A Letter to Parents of Micro Preemies

(This is just a rough draft of something I might say to a parent who’s about to deliver a micro-preemie)
Dear Parent,

My twin boys were born at Alta Bates at just 25 weeks’ 3 days’ gestation. Prior to that, I spent 8 days in the antepartum unit. During that time, my obstetrician asked the doctors who care for premature babies to talk to me.

My husband and I had very different attitudes about how we wanted to receive information. I wanted information on a “need to know” basis, based on what was happening with my particular babies, not what might happen to a baby similar to mine.

I don’t know what you’re going through, but I know what I went through.

If you’re a parent of a preemie, this is what I want you to know:
I want you to know that they have perfectly shaped fingernails.

I want you to know that it is possible to feel love for something that doesn’t look like a baby.

I want you to know that when they cry, it squeaks and it breaks your heart.

That sometimes they grab your finger like they know who you are.

That sometimes they look like they’re in pain.

That sometimes they look like they’ll never get better.

That sometimes they are more resilient than you can ever imagine is humanly possible.


If you’re a parent of a preemie, this is what you need to know:
You need to know that you might have to hear the same information 4 or 5 times before it sinks in.

You need to know that you might have to make work sacrifices that you didn’t think were possible.

You need to know what kind of things will help you during stressful situations.

You need to know that your mental well being can affect your physical well being and even the well being of your baby.

You need to know that sometimes more information makes you feel even worse.

You need to know that sometimes ignoring information can leave you unprepared.

You need to know that, whatever happens, this experience will change your life forever. Now that I am on the other side, I feel that I have a wisdom, a patience, a reverence for life, and intense feeling of happiness and gratitude that I never imagined were possible.

You need to know that not everyone feels this way.

Secrets of the Twin Mom

Here’s a secret: I was so afraid that I wouldn’t be able to take care of twins that I actually dreaded the day they would be well enough to come home from the hospital. Terrified to the point of tears. But here’s another secret: twins are awesome. Nothing against the rest of you out there, but if you don’t have twins, you are missing out. And being a twin mom is just about the funnest thing I have ever done (next to performing in Piazza Barberini for Italian television or dancing at McKelligon canyon, but that’s a blog post for another day).

First of all, the bar is set really, really low for twin moms. Wearing two matching shoes? Ate breakfast before 2 p.m.? Bathed yourself and all three kids this week? You are an overachiever!

And twin moms who also have a preschooler are on the short list for sainthood. It’s awesome—because it’s much easier than it looks.

Actually, that’s misleading. It’s not that having twin babies and a three-year-old is so easy, it’s that motherhood—parenthood—is SO hard. On a transition scale, going from no kids to one kid is like going from zero to seventy. Going from one kid to three, however, is not as big a leap as people would think. It’s like a seventy-five.

But because everyone who has kids has at least one kid, (duh!) moms are expected to do all kinds of crazy things. They wake up for every feeding. They drop off and pick up their kids from daycare. They buy baby clothes and wash baby clothes and read bedtime stories. They rock their babies and sing them to sleep. They have jobs. And they do it all themselves.*

* OK OK OK! I KNOW there are Dads out there who step it up—who do dishes and fold clothes and make dinner and drop off at daycare and rock their babies and sing them to sleep. But they also have jobs. Two parents who work in tandem is a better deal than the responsibilities of the single parent, but it’s nothing compared to the help and support that is shown to twin moms (and dads).

It’s like Stone Soup. Maybe it’s just my selective Mommy Memory, but we are getting so much help, that having three kids is easier than when we had just Chiara.

For one, back then I was working thirty hours a week, going to school fulltime, and commuting back and forth to school. Matt was working 40+ hours a week and commuting 80 miles a day. Granted, that’s a lot, but it’s nothing out of the ordinary. What’s out of the ordinary is that now I am not working and Matt is working from home more so that he can be around for the morning shift and be here when Chiara gets home from daycare. What’s out of the ordinary is that my mom came and stayed with us for five months out of the last ten. So I never had to get up to do every feeding. On Wednesdays one of the moms at daycare picks up Chiara and brings her home. So we don’t have to do every drop off and pick up. On Saturdays, Matt takes the whole brood to Nutcracker rehearsal and one of the moms babysits. For free.

