As the title suggests, since I last posted here my wife Amanda and I have become parents to two twin[1] boys! They’re just over eight months old now and it’s been an exhilarating and exhausting experience.

I have a number of posts in the hopper about weight gain during pregnancy, pregnancy nutrition, how I managed to fight off (and then succumb to) some sympathy pounds myself, New Year’s resolutions, and some other posts unrelated to being pregnant or being a new parent. I haven’t posted any of them (yet) because we had a rough pregnancy, and then because being a new parent is much, much more time-consuming and enervating than I ever would have possibly imagined.

Losing weight is simple but it isn’t easy. It requires a certain amount of dedication, but getting fit mostly requires a good routine, and it’s hard to keep to any kind of routine when you have two babies to feed, change, play with, and otherwise look after. There are two of us and yet sometimes Amanda and I still feel outnumbered. Before they were born I was walking on our treadmill just about every morning before work, recording everything I ate, weighing-in every day, and losing a nice steady 8–10 pounds every month until last Fall when I stagnated.

After the boys were born I started to put on weight at almost the same rate, gaining about a pound a week through the holidays. Some of it was a change in routine, or because we ordered-in a lot more, but I’m sure some of it was due to stress, too, since high-calorie foods are very comforting.

I said above that our pregnancy was “rough” but I should probably elaborate a little.

Our Terrible Pregnancy

We’d[2] been trying to get pregnant for nearly two years before we finally did, with a couple of half-starts and false-positives[3]. When we bought our house in May 2011 we kept the second bedroom mostly empty and referred to it as “the nursery” before we moved in. So even before we were actively trying we were at least planning to have children.

Amanda and I had both seen a number of fertility doctors after the first year, and nothing was really wrong with either of us. We both lost some weight and exercised more. I started taking supplements to increase the count and motility of my sperm, and there was talk of my having surgery to remove a varicose vein that could be heating things up too much “down there,” but I never got the surgery. Amanda was (and still is) young enough that age wasn’t a major consideration, and everything just appeared to be working normally. Still, we weren’t getting pregnant.

When I was younger I assumed that you have unprotected sex once and BAM – you get pregnant. The real world doesn’t work that way, though. There are only a few days per menstrual cycle where a woman can actually get pregnant (although sperm can live for over a week inside) and not every woman actually releases an egg every single month. So right away the odds are against us. How did the human race ever proliferate before ovulation calendars and timed abstinence?

Nonetheless, sometime in October 2012 we finally got pregnant. We tested with two different brands of pregnancy test[4], and then Amanda got a blood test that confirmed it. I just happened to be working from home (for some other reason) the day the doctors called and we both heard the good news together while standing in our bathroom.

We found out a few more weeks in that we’d be having twins. When it rains, it pours.

We got each other a lot of baby-related gifts for the holidays last year. Amanda got me a “World’s Greatest Dad” mug and a Minnesota Twins t-shirt (that says “Dad 1” on the back – I brought it to the hospital and changed into it on the day they were born). I got her a bunch of kitchy pregnant t-shirts that said things like “Baby Bump’s First Christmas” and “Two For the Price of One”. We bought cute onesies and books for “the babies” (we wouldn’t know their genders until mid-February or so). I had two onesies made. One said “Buy One” and the other one said “Get One Free.”

There were complications almost immediately, but thankfully most of them were painful for Amanda but not harmful for the babies. All of the books, pamphlets, and doctor’s warnings will say things like “Some pregnant women may experience…” and then some symptom. Amanda is “some pregnant woman” – she experienced almost every pregnancy complication a woman can. Terrible morning sickness? Check. Swelling in the belly because of extra fluid that needed to be removed with a needle once a week for the first five weeks? You bet! We spent the better part of Christmas 2012 in the ER because of some bleeding that turned out to be cervical polyps, caused by hormones and only tangentially related to being pregnant. Still, you’re pregnant and you start bleeding, you get your ass to the hospital, major holiday or not.

Because of our history and because Amanda is by her nature private and a bit of a worrywart, we only announced the pregnancy to our families after the customary twelve weeks[5], on Christmas day when everyone on my side of the family was gathered together back in Philly, but waited another month to make the big public announcement to our friends, coworkers, and social media sites at sixteen weeks. So on Monday, 21 January 2013, we announced this to the world:

We’re pregnant! With TWINS! Due on the 4th of July. http://t.co/1DIigapo

— Jough Dempsey (@jough) January 21, 2013

Thanks for the kind words, everyone. Amanda announced the pregnancy by changing her Facebook status pic to this: http://t.co/sybl2CKv

— Jough Dempsey (@jough) January 21, 2013

Two days later I posted the last article I wrote for this blog before this one.

