Her Hardest Climb Didn’t Involve a Wall. It Involved Twins.

When I first discovered I was pregnant, I planned a unique way to tell my husband.

He unwrapped a t-shirt with gold lettering that read “Trad Dad” (a reference to a stereotypical climbing dad). As realization dawned on his face, I pulled a positive pregnancy test from my pocket to show him.

We were ecstatic and began fantasizing about all the ways we’d bring our baby along with us on climbing adventures. When we arrived for my first ultrasound, my obstetrician explained that the reason I felt crippling exhaustion and nausea was because I was pregnant with twins.

I was in such disbelief, I anxiously laughed throughout my appointment and kept repeating, “You’re joking,” and “It’s only two, right?” She told me she wasn’t joking and there were only two.

I didn’t enjoy pregnancy like some women do. I wasn’t craving fun and elaborate meals or glowing with the miracle of the lives I was creating. Instead, I was surviving off greasy crab rangoon, fruit, water with an obscene amount of ice, and as many naps as I could fit into each day.

Looking at social media felt like peering into a window of what my life was supposed to be like while pregnant. I scrolled through videos and pictures of all my favorite pro climbers seemingly unbothered by their own pregnancy. Their commitment and diligence to the sport couldn’t be deterred.

Unfortunately, soon into my second trimester, the only thing my pregnancy harness was doing was collecting dust under my bed. My babies were in the shape of a T in my belly, causing an immense amount of pain in my spine.

 

Swimming became the only activity my body could handle. Doing laps in my dingy local YMCA swimming pool — like a submarine with my multi-passenger load — was the highlight of my day. I felt ashamed by the lack of climbing I did during my pregnancy, as if my not climbing would prevent my babies from loving the sport as much as I do.

Already, I could feel a tension beginning to battle within me as an expectant mother. Climbing used to feel like my whole world, the driving factor in all my decisions. Now, as a soon-to-be mom, I was struggling to make sense of a different reality.

Giving Birth
I gave birth early, and my son stayed at the hospital where I delivered, while my daughter was sent a week later to a larger hospital with more resources. My tiny four-pound baby resting in her small incubator looked like she was peacefully sleeping in a display case you’d see in a museum. She was so painfully small that the thought of picking her up felt like it would be trying to lift a jigsaw puzzle and hoping it would stay together.

As the EMT strapped her down to the stretcher to be wheeled out to the ambulance, they asked in a jovial tone, “Do you want to take a picture of her all strapped in?” Like a zombie with my bloodshot eyes from crying and lack of sleep, I snapped a picture and thought, “Why would I want to remember this? This is the worst day of my life.”

My husband and I split our time going between the two hospitals on opposite ends of St. Louis while doctors worked to stabilize our daughter’s condition. Our daughter was diagnosed with Supraventricular Tachycardia (SVT), which basically means that her heartbeat gets stuck at a high rate due to an extra electrical pathway in her heart. I was overcome with a primal longing to hold both my babies in the same place at the same time.

 

Being stretched between the two hospitals felt agonizing. I feared each baby was struck with panic at the disappearance of their sibling, the cozy partner they had beside them suddenly gone. Every picture we have of them from nearly the entire first month of their lives is decorated with wires, machines, and our puffy eyes from crying.

At times, I’ll feel transported back to the labyrinth of long, dim hallways in the NICU. The echo of alarms ringing in all directions. The lights flashing above her door. The bells chiming in her room so frequently to signal an emergency, it haunted my sleep.

Montages of the worst moments replay in my head, like when a sleepy-eyed med student called for a crash cart in the middle of the night when they couldn’t lower her heart rate.

The uncertainty of it all weighed so heavily on me that I felt like I could barely breathe. We sat for weeks in the hospital’s uncomfortable chairs, awkwardly trying to hold our tiny babies, practically willing ourselves to wake from this nightmare and bring them home.

Coming Home
Twenty-six days later, we were finally home with both our babies. Our daughter was prescribed medication to be given every eight hours to control her heart rate. We were told when she was discharged from the hospital, “Most premature babies grow out of this by the time they turn one.”

We had our eyes set on the finish line of one year. Our alarms buzzed and reminders chirped every eight hours. We dutifully checked her heart rate at every diaper change as instructed and thought, “I can’t wait till this is over.”

But a year came, and this exhausting and anxiety-inducing reality wasn’t over. Her persistent condition was here to stay. These eight-hour intervals dictate our days with the alarms on my phone now set to run indefinitely.

I secretly carry the guilt of her heart disease with me, like a mistake I made and should have somehow fixed while pregnant. I grew these two beings in my body, so what did I do wrong?

My daughter’s medicine must be temperature-controlled, which has created challenges in being outside for extended periods of time and having her medicine accessible. Unfortunately, we don’t live somewhere that makes it easy to take a quick trip to a crag.

When we asked our doctors how we might extend our family’s world to include camping and time outside, we were met with no solution. Shoulders were shrugged and apologies were given, almost as if to say, “Sorry, time to redefine the life you envisioned for your family.”

 

On top of my daughter’s heart condition, twins present a challenge in recreating any of our beloved outdoor or indoor endeavors. An outing with twin toddlers under two years old is a daunting task unless you have a flawless tag-team system.

Toddlers are surprisingly quick to recognize safety precautions and often try to escape from enclosed spaces, similar to the dementia patients I used to care for in nursing homes.

Due to their dramatic entrance into the world, we still work on hypotheticals, anxious to keep them safe while experiencing as much life as possible.

Climbing Again
My climbing sessions now are fewer and farther between, but I’ve thankfully made my way back into the climbing gym. My body still feels stiff and foreign after my C-section, and a sense of wrongdoing often creeps its way into my sessions, whispering, “You should be home with your children,” or my personal favorite, “What kind of mother are you?”

Nonetheless, I’ve emerged from almost a year and a half of isolation to my local chalky plastic crag. Here, despite the new challenges of motherhood, I’m still overjoyed to move my body in such a familiar way. It feels like saying hello to an old friend.

My love for climbing has not dimmed since I’ve had children. If anything, it has become stronger, like a lifeline to my sanity. I still look forward to each time I get to bask in the camaraderie of a good climbing session and the feeling of normalcy it brings.

Pregnancy, postpartum, and my new reality have felt like a never-ending set of hurdles and obstacles, and the gym has been a continued spot of solace.

If my story seems messy, it’s because it is. I feel unwavering love and devotion to my family. We’re incredibly grateful that our daughter’s condition is well-controlled with medicine, and she is very healthy.

It’s wonderful being a mom. I live for the moments I get to do new activities with my toddlers. Their sweet faces light up with unabashed joy at the most mundane experiences.

I wish I could put these moments on repeat like a favorite song. My heart feels like it may burst with the love they give me on a daily basis.

At once, everything about my life has changed. And I think it’s OK to miss a former version of yourself. I miss crag climbing, road trips, and time spent outside. I still dream of bringing these pieces of myself together.

For now, I try to live and breathe the mantra “everything is just a phase.” And before I know it, we’ll greet climbing together as a family.

Author: Dani Critzas-Murphy is a contributor to Terrain.

Top image: The author reconnects with climbing. (Climb So iLL)