Speaking of free, aside from diapers and formula, to date we have purchased: one teether, one ball toy, six baby spoons, (thank you, IKEA) and two high chair trays. Everything else was given to us. Six bags of boys clothes, ages newborn to one year. Blankets, bibs, Stokke Tripp Trap high chairs (two), a crib, two carseats, two different double strollers, a Moby wrap, a second Ergo. Baby hats, crib sheets, bottles, you name it. Free stuff is awesome, absolutely. Also awesome is never having to take inventory of what we need and figure out how to get it. That’s a lot of saved time.

People open doors for the twin mom with a stroller. When was the last time someone did that for a single stroller? Neighbors we barely knew dropped off food because they knew we had twins. On my first flight with the boys, the pilot deplaned and carried on Wagner’s carseat himself. We were actually able to get special passes from TSA so that my family could escort us to the gate. Crazy – take one baby on a plane and you get a dirty look. Take on two and people buy you a drink because they think you could use it.

So we’ve gotten more help. We’ve gotten more free stuff. We’re cut more slack. All this helps us be more organized and efficient with our time. Which gives us more energy to give back to others. It’s crazy. We’ve actually hosted more playdates (read: babysat someone else’s kid) and sleepovers in the last six months than we have in the three years before that. (We have three babysit/playdates next week alone). And since we’re twin parents, we get even more credit!

As Matt likes to joke, “Set expectations low. Exceed expectations.” Well, let me tell you, expectations are set pretty low for the twin mom. The punch line is, because expectations are so low, people help you out. You exceed expectations, impress everybody, and actually have the time and energy to help them out. Amazing, this non-zero sum stuff.

Next up: why taking care of twin boys is easier than taking care of one Chiara, OR Dancing in Piazza Barberini.

Three Months Old

The boys are now three months old adjusted* (today, July 11^th).  They are HUGE.  Weighing in at 13 pounds 6 ounces, Michael is seven times his birth weight.  Wagner weighs 13 pounds, or eight times his birth weight.  They are both 24 inches, or twice as long as they were the day they were born (six and a half months ago).  They are doing great.  And we’re still doing a lot of work to make sure it stays that way. 

We see the pediatrician once a month (she took the babies off of preemie formula and gave us the green light to travel—C-O-R here we come!), a county nurse makes monthly home visits (she thinks that Michael is babbling on a six month level**) and every Tuesday we have an Infant Development playgroup organized by the NICU (which the twins have slept through 6 out of 8 weeks). 

One week there’s the physical therapist.  Another week there’s a speech therapist.  Week 3 is mediated by specialist who helps organize play and I can’t remember what happens in Week 4 because I had to take Chiara to her first ballet class.  (She enjoys it, but she’s much more excited about the “Princess Ballet Workshop” that starts tomorrow because the dancers learn tap.  And they get snacks).

Then the cycle starts again: physical therapy, speech therapy, play therapy and mystery therapy.  The twins will go for a full year.  It’s really a way to facilitate their development and catch the snags before they turn into delays. 

I know what you’re thinking, speech therapy for an infant?  At this age, speech therapy consists of listening for “social sounds” in their noises and looking at their breathing patterns.  The boys are doing just great—Michael is a little conversationalist—but if they weren’t, we’d get some clues from how they breathe and then do some exercises to help them breathe better.

Our big thing to work on now is grabbing toys, but the twins don’t really care about that.  They are far more interested in faces, particularly Mama’s, Daddy’s and Chiara’s.  They are transfixed by Chiara’s face. 

And why shouldn’t they be? 

She shows them her princess collection. (Inspired by Cousin Maria’s princess collection.  Also inspired by Cousin Maria—sleeping in underwear instead of pull-ups and sleeping without a shirt on.) 

She shows them photographs.  (“This is me with my Mommy and Daddy.”)

She reads them books and makes up stories. (“This is the story of when Pooh Bear died.”)***

She gives them advice.  (“Don’t worry.  You aren’t going to die for a really long time.”)

She helps with baths.  She picks out their clothes.  She puts IKEA bowls on their heads.

For awhile every time one of the twins would cry, she’d come running, “Mama!  Mama!  They’re starving!  My brudders are starving!”

Another time we had them in their respective rockers and every time one would make a noise, Chiara would get up from her chair at the table and pull the electronic dangly toy that sings “If You’re Happy and You Know It” in odd tones.  Each time she’d run to the rocker, pull the toy and run back to her chair just in time to hear the other twin whimper.  After running back and forth several times, she finally exclaimed, “I’m doing all the work around here!”