The Incident

This is the first time I’ve written about the worst day of my life. Before I delve into this personal horror story I’ll:

a) warn that you may not want to read this if you’re pregnant or planning to ever become pregnant, and

b) remind you that this story has a happy ending (although we didn’t know that it would at the time).

I was standing on the El platform at my station on the way to work when I got a call from Amanda who just got to work herself. She said that she thinks her water broke as she was stepping out of the car. She felt a gush and her pants were soaked. She said she called the OB first and they told her to come in. I told her I’d meet her there, left the station and started walking to the OB, emailing my office on the way to say that there was an emergency and I’d be late. We just announced that Amanda was pregnant a few days before, so I didn’t have to elaborate.

I got there first (since the OB office was near home) and waited while Amanda drove in from the suburbs. I called her and we talked on the phone for a minute, trying to reassure her that it could just be urine from her bladder being pushed out by the babies, which I’d read about online as something that happens pretty frequently.

At this point a sense of dread was already emerging, but we’d already seen other complications that affected Amanda but not the babies, so I remained optimistic that this was just another hurdle that we’d have to suffer, some minor indignation that Amanda would experience and then we’d move forward. As I waited for her I started to doubt this more and more.

She got there a little while later and we waited, not knowing how serious it was. They finally saw us and examined Amanda, swabbing the remnants of fluid to look for “ferning” which is a sign that there’s a leak. Our regular doctor wasn’t in, but the doctor on duty smiled, looked up at us, and said “it is amniotic fluid.” The discrepancy between the news (bad) and her demeanor (cheerful) was confusing for a second, but after a moment it sunk in and Amanda started to hold back tears and asked it it was bad, and if there was a chance we could lose the baby. The doctor said yes and we both broke down crying.

They did an ultrasound and found that the fluid around Twin A (the one closest to the cervix) was low. Ultrasounds are too low-resolution to see the tear or spot where the fluid is leaking.

Fluid levels in the amniotic sac being low is dangerous not only because the fluid acts as a cushion to protect the baby, but also because the baby breathes the fluid in and pees it out (gross but true) and this stimulates lung and kidney development. Having a rupture is more dangerous, because it means that infections and things that the baby would be otherwise protected from in their little isolated chamber can now reach them.

They sent us to the labor and delivery ER at a major downtown Chicago hospital. I drove us there in the snow, praying they were wrong, and hoping there was still a chance to save Twin B.

I dropped Amanda off so I could park the car and got stuck in the hospital driveway. Aerosmith’s “Dream On” was playing and it felt like the universe was taunting me.

I left the car with the valet and met Amanda in the lobby. They took us up to the labor and delivery department and the sinking feeling in my chest started to lower to my guts as I realized they were walking us to a nearly-abandoned wing. They put us in a huge corner room away from everyone else (probably in case we started to cry loudly) and then we waited.

While we were waiting we talked about being strong for Baby B, already resigning ourselves to maybe losing another baby but pressing on to do the best we could for both of them. We cried a lot. Mostly we just waited, praying please, please, please let them be okay.

A resident finally came to see us. He said that once the amniotic sac breaks there’s very little that they can do, and that they can’t save Twin B if Twin A’s bag broke because everything’s connected. The bag around Twin A had a “pre-term premature rupture of membranes” (PPROM) which is to say it sprung a leak prior to thirty-seven weeks of gestation. We were only at week seventeen, and their chances of survival outside the womb at that point are virtually none. Even if they did survive, they’d likely have all sorts of developmental complications and wouldn’t live a good life.

The rupture, he said, was likely caused by an infection that weakened the amniotic sac, and thus waiting meant that Amanda was at risk for getting an infection that could potentially get septic and cause her to lose her uterus, which would mean we’d never be able to have children at best, and could cause Amanda to die at worst.

He explained our options would be to wait to deliver the babies, or to perform a “dilation and extraction” or “D&E” procedure which is tantamount to an abortion. Basically they’d open up Amanda’s cervix and pull the babies out in pieces.

