Mike Compton - a day in the life of…

So we’re 5 1/2 weeks into being parents, and it amazes you just how fast you pickup on things your kids like and dislike.

Both kids hate baths, but love their head shampoo’d and a towel around them. Both kids hate laying on their stomach but love laying across daddy’s stomach. Both kids love their feet massaged by mommy.

One Jen found out this week is, both kids love….. Barney the purple dinosaur? I guess Jen turned on Sprout Tv for them (kids channel) as they were laying down after a bottle yesterday. They were both facing away from the tv, but when the heard the music that they’re singing on that show, they BOTH turned their heads towards it. And today Jen had it on for them again, both kids, content. Then she turns it down so they can nap, walks away, WAHHHHHHHHHHHH Tyler starts singing. Turns it up a bit, *content again*. So there you have it, the Compton kids like Barney, so our big tv w/ full surround all ready for sports is now a dual purpose tv as a baby-calmer.

Oh, did I forget to mention that both kids also like to keep mommy and daddy up at all crazy hours of the night/morning? almost forgot that one as I nodded off…

Jen got to come home from gallbladder surgery sunday night. She’s still in a lot of discomfort, but VERY happy to be home w/ the kids again

She missed them, they missed mommy. Jen went to the dr today and he said she’s doing ok, but it will be a few weeks till most of the pain/cramping subsides. But she’s DEFINITELY a trooper, and me and the kids are glad she’s home and doing good.

Love you mommy

Dad, Hailey, & Tyler

the past 3+ weeks has been about taking care of the babies, this week its about taking care of mommy. Jen has been having some internal pains that we kinda contributed to her insides returning to their pre-baby spots, but come Thursday night, her discomfort was bad enough for a trip to the E.R. The doctors there ran blood work and utrasounds and came up with….. gallstones. Interesting. After reading more about it and talking with the doctors about it, it seems that pregnancy can trigger the gallbladder to not clear out like its supposed to. And the stones trying to be passed was what was giving her the discomfort.

Jen had a dr appt friday am and her dr said back to the hospital she goes. So we’re here, and they wanted 2 procedures for her. One to check out the bile ducts, and the other actual gallbladder removal. Procedure 1 just finished and her dr was very happy w/ the results and how it went, really encouraging. Tomorrow is the gallbladder surgery. Jen seemed to be more worried about the first procedure since 2 family members had gallbladder removal w/ no issues. Now that her procedure is done, and our comfort in her dr tomorrow with having done THOUSANDS of gallbladder removals, she will hopefully be on the road to full recovery, and back to no sleep with the kids at home

Thanks grandma and grandpa for all your help and for watching the kids while we’re here!!!

Jen & Mike

So the monkeys have been home with us for just about two weeks now. Its been both the most amazing and at the same time most physically taxing time for Jen and I in a long time.

As we try to get them on a schedule, they do good, then bad. It seems like they’ll be fine for a day, then the next 2 days they’ll be on complete opposite schedules. Even one of them keeps w/ a 3.5-4 hour feeding schedule, the other will decide at about 2 hours that they’re STARVING, like we’ve never fed them before.

We’ve yet to have them sleep through the night. They have no problem sleeping through the day though, so we try to get stuff done in the afternoon when they’re sleeping. But come nighttime, its seems like during/after their overnight feeding they wanna partttttttttttttttttttttttttttty. If they eat at 1am, they’ll be up and fussy till 3. I think I was up till almost 6am yesterday with Tyler. You cant get mad at him either. He’s such a cute kid. Hailey does the same to us too. She’ll be fine for days, and then 1 night she’ll pick to have a meltdown, and I mean MELTDOWN. Screaming to the point that she’ll almost be out of breath. It gets to you, but they just want to be held most of the time.

We’re getting used to them. They’re getting used to us. We know what they need and when they need it. Guess that’s what being a parent of newborns is all about.

Hailey seems to almost have doubled in weight (well not literally, but you can really tell she’s putting on the weight) Tyler is gaining too, but not at the same rate as her. That poor kid too, his sister got all the good stuff even when they weren’t born yet.

He’s probably going to not know his name either. It seems we have about 10 nicknames for him already. Bubba, Bubs, Squeaker, Popeye, Lil Brother, Ty, and probably 4 or 5 other ones that escape me at the moment. Most popular one is Bubs though. Hailey has her share too. Lil Momma, Big Sister, Chunky, etc

Ah well. Back to baby’in

Mike & Jen

Jen and I have been taking shifts watching after the monkeys

its not strange napping at 6pm and being up all night. see: its 2:45am currently

I’m not that tired either. Just catching up on news and technology after the kids were fed/changed

but, I think I’m calling it a night. I’ve seen the sunrise too many times in the past week

crazy kids…..