And she LOVES to help with the diaper change.  It gives her an excuse to check out all the bits and pieces that she doesn’t have in her own underpants ([giggle] “It looks like a chicken!”)

But the best was the other day—both boys were LYING (that one’s for you, Mom!) on our bed.  It was right before the late afternoon nap and they hadn’t quite settled in yet, so they were making those non-committal cries that make you think, “Should I pick them up or what?” 

Chiara climbed onto the bed and sat between them.  She put a hand on the chest of each baby.

“It’s O.K.  You’re O.K.” she said in a soothing voice, “I’m right here.”

It’s good to be a parent. 

There’s other good stuff—my mom was here for two and a half months, pulling truly heroic shifts, back when there were six night feedings between midnight and 6 a.m.  My sister, Jackie has been here the last month, playing taxi and reading books, changing diapers and washing chickens. 

And now my stepmom is here helping us hold down the fort.  The night shift has gotten markedly easier (now the 6 feedings span between 6 p.m. and 6 a.m.)  This week a million cousins and grandparents are coming in for next Saturday’s baptism (well, five grandparents, two aunts, two uncles, and three cousins).

We’ll check in sometime after our whirlwind tour ’10: Fresno, Santa Monica, El Paso, Austin, St Paul, Chicago, and COUSIN-O-RAMA! 

*adjusted

** She’s wrong.  She has mistaken Michael’s babbling (“ah-goo”) for multisyllabic babbling, but real multisyllabic babbling has two characteristics.  1) Anyone can babble in vowels, so they don’t count.  It has to be two different consonants, like ba-da or doo-ba.  2) Developmentally, it has to happen after reduplicated babbling, like ma-ma, ba-ba, da-da, you get the idea.  If it happens before then, it’s just an accident; it’s not a milestone.  

*** In case you’re wondering, in this story—a Chiara Original, as far as I know—Christopher Robin finds Pooh Bear drowned in a pool of water. 

Until next time, enjoy these pictures!

Michael and Oregano

Michael and Oregano

* * * The twins are fine * * *

When Chiara went back to school after the Christmas break, she was SOOOOO ready for Show-and-Tell.  One of the nurses in the NICU had made her a little care package: a hospital band that reads “Big Sister,” a preemie diaper, a preemie shirt, a preemie pacifier and stickers of the boys’ footprints and she was ready to show them off.

“I have twoooo brudders!” she announced to her teachers.  “Mi-call anda Wag-ah-nah.”

The teachers were puzzled.  “Michael,” they understood.  But what was that second name?  Oregano? 

“No!  Ah Wag-ah-nah.”

It really sounded like “Oregano.”  A name like that, paired with the name “Michael” was an unlikely combination, the teachers thought, but they didn’t want to pass judgment.  After all, we do live in Berkeley, where half the parents get their names from The Silmarillion and the other half pretend that’s completely normal.

As open minded as the teachers are, they were quite relieved to hear that Baby B’s name was “Wagner,” Matt’s mother’s maiden name, and not some pizza topping.  (When Matt’s five-year old niece heard that one of the twins was named “Wagner” she gasped and exclaimed to her mother, “They named him after your computer password!”)

The twins’ full names are Michael George Ordonez Kovac and Wagner Lee Bryan Kovac.  “Michael George” is Matt’s dad.  “George” is also my stepdad’s given name, the father of my stepmom, Matt’s middle name, and Matt’s grandfather’s name.  “Ordonez” is my mother’s maiden name.  “Lee” is my dad’s middle name and “Bryan” is my maiden name.  Which means that we have completely exhausted our pool of family names.  If we have a fourth kid, we just might have to turn to the genealogy of Gimli.  So if you get a birth announcement four years from now for “Dothlorian Kovac,” don’t laugh and don’t judge.

* * * * *

Mikey & Wagner are a month old today (Saturday, Jan 30) but their age is still counted in gestational weeks.  Right now we are at the end of week 29.  I think of it as T minus 11.  So it’s funny for me to see that they have little personalities and peculiarities, since, under “normal” circumstances, they’d still be in the womb with nearly three more months to cook.