Since we were intent on keeping these babies, and the options presented both sounded horrible in different ways, we waited to talk to the attending specialist and to see our OB. He said if we waited and did nothing that Amanda would go into labor within 24–48 hours and maybe we could hold them briefly before they died.

Think about these options. Either they’d induce labor, in which case Amanda would have given birth to both babies who wouldn’t have survived for more than a few minutes to a few hours, or she’d willingly abort them and have to live with that[6]. Amanda was terrified of giving birth to babies that were doomed to die, of having the happy moment she’s been dreaming of turned into a twisted nightmare. At the same time, we couldn’t willfully abort them if there was anything, anything at all we could do to save them.

We waited for another hour and our regular OB came to see us. She confirmed the resident’s grim outlook and gently pressured us to make a decision because time was running out. She said that one of the best prenatal doctors in the world, who has been on boards appointed by the president and who has won all sorts of awards would be in to see us along with her team.

She left us alone to think about and discuss our options and we waited for a few hours holding out hope that the world-renowned specialist would have better news for us. I searched the internet for answers, hoping to find news of how our babies could get out of this alive.

In the meantime, neither of us had anything to eat or drink. They didn’t want Amanda to have anything in her stomach in case she had to go to surgery.

We finally saw the specialist, Dr. G, who arrived with her resident and the first resident we saw, plus another doctor plus a counselor and at least another nurse or two. They sat around us and reiterated what we’d heard before. We asked every desperate question we could think of – is it possible the bag could reseal? Are there any other options? Can we save Twin B by removing Twin A? Is there any chance at all for us having a positive outcome?

Their answers were dire. No, the bag can never heal or reseal. D&E or inducing labor are your only options (and if you don’t induce, labor will happen naturally within 24–72 hours, so you may as well induce or abort). They said the chance of keeping the babies was around two percent, but based on what they’ve seen they didn’t think it was even that good.

They stared at us and waited for us to make a decision. What would you like to do? We didn’t know. Are you absolutely sure it was amniotic fluid? Are you sure there’s a rupture? Dr. G asked if we’d like to do another ultrasound to confirm. We did.

Amanda couldn’t even look at the screen. She burst into tears upon hearing their heartbeats on the monitor. The fluid was indeed low.

They left us alone again to confer and decide, with the implied pressure of making a decision, and the doctors were getting more annoyed as the day went on.

We called our parents. We cried some more. We tried to decide what to do.

Finally, after it was too late to go to surgery that day, they brought us some water and a couple of turkey sandwiches, which we didn’t really eat much of.

Eventually we decided to leave and take the night to think about it (with the instructions to rush back should Amanda go into spontaneous labor).

I searched frantically for information online. I found some success but mostly sad stories at the pPROM support site. We were physically and emotionally exhausted. Amanda was still pregnant, and stress on her is stress on the babies.

The owner of my company texted me to see how we were, and put me in touch with his doctor who’s a bigwig at the hospital. He called and suggested I talk to Dr. G. Things were looking hopeless. We went to bed really early and in the middle of the night Amanda asked me to hold her. We cried some more. We prayed. We cried.

On Friday morning I called every high-risk pregnancy doctor in the Chicagoland area. I explained our situation over and over trying to get an appointment for a second opinion, trying to find someone that could help save our babies.

While I was calling other doctors Amanda’s OB called to suggest that we schedule the D&E for Monday, just in case we decide to go that route so that it’ll be on the schedule and we’ll be able to do it. Amanda said she’d do that and then got off the phone. It felt like getting a phone call from the Devil. I called the hospital where my urologist was based. They said they could see us in two weeks. I explained that it was an emergency, that we were told we only had 48–72 hours. They said they’d call back within the hour. They called back a week later saying that they could see us the following week. Gee.

I called another practice affiliated with a different major Chicago hospital. They told me they didn’t have any appointments available and I broke down crying, begging them to please see if they could fit us in. I was placed on hold and a few minutes later was told that if we could be there within the hour Dr. H would see us. We jumped in the car and went to see the doctor.

