Marie Laveau and the tales of Fertile Myrtle

Despite knowing it was a double blessing, the hubs and I jokingly looked for reasons to blame the other for the duo we were unexpectedly expecting.

My parents adopted 2 schnauzers from the same litter in May - they were twins, though not identical. And they shared a birthday with me. So we blamed them and indirectly my parents for bringing their twin juju too near.

The hubs tried to blame me for having some crazy-distant cousin whose name I don't know, nor have I ever met, who allegedly has triplets, though I cannot verify this with 100% certainty. And we have no idea how this nameless person got them - was it with the assistance of fertility enhancements, or not?

I tried to blame the hubs and his long hyped-up discussion of how "super" his sperm were. They were obviously so super they could make one egg become two. Someone even suggested to us that it's the shape of the mail sperm and a hook on the sperm's tail that creates twins. I can find no research that supports this claim, though. But, boy did I try!

Then the hubs tried to blame the hotel where the twins were conceived - a Robbinsville, North Carolina Microtel with mirrors near the bed. His argument that seeing double leads to conceiving double wasn't sound to me. We were there for bike week, and as friends have lovingly joked, it seems that the motorcycle wasn't the only thing we were riding during our stay. Hardy-har-har. They're only laughing because it's not happening to them. They had mirrors in their rooms, too, and they're not doubly knocked up, so that argument isn't sound either.

I blamed a dragon statue that the hubs stood near for a photo opp during our motorcycle adventure. Dragons are, after all, a symbol of virility. And we'd only just finished riding "the dragon" a few hours earlier - a route on Hwy 129 in Deals Gap, North Carolina that is renowned among riders for its hairpin turns. 318 turns in 11 miles to be exact.

Incidentally, this picture was taken at a Harley Davidson shop in Maryville, Tennessee just near the North Carolina border. We named one of our girls Mary not making the connection at the time. And the other we named Charlotte, one of North Carolina's biggest cities - also without making the connection. We chose these names based on family connections, but the coincidence is rather odd. Also, funny is the fact that we lovingly call the girls "little dragons" when they cry.

And, of course the hubs tried to blame me some more since my jacked-up uterus was responsible for all kinds of weirdness in the past, so why wouldn't this just be another example. He would eyeball me when outsiders would ask us "Which one of you has twins in the family?"

Turns out neither of us do. But even if we did, it wouldn't explain why our twins came to be.

Fraternal twins are the only ones that have a genetic link. There is a higher incidence of fraternal twins coming to mothers whose family has other sets of fraternal twins, as well as mothers over the age of 35, and those who are overweight. These factors can lead to the uterus releasing more than one egg for fertilization.

But our girls weren't fraternal. Though they were not yet born to prove it, we knew they were identical. They had to be. They shared a placenta, which is not possible for fraternal twins to do.

The research that I've done says that there is no medical explanation for the cause of identical twins. We know that the egg spontaneously splits in two, but there's been no cause for this split discovered.

It was only after they were 2 months old that we learned the true origin of our twins.

A phone call from our niece revealed that a gift we'd purchased for her during our trip to New Orleans in April 2012, could be to blame for our twins.

At the time of our trip, we were just recovering from 2 surgeries after previous miscarriage and decided to get away for a bit to celebrate his birthday, which conveniently fell during a scheduled break from my work. We had such a good time while we were there, eating, sight-seeing, even running into a couple from Ohio we befriended while on our honeymoon in Jamaica three years earlier. We also got a little shopping done.

A little too much shopping it would seem........

Myrtle, as in Fertile Myrtle, was the name for a souvenir doll that we had purchased for our niece as a gag gift. We were looking for a fertility broom but couldn't find one anywhere. What we did find was a fertility doll in Marie Laveau's House of Voodoo on Bourbon Street. It was too cute to pass up!

Though neither of us are voodoo believers, we thought there was no harm in purchasing a little extra juju for our loved one who was trying to have a little loved one of her own.

As it turns out, the voodoo explains that the purchaser, not necessarily the possessor, of the doll is the one to benefit from its magic.

Well, we benefitted alright. We benefitted a whole lot.

That doggone voodoo priestess, Marie Laveau!

Marie Laveau is notorious in New Orleans for creating troubles for men encountering scorned women. She's worshipped by many voodoo believers, with baubles left on her grave in St. Louis #1, and she's apparently still working her charm on the living.

Marie (which is French for Mary, ahem.......the weird coincidences continue) and Myrtle have some strange tales to tell, and our new girls will have some interesting stories to hear one day.

But with each level of the "blame game" I'm sure we'll be certain to thank the guilty party, whoever that may be, because they've doubly blessed us with two little dragons that we wouldn't trade for the world.

Invisible strings

Immediately after conception, the zygote attaches itself to the mother in order to sustain life. Once development continues and that little cheerio turns into a fetus, there is a very noticeable connection -the umbilical cord, which connects a baby to her mother and is the highway for blood, oxygen and nutrients for the fetus.