For your amusement, some Michael and Ore . . . uh, Wagner fun facts:

Michael was born at 1 pound, 12 ounces.  He is about two and a half pounds or about a kilo and some change.  Or, for those of you doing the conversion in methamphetamine, about $70,000 street value.  In other words, if Michael were all meth instead of all baby, he wouldn’t even come close to paying his hospital bills.

Wagner was a little scrappier, born at 1 pound, 9 ounces.  Now he is hovering right around two and a half pounds, depending on if he gets weighed before or after the diaper change.

Michael has an outie belly button; Wagner has an innie.

Sometimes I look at them and think, “Wow.  They look just like Kovacs.”

Today they both had the hiccups AT THE SAME TIME.

Michael likes to suck his thumb and when the nurse delivers “oral care” (a swab with a few drops of breast milk to clean out the mouth), he always opens his eyes.  They both like to suck on the swab.  (Michael and Wagner, not Michael and the nurse).

Wagner is often found with a hand down his diaper.

Both boys prefer to be on their bellies.  They get turned every few hours and their heads get turned, too—to prevent what the nurses call “Toaster Head .” 

Michael will often hold on to a finger or thumb when you “hold” him (compassionate touch holding).

Wagner will often put his arm over your hand.

Now that they have a new breathing system (nose pressure—SiPap for you NICU know-hows—rather than tubes down the throat) we can hear them cry a little bit.  They sound like that penguin from Toy Story who swallows his squeaker.

Yesterday Wagner had tears when he cried.  Actual tears.

They have strawberry blond hair.  And, sadly, a little bit of Toaster Head.

Both LOVE to be held and both hate diaper changes.

They are funny little guys.  The nurses like to tuck the babies’ arms and legs in when they are on their backs (the babies, not the nurses).  Then they (the nurses, not the babies) stuff little blankets to make sure they stay that way (the babies, not the nurses).  One day—and just this one day, as far as I know—the nurses would tuck the twins’ arms and legs in and two seconds later BOTH kids would have their arms and legs draped over their blanket bumpers like little old men in inner tubes, sunning themselves in their little isolettes.  The nurses would tuck the limbs back in and within seconds, both kids would be stretched out again.

The day nurses always say, “Wagner’s so fidgety.  Michael’s the calm one.”

The night nurses say, “Michael’s a feisty one!  Not like his brother.”

Sometimes I look at them and think, “Wow.  They look just like Dr. Zaius.”

On Monday I got to hold Wagner and Matt got to hold Michael for the first time.  Really hold them—skin to skin on our chests—not just one hand on the head and the other on the feet.  It’s a dramatic endeavor: the babies still have tubes and wires and IVs and it takes two nurses to take each baby out of his isolette.  But it’s so good for the babies.  And the parents.  True, I did cry on my son’s head.  But it was amazing.  We held them for over an hour.  (Michael cried when they put him back).  It was like being parents. 

Sleep tight, my little Toaster Head monkeys (the babies, not you blog readers).

© 2010 Janine Kovac 

Ligation Wednesday!

I have decided to do what the NICU does when they call us on our cell phones:  begin each post with “The twins are doing fine.”  (Which hopefully reads better in a blog post than in a phone call.  After all, dear readers, by now you must be accustomed to reading all kinds of things from placenta recipes —who could forget that one—to obscure movie quotes.  In a phone call, one thinks, “If everything is fine, then why are you calling me?”)

So—the twins are fine.  Now for more stuff you never wanted to know about really tiny babies.  Ligation.

Ligation is one of those words that get tossed around frequently and carelessly (in our circles at the NICU, anyway) as if everyone knows what it means and no explanation is necessary and after it gets used in context often enough you figure it out.  Like the word “escrow.”  Or maybe it’s one of those words that everyone but me knows the definition of.  Like the word “escrow.”

In our context, ligation means baby heart surgery.  Which is probably why they call it “ligation” instead. 

It turns out that our babies, like ALL babies, have a PDA.  No, not one of THOSE; it’s a Patent Duct Arteriosus, meaning that the valve of the pulmonary artery (from the heart to the lungs) is open and flapping.  And it’s important to have a closed PDA because then blood from the heart goes to where it should, like to other blood vessels instead of where it shouldn’t, like to the lungs. 

Usually, this valve closes shortly after birth.  But in preemies, often it doesn’t.  The PDA is diagnosed by an echocardiogram (or simply “echo” for the cool kids) and is treated by either a) waiting; b) ibuprofen or c) baby heart surgery.  We tried some of a) and some of b) and I kept thinking, well, at least we can always try this ligation thing instead of baby heart surgery.  Then I found out that ligation IS baby heart surgery.  And I burst into tears and fled from the hospital. 

