Friday, April 30, 2010

Through Christy's own words

This was an email Christy wrote to a friend of ours, and I was CC'ed on it. But I thought she totally nailed it in terms of her physical and emotional stress at this point:

"I am doing well, still bed resting at home and waiting for the babies to come. To tell you the truth sometimes I find it unreal that I am carrying two in there. I feel kinda strange having two babies moving and kicking in my belly. And they already have different schedules and personalities!

I watch lots of TV and browse the web during the day. But not much can keep me sane during bedtime when I can’t fall asleep. The discomfort of carrying more than 11 pounds of mass & fluid has gotten the best of me. I’ve passed the “calm and peaceful” stage. On top of the heavy weight, I was freaking out about my huge belly with the stretch marks. I lost it last night because I couldn’t imagine how much bigger the belly will grow and how much more stretch mark will developed. I felt like a freak show when looking at myself in the mirror and wanted the babies out ASAP.

It’s such a struggle..."


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Wednesday, April 28, 2010

做月子. The healing month

Now that all the prep work for the twins arrival are almost in place, I need to think about getting ready for Christy's recovery as well. In the Chinese medicinal philosophy, there are three time periods when women can rebuild the health functions of their bodies: first period, after birth, and menopause. In thousands of years of practice, there has been a rich accumulation of studies on how certain herbs and recipes play various functional roles in these critical times. On top of strict diet of certain "functional foods", there are a whole lot of routines that go along with them all within the first month immediately following the birth. All in all, I've seen some people that look younger and feel healthier after this process. so Christy and I decided to get a full-on healing program. We evaluated a few services that deliver freshly-made healing functional food for the four-week time period, as well as cooking this whole program ourselves based on 月子餐 cooking recipe We just decided to go ahead and leave it to the professionals, and not have to worry about anything

Below are two top options we've looked at, and eventually we went with the second one.

益膳坊: $2500
廚房準備好之後馬上真空冷凍經由 fedex 送到, 一次寄送一個星期的份量, 冷凍真空包放進大同電鍋, 跳起來就可以食用
(Couple of my friends in north califonia tried this company and really liked it.)

京品月子膳食: 4 options range from $999 to $3750
使用莊淑旂風車月子藥包 / 全酒料理 / 專業中央廚房 / 菜色天天有變化 / 資深專業台式月子廚師 / 外州冷凍月子膳食低溫宅配 / 嚴選品質
(This one is in Rowland Heights, I am ordering from them.)

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WEEK 32!!!!!!

That is right, ladies and gents, we're past the critical point of 32 weeks!!! Christy had promised the twins if they behaved and stayed in until this point, she would celebrate and feed them cakes!! So, as first step of being a "promise-keeping" parent, I went to Beard Papa in Sawtelle and got all of us some delicious treats to celebrate this milestone. According to doctor Silverman, we're safe at this point, babies have been administered steroids, and they are close to 4lbs each. We're now shooting for two more weeks, and that will be really phenomenal.

Even though we're very happy about that, it's painful to carry twins at this stage of pregnancy. Christy is now having constant back pain, carrying 10lb worth of weight in her belly all the time. It's hard to breathe right, she can barely get any sleep during the night, and can't eat much at one time because the stomach is being compressed from below. The belly is enormous compared to her tiny body, and she's having to support her heavy belly all the time with her hand, which is giving her minor wrist injury. Thank goodness for the invention of bedresting, I can't imagine how my grandma did it with her twin pregnancy ( yes, my mother is part of an identical twin sisterhood ) during 1949's China civil war when she carried her twins to fleet from inland China all the way to Taiwan, and a lot of the journey was on foot, with insufficient water and food along the way.  Go Grandma! I'll save the story for another day. Meanwhile let's march onto another week!

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Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Getting the "Nursery" look

An excellent way to dress up the baby room without having to worry about introducing toxic fumes from the paint, we find, is to use vinyl wall arts such as the one by Wee Gallery

It only took me 20 minutes to bring this room to life!

