...and today...

8 hours of labor, magnesium therapy, about a hundred nurses, interns, NICU specialists, and doctors. It was a full day.

Some of my favorite memories of the day the twins were born are the people who came to visit-- Mom and Dad, of course, and Jeannie Stinson and Clark and Avis Hanna.

The nurses said I had a ways to go, but when I felt a certain pressure, they did another check and wheeled me off to delivery so fast that my parents, who had just gone down the hall for a drink from the vending machine, came back to find an empty room-- no bed, no pregnant woman, no Edwin-- just a pile of Edwin's clothes where he's dropped them when he changed into scrubs.

The first one was born about 15 minutes after I went into delivery. The second flipped around wrong way round. 4 minutes later, with lots of help, all 2 pounds, 15 1/2 ounces of her was born breech. 7 pounds of baby all together, in two perfect little packages. I'd never seen their dad look so happy.

Their eyes were so blue, so dark. It was all I could see of them since their mouths were covered with ventilators, their arms with tubes and wires, and their heads with hats. Two pair of dark blue eyes asking for me to hold them, but I couldn't... not yet. Holding would come later, after they were stable.

I remember a day about 4 years later when we were trying to cross a busy street. I scooped up one child in each arm and hurried them across. I reminded myself to remember the last time I could do that. Now, both girls stand eye to eye with me and I can't remember the last time I could pick them both up at once. The days fly by so swiftly.