This interview was conducted on November 2, 2014. My mom, Josephine was interviewed. She has been married for 23 years to my dad Ed Barzowski. They are proud parents of four children. Although they have four healthy children it was not an easy process for my parents.

Q: What year were you married? How many years into your marriage was it when you thought of having children or did you going into the marriage knowing you wanted to have kids?

A: I got married in 1992. Going into the marriage we both wanted to have children and it was probably two years that we were married and we started to think about having kids.

Q: When did you realize you were having trouble conceiving?

A: Probably six months into trying to have children and nothing was happening, I thought there might be something wrong. Plus my family has a history or had a history of going through menopause early and at the time I was 27 years old. I just wanted to always wanted to keep that in mind and to not wait to try and make sure everything would be okay.

Q: Did you see a doctor about having trouble with conceiving?

A: Yeah, we went to a doctor and they recommended that both my husband and I get checked out and there was something wrong. Dad had to have a little surgery. Once that was taken care of then we should’ve been fine. And we weren’t.

Q: How did you feel when you realized you were having trouble having children?

A: Anxious. Each and every month if I was supposed to get my period on a tuesday and it was wednesday with the prospect that, oh maybe I’m pregnant and then on thursday I would get my period. I was feeling worried that maybe in fact there was going to be something really wrong. That I wasn’t going to be able to have children.

Q: How many months did it take you until you finally got pregnant?

A: I had you guys just before I turned 30 so we started probably when I was 26/ 27 years old, so this was years not months.

Q: Did you ever feel that you were going to give up or go with a different option?

A: I was very proactive in trying to make this work. So I went to a fertility specialized and thats when we embarked on this whole journey to become pregnant.
There were several steps we had to go through we had to try a certain procedure first and then we moved on when that didn’t work. And that was disappointing although there was a great chance that it was not going to work, we thought it was the simplest route and maybe that will work and that’ll be great. Then we went to the next step and that was going to in vitro and that whole process. And that took a lot of time and effort put into that which was all worth it and it was all great. It was just that I was teaching at the time and that created its own set of stress because of that.

Q: When you did get pregnant did you tell people right away or did you try and keep it to yourselves because of the complications you were having?

A: Well two folds. We went through in-vitro the first time we did our first cycle I got pregnant and miscarriage right away. My numbers we not that strong and we were hoping it was going to stick and it didn’t. But they were able to retrieve a number of embryos so we froze them. They were saying we had great success when you did what was called a cryo cycle. Where they use frozen eggs instead of right then after. So we did a second round right away and that didn’t work at all. That was really devastating. I was on a lot of hormone medication too, I was giving myself shots. I just physically could not stop crying. The hormones, the disappointment of it not working kinda because I had really high hopes that this was going to work and so did they. Then for me not to be pregnant at all and not even pregnant and miscarried. But for it to not work at all was really disappointing. So then we did a third cycle of this and in the middle of taking of the meds prior to even doing a cycle, I got my period before we started the cycle. So that was the third attempt that didn’t work and this was all this prep work beforehand so it would be 6 weeks of taking shots, getting ready, going in for all these different ultrasounds, and blah blah blah, and then in the middle of just getting ready I got my period and thats it, you can’t go through the procedure. So that last time I was like, I don’t know if I can do this anymore. I didn’t want to quit but part of me wanted too because I couldn’t do it emotionally.
We had been going on almost a year from trying this in vitro process, so when I first got pregnant when it worked I really didn’t want to say anything to anybody. The problem was everyone knew we were going and so I was kinda tight lipped about it. I would say we have to see if it will stick, the numbers are good but we will have to wait. So I was cautiously optimistic.

Q: In between each cycle did you take a lot of time deciding whether you were going to go another round?

A: Between the first and second cycle we went right away. Then between the second and third there was a little bit of time. And then the third and fourth, the third didn’t turn out to be a cycle because of me getting my period, there was a chunk of time. I was teaching at the time and the last cycle was in May and I decided it was too stressful. I would have to go to these ultrasounds before work and try and get on the expressway to get to Forest Park from Park Ridge. I would be walking in right before the kids were. I had already gotten special permission from my principal, I had to leave early and being a teacher it’s not a job where you can be like, “Just leave it on my desk and I’ll get to it when I get back.” So it stressed me out and I decided the next round of in vitro I would wait until summer when I was off. Then I wouldn’t have to worry about leaving my kids at school, not being there, and those type of things.

Q: How did you feel when you were pregnant? When you official knew?

