FOUR little FULTONS: traditions

Thursday, October 15, 2009

canned pumpkin people!...

Last night we met up with quite a few friends from our multiples group at the Pumpkin Patch. I got the tribe all decked out in their Halloween garb. They looked SO darn cute! I just LOVE Halloween! The turn out from our multiples group was AWESOME! Wait till you see our group shot! There had to be over a dozen families of multiples there! Can you imagine how many kids that is!? AMAZING! A local church has this pumpkin patch every year & this was our first visit. Hard to believe but true! They had pumpkins of all sizes & colors. I was in AWE! I had never seen so many before in one place! This was such a great photo op that our good friend April, also a multiple mum, took photos of us all. She is such a talented photographer in fact she has her own business, CoConut CirCle Photography. They have photographed the tribe on a few occasions in fact she will be taking our Christmas pics this year! SO excited!
There we were surrounded in a sea of orange, with pumpkins EVERYWHERE! The tribe did not know which one to grab first! There were big ones & little ones, bumpy ones & smooth ones but the ones that drew most of my attention were the white ones! CRAZY! Who knew that there could be white pumpkins! WOW! This was an EXTRA special evening because not only were we going to the Pumpkin Patch with our friends but we were also celebrating Daddy's Birthday! Yes our Daddy turned another year older yesterday! He was such a good sport spending his evening trekking through pumpkins with all of us! You'd never know he was 43 years young! I made sure to get a picture of him with his tribe! They just LOVE their leader! (=We wanted to go to the pumpkin patch more to see our friends & be a part of this annual event then to pick pumpkins. Sounds strange I know to go to a pumpkin patch & not get any pumpkins. But remember we are native Floridians & I really think this activity is more of a northern thing. My parents never took us to a "Pumpkin Patch" when I was little. Did they even have one back then? LOL! I must say that I do love the look of pumpkins and a carved one at that but have no plans on carving one up myself! My kind of "carved" pumpkin is an artificial & reusable one! Ha! The thought of having to scoop out all of the pumpkins innards with your bare hands, YUCK! Just never wanted any part of that! LOL! I guess you can say we are the...

canned pumpkin people!

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Happy Saint "Pap Pee's" Day!

Today is the day to be on the lookout for all of those little green men & searching for their pot of gold! Oh wouldn't it be nice to actually have there be a pot of gold!? Ahhh.. We all can dream! My Aunt Pat LOVES St Patty's Day! She usually will call around & wish everyone a "Happy St Patrick's Day" but in the most perfect Irish brogue! Sometimes I do not even know it is her! She is AMAZING! IF she called us she should probably say "Happy Saint Pap Pee's Day!" since that is how we say it here in the Fulton House! LOL! They try SO hard to say things & it is SO funny what ends up coming out of their mouths! It's TOO cute! Hopefully I capture their meaning well! I might have to create a 2nd edition of their dictionary soon! hmmm. Anyhow, I hope you all have a wonderful day spent being HAPPY & with bellies FULL of Irish fare! You know the traditional things, the corned beef & cabbage, the shepards pie, the green beer, etc. Oh and you better wear green too! You know we will! SO from our family to yours, please have a...

Happy Saint "Pap Pee's" Day!

Our Story...

Ok I am now over 8 years into this "job" of mine, being a mommy to multiples, high order multiples to boot! They say that if you try to conceive without protection for one year with no success then you are infertile. Those words were a lot to take in. I sought answers from everyone. We started out with our 1st OB/GYN Dr William Casale doing the normal testing that they were equipped to do. We did it all, IUI's, spermwashing, etc. I then contacted RESOLVE, a wonderful organization for people like me (could not get pregnant). I started making mental notes of what I needed to achieve my dream, to be a mom! The next step was to go see a Fertility Doctor. We chose to see Dr Mark Denker. After checking me out he then referred Michael to see a Urologist who ended up putting him on clomid. Yes, men can take this RX too! It helps make more sperm just like it helps a woman create more follicles. It is AMAZING the things you learn when you are trying to conceive! After further testing we were both told we had fertility issues, I had fewer eggs than a woman my age & they were "tough", Michael had double vericasils so that in order for us to have the "best odds" we needed to go the IVF route. I had this feeling that it was not going to work right away, call it my intuition. So we bought a package, can you even believe that they sell "packages" like a travel agency? Our "package" included 3 rounds of IVF with ICSI, minus all the meds I would need. The drugs are an expense we did not even think of but had to purchase for this entire thing to work. Well, it ended up taking all 3 rounds of IVF & accupuncture courtesy of Dr Susan Schiff for me to get pregnant & boy did I get pregnant! (Trust your intuition!) We started out with very few follicles, only 3 fertilized into embryo's and all three took. I was finally pregnant! 8 weeks into my pregnancy one of the embryo's split & became identical. Can you believe that!? What are the odds? No one told me that could happen! AMAZING! We had a lot of decisions to make. No one thought that we should keep all four. In the medical world it is called a "selective reduction". Only a few doctors even do this procedure. We did not know what our future would hold just that we could not reduce anything! In the beginning we had a hard time finding a doctor that felt like we did & wanted our four babies to thrive! We finally found Dr Moises Virelles, a fellow Christian & my now OB/GYN. He then referred us to an AWESOME Perinatologist, Dr Gary Cohen. Having the two of them on our side we knew ANYTHING was possible! My pregnancy was really uneventful. I was put on "bed rest" at 22 weeks. I later found out my "bed rest" was unlike other women's bed rest. I was just not allowed to work. I continued to do things, just stayed off my feet as much as possible. If I went shopping I would ride a motorized scooter. If I went to a party I sat pretty much the entire time. I had no issues, my cervix was long & rock solid. I really feel that God wanted me to be a mommy! The babies were great! They kicked each other more than they kicked me! People would look at me & could not believe that I had four babies inside me, I tell you I was meant to carry quads! Now don't get me wrong, it was not a joy ride, I was miserable towards the end & felt it very difficult to breathe. I never even went into the hospital prior to January 15th. Even though I asked them to admit me MANY times!! On January 17, 2007 we welcomed our GBGG quads; Camryn, Brendan, Avery & Lindsey into this world. 1 set is fraternal & 1 set is identical. They weighed 4 lb 7 oz, 4 lb 4 oz, 3 lb 6 oz & 3 lb 3 oz. I made it 32 weeks 5 days when I delivered them at St Mary's Medical Center. They were all HEALTHY and they did not need to be intubated! WOO HOO! They were little miracles destined to be here! I had nurses come up to me & tell me how wonderful it was that I carried them so long, that it was a better gift holding onto them as long as I did than a Harvard education! WOW! We were SO happy, excited & most of all unprepared for how much our life was about to change. I will say it was a GOOD change! I cannot imagine my life without them! Everyone watches our little ones in amazement & they still do. This is their story....

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