Tag: about Suz

Categories
Babies

World Prematurity Day

November 17th, today, is world prematurity day. I remember seeing preemie mom posts last year & reading the March of Dimes tweets of facts while I sat newly pregnant with multiples wondering where we’d be next year.

I’m so thankful that this November 17th arrived with two healthy babies sleeping the best they have in weeks. They were born six weeks early & are considered late preemies. But preemies no less.

Im thankful to the steroid shots I received at 32w1d & 32w2d right after Zach’s water broke. I help attribute those shots to the fact Zach’s lungs worked perfectly & that Lucy only spent one day on a bubble CPAP machine.

So many preemie parents are so nervous, afraid for their babies. I was calm. Anxious but calm. And thankful.

I’d dreamed of birthing my babies & having them immediately placed on me. I learned that wouldn’t happen with my preemies. I was lucky though. While Zach was whisked right off to the NICU, I held him & was able to put him to breast within ten hours of his birth. It would’ve been sooner, but I was busy laboring with Lucy for 8.5 of those hours. With Lucy, I held her for a minute in the birthing room then later that day in the NICU.

All the tubes & wires couldn’t keep us from getting & giving as many snuggles as possible. Hard to remember them this tiny & yet I know I’ll never forget.

Our little 4lb2oz Zach with his IV, feeding tube & monitoring wires on day two of life.
Our 6lb Lucy girl with her bubble CPAP, IV, feeding tube & monitoring wires on her day two.

Please check out & support March of Dimes & the WHO on the World Prematurity Day.

Categories
Family/Travel

Redefining Us

2012 has brought on a lot of changes for us. For Jason & I. Mainly, of course, the birth of Zach & Lucy. And with their arrival, things have been shaken up. The vast majority have, thankfully, shaken up for the better.

I think some people & couples will disagree with me here, but I’ve always thought of a married couple without children as that. A married couple. Not a family per say. I guess to me, the word ‘family’ means/involves/includes children. So for the first {almost} five years of our marriage, I thought of us as a couple trying to eventually, one day, then hopefully soon, become a family.

The term family for me was my parents, brother, grandparents, aunts etc. It extended to Jason’s family too. But they were more ‘your’ family or ‘his’ family. As for our families now, they are still very if not even more so present. New babies mean that they’re now excited new grandparents, aunts & uncles, & great-grands. They are loving it & we’re redefining relationships there too.

Now that Zach & Lucy are {oh-so-thankfully} here, we are a family. Our own precious, perfect & complete family of four. And we’re in the process of defining what that means to us.

For now, this month, it means getting our first fall/winter family photos for Christmas cards. Negotiating holidays where we decide when it’ll be time for it to be celebrated with just us as a family of four. {I’m not quite ready for that yet.} Creating family traditions for the babies to look back on through pictures. Being together as much as possible. Calling each other “Mommy” & “Daddy”. And being thankful.

Categories
Babies Everything Else Family/Travel Trying To Conceive

Triangle Mom 2 Mom

I know I just linked y’all to where else I’ve been on the interwebs yesterday. But I have another one today. When it rains good things, it pours right?!

I was contacted by a lady from the local Raleigh newspaper’s Triangle Mom 2 Mom blog a couple weeks ago. They wanted to feature me & Suz’s Treats today. I answered her questions & boom, Meet Suz is the featured story on their blog & is listed on the newspapers website too.

::feeling famous for a day::

Categories
Everything Else

How I Make Working Work {Liberating Working Moms}

Happy Halloween! I’m all treats & hopefully no tricks today. While I’m off celebrating the babies’ first Halloween at their daycare sticker-treat event this morning & their first trick-or-treating tonight {photo overload to come!}, I thought I’d share a little news.

Hi, I’m Suz. The most recently added contributor over at Liberating Working Moms!! Yep, they liked me so much after my Choosing to Work post, that Tracy invited me to write for LWM regularly. I’m so excited & humbled & honored. & have I mentioned excited?! I have a ton of respect for my fellow contributors & am so happy to be working along side them as we discuss the lives of working moms.

I’ll be writing & posting most of my working mom {of two} topics there. Like I did with other previous guest posts, I’ll continue to preview & link to them from here.

To follow up on my first LWM post & to open up the topic of how we working moms do it, today I’m sharing How I {try} to Make it Work. I’m revealing what I do on the weekends & at night to help keep the morning chaos at a minimum.

Join me over at Liberating Working Moms for the rest. And please let me know if I’m missing any make-the-mornings-less-stressful tips that you do!

Categories
Everything Else

Best Diet Ever

For the past five months, I’ve been on the best, most effective diet of my whole life. Breastfeeding two babies.

I’d heard nursing multiples I’d burn about a thousand extra calories a day. Take a second to let that sink in, 1000.

So the multi momma nursing books recommend you compensate for that by eating 1000 fatty extra calories. That’s 100 more than when I was eating for triplets & 400 more than my calorie goal when I was pregnant with Zach & Lucy.

Somedays I’m better at eating than others. And the days I’m too busy at work to have second breakfast or weekend mornings I nurse before I drink or eat anything, I pay for it with hunger pains & nausea worse than when I was in the first trimester. My body is working hard & I’m trying my best to keep up.

I’ve learned to carry a big jug of water with me at all times. And I keep snacks now in my drawers at work. I pack a lot of food for my workday & still sometimes take advantage of our cafeteria.

But yall, even eating as much as I do, with a scoop of gelato on top, I’ve still lost close to 60 pounds since May 21.

taken in NICU bathroom May 26th.
Monday morning in office bathroom

It’s crazy. And while breastfeeding multiples & pumping at work is tough {& probably needs its own post later}, it’s so worth it. Hello! I’m wearing my skinny girl khakis & have set aside my fat kid pants for the first time in years!!

{I swear I’m not trying to be braggy, annoying or knock-you-down-pro-breastfeeding, I’m just shocked at the weight loss & wanted to share.}