A: I was thrilled and it was twins so excited and the whole family was super excited. I was nervous though. I was pretty much a nervous wreck. Not that I was waiting for something to happen but I was concerned something was going to happen. I had a few different issues while I was pregnant. I was worried if I didn’t feel you guys kick or move, I was worried if I had a little bit of spotting but i didn’t know what it was for sure. I was probably a high maintenance patient [laughing].

Q: When you were pregnant what difficulties did you have?

A: Well I was on bedrest in February, so the beginning second trimester. What wound up happening was I wound up having cramps or spotting or braxton hicks. I had gained thirty pounds by that time which is not bad, but I had 12 weeks to go and I was small. When I got pregnant I was probably 107/ 108 pounds so not a big person, so I didn’t have a whole lot of room. By the time I had gained thirty pounds I was pretty uncomfortable and there were two babies. Jake who I didn’t know was Jake at the time was sitting pretty high at the time, right under my ribs and it was getting uncomfortable and hard to move around, I was having some early contractions or spotting, so my doctor put me on bedrest. That was the first week in February and you were born the 22.

Q: When your water broke, how did you feel?

A: It was a Friday early morning so it was the 20th and I went to go to the bathroom and my water bag broke. I had know because I had went to the bathroom and I had then felt a rush of water so I knew something more than peeing had happened [laughing].  I was like “ Oh my Gosh.” And kinda stupidly I’m 29 years old and I’m thinking to myself when your water bag breaks do you have to have this baby? I knew it was really early and you weren’t due till May 5th and it was February 20th. I come back into the bedroom and I say to dad, “Eddie, eddie we have to go,” and you know how sound of a sleeper he is but I kept saying, “ we have to go, it’s time my water bag broke my water bag broke!” At this time he’s kind of out of it. He pops up and he’s getting ready and we had a bag packed because I was reading about it in a magazine. I figured I would go early with twins just not this early, so we hopped in the car went to the hospital.

Q: Did the doctors think something was wrong because the water bag broke so early?

A: Yes. Well, I had called the doctors and he said we had to check and see if it actually was my water bag that had just broke, thinking that maybe it hadn’t. When I got there they were waiting in the emergency room for me and they brought me right up. They hooked me up monitors across my belly to see what was happening with you guys and then test and see if it was actually amniotic fluid, and in fact my water bad had just broken. It had. This was now 5 a.m. in the morning and we started to discuss all the options. When testing the amniotic fluid they tested to see if our lungs were developed and they weren’t.

Q: At any point did you start to cry or feel overwhelmed but what was happening?

A: I was extremely concerned. I knew it was too early. I wasn’t even thirty weeks pregnant yet. They had explained that you guys were small. They had guesstimated that you guys were about three pounds, which neither one of you turned out to be three pounds. They knew both of your lungs weren’t developed. I also had to get a steroid to help develop your lungs. It was something that would speed up the process but it wasn’t going to be fast enough. The plan was to hold you guys off as much as possible. We were going to pump fluids to replace what was being lost in the broken water bag.
There was going to be three situations to decide if I was going to deliver the babies. If I went into labor and they couldn’t stop it, if the babies were in distress, or if I spiked a fever, which would be a sign of infection and then I would have to deliver. If neither of those options happened then I could be in the hospital for potentially the next ten weeks. Obviously there goal was to keep the pregnancy going as long as possible. So then I had asked because I read an article about twins that were delivered separately because one bag had broken but left the other one to stay in the mother and still grow. I had asked about that and they said no. They would take both of them at the same time because it would be a better environment with both of them in the incubator to take care of them and to see what was happening.

Q: Did you call any family members when you went in right away or did you wait until something happened with the delivery?

A: No, we called them that morning once it got to be around five or six. We had called both grandmas and grandpas. We had called them because we didn’t know if you were going to be delivered that day or what. They came to see what was going on and hear what the doctors were saying. They had decided that they would deliver via c- section because they didn’t want to subject us to anymore stress. Jake was what was called laying transverse, so he was across my stomach instead of head first. They said we were too small to manipulated and try to turn them and too traumatic for a regular delivery.

Q: What ultimately made you deliver the us? Were we under too much stress?

A: It went all day Friday and I was fine. I started to contracted so they pumped up the I. V. and gave me more fluids and the contractions spread out. On Saturday, I was fine. Sunday I was fine. My friend, Ornella came to visit and she brought me a chocolate shake and I started to not feel that well. I was uncomfortable, achy, and icky. I started to contract and they were going to give me the I. V. again. They had turned it on and they took my temperature and I had a 99.9 and that was it. I delivered because they were worried that I had an infection. They were right, I ended up having a bladder infection and that was what caused the water bag to break.
It was a whirlwind once they determined you guys were going to be born. It was kind of crazy. We called grandma and grandpa. We called the family. They started filling out paperwork. I had to sign all kinds of things giving them permission to do anything to keep you guys alive. I gave permission for NICU to come in and for whole team to be ready. Just a bunch of different things. It was a little scary because this was my first delivery and there were so many things going on. Since I was delivering twins, there was a team for you , a team for jake, a team of doctors for me.

