What a day!

Yesterday's adventures began with a trip back to the hospital for little A. Since he hadn't pooped in almost two weeks (only being three weeks old, that's a bit concerning), the doc sent us to have a barium enema done. We took little N as well, since I was worried we'd be there when I needed to feed both of them. They did a live x-ray while shooting the dye through his intestines. They were specifically checking for Hirschsprung's Disease. With this condition, the large intestine doesn't have all the nerve cells that it needs. When stool gets to the part without the nerve cells, it stops and everything gets backed up. It's pretty rare, but our doc wanted to rule it out.

Ironically, little A pooped in the waiting room right before we went in. Since the doc had told us to go ahead with the procedure even if he pooped, we went on in. They did their thing while little A cried rather pitifully on the x-ray table. They didn't find evidence of the disease, but couldn't completely rule it out. They did, however, notice that he has redundancies in his colon, which means he has extra loops that stool has to pass through, making it take longer to get out of his system. That made sense, since he never seemed particularly upset about not pooping. Things were just taking extra long to make their way out. We're supposed to keep an eye on him, and if he goes this long again, we might need to do more tests.

What goes up (dye) must come out, so we prepared ourselves for some big blowouts. He had one at the hospital, and then he fell asleep on the way home. I didn't want to wake him yet, so I fed little N and let him sleep. When he woke up, we discovered he had pooped in his carseat. This all happened right as my husband was leaving to go to the airport--his brother came home from his mission to Italy last night. I made A stay until I had gotten most of the carseat cover out to wash and cleaned up little A.

A's brother was set to arrive at 8:30 pm. A and the kids were going up with the rest of the fam, and I thought they'd get home around 9:30 or 10. That's when the babies usually start to get pretty fussy, so I was nervous to be on my own, but thought it wouldn't get too bad. Just as the babies woke up around 9:30 to eat, A called to say that his brother had missed his flight and wouldn't get in until 10:30 pm. At that point, I started to panic a bit, knowing that from 10 pm until midnight every night, it takes two of us to take care of these babies. I was not at all confident that I could even do it on my own.

Two and a half hours later, A came home with the kids. I had spent 99% of the time with two babies in my arms. The saving grace of the evening was little A. Even though he had a traumatic afternoon, he lay on my lap, calmly looking around while his sister cried and fussed. He did have several more blowouts, but I was able to change him before they got everywhere.

Although my arms still feel like they're going to fall off from holding the babies for so long, I feel a certain sense of accomplishment. It was really hard at times, and at one point, I did call my husband and, in the midst of crying, asked him to please come home. But, I didn't really freak out otherwise. It's great to know that when I need to do it, I can calm these babies down on my own, even during their fussiest times. I'm not about to repeat this feat anytime soon, but it's still nice to know.

Note to my neighbors: No, I did not call anyone for reinforcements. It didn't get bad until 11 pm and I wasn't about to ring up anyone to come on over and hold a crying baby that late at night. :)