Cookie and Peanut are born.

My twin girls were born way too early at 3lb 8oz and 3lb 11oz.  My smaller girl had VSD (a hole in her heart) and my larger girl was apt to Bradys (heart rhythm would drop).  They were delivered during an emergency c-section at a hospital we hadn't planned on.  In fact nothing had went as planned and the NICU stay was even harder to deal with then my emergency surgery.  Visits consisted of 30min with each girl who was hooked up to tiny tubes plugged into large intimidating machines that thew alarms incessantly.

It was a hard time for my family.  Then one day the girls were assigned a new NICU nurse. She was a very positive and happy Belgian woman with a passion for her job.  Like a Belgian Fairy Godmother she really took my girls under her wing.  She made extra time to feed them even though the regulation time for bottle feeding was 20min and she even allowed us to put the girls together in the same room during visits (they had been separated the minute they were born and hadn't been together for weeks).  The tubes and monitors started to disappear.  The Bradys became less frequent and the VSD closed up.  The nurse exclaimed one morning, "Cookie and Peanut would go home soon!"  "Cookie and Peanut?" I asked.  She laughed, "Oh, I name her Cookie because of her love to eat and I name her Peanut because she is so small like a little peanut."  I then realized that these little identical beings had already started to develop their own personalities and habits. They were thriving and growing fast everyday so I decided to create a blog to house their story. I want other mothers to be prepared for how tough twin pregnancy can be, how dealing with twin infants is not as horrible as people make it sound, and how you will pity parents who will never experience the joy of twinning.

Our first family picture.