thanksgiving photos + 2 colds + an honored guest posting

hi all! hope everyone's been well and had a great thanksgiving holiday. mark and the twins and i had a very eventful and exhausting thanskgiving weekend. we started our day all in bed to watch the macy's thanksgiving parade after a full 8 hours of sleep! what!? full 8 hours you say!? let me side-step for a moment...

yes, the twins SLEPT THROUGH THE NIGHT!!! haaaallelujah! praise the Lord! it was glorious and fantastic and holy crap did it feel gooooood! we had been experimenting with their sleeping and feeding schedules here and there to see how long they'd last between feedings. just as they turned 4 months, they miraculously surprised us by starting to sleep for longer periods of time at night which resulted in them finally sleeping through the night. they have been great sleepers since then. they wake up here and there but are learning to put themselves back to sleep. it's truly bittersweet as i love my times of rocking and singing them to sleep and sometimes back to sleep for bedtime and sometimes naptimes. they're just growing so fast!

back to thanksgiving...
we spent the day playing and taking photos of the twins (we now call them the baby bears; explanation to come soon). later the night, we went to mark's aunt and uncle's home to celebrate with mark's family. we ate a lot, played with and showed off the baby bears a lot and had a great time. the baby bears had so much fun that they were extremely exhausted and passed out cold as soon as we got home.. and again slept through the night! here are some photos we took of them that day.

 

the next day, we relaxed at home for most of the day and then went to a friend's house to celebrate thanksgiving with our friends. it was great to see our friends and spend time with them even with the babies in tow. again, they had so much fun that they passed out right when we got home and slept for most of the night. they got up once or twice though, cause i think they were just too over stimulated that night and seemed like they had a nightmare or two; at least for lincoln. poor thing woke up screaming! 

the next day, we spent the day resting and playing at home again. that night we went to our friends' new home for their housewarming and potluck thanksgiving dinner. i think the twins were just too tired from the 2 nights before at this point and they were pretty fussy and only wanted mommy and daddy to hold and play with them. so we cut the night short and went home earlier than we expected so they could get some rest. 

the next morning, both babies woke up fussy and congested. our poor baby bears had their first cold. they had runny noses and lincoln had a phlegmy cough. reagan just had boogers for days! the nosefrida was working overtime yesterday and STILL is! i made and emergency run to the pharmacy for vicks, vapor bath and lots and lot of boogie wipes! since then, we have been religiously sucking snot out of two noses, running the humidifier in their room for every nap, wiping vicks all over 2 chests, 2 backs, 2 necks and 2 feet and been trying our  best to comfort and cuddle with 2 babies. we are exhausted but the babies are already getting better. thank God!

an honored guest posting:

today, we made an appearance on another twin mommy's blog in honor of Prematurity Awareness Month last month. so pop on by the sweet Sharisse's blog at sharissespieces.com and read about our Preemie Life!

stay tuned for our next posting as we backtrack a bit to the twins' red egg and ginger party! 

an apology and a guest posting

1. my apologies for not being better about updating. the twins are keeping me so busy! but the gist of what's been happening in our household...

--the twins are now 4 months old! if you look to the right of the blog you can see their monthly photos to see how much they've grown and how they're looking. i may be bias, but they are growing cuter and cuter each month! they're so interactive now. they love "talking" to mommy and daddy and anyone that will listen and their giggles and laughs are so adorable and infectious.

--we've been busy getting our house ready to receive my family for the Christmas holiday so on top of taking care of the babies, we've been running rampant around the house cleaning and purging to make room!

2. i'll be guest posting over at another twin mommy's blog soon about my life as a preemie mom. stay tuned for the announcement when she posts it!

till then... hope everyone has a happy thanksgiving. we over here are so very thankful this year!