I'd been told, however, that there was also an invisible string that connects a mother to her child. 

A string whose pull is so strong it's undeniable. Heart wrenching. Life changing.

I'd been told that string replaced the umbilical cord the moment the baby breathed her first bit of air and filled the delivery room with her first cry.

So as I laid there on the operating table with a room full of people (at least 12 humans, not including my husband and myself or the twinkies) and stared at a blue cloth draped before my chest to prevent my view of the surgery below, I waited and waited to feel that string.

Tugs and pulls were happening. I could feel those. But I felt nothing else.

Their first cries came and went. They even began sneezing in the OR. I recall asking my husband if they were okay and smiling with tears in my eyes when he reassured me they were alright.

But I still felt no string.

He brought them near me all swaddled up in blankets for our first picture together. But still, I felt nothing.

Well, that's not entirely true. I felt relief. And fatigue. A whole lot of each, in fact.

But I did not feel a wash of love come over me. I didn't feel my heart burst into a thousand little pieces and go flitting about the room.

And because I didn't feel those things, I began to feel abnormal. I began to feel like something was missing. Maybe my mom gene was M.I.A.? Maybe my invisible string did not function, almost like a parachute cord that failed to open?

I spent only 48 hours in the hospital before being discharged home. And in each of those hours, I promise you, I was looking for that string.

I held babies on my chest as they slept. I changed diapers, I nursed. I put their going-home outfits on them. But at no point in time did I feel that pull that so many moms described to me.

A hospital visitor even asked me "Aren't you just madly in love with them?"

And I told the truth.

I wasn't.

That elicited some strange stares. But it was true for me. The jury was still out. Though I learned not to say that aloud again.

I even had one mom tell me that colors appeared differently to her after birth and she would swear the leaves on the trees were brighter. Sadly, my hospital room didn't have a view, but I recall standing at our master bedroom window when we returned home and looking from my babies lying there on our bed to the crepe myrtles in our front yard hoping to see some change. But it all looked the same to me.

Everything felt the same.

I simply felt tired. 

And I felt very sad that this was all I felt.

In the hours after we returned home from the hospital, I wanted nothing more than to hear quiet surrounding me. I wanted to be left alone.

Sadly, my house was full of people. Long story short, in effort to include my bonus kids and not take time away from their regularly scheduled visit, we had them stay at our house with my older nephew who was adult enough to keep them safe and fed while we were at the hospital. My husband shuffled back and forth from the hospital to the house to check on everyone.

So when I returned to a house full of people, there was no quiet to be had. I asked the hubs to please remove everyone from the premises. I needed to be left alone and didn't want people disturbing the babies. I didn't want him to leave me alone with two brand new babies either, but there was no other alternative. We had to divide and conquer.

As the door closed behind them, the tears fell down in relief that I didn't have to put on any more "faces" for people. I could breathe.

I curled up next to my swaddled newborns who were lying on their backs, each propped by a nursing pillow. And we slept.

It was 2 hours of uninterrupted peace until I woke up with terrible stomach pains. I jumped up from the bed and raced to the bathroom. Out of habit, I threw the door closed behind me, but then remembered there were 2 people who needed my supervision still asleep on the bed, and so I quickly reopened it, only to race back toward the toilet.

Apparently the medicine that I'd been given was having its way with me. I sat on the toilet hugging a trash can when I heard a strange sound. I looked up to see one of the babies squirming in her swaddle. A moment later I heard a strange gurgling noise again and knew for certain it wasn't coming from me. Before I could get up, the baby's arm shot into the air and her movements seemed to be more of a struggle. I ran with pants around my ankles to grab her and when I got my hands beneath her noticed her face was purple and covered in vomit. She was gasping for air.

I raced back to the bathroom counter and held her over the sink while I performed the Heimlich maneuver for infants that I'd learned only hours earlier before I left the hospital.

I was panicked. Tears were streaming down my face as I shouted "breathe, baby!" over and over. I didn't even know which baby I had in my arms. There was no time to tell them apart.

I raced around the house looking for my cell phone with the baby on my forearm and beating her back. When I found it, I dialed my husband. He didn't answer. I dialed my nephew. He didn't answer. I dialed my stepson. He didn't answer. I dialed my stepdaughter. She didn't answer. They were all together - turns out they were whitewater rafting and couldn't have their phones. Probably not the smartest choice for activities at the time, but he was ushered out of the house in a hurry, so I'll forgive him.

I reached my mom and cried some more. She tried to talk me off the ledge and get me to check for the baby's breaths. It seemed like an eternity, but I'm sure the whole event lasted no more than 2 minutes.

Slowly, Charlotte Ann's color returned to her face (I could tell who I was working with now) and she began to take some shallow breaths.

My breathing however, was never the same the again.

Somewhere in the space between the bathroom and our bed, that invisible string had finally found me.

And it was tugging on my lungs and heart.

My life in 16 years..........