In talking w/ a friend of mine today, I guess I didn’t fully grasp just how of an amazing experience it was having kids.

I told him that I could have written a novel about just the 15 minutes prior to delivery and the 15 minutes during and right up until the delivery of our twins. The emotional rollercoaster you go on is almost unexplainable in words. You’d never understand unless you were there or its happened to you. It all started by getting to the hospital at 7:45am, 2 hours till delivery time (babies had went breech, so a c-section was the only option). By 9:00 Jen was all done being monitored, IV was in, drip was started, and the delivery nurse was giving the run-through about what was going to happen, all starting the cycle of how our life as we know it was going to drastically change. Just past 9:45 and they walked Jen down to the O.R. I could only imagine all the thoughts going through her head as she was going from very pregnant to a mom all in about a 30-45 min period. But she’s strong, and she knew both kids were already very healthy, so I think it put her at comfort. Plus, her OB was the one that started that practice years and years ago, so having somebody she was not only comfortable with, but one that was able to talk her through everything while being the utmost professional was great for her, and me as well. So they take her away and tell me to get on the scrubs and such, and we’ll be back in 15 minutes to get you. So as you sit in a room by yourself with nobody checking in on you, knowing your wife is less than 50 feet away, but you cant see her, talk to her, comfort her, it was disconcerting. You just sit there and watch the clock, waiting for that nurse to step in the room and call you down to be with your wife. About 5 minutes into it, your mind starts wandering. How am I going to be as a father? How will our kids be? Are they healthy? Is mom ok? The whole time you keep looking up at the clock, it almost looks stopped. I’m sitting there in my scrubs, in COMPLETE silence, all alone, mind wandering, all I wanted was information. How is my wife? How are my kids? Are they all ok? Then a nurse walked in and mutters ‘We’re ready for you’ You walk into the O.R with her to find the BRIGHTEST light you’ve ever seen in your life. Almost bright to the point where you cant look up. The sounds of the O.R., the beeping monitors, the suction running, the doctors chatting like its no big thing. Then the nurse sits me down by the head of Jen’s bed, next to her head, right next to the anesthesiologist. I’m watching him check his monitors, watching her heart rate and other vitals, talking to the doctors. I have an issue in which if I hear backround noise, I cant quite pickup on all the conversations that are going on. Seeing that there was no less than 6 or so medical staff in the room talking to one another, I was having an issue picking up what was going on. Plus with emotions going crazy, the light, seeing Jen looking so helpless, it was a lot to take in. And knowing you’re minutes away from parenthood, this was the apex of the emotional roller coaster…. and right as I’m at that moment you hear the doctor say ‘here is baby 1… a girl, and the dr breaks the tension of the room with ‘Jen, your baby girl has a big butt!’ I smile, Jen smiles…. but, we don’t hear a cry right away. Just a little peep, almost like a chick. The nurses and neo-natologist check her over and help clear out her lungs, and then she cries. We were both holding there, just waiting for it, it seemed like FOREVER while in actuality it was probably a minute or so. Hailey has joined us. 10:18am. Just one minute later you can see Jen wiggle a bit from the dr positioning her, then ‘ah, baby 2’ and then an immediate cry. He didn’t give us as much as a scare as her. He made his presence felt. After a few minutes of the dr’s doing their thing, the nurses doing theirs, Jen looks at me, I look at her and we both have a smile from ear to ear… we’re parents. The nurse then stops by and asks me “would you like to cut the cords?” Me being somewhat squeamish I thought twice about it, but Jen smiles and says ‘do it’, and I’m glad I did. Both babies are still a mixture of pale white and bright pink, but they look up at you while they’re warming and right then you get your first experience w/ them as a parent. After that I was quickly shuttled out of the O.R. with them as the dr’s finished with Jen. I got to carry Tyler out of the O.R. to the recovery room. It was probably the proudest moment of my life. Makes me feel awesome just writing about it. They got warmed up a bit, another checkup and the doctor comes walking out and says Jen will be with me in recovery in a moment. As they wheeled her into the recovery room we just looked at each other and knew what each other was thinking… like I said before, I think it was ‘wow, we’re PARENTS’

I just sit back and think now that in the time it took me to write this was longer than the time it took us to be a true family. Its simply amazing. Emotional, crazy, awesome, wonderful, yet amazing…..

Love you Jen, Hailey, and Tyler…. Dad

Jen delivered just 60 hours ago and it seems like it was just about 12 hours ago. Time is flying since there is never downtime at the hospital. If you dont have family/friends visiting its nurses. If its not a nurse, its a tech, not a tech, a doctor, room service…. etc. you get the picture. busy busy busy.