Q: Once you delivered us how did you feel? And during the delivery did they say anything to make you nervous?

A: They didn’t say anything during the delivery to make me nervous, but I had gotten an epidural during the delivery and it didn’t work. They had to give me a spinal block, which made me numb from my chest down. I was throwing up the whole time I was delivering. Two things, I think I have a problem with anatioua because it happened every pregnancy and then they jumble your insides around and it doesn’t help the situation.
It made me a little nervous when Jake came out right away because he didn’t cry right away, but we both ended up crying so I knew you guys were at least breathing so that made me feel good. There were so many people in the delivery room. They had two little incubators, a doctor and team of nurses working on you, a doctor and a team of nurses working on Jake, and the people working on me. It was a party in the delivery room. You had cried but I got to look at you two for a few minutes and off the whisked you to access your situations and what you needed.
Dad was in my ear saying, “What are we going to name them? What are we going to name them?” We had only picked out one name for a girl and that was Taylor and two names for boys, Jake and Josh. I liked the name Jake and your father liked the name Joshua. Again he was in my ear, “What are we going to name them? What are we going to name them?” I couldn’t take it anymore because I was still throwing up, I was dizzy, there was a million people in the room, and I barely got to see him. They had just laid him by my face and I was like “I, I don’t know.” He said, “You want to name him Joshua” and I said, “Fine.” The next day when I was more with it I decided I didn’t really want to name him Joshua, so he was Jake. It was fine because we hadn’t done any of the paperwork yet.

Q: Did you cry when you first say us?

A: I didn’t cry. I was throwing up and throwing up and there was this whirlwind of emotions. I cried a lot in the next week though, uncontrollably though. I think I was having a hormone surge or dip that my body got shoved into early because you guys came early. I felt very responsible for the fact that you were born early and that you were in incubators. I didn’t see you until the next day later and when I went to see you while I was kind of out of it. You were both in these incubators and you were so small. You guys reminded me of rubber chickens because you were just skin and bones with big heads. [laughing] You had little goggles on because you were in a heat bed for jaundice and you looked like you were tanning. [laughing] It was goofy, but I started to cry when I went down there because I had just felt like I had failed you guys. Why couldn’t I hold this pregnancy? I don’t know what was going to happen to you guys, Jake’s hooked up to a ventilator, you guys are hooked up to machines. The doctors are talking to us about scanning their brains because there could be bleeding this early, which could mean cerebral palsy. It was just this barrage of information that we needed to hear and know, but just overwhelming. I just didn’t know what my problem was.

Q: When you finally got to take us home were you nervous?

A: Totally. I was so nervous. We had to take an infant CPR class. I made both grandparents take the class because they would be the only people who would watch you guys. Any caregiver would have to take the class. You came home before your brother and I didn’t know how I was going to see Jake because I couldn’t bring you back to the hospital. I wasn’t able to because you couldn’t expose any germs to the babies and they didn’t want you exposed to germs they might have. I didn’t know how I was going to be able to do that until your dad got home. I was worried I didn’t know what I was doing.

Q: How long did you worry about us or come used to the fact that we were so tiny and you needed to be extra cautious?

A: Jake came home a week later and that was a whole set of worries. He would forget to breath at the hospital and the monitors would go off. You did it maybe twice a week whereas Jake would do it twice a day. I totally wanted him to come home with a monitor. I wouldn’t allow him to not come home without a monitor on. I was worried sick about him stopping breathing in the middle of the night and me not knowing about it. He ended up coming home on the monitor and he had it for six months. He probably didn’t need to be on it for that long but it was a security blanket. I was worried for a while.

Q: When you were deciding to have another kid were you worried the complications were going to reoccur?

A: I knew we were only having one the next time and I was hoping it was going to go well. I was worried though that I would get an infection I didn’t know about and something might happen. I was also concerned because I had two toddlers running around and it would be complicated. How was going to manage these three babies?

Q: Was it worth it and what is the proudest moment of being a mother?

A: Absolutely. I would do it over a million times even knowing the complications. I have had so many where I have been proud of you guys. But the proudest moments are when other people recognize how wonderful my kids are. When you guys have done something good and someone will say “you have really great kids” or “what a nice, caring kid you have.”

Josephine lives a busy and stressful life. She manages four kids schedules, her job as a teacher, and being there as a mom for her children. She wouldn’t trade her life for the world though.