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Sunday, April 25, 2010

Stepping into my old man's shoes

At the time of this entry, my dad is on his final country-wide motorbike tour with all his retired military comrades, this will mark the official beginning of retirement for him. 2010 is a good year for my dad, for one thing all his children are now married, and he finally gets to come to the States and reunite with my mom after 12 years of being apart from each other (My parents really sacrificed themselves only to give us better opportunities in life). As the D-day approaches, I often think about how I would do, what I would say, where I would be in those important moments of my children's lives, and I can't help to reflect and think about my dad.  When my parents had me, my dad was 30, which means he was only 27 when he had his first child. People in my parents' generation were fearless. There was not much contemplation of money, job, and status. Simply put, they just went ahead and did it, and figured things out along the way. Fast forward to today, so many of us feel the hesitation to commit to something, for that we feel that we need to be prepared for it, whether financially, mentally, or having to face the fear that we'd lose freedom - the nature of attachment.  The design of this pregnancy process is brilliant, it gives us time to let the reality sink in, this time lets us gather courage and wisdom, the time forces us to face ourselves with honesty and get clarity on what we want to leave with our next generation. Both me and my dad are in transition into the next stage of life and I'm grateful for the great example he has set for me to follow.

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Thursday, April 22, 2010

Brith Plan

So I read from various books on the importance of creating a birth plan.(pain medication, blood transfusion, my participation during the procedure, cord blood, and wound closure etc..) This morning we came prepared to discuss it with Dr. Weiss. The twins are now 3lb6oz and 3lb13oz, both very healthy and punching and kicking REALLY hard. However the cervix length reducing down to 14mm from 22mm last week. Dr. Weiss almost sent us to the hospital, but Dr. Silverman saved us from going there considering hospital is really not a pleasant place to be, and we're still looking bordering okay to stay home. Dr. Weiss said that the birth plan is simple: As soon as we have frequent (10-min) contractions, we call him, and he'll meet us at Cedars-Sinai and get ready to meet the twins. As far as other details, he's completely aligned, and even exceeded our expectation to say that he only does cosmetic surgery closures on the wounds. (we forgot his practice is on the famous Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills.) We now feel a lot more relieved!


wk 31


it's week 31 and half. This has been an exhausting week due to travels for work, and it may have been the last time I travel before labor and delivery time. Before I left for Wisconsin Christy was worried that her frequent contractions was not a good sign. I urged her to stay relaxed and be rigorous about taking Motrin to ease off the contractions. Luckily it worked, the twins were good to us this time.

My clients in Wisconsin has been enjoying stories that I bring to them every time, and they even help me come up with suggestions for names. great group of folks! Sitting in the hotel room on Tuesday night, I opened up my outlook and saw Christy trying to pin me down to ramp up on C-section knowledge, then I spent the rest of the night reading and watching the following links.

Giving birth by cesarean section

Birth surprises: 15 things moms didn't expect
 

Live birth video 
These are especially helpful to watch, making me realize what amazing tasks human bodies are built to endure.
 

Recovering from a cesarean delivery

With c-section, stitches may be best

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Week 30!!!!


Wow! After weeks of mini baby dramas, we finally got here! Every week to us so far has been a major milestone, but from here on now they will be even more significant. Our goal is to keep them in 2 more weeks! Just 2 more! The twins are now weighing 3 lbs each. Although Christy hasn't been able to take contraction medication that was prescribed to her because of low blood pressure, the strict bedrest has done wonders! The cervix length has now stablized at 22mm, so it looks like we'll be able to keep them in the oven for a little longer. The twins are now moving and kicking harder than ever. I was able to see the twins pushing and moving through the visible movement on the belly surface. The twins are now so heavy, that Christy described as "having a bowling ball sitting on your stomach 24/7".  As soon as I had that visual in my head, I actually felt short of breath for a few seconds...

Few More Pieces To Go

The diaper changing dresser unit has been sitting in its intended location since we bought it a month ago. Finally I got some time this weekend to break open the box and put it together. I was very impressed with the quality of the materials and how thoughtfully it was designed (including four built-in rubber pads on the bottom of the wooden legs). With this built, the nursery basics are all set for their arrival, we now just need to ramp up on stocking up extra bed sheets and matress pads for those late night throw-ups (no, not me, the twins.) 


A Must Have For Bedresters

A week ago I went to Bed Bath and Beyond and got Christy this breakfast in bed command-central table, and the rest is history. This has been set up to contain all the key books/vitamins/snacks/ and is used interchangeably to serve meals on, and surf the web inbetween meals. It is such a godsend and makes her bedrest at least bit more enjoyable.

兩隻老虎, 兩隻老虎, 跑的快, 跑的快!

Thanks to Alfred and Alla who continued to give us lots of cute baby clothes, this week we received from them an adorable tiger blanket!! Thanks so much guys~ My two little tigers will love it!

