September 3, 2007 by Jaime

Home at last!

I was home last night for my first night and it was glorious! My own bed, my own husband, my own furniture and dishes, my own shower with decent water pressure, my own doggie to cuddle, food from friends… ahhh. I bet my blood pressure is MUCH better just by being home. I finally ate my birthday ice cream and we watched a bit of our new show which arrived in the mail, Heroes, Season One. What an intriguing show!
I slept well (I’ve managed to revise the definition of that statement– sleeping well is not sleeping for one big length of time anymore. It’s being able to fall back asleep multiple times in between mommy duties and actually function later in a day). I’m so grateful for my little family and for our house! We slaved over this house during the renovations last year and now I look around our bedroom and the babies’ room with pride because we did all that and it’s ready for our family!
I’m at the NICU this afternoon hanging out with the babies, who are snuggling cutely together right now. I can’t upload the pictures from here, or I’d show you. Between yesterday and today, I have been pooped on by both of them and peed on by Zach, and it feels like a rite of passage. (I’m pretty sure Marissa peed on Matt already, so she’ll get to me soon). They have excellent aim and I’m rather impressed that someone so tiny can be so accurate! Our babies still eat in a rather uncoordinated way, so breast-feeding has not been working. They do really well with their bottles though and both got their feeding tubes out this morning! We were waiting until they could take the large percent of their meals orally. Two days ago, they were taking 53% and 56% by bottle, and now, all of it! I’m so proud of their progress… they are only a week old tomorrow! Marissa was too sleepy to eat her 11am meal, but it was our first semi-successful breast-feed, so I was thrilled anyway. We almost had to put her tube back in to get the rest of the food into her tummy, but then she woke up and was like, Okay I’m ready for the bottle! Thank goodness, because she spent DAYS scratching at the tape holding that feeding tube to her little cheek trying to rip it out of her nose. It would have been a tragedy to reinsert it so quickly after it finally came out!
I’m in less pain and not having any allergic reactions to my internal or external stitches, so all-around, things are very good. I have felt like myself since Friday and it’s good to be back! I missed me 🙂
More posts later with pictures…

September 2, 2007 by Jaime

lack of sleep

I wish I could say that the lab tech who just came in to stick my already-purple arm woke me up. I am starting to get on a 3 hour schedule, but my brain doesn’t seem to understand that it is supposed to go back to sleep in between! Waking up is happening, sleeping is not. So it’s 5:40am and what do I do with myself? The babies are asleep and working hard on growing and I’m hoping to sleep later.

In answer to a pronunciation question, yes, her middle name is pronounced KAR-is, not CARE-is. I’m more and more glad that we used Charis as a middle name because it is beautiful and so is the concept of grace, but I had a hard-to-spell name growing up AND a hard-to-pronounce last name, so Marissa should be simpler for her 🙂 You should see her sweet little smile…

People told us that we’d become obsessed with poop– what it looks like, how often it happens, etc. It’s funny because Alana, my sister-in-law, remembered to tell me that the hospital staff would be obsessed with my poop as well. It’s all true. I get asked about it rather often and when I call or stop by the NICU to check on our little rockin’ preemies, I say things like, “so, did Zach poop this afternoon?” Marissa had been pooping well and he now is too! It’s a big yay because he worked very hard to develop enough this week to poop appropriately and it took some time. But we can stop mentioning it now 🙂 They are eating and that means other things are working and that’s the extent of knowledge you all need. I won’t update you on mine…

So I might get sent home today. It will be hard to not be here with the babies and have a place to crash during their naps, but I do miss Hoochie! He is apparently behaving beautifully at home and getting great care from our neighbors. We are blessed because our insurance covers extra days for me if needed, and I guess that will depend on these labs taken this morning. I overheard another mom in the NICU answering questions about her insurance and it made me cringe to hear how different it was from ours. We are definitely the HAVES! (Matt can show me later how to link here to my previous post about this) I’m grateful to be a have, especially because our little ones are receiving AMAZING care in the NICU. I just wish everyone could be a HAVE too. The sort of justice and equality that Jesus offers and will bring is so, so desirable!