Dr. H did an ultrasound and found that the fluid level was low but not dangerously so. He said that while Dr. G was technically right in that the bag won’t heal like a skin wound it does sometimes close up and reseal. He agreed with the assessment that we only had a two percent chance of success, but thought we could afford to wait as long as Amanda didn’t show signs of going into labor or having an infection[7]. We told him what Dr. G said about sepsis. Dr. H was incredulous, and said that would only happen if we were in a third-world country without access to medicine. He said they’d monitor Amanda and if we wanted, he’d like to follow-up on Monday. We said we would and so we switched doctors to the new practice.

All of the other doctors at our old practice (and at the hospital) were entirely focused on managing the negative and not at all interested in helping us save our babies’ lives. Dr. H, and other doctors we met in the new practice, seemed to be all about what we could do to mitigate the risks (keeping in mind that a lot of it was out of our hands) and doing everything possible to give our pregnancy the best chance that it had.

The day after The Incident was the first and last time we saw Dr. H. He moved away shortly after we started going there, but we’ll always be grateful to him giving us hope, which gave us strength to persevere. We asked him what he would do, and he was the only doctor we’ve ever asked that of who actually told us. “If it were my wife? I would definitely wait and see.”

We weren’t out of the woods yet, and were still scared about what could happen, but we left Dr. H’s office with some hope that we could save our babies. Amanda was prescribed bed rest and for both of us to avoid other people as much as possible.

We Became Shut-Ins

The first couple of days and weeks after The Incident were terrifying. At first we were just waiting for something bad to happen, looking for signs of infection. Amanda went on sick leave. I was in the middle of a big project at work but thankfully they let me work from home and use some of my vacation days as FMLA time so I could take care of Amanda who wasn’t supposed to go up and down the stairs or really get out of bed any more than she absolutely had to.

An infection would mean that Amanda would likely go into labor and we’d lose both babies. There is very little chance of stopping labor once it happens to save Twin B. At 25 weeks their survivability would go up to the 80th percentile, and after 30–32 weeks (depending on which statistics you follow) well into the 90s. So we had to just hang in there, one week at a time.

I can’t even begin to describe the horror of just waiting for something bad to happen for seven weeks. We never left the house except to go the doctor’s for a weekly checkup and ultrasound. We had groceries delivered. I’m sure the Peapod guy had a good story to tell about the customer who always greeted him wearing a face mask and gloves. Sometimes I’d go to the supermarket (also wearing a mask) extremely early in the morning when I was less likely to run into anyone else. I washed everything well, including myself, whenever I had to interact with Amanda.

To keep hydrated and keep fluid levels up Amanda was pounding down watered-down cranberry juice, which also helps ward off urinary tract infections. We took her temperature several times a day to make sure she didn’t have a fever.

It worked, or at least seemed to. The fluid levels increased. Every week we’d find out the measurement of the largest measurable pocket of fluid in each amniotic sac. As the weeks went on we’d even see one of the boys sucking his thumb or them touching each other through the membrane between the bags.

There wasn’t much else I could do other than take care of Amanda, make sure she had pregnancy-safe food to eat, plenty of fluids to drink, and to keep her spirits up as much as possible. As the weeks went on we grew more cautiously optimistic, but never any less vigilant. For the first few weeks Amanda wouldn’t look at the ultrasound screen because she couldn’t bear to see them in case things went bad. She’d start crying when hearing their heartbeats. Those first few moments before they found each heartbeat every week was especially anxious. After the first week the doctor came in to discuss the ultrasound results along with a “coordinator” from the hospital who was just there to assess Amanda’s well-being and to try to talk us down from the ledge.

I read that watching funny movies and comedy TV shows sometimes helped a pregnancy’s outcome, so Amanda tore through various seasons of comedies on Netflix.

It was impossible to enjoy the pregnancy, however, and because something terrible could happen at any time, we avoided buying things for the babies or decorating the nursery for a long time.

Around twenty weeks we found out that we were having two boys[8]. We didn’t tell anyone until after they were born.

A week before The Incident we went to a furniture store to order two cribs, a chest of drawers, and a book cubby for the nursery. We were ordering pretty early, but one of the items was on backorder, so they said it could be 6–8 weeks before we got everything delivered, which was actually perfect for us as it would give us time to do some decorating in the nursery.

Naturally the day of The Incident I got a call saying that the furniture came earlier than expected and when would we like it delivered. At that point we couldn’t take having two cribs in the house in case things took a turn for the worse, so we put off delivery until after 30 weeks when they would be more likely to survive even if Amanda did go into early labor.