My Savior Is Here

Last Sunday my mother-in-law came in from Taiwan to do me a huge favor - keep me sane.  On the day she arrived, I just felt soooo relieved. For weeks I had been exposed to what it's like to be a stay-home care taker, while there are still expectations I needed to fulfill at work. The tough tug of war gave me a glimpse of what's inevidibly coming for me in merely weeks, it was just all too suden for me to be ready for. Mom came on Sunday night, I went into work (first time in 2 weeks) on Monday, and traveled to Boston for 3 days following that. Not only mom took great care of Christy, she made cooking seem sooooo effortless!! it was as if she pulled these dishes out of her pocket because the kitchen seems so clean afterwards. I can't believe how blessed we are!! The two soon-to-be-grandmas took Christy to Dr. Weiss while I was in Boston, and thanks for the strict bedrest, the babies are doing great, now 3 lb each!




Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Belly Support

At this point of twin pregnancy, people always come up to us and ask if they were coming out any second now. it's 29 weeks but the belly sure looks full term if there were only one fetus in it! Christy got this support belt which she would only wear at home. because it's kind of scary looking if seen by a random stranger.. It's necessary, but this one works only okay. We think there are better support belts out there.

WK 29

After the episode we had last week, Christy and I learned a few things: Apparently if you have full bladders it can trigger contractions, so the best thing to do at this stage of pregnancy is to constantly drink water (because babies need lots of fluid) and constant use the bathroom, even if it means that you have to get up 5~6 times a night to do it. This is the 3rd week Christy is on bedrest, and bedrest is not easy, besides the physical discomfort on pretty much the whole body, it's emotionally challenging as well. On the upside, the twins are safe and sound thus far, and I still have some time to finish up my share of readings, classes and lots of other stuff we still need to buy before they come into this wonderful world.
On the side note, I discovered my good friend M was recently admitted to the hospital for MRI and treatments, while in the hospital room M was reading my blog on the steroids, as she was getting the shots as well. M is back to healthy state now and I just wanted to give her a shout out and wish her all the best!

The Expectant Father

Father Knows Best: The Expectant Father, Facts, Tips, and Advice for Dads-to-Be; The New Father, A Dad's Guide to the First Year; Fathering your Toddler (2nd and 3rd years)I've been reading a book called The Expectant Father, by Armin A. Brott & Jennifer Ash. it is such a wonderful book that explains month by month what I need to expect, physically as well as emotionally on both me and my wife. I have learned a tremendous amount of knowledge just from this book, and occasionally I'd drop some knowledge bomb on Christy to impress the heck out of her. I highly recommend any expectant dads out there to get this book or the whole series going into the first year and toddler years.

Saturday, April 3, 2010

Speed Dating

Contours Options Tandem II Stroller, Tangerine shown in picture is the awesome twins stroller Annie gave us. It is easy to maneuver, folds up nicely, sturdy, and multi-functional. It has all the right stuff, but it's something I only recently began to accept as something I will need with me everywhere I go. A car that will pack all (stroller, 2 infant car seats, diaper bags, groceries, nanny, christy, myself, and potentially if we need to travel somewhere, luggages), fuel efficient, affordable, and yet doesn't make a wrong statement about me is just very difficult to find.  WHERE ARE YOU, MY SWEET RIDE!?

Friday, April 2, 2010

Thanks everyone!

Thank you Continuum for sending a very elegant orchid plant to us. it brightened the patient room as well as warmed our hearts! It has been very stressful for me as an expectant father over the past two days. On one hand, I felt powerless because the hospital has now taken over, and it's only made worse by watching Christy get the steroids shots and yet i can't do anything to stop it. There are many sources (including NIH) that suggest both short and long term risks on these steroids for unborn babies, but at this point we had to do it because the short term benefits (they get to survive premature labor) outweight the risks. I've been very torn on this subject, but we're blessed to have so many friends and family sending us encouraging words and sharing experience and even expert medical opinions. I truly appreciate it guys! Now onto the next milestone

Wednesday, March 31, 2010

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.


Sunday, March 28, 2010

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!

Saturday, March 20, 2010

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!!!!!

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

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!!!


Tuesday, March 16, 2010

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:
Bellysonic

Saturday, March 13, 2010

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.

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

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...

Sunday, March 7, 2010

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.


Fisher Price My Little Lamb Cradle n Swing

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.

Babyletto Mercer Convertible Crib in Two Tone Espresso and White

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.