My Twin story...in the beginning

Being a mom of twins is the most rewarding blessing any mom could have.  Having said that, there are many crazy moments as well.  I want to write to you a little on my twin adventure and what I have learned along the way.
I found out I was pregnant with twins on my 10-week appointment and have never been so excited in my life.  The day the doctor told us, "I don't know about you, but I see two heart beats" while looking at my ultrasound, I have never been the same.  I looked up at my husband and he had a tear running down his cheek.  To this day I'm not sure if that was a look of happiness or fear!  :)  It was that day that I had two concerns run through my head, one...if I could carry them, because I had broke my back in a car accident when I was 24 and now at 25 I was pregnant with twins.  I knew I was not going to be able to gain a ton of weight or this could be dangerous.  Two...was the delivery. 
I did really good through my pregnancy...I carried my girls to 38 1/2 weeks and only gained 40 lbs. which I lost 35 of 10 days after my delivery.  I was able to successfully breastfeed my girls at the same time (football hold) for a year and a week. 
During the end of my pregnancy, the doctor didn't know if we were going to be delivering naturally or not because one girl was head up and one was head down.  So we went to "birthing class"...after the first night I was convinced that I would just sign up for the C-section.  HOLY COW...to imagine that one could come out naturally and you might have to go through a C-Section also was too much for me. 
It was kind of fun to know the exact date you were going to deliver.  We had family fly in from all over.  My husband and I wrote a scrapbook page to our girls the night before we delivered.  And I remember to this day just crying because I didn't want them to come out in this scary world.  I had protected them the whole time they were in my belly and now was going to have to bring them in to this uncertain world.  My husband looked at me, put his hand on my belly and said, "It's time to share them with the rest of us."  I just cried.
We knew they were identical at the first appointment because of how thin their membrane was (I will write later posts on my HUGE pet peave of doctors and their instant assumption that all twins in two sacs are fraternal). 
We weren't really sure how to name them...so we decided the first one out would be Emilie and the second one would be Erynn.  I knew I wanted their names to start with the same letter but not to end the same way.  Why...because I grew up as the baby of 5 kids and all of us started with a K, except my brother.  We have Kelly, Kathy, Pat, Kimberly and Kandi.  All the girls names end with the same sound and when someone is calling your name, you generally only hear the end.  So we never knew who my mom was talking to and had to ask her again. 
Their middle names are Jolene...we name both of them the same middle name.  Why...becuase when thinking of names, Adam and I wanted to name them after us.  We thought maybe Emilie Jo and Erynn Darlene (my middle name is Darlene and my husbands is Joseph).  But we didn't like the idea that one would be named after one and the other after the other.  We wanted them both to be after both of us.  So when trying to put our names together...I took the "Jo" out of Joseph and the "lene" out of Darlene and made both of them have the middle name Jolene.
When they were born, Emilie (who came out first) was 6 lbs. 4 oz. and 19 inches long, Erynn was 6 lbs. 13 oz. and 19 1/2 inches.  From that moment...I learned that identical twins don't look alike to the mom!  It must be a mother nature thing. 
We were in the hospital for 5 days...I learned many things during those 5 days.  I learned that I was a freak of a mom.  I didn't want them to be passed around.  It didn't take long to learn that everyone just "stops" by after you have babies.  So we had to have a note on the door saying we were sleeping so they would check in with the desk and could see if we were ready for visitors.  I learned how hard my husband sleeps at night and I also learned that there can be ABSOLUTELY no privacy when breast feeding twins. :) 
We took them home on the 5th day and it was such an overwhelmingly scary feeling of having my babies in this great big huge scary world!  The mother bear was already coming out in me and they were only 5 days old.