Hospitalized

At week 25 Amanda was admitted to the hospital as a matter of routine to administer a series of steroids and intravenous antibiotics, just in case. The antibiotics would help prevent infection, but were also known to delay premature labor, and scientists don’t know why, but it does. Maybe it only works due to how the numbers are crunched, but we were willing to try anything that could be thought to help as long as it didn’t do any harm.

The steroids are for the babies. They speed up lung development in case they’re born early. Most of the benefit occurs within the first 24 to 48 hours, but studies show that there may be longer-lasting benefits for weeks after. There are two rounds spaced apart by 24 hours, in two courses – one at 25 weeks and then another 24 to 48 hours before Amanda would go into labor. How good are doctors at predicting when a woman will go into labor? Not very. But we’ll get to that.

While she was there they’d monitor the babies a few times a day with a doppler ultrasound machine, which were these plastic circles attached to straps that went around her back and had to be placed as specific angles to read the babies’ heartbeats. Sometimes the two rates would synchronize and it meant that both monitors were reading the same baby, same heartbeat. Some nurses were especially bad at setting it up for two heartbeats. I got to be pretty good at it. Of course as soon as you’d lock onto one the other baby would shift and it would stop reading. It was somewhat comical, our little rascals wiggling around in there.

So Amanda was in the hospital for the better part of a week, and after seeing her in there for a day I went back to the office (at first secluded in a room and wearing a mask whenever going to and from, and then once Amanda got the green light to matriculate back into society we both were able to go out into the world again, which we did cautiously). After testing to see if there was any fluid leaking, and a swab didn’t show any ferning, Amanda was discharged and the OB appointments continued like any other pregnancy.

Those weeks after week 25 were still scary because we still didn’t know what would happen, but at least after passing that milestone we knew they had a much better chance even if Amanda’s water did break again and they were born prematurely. The entire pregnancy was like walking out onto a frozen lake, knowing that the ice was thin, and just not being sure if the next step would be the one where you broke through the ice. We just hoped when (not if) we did, we’d be closer to shore.

Babiestime

Around 4am on Wednesday, May 8, 2013 Amanda called me from the bathroom. She was leaking again, at 32 weeks. We called the doctor, rushed down to the labor & delivery triage, and they saw us right away. The trip to the hospital wasn’t anything like I pictured it would be. Mostly we were quiet. It was so early that the roads were empty.

They took Amanda back and made me wait in the waiting room so they could ask her questions about whether she feels safe at home. She later told me that she kept asking for me, but they had a checklist of things they first had to ask her. When they finally called me there were at least half a dozen people around her. Amanda was crying and there was blood on the gurney, Amanda’s gown, and even on the floor. The fluid was indeed amniotic and the blood was from her cervix dilating. They brought us down to a labor & delivery room in case the babies were coming soon.

While we waited they gave Amanda the second course of steroids in case the babies were born within 24–48 hours.

They put a doppler ultrasound around her belly again and didn’t see any signs of contractions. They planned to move us into an antepartum room to wait until Amanda started to go into active labor, so I went home later in the afternoon to grab some things for her since we still should’ve been two months out from having the babies so we never got around to packing a bag and leaving it in the car.

We waited around for two more days in antepartum with the baby heart rate monitors strapped to Amanda’s belly the whole time. Sometimes an alarm would sound because the babies’ would “decel” meaning that their heart rates decelerated, which is usually a sign of contractions (the uterine muscles contract, the babies slow their breathing for a bit in anticipation of being born). They’d move Amanda around and they’d come back up again.

A decel would mean every nurse on duty would rush into the room and flip on the lights shouting and moving Amanda, and usually happened when we were both sleeping (I certainly don’t miss sleeping in hospital recliners), startling us both awake. It was more preparation for having babies than we realized at the time.

In any case, by Friday afternoon they didn’t think Amanda was going to go into labor anytime soon, but her OB wanted to keep her in the hospital now for the duration of the pregnancy. I planned to go back to work on Monday and just come to visit her at work every night.

The hospital had a special “date night” meal for patients and their guests on Friday nights, and we enjoyed a romantic hospital dinner together while wondering how long we’d be able to keep our two little buns in the oven. Every week meant more development, a better chance of their ability to thrive in the inhospitable world outside the womb.

Sometime after midnight the babies decelled again but this time instead of watching the monitor return to normal and then leaving, the nurses had me pack up everything and moved us to a little room full of equipment in labor & delivery a few twisty corridors away.