7 weeks too soon: the twins' birth story - part 2

so let's continue...

forgive me in advance, as this is where things are a bit hazy. so, i'll do my best to remember the bits and pieces.

so we hop into the car and are on our way to the hospital, when it hits me that i'm supposed to have called the doctor to let her know what was going on. another DUH moment! so i get on the phone as mark just gets on the highway towards the hospital. i leave a message with the on-call service and wait till the doctor calls back. about 5 or 10 minutes or so along the highway, the doctor calls back and i explain what's going on. she tells me to go to the nearest hospital as she doesn't think i'll make it in time to get to our hospital (45 min away). i tell mark, and he's not having it. he's determined to get me to our hospital and to our doctor, no ifs ands or buts.

his explanation was that we had gone through so much already to get to this point that he wasn't letting some doctor delivery our twins that we'd never met and that didn't know my medical history or our pregnancy history. he had a valid point... to me at least. but when i told my doctor this, she wasn't too pleased and was urging me to turn around and go to the nearest hospital. by this time, i hadn't noticed it, but mark was flying on the highway at almost 90 mph!!! which meant that from where we had started to where we were now, the trip would usually have taken at least 20 minutes and we had just done it in 5 minutes! so mark told me to tell the doctor that we'll be there sooner than she thinks and there's no turning back now. she was not pleased at all.

this is the part that gets hazy...

in a record time of 20-25 minutes or so, we got from baltimore back to rockville. we pull up to the ER at Shady Grove Adventist Hospital and head in. we go straight up to the 3rd floor where labor and delivery are and sign in. i guess my doctor told the front desk to possibly expect me and how crazy we were for making the trip 'cause the front desk girl was like "wow, i can't believe you made it. you're crazy!" or something like that... hard to remember!

so around 6 am, they finally take me back into a triage room to get me on monitors to see how things were going. because i was only 33 weeks 1 day, they wanted to slow down and/or stop my contractions and prevent preterm labor. as i'm lying in the bed writhing in pain from the contractions, i feel them prick me, take blood, give me an IV and all sorts of other things going on that i really cannot recollect right now. according to mark though, i was given several rounds of some drug that was supposed to slow down or stop the contractions. they did this 3 times. all 3 times failed to do their job. so, this was it. the babies were coming and there was nothing we could do to stop it anymore.

after however many hours of prepping and paper signing, i was whisked off to an operating room to get prepped and ready for a cesarean delivery. the decision had been made just the week before to have them via C-section because reagan hadn't turned and it didn't look like she was going to by the time i was supposed to deliver. so after mark came in to join me, it was go time.

so, at 11:15 am, our first twin was born... Lincoln Jude Yuen; 3 pounds, 15 ounces, 16.75 inches.

and then 3 minutes later, at 11:18 am, our second twin was born... Reagan Elizabeth Yuen; 3 pounds, 12 ounces, 16.75 inches.

and our lives changed forever... yuen, party of 4.

7 weeks too soon: the twins' birth story - part 1

sorry this has taken me forever to post! let's begin...

july 19, 2014
i was 33 weeks and HUGE. mark and i were getting ready for our friends' wedding in baltimore. the day started off like any other, eat breakfast, take a shower, try my best to get dressed on my own, fail at getting dressed on my own, yell for mark to help me. a little time passed and we ate some lunch then headed out to the wedding. mark actually had to DJ as well.

45 minutes or so later, we get to the venue, The Walters Art Museum, and as mark was setting up, i was eating a chicken teriyaki sandwich from the museum cafe to tide me over till the reception. i ate most of it, but for some reason just couldn't finish it all. i thought i was so hungry i could eat a cow, but i just couldn't seem to finish my sandwich. so i gave some to the bride and the rest to mark.

mmm... chicken teriyaki!