I branched out from hospital gowns and wore pajamas yesterday. It was a nice change– maybe I can do that again today! In my sleepless state this morning, I was thinking about cleaning the bathrooms at home. It’s so sad that my brain chose those thoughts over happy dreamy ones! Is this post-partum depression, because THAT is depressing!

My last disconnected thought: The NICU nurses have been amazing. They work 12 hour days and just express love all those hours to our little ones (who are definitely lovable) but not just because it is their jobs! I’m so touched to have memories of them teaching us new parenting skills and seeing them cuddle and be with our babies. They also got them on a handy schedule of care which we hope to continue at home! Thank you Kris, Jen, Diane, Linda, Kelly, and Cuc!

September 1, 2007 by Matt

Alright, alright…

I did consider making everyone wait a couple more hours. Or days. Or maybe weeks. But I suppose we’re both too excited to really pull that off. Plus, I feel like I got enough hate mail to at least partially satisfy my twisted sense of humor 🙂

We present to you our two beautiful children, born at 9:36am on August 28, 2007 in Carle Hospital in Urbana, Illinois:

Marissa Charis “Raisin” Olson and Zachary Alden “Kiwi” Olson!

Zachary means “The Lord Remembers” and Charis is Greek for “grace”. Alden was my grandfather’s name, and we just love the name Marissa (which means sea-loving), and her nickname Rissa means “laughter” 🙂

September 1, 2007 by Jaime

more from mommy

Well, I’m rather shocked to not be pregnant anymore! I’m so thrilled to see the babies and be able to LOOK at them in all their sweet baby glory, but it’s definitely something to get used to. All 3 of us got our IVs out yesterday and we are all much, much happier! I remember only small pieces of earlier this week and mostly, just that I couldn’t see the babies and then I could and then things started getting better. After that, the memories make more sense. I’m really glad we gave in to buying the minivan when we did! I feel like God has orchestrated each detail so that it works, even though we weren’t planning for any arrivals yet and couldn’t have done any of this planning on our own. I’m still smiling when I think about how we thought Sept. 16-23 would be a good range for them to come, because now I can’t imagine if they weren’t here already! My little cuties. They bring Over the Rhine songs to mind when I look at them.
I expected some hatemail about Matt announcing that we HAD names and then not sharing them 🙂 He is hilarious! They are my kids too, so I could squeal, but I’ll let him do it. He’s done all the work of posting their cutie pictures and updates 🙂 We had to tell the grandparents over the phone before we revealed it publicly, so I’ll bet he tells you very soon. The REASON they weren’t named for so long is because they came early and then I hadn’t been myself until last night and today. I didn’t want to name my children while on crazy drugs! Who knows what I would have agreed to, and then my poor kids would have to explain that their mommy was temporarily luny when I named them. We waited until I could think straight and we could try the names out on them. For the record, I do not like the codeine/darvocet/vicatin family of drugs and I’m not taking them anymore! Blech! I’m on normal tylenol and ibuprofen, and it’s helping the pain without making me crazy. This is a good thing.
I need to go figure out the breast pump they are sending home with me because it is different than my current one. I think I’m being released tomorrow if my labs still look good and then I’ll have to get myself here to be with the babies until they are ready to come home. It will be VERY hard to not be in the same place as them, but we will work it out. God bless my sweet Matt who makes everything beautiful for me and God bless all of you for your love and prayers. The four of us feel very loved!

p.s. Kiwi sneezes 5 times every time he sneezes. Then he squeaks. It melts my heart. And Raisin keeps one fist up by her face while she sleeps just like in her sonogram pictures. He is still very blonde like his mommy but Raisin’s hair is darkening to beautiful golden. I’m hoping for some curls! It’s so cool to SEE them after months of feeling them and to notice ways that they are similar to themselves– the themselves I knew before they had even come out. I’m so amazed by my precious children.