No one said anything about Amanda going into labor, but two hours after we got there Amanda started to have excruciating pain, mostly in her back. A doctor or a nurse would check-in once an hour, but we mostly just waited together in that little room. Amanda moved to a chair so she’d be more comfortable, and eventually fell asleep a little.

We kept asking if she was going into labor and they said they didn’t know. Meanwhile the pain in her back was getting worse and worse. She was experiencing something I’d never heard of before: back labor. She didn’t feel contractions exactly but felt an increasing pain in her lower back that would surge and then fall off (but still hurt between surges) so we started timing those. They started to grow more frequent and it was clear that those were labor contractions.

After another shift change one of the doctor’s from our OB practice, the only doctor we’d seen only once previously, arrived to deliver the babies. It was time.

She asked if we wanted to do a natural birth or Cesarean section, with plusses and minuses for each. We wanted to do a natural birth, although because we had twins there was a possibility of a hybrid birth as well, with one being born naturally and the other requiring a C-section, depending on position, etc.

Just in case, they brought us into a large operating room with the brightest lights possible. There were at least fifty people present – including a full team of doctors, nurses, and assistants for mother and each baby. The NICU teams usually don’t come down until later, but they hung around waiting since the babies were so premature and they expected a very fast delivery.

Amanda was in labor for two and a half hours before the doctor called it and said we’d have to switch to a C-section. They kicked me out to do prep and I made smalltalk with the nurses and staff in the hallway while trying not to break down crying for fear of Amanda and the babies’ health while they gave her a spinal anesthetic to keep her immobile from the torso down.

They finally let me back in, and I sat behind a big curtain holding her hand while the doctor performed the surgery. Eleven minutes later our son Atlas was born, and a minute later Ezra came out screaming[9]. As the babies were pulled out the doctor called to me so I could stand up and see them.

The day my sons were born was probably the second scariest and also happiest day of my life. Both boys were born eight weeks early and weighed around four pounds at birth. They were dark red and had tons of hair matted to their heads. Atlas had to be on an assisted respirator for about six hours, wearing a mask like Bane in The Dark Knight Rises. Ezra was in the NICU for four weeks and Atlas for five (which is a story for another time).

We were terrified for them before they were born, scared about their progress and survival while they were in the NICU, and frightened of breaking them when we first brought them home. I still have anxiety about them being okay, and sometimes wake up abruptly in the middle of the night and go check on them.

I still feel a little shell-shocked by the whole experience. Can you get Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder from a horrible pregnancy? I should probably talk to a professional about it. Sometimes I think I hear them crying when I’m at the office.

Seeing their adorable little smiling faces or hearing them baby-talk or laugh does alleviate a lot of my anxiety but that doesn’t stop me from checking-in several times a night to make sure they’re still breathing while they sleep, especially now that they can turn over and sleep on their stomachs.

So Many Babies

Having two babies sometimes feels like having ten. When they’re both crying it’s just total bedlam, and a baby’s cry has the tendency to feel as though it’s piercing through the center of your skull.

They’ve gone through phases over the past eight months of sleeping really well, and then not sleeping well. Or one would sleep well while the other didn’t, and then vice-versa. I don’t think we’ve slept well since Amanda got pregnant.

We had them both in the same crib for their first four months at home, as having them in your bedroom is said to reduce the risk of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) which is yet another thing to worry about. Basically I’m just never going to stop worrying.

Having babies is great, though, despite all of the horror and anxiety. They’re little people with preferences, personalities, and feelings, probably far more fully-realized than we usually give babies credit for having.

Against the odds, we made it through. We are the 2%. I don’t know if the prayers worked or we just got lucky, but either way we are truly blessed, and grateful for these boys each and every day. I hope I’m not doing irrevocable harm to their psyches when I tear-up sometimes while holding them.

Routine

We’re just now settling into a bit of routine with them, although I’m sure as soon as we get used to their current behavior they’ll hit another developmental milestone and everything will change again. Despite my body craving carbs and fat during one of the harshest Chicago winters in many years I’ve been slowly losing weight just by counting calories and recording everything I eat again. I’m sure the pace will pick up once I’m able to get more exercise.

At the very least, once the boys start to crawl[10] and then walk I’ll be burning calories chasing after them.