After Tuesday’s echo confirmed what the doctor’s stethoscopes had detected—that the boys’ PDA’s were still open—the surgery was scheduled for the next day.  The head nurse practitioner described the surgery and even offered to show us pictures, to which I said, “You know, I’m cool, but I’m not that cool.”

Now, ligation surgery in the scheme of baby surgeries, is really no big deal.  But it does involve a lot of “-tion” words and “-sion” words that you didn’t want to associate with your newborns, such as “sedation,” “incision,” and “morphine drip.”

On Wednesday morning, the surgeon, Dr. Olaf GuutDoktor (mostly not his real name), imposing in stature and nearly albino, explained the procedure in a very calm and reassuring manner.  But all I could think was, “Where are his eyebrows?”

For the curious, the procedure starts with a small half-moon shaped incision under the left shoulder blade.  Then they spread the ribs a little, gently push the lungs out of the way and with the help of sci-fi binoculars to navigate through teeny tiny vital organs, clamp a teeny weeny metal clip to close the PDA.  And then they attach Steri-strips, which is basically just tape.  It’s done bedside at the isolette by expert doctors like Dr. Olaf and takes about fifteen minutes.  It takes longer to set up the surgery than it does to perform the surgery. 

On Tuesday night, the boys were moved from the room they shared to individual rooms for Wednesday’s surgery.  The only reason they had to move at all is to adhere to state regulations: the babies in the most precarious condition have to be closest to the exit.  So Michael moved 12 feet from Room 3 to Room 1 and Wagner moved 6 feet from Room 3 to Room 2.  After the surgery Wagner moved to Room 1 to be with his brother.

The doors to all the NICU rooms are big, sliding patio-like doors with a second set of glass doors that adjoin to other rooms (so each room has at least two “exits”).  Parents aren’t allowed to watch the procedure (whew), and to prevent this, the curtains are drawn and paper is taped over the windows.  Which didn’t prevent us from trying to peek over the paper nor did it prevent us from hearing the doctor, anesthesiologist and nurse crack jokes.  We don’t know what they were laughing at.  We can only guess that it was our terribly funny ligation clearance sale joke.

[Matt and I made the same joke to different nurses—thankfully—what an embarrassment if we had made the same joke to the same audience!  Me in Michael’s room: “It’s Ligation Wednesday!  Buy two ligations, get one free!“  Matt in Wagner’s: “Today only!  3 ligations for the price of 1!”  It’s like we’re turning into twins, too.]

Laughter is not really something you want to hear during surgery.  You want the surgeons to take this VERY SERIOUSLY; it’s baby heart surgery, for Pete’s sake.  On the other hand, if the surgeons are laughing, they’re not panicking and if they’re not panicking, maybe things are going really well. 

In our case it seems to have meant that the surgeries went really well.  Dr. Olaf seemed really pleased and then he went to the next room to crack more jokes, I mean, perform more baby heart surgery.  Michael’s surgery went first, then Wagner, then a third baby (who had moved from Room 6 to Room 3 the night before and then from Room 3 to Room 2 for the surgery). 

After the surgeries the babies stayed on their morphine drip for 48 hours.  Michael got .188 milliliters of morphine an hour and Wagner got .156 ml per hour (it’s based on weight.)  For those of you who are metric system challenged, a tenth of a milliliter is really just about a drop. 

On the second day they upped Wagner’s dose a smidgen because he seemed to be in pain.  Pain is determined partly by the volatility of their numbers: heart rate, oxygen-saturation rate, amount of oxygen needed, etc. and partly by watching the twins themselves.  Are they really fidgety or are they calm and sleeping soundly?  After they got weaned from the morphine, they got Tylenol suppositories.  Which I’m pretty sure is just as much fun as it sounds.

The twins did better than expected.  Their oxygen needs went down.  They went back on their trophic feedings (they get 2 ml of breast milk injected every 3 hours into tubes to their stomachs).  Their ventilator settings came down in a way that I would explain to you if a) I understood it well enough to repeat it or b) it was remotely interesting.

