Explosion!

Not sure how many people that are reading this watch How I Met Your Mother, but recently there was an episode where Marshall and Lilly's son Marvin had a huge poop explosion. Anyone who is a parent has probably had this happen. My story is a little different.

The boys were still in the NICU at Brigham and Women's and we were spending one of the many Sunday's we spent at the hospital in the fall of 2007. They had finally been moved to NICU A, which was a step up from NICU B. It meant they weren't as critical which is always a good thing. There was also a little more room as there weren't as many isolettes.

They were still very young, about 8 weeks old or so I would guess (my memory of that time is a little fuzzy). Amy was over hanging out with Daniel and I was with Douglas. And of course, as luck would have it, it was time to change him. So of course I get everything prepared and open up the isolette. Now that they were in NICU A we didn't have to reach through these holes anymore. We could actually just open up the side of the isolette and put our whole arms in which was nice.

So I had everything prepared for the changing. I had the new diaper under the old one, wipes next to me all set to go. Now at this point, they weren't even in regular diapers. They were in these things called wee-pees. I'm not joking, they were so small because they boys were only about 4 pounds or so each, their bodies would have just been swallowed by a regular diaper. So I take off the tabs on the sides of the dirty diaper and lift up his legs to remove and.......

SSSSSSSSSPPPPPPPPPLLLLLLLLLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSSSSSSSSSSHHHHH!!!!!

That is my best attempt at onomatopoeia.. He unloaded this vile, green and brown fecal matter everywhere and it just wouldn't stop!! I mean all over my arm, the floor, the entire isolette, the wires, the monitor that was monitoring his heart rate, BP, O2 levels, etc.. Literally everywhere it could possibly be, it was.. So I'm standing there with poop all over the place trying not to yell for someone to help because you need to keep your voices down while in the NICU.. So I'm yelling at the highest level I can, which is about a normal talking level..  nurse...  Nurse..  NURSE!!  Finally I just couldn't deal anymore and a nurse came over and immediately doubled over in laughter..  Yeah, real funny.. although, I'm sure it had happened to her before which is probably why she was laughing.. She knew what it felt like..

So a janitor was called to clean up the floor and take the isolette away and have it hosed down..  Douglas had a quick bath while a new isolette was retrieved and set up.  I cleaned up, but we left shortly thereafter.

Let's just say, we made sure there was always a nurse around every time we changed him from then on.

Looking on the bright side, changing diapers for many years for two boys, I was never ever once peed on. So I have that going for me.

Bottles for daycare

If you're sending your kids to daycare like we did, they need to have all the bottles made and ready for the entire day. This meant 2 kids, 6 bottles/day while at school = 12 bottles to make. Every day. Just for school.

So don't kill yourself making each bottle individually. Go get yourself a couple of pitchers. You can get them anywhere. You used to make strawberry daiquiris in them before you had twins, remember?

Make sure each child has his own pitcher and write his name on it so there is no confusion. The last thing you want to do is mix up the formulas. We had 1 child with a milk protein allergy so he was on Neutramegin, which was one of the most foul smelling odors I've ever smelled. I still can't even believe he drank it, but he did. The other one was on Enfamil AR, which is pretty common.

Mix the right amount of formula with water so there is enough for all 6 bottles. Do this the night before and put it in the fridge for the morning. Pour the bottles in the morning and you're good to go. Before going to bed that night (obviously after washing all 12 bottles and the pitcher), make the pitchers again and put in the fridge.

While it doesn't seem like much time is saved, believe it or not making the pitchers and not the individual bottles saved enough time for us to maybe eat breakfast in the morning or perhaps snooze once or twice.

And in the world of having children, not just twins, those two things are gold.