Joy and Purgatory

Extreme happiness.  And a feeling of being in a strange in-between state.  That's what's up. 

I'm sure you've all heard by now that the twins have made their grand entrance to the world.  Real contractions started around 11 PM on Dec 7 and by midnight we were at the hospital since the doctors had said to come right in once contractions began.  Things moved along through the night and by 8:13 the morning of the 8th, Elise Rinn had entered this fine world.  Her brother Paul Nicholas came five minutes later after a bit of acrobatics that I'm sure Nicole will cover in an upcoming blog.  Suffice to say, Elise & Paul had two overjoyed, overwhelmed, and exhausted parents who were still coming to grips with how different the experience was versus welcoming Lily. 

And that's basically where we still stand.  The twins are here and things are not easy, but they're probably about to get a lot harder.  Compared with Lily's arrival, I am definitely in limbo land at the moment.  With Lily, I was at Nicole's bedside from our arrival at the hospital until we left three days later.  But here, dads don't spend the night at the hospital.  Visiting hours are 8 AM to 8 PM and that's that.  So while I head home for a peaceful night's sleep, Nicole gets to deal with nighttime feedings pretty much on her own.  So while I've spent most of the twins' first three days at the hospital, I feel like I'm leading a dual life.  At the hospital during the day and coming home to put Lily to bed, relax, sleep soundly, get Lily up and ready, and hand her off to Oma and Opa for most of the day. 

Oma and Opa have been key to enabling this best of both worlds scenario, as they've powered through dealing with a two and a half year old's energy and challenges while I provide an extra set of hands and an opinion to Nicole and a familiar voice and a warm body to Paul and Elise.  It's hard to picture how frazzled Nicole would be without an extra set of hands there since the hospital we're at is just not optimized for helping new parents deal with twins.  It seems that the German standard for customer service (not quite what we spoiled Americans expect) extends into the hospital as well.  For example, Nicole was feeding one of the babies in the middle of the night last night and the other started wailing and she needed a hand to switch babies.  She called the nurses' station and was informed that it would be at least twenty minutes until someone could come to help.  Are you freaking kidding me?  Another example, Nicole needs to be examined by a doctor to be released from the hospital.  She informed the staff Friday evening that she would like this to be completed ASAP so that once the babies are ready to go home there are no more barriers.  Well here we are Saturday night and it hasn't happened yet.  Somehow a doctor couldn't find the time today to examine her.  Lame, lame, lame. 

So while the doctors and nurses here have been very thorough and cautious (more on that another time too) with the babies, we're starting to get fed up with waiting for every little thing and every estimate of how long things will take being short by a factor of two.  They keep saying things are busy with a lot of babies arriving, but come on, call in extra staff to take care of the baby boom. 

So that's where things stand.  I'm stocking up on sleep and remembering how easily holding a baby will make my wrists stiff, and Nicole could be getting halfway decent stretches of sleep too except that she's in a shared room with two Mom roommates who snore like Mack trucks.  Hopefully tomorrow will be the day we make our escape from the Frauenklinik.  I'm picturing us making a run for it, Nicole sprinting down the street with an open-back pink hospital gown and bare feet, holding one baby in each arm as the Munich snowflakes fall as lazily as the hospital staff.