Today is Sunday.  Each of the boys had a couple of rough patches here and there over the weekend, but nothing a couple of drops of morphine couldn’t cure.  Both were extremely squiggly on their backs (read: lying on their incisions) which is understandable, so they stayed on their tummies (they get turned every three hours).  But today things are good. 

And so ends a big surgery week for the Kovac family: Grandpa on Tuesday, the twins on Wednesday and on Thursday, our poor beloved Jetta had her transmission rebuilt.  I’m happy to say that all are doing well.

© 2010 Janine Kovac 

One small step into the blogosphere . . .

The Pod Blog

So we decided to jump on the blogwagon.  Not just because our daughter is so adorable we wanted to have a forum to tell people about it (like, “Christmas is so far away, we’ll need a plane to get there”), but because in the foreseeable future we imagine we will have a lot of different kinds of news that we imagine a lot of people would like to know and that’s a lot of phone calls.  Nine, if you just count our immediate family.  And if we just send out of few facts, and you use the Google machine on the Interweb, you’ll find out a lot of scary sounding things indeed.  Better to get it straight from us.

Here’s the short story: we’re pregnant.  Twins.  Identical.  Boys.  Due in April, but we’ll get them in February.

We’ve told enough people and been asked enough questions that we’ve realized that we might actually need a FAQ section.  So here goes.

Do twins run in either family?

No.  But that only applies to fraternal twins, anyway.  And if you think real hard about it, can only be carried down through the mother’s side.  (Quick biology refresher: fraternal == two fertilized eggs, kids are no more similar than other siblings; identical == one fertilized egg that splits, kids have the same genetic material).

Other fraternal fun facts: there are, like, TONS more twins now in the United States than just a scant 30 years ago, by like, some really high percentage that I am too lazy to look up right now.  Some fraternal twins, of course, are due to techniques like IVF and even Clomid, but for some bizarre reason, older women who have already had a baby are more likely to have fraternal twins if they conceive again in their 40s.  (That’s a nasty little trick, isn’t it?) 

So how do you get identical twins?

Nobody knows.  Identical twins are just a fluke.  Or in fancy medical language, an anomaly.  One perinatalogist actually called it a birth defect (because “it’s not supposed to happen.”  She continued: “Let’s hope this is the only birth defect.”)  This is the same one who used the words “dead baby” during our consultation.  I don’t remember the rest of the sentence because I was so shocked.  I hadn’t heard those words spoken together since my brother went through his “dead baby” joke phase in eighth grade.  Don’t worry.  We got her back.  Stuck a “kick me” post-it on the back of her scrubs. 

So nobody knows why a fertilized egg suddenly splits, although I do recall having a serious bout of hiccups in late July.  It could also be that I’m Gary’s friend.  Gary has FIVE friends who have had twins in the last two years.  (Needless to say, Gary’s wife is a leetle worried.)  Of course he told me this AFTER we told him about the twins.  Thanks, Gary.

How do you know they’re identical?

This is a question you would only ask if you’re up on your twin reading.  It’s like this: all fraternal twins have their own little sacs to grow in.  (Placentae).  And in the identical case, if they split early, they will also get their own placenta.  And nobody will know whether or not they are identical (if they are the same sex) until after they are born.  Since fraternals can look alike, too, in some cases, there’s really no way to know without a DNA test.

On the other hand, if the egg splits late, the babies will share a placenta.  And if the egg splits really late, there’s a one in 25,000 chance that the babies will share both a placenta and an amniotic sac (or as the midwives call it, the “bag of waters.”  Awesome.  It’s like the first line of a haiku, isn’t it).  Anyway, so I burped instead of buying a lottery ticket and we blew our lottery odds on two peas in a pod.

This means that our babies will have skin to skin contact in the womb.  Which is pretty cool.  It also means that I just went from the ho-hum ordinary “40 years old and merely high risk” to, as I told Aunt Rita, “DEFCON 4 High Risk” and listening to Dr. Bedside Manner and her “Dead Baby Birth Defect” speech.

But before we delve into all the scary stuff that Dr. Bedside Manner and her staff told us, (no, I will not call her Dr. BM, that is just too infantile), let’s end our first post with a little twin haiku.  This haiku is dedicated to Greg, because I know he likes haikus although I don’t know how he feels about amniotic sacs.  It’s called, “Hiccup Hiccup Oh!”

Hiccup Hiccup Oh!

One bag of waters

Not a lot of room in here

Will you be my twin?

© 2010 Janine Kovac