For that reason we get even less sleep than if it was only just two kids (listen to me ‘only 2 kids’) I guess thats how you feel if you see moms/dads in the hallway having problems with 1 kid. Now double that, *ding* thats us. We’ve been pretty lucky so far. The hospital has a new ‘naptime’ policy where at 2-4pm they dim the lights, and try to limit visitors and dr visits during that time. They also encourage kids to the nursery so mom/dad can get some sleep in. Today we napped for about an hour + since the first time we got here. As much as we want the kids to be with us, we’re no good to them if we cant stay up and help them.

Speaking of the kids, they’re doing well. Day 1 they werent really feeding all that much, but now both Tyler and Hailey have really taken to the formula. I have *no* idea how moms that have had c-sections would be able to breast feed 2 kids. Even w/ just me feeding with the bottle it takes 5-15 mins per kid to get them full and burped, at anywhere from every 2.5-4 hours, and they said that breastfeeding they eat more often. Thats just insane, and really tough of mom seeing she just recovered from major surgery herself. Jens doing awesome. She’s walking around now, and we just took a stroll through labor & delivery to see whats goin on over there.

Everyone here has been so awesome, and so helpful. They even encourage us to take the kids to the nursery at night so we can sleep. They’ll be plenty of time to spend sleepless nights at home. Although it was far from home, I think Jen made the right choice by picking Edwards. The dr’s and nurses have been great. We’ve even seen some faces we’re familiar with from the pre-labor trips we made here, and even our instructor from our Managing Multiples class.

They even have a professional photography service that comes through to take pictures to capture babies first week. We ended up getting a cd of awesome images. Here they are http://mikecompton.com/pics/thumbnails.php?album=55

Well its late and I think we’re going to take advantage of our baby-free evening 

Jen says HI and thanks for all the love, support, and generosity that you’ve showed us and our new babies. Hailey and Tyler really appreciate it that they’re so loved by everyone.

What an AMAZING day we had. We’ve been waiting for our two monkeys to show up for soooo long now. Jen has been nothing short of awesome holding onto these 2 kids for so long. And we couldnt be happier. They are incredible. BEAUTIFUL

They were delivered at 10:18 and 10:19 this morning respectively.

I’d like to announce Hailey Marie (6lb, 7oz!!!! and 19 inches long) and Tyler Michael (5lb, 130z, and 17.75 inches long) They’re both doing really well, as mommy is doing just as good as them. Crazy to think that after seeing just how uncomfortable she was.

It was an amazing thing being a part of their births. I even got to cut both of their cords. They just had their first baths and both of them have filled a good share of diapers already.

Tyler was able to pick up on a bottle first try, and Hailey took a bit, but they’re both eating healthy now, and you should see these kids BURP, make me proud!

We’ve had a good share of people with us today to help us celebrate our little bundles. They nodded off for a bit, but they’ve enjoyed all the love and attention.

Here are some pictures of them, as you could imagine there definitely will be more to come

http://www.mikecompton.com/pics/thumbnails.php?album=54

Jen had a dr. appointment and ultrasound today and everything is going GREAT.

they estimate baby A at 5 lb, 11oz, and baby B at 5lb, 8oz, so monkey 2 has seem to have caught up to his sister pretty well now

Jen is doing AMAZING at handling these kids. Its been a big strain on her, mentally and physically. I cant even imagine how tough it is having all that going on to your body at once. Its to the point where its almost too uncomfortable to walk, not being able to find a comfortable position to sleep, sit, etc.

Its just such a wonderful time for us. The dr. said the babies are doing *excellent*, as well as mom. She really hasnt had any complications w/ the pregnancy, and the fact that she still hasnt delivered yet (today is 36 weeks, 6 days, almost unheard of for twins), the chance that the kids wont have to spend any time in the NICU is looking to be pretty good.

We’re just really looking forward for our 2 monkeys to join us shortly. And the fact that all is well w/ them so far is so encouraging.

Just want to say thanks to Jen for being such a great wife, and already a great mother to our kids even before they’ve joined us.

Love you baby, and cant wait to meet our young’uns soon

ok, so I havent kept up on this blog, gimme a break, 2 kids on the way!!!!

so here goes. we finally finished the house. painting *done*, deck *complete*, landscaping *done (for this year anyways)

now the important stuff.

Jen’s pregnancy is going well. All her ultrasounds/tests/doctor visits have gone perfectly. It seems that the two little monkeys are getting closer to joining us though. Jen is 35 weeks this friday, so probably at any point over the next 3 weeks her and I will be PROUD parents of two amazing kids.

Summer hasn’t been the same as past. No vacations. No weekends away, etc. All we’ve been concentrating on is getting ourselves and our home ready for 2 kids, and I think we’re there. Well, we’ll NEVER be ready for it, but I think we’ve done the best we could so far.

I’ll TRY and keep up w/ any updates as I have time