the ceremony went off without a hitch. during cocktail hour my stomach started feeling funny... like i had to poop. so, my friend took me to the ladies' room to take care of business. nothing happened. so i wrote it off as just bad gas and we proceeded to the reception dinner. intros began and my stomach felt yucky and crampy again... like i had to poop even more. another trip to the bathroom. no dice. back to the table and the salads were served. i ate a little and then again... stomach yuck and a trip to the bathroom. again... nada. this went on several times throughout dinner. at one point, i felt bad that my friend kept having to wheel me to the ladies' room and made mark wheel me. as he was wheeling me past the tables to the ladies' room, people must have thought it was Go Time and started clapping and cheering! it was pretty funny when we rolled back in and were like "false alarm!" little did we know, i was actually having contractions and not just funky gas problems!

side notes: with every trip to the bathroom and every grunt from my stomach pains, the ladies at our table all kept telling me that they had similar pains when they started having contractions. i didn't think they were contractions and just thought i had really bad gas or that the chicken teriyaki sandwich must have been bad! 

throughout the rest of the night, i kept having the stomach pains and kept trying to poop. i even got so frustrated with the wheelchair business that i just got up and walked to the bathroom. it actually alleviated the pain from time to time when i would walk. needless to say, i was counting down the minutes till the end of the reception so i could go back to our hotel room and attempt to poop or just lay down and rest for the night. i was feeling so crappy that i didn't even get to take any decent photos that night. this is one of the very very few that doesn't even have mark in it... at least the bride is though!

rita, jemi (the bride) and me

july 20, 2014
we got back to the hotel around 1am-ish after mark packed up his equipment. i got into my pajamas and was getting ready to settle in and rest for the night while mark was getting into more comfortable clothes to go to the after-party in the bride and groom's suite. mark kissed me goodbye for now and off he went to enjoy himself as i started getting into bed. i kept feeling the stomach pains more and more and kept trying to poop, but for some reason just couldn't get anything out. at that point, i actually vomitted; which is why i thought i got food poisoning from something at dinner. the stomach pains kept getting stronger and more frequent, so i texted mark to come back cause i just was not feeling well and i needed him near me just in case it got really bad.  if it was food poisoning, i would have to have him go out to get me some ginger ale or whatever was safe to take while pregnant and sick.

around 2:30/3 am, i just couldn't take it. poor mark was intoxicated and resting in the bed while i kept going back and forth to the bathroom to try to poop it out. at one point, i was faced down butt up on the bed trying to alleviate the pain. and then it hit me... AM I IN LABOR!?!? ARE THESE CONTRACTIONS!?!? BUT IT'S TOO SOON! WE HAVE 7 MORE WEEKS!

duh. duh. duh.

sure enough, i was in labor. i started timing the contractions and they were about 12-15 minutes apart. i look over to see mark passed out and snoring his head off. so i shook him and told him what was going on. he was in as much disbelief as i was that i was actually in labor. he was in denial and wouldn't get up; i think mostly cause he was too intoxicated to fully function. after about a half our of screaming at him to get up, he got up, took a quick wake up shower to get him going, and we started packing things up to head out to the hospital... which was at least 45 minutes away!

stay tuned for the next part!

for now... happy halloween from our little chilipino miracles! (they're already 3 months old!)

mini update before the big one

just a short update on what's been going on since the last update and then hopefully in a few days, if i can find the time, i'll do a big update with more pics and details. but for now...

just in case you didn't hear... the twins arrived! they came early on July 20, 2014 at 11:15 am and 11:18 am.

Mr. Lincoln Jude Yuen
11:15 am
3lbs. 15 oz.
16.75 inches

Ms. Reagan Elizabeth Yuen
11:18 am
3 lbs. 12 oz.
16.75 inches

me and reagan

me and lincoln

me and lincoln right after he was born

me and reagan right after she was born

life has been chaotic and wonderful all at the same time since they've come. but they have brought so much happiness, love and pure joy into our lives.

today they are one month old and continuing to be just as amazing as the day they arrived. i can't wait for the next days, months, and years to come. it's time to give them a bath now. so i'll leave y'all with a photo of how they look now which was taken during their newborn photoshoot this past saturday.

 

i'll do a bigger and longer update as soon as i can! ciao for now!