Christy asked me to sing to them. As I leaned my face right up against the belly, a few seconds later I got kicked in the face!!! Even my sons know that I don't have a talent in singing. Sigh...

My weekend plan

Weekends from here on now are no longer chill time. it's crunch time!! The past two weekends have been filled with joys from putting together the stroller, swing, and the crib for this weekend.




Christy decided to get this "My Little Lamb" based on lots of positive reviews, our Realtor also told us it's a must-have because it's like baby on crack, when you put them on it.



The crib of choice is Babyletto Mercer Convertible Crib. Christy loves the espresso duo tone color and the modern look of it. We're going to only have one crib for now for the sake of space efficiency, when they grow into 30 lbs we will hopefully move into a bigger place and then we'll definitely buy another crib at that point.

What to eat, what to eat...

Probably the biggest challenge and a constant struggle for me is the topic around what Christy should eat. Hasn't anyone noticed this HUGE market potential? If I wasn't so busy innovating for my clients, I would publish a food idea guide for busy expectant dads. Something simple that I can quickly pull out of my pocket before meal time and present ideas to me, and needless to say every recommendation should be 1. delicious, 2. nutritious and 3. accessible.

Pre-Owned Infant Car Seats

Thanks to Jun's suggestion, we've begun our Craigslist hunting early, the reward can be big when time is on our side. Case in point, after weeks of waiting around, we found these 1-yr-new mint condition Chicco KeyFit 30 infant carseats at less than half the retail price!! They totally match the twin strollers that arrived a week later too!

Can't ignore them anymore

Aside from the visually attention-grabbing growing belly, the weight has begun to cause major discomfort for Christy, It is now officially a daily routine to give her back rubs and foot massage, whereas before the 23rd week it was something i could get away with if I had 5 more powerpoint slides to make by the end of the weekend. The twins have begun to kick really hard too. Since two weeks ago, Christy started to feel difficult to breathe. We've also noticed that the twins get really cranky (kicking really hard) before meal time, and really excited after that.

What changed #1

Whole Foods Market has a way of speaking to expectant dads - It's a no-brainer. Why go anywhere else when you know WFM won't carry anything that can harm your body? Ever since the pregnancy I started to frequent WFM so much it has worked its way to my #3 monthly spending following my rent and student loan repayment. I'm getting ready to become middle sized household and back to middle class (say goodbye to DINC)

24th week and one day

Two weeks ago, the reality of twin pregnancy finally settled in for me. It is true, what the books say about expectant dads, that we don't typically realize the enormity of what's about to happen until the third trimester thrusts upon us. Things happened so quickly, 24 weeks already took place and we're only left with 13 more weeks before our twins arrive in this world. I decided to document my journey starting today, March 1st, 2010.