Holiday happenings

A very belated HAPPY HOLIDAYS, bloggies! I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday, whatever you celebrate!!

I’ve been totally AWOL! First work was craaaaaaaaaaaaaazy before the holidays. Then we were in Philly for Christmas with hubs’s family and I forgot to pack my lappie’s power cord….so I had to ration my battery power to actually do work and not blog. (Sigh.) I read your posts from my phone but it’s impossible to comment that way so please forgive me for being behind in checking in with all of you! We got stuck in Philly with the crazy weekend snowstorm. (Ugh.) We ended up renting a car and driving down to DC yesterday because we couldn’t get a flight back to Chicago from Philly, all of the 12-hour trains from Philly to Chicago were full (!!) and we didn’t feel comfortable driving the 12 hours on winter highways….anyway, we finally made it home at midnight last night and I am so so so so so so happy to be here! Back to my comfie bed (no more fold-out couch!), my lovely Snoogle body pillow, my humidifier, my awesome shower with its amazing water pressure, my healthy breakfast options (no more bacon every morning!)….ahhhhhh, home, sweet home.

The babies got lot of loot this Christmas. 🙂 We got carseats and a travel crib from my parents. Hubs’s parents gave us a rocking chair for the nursery and some onesies. Hubs’s sister gave us a nursing pillow and stuffed animal and more onesies. Hubs’s brother gave us a flip video cam. And my sibs all went in together on a totally adorable night light for the nursery (above) that I would never have splurged on for myself but have been eyeing for 6 solid months.

Lucky us, lucky babies! And now for some random updates….

I am feeling good but big. I stopped jogging after the Turkey Trot with my fam over Thanksgiving and have been rotaing yoga DVDs, swimming and the elliptical a few times a week. Just getting to the gym is becoming more of an effort but it’s so worth it to get some exercise and feel like I’ve got a healthy routine in place. Hubs and I hit the gym a few times over the holidays and it not only felt good to move around, but it was also lovely to get some Zen, me time away from the house.

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Over the holiday weekend I had some discharge that freaked me out. It was more copious, yellow and a thicker consistency than the usual thin, white stuff I get. The next time I went to the bathroom there was some semi-solid discharge, about the size of a pea. Of course I used my phone to Google my findings and found scary stories about women losing their mucus plugs and going into premature labor. It was the day after Christmas and we were officially stuck with the snow so I opted not to call my doctor’s office, figuring they’d hear the fear in my voice and invite me into the office to get it checked out (which I couldn’t do). The discharge went right back to normal and I took it easy snuggling with hubs’s family’s dogs in front of the TV the rest of the weekend so I feel okay about it. But I’ll ask my OB about it when I go in for my growth scan next week. (Grow babies, groooooooow!)

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I also have my gestational diabetes test next week. Just this month my clinic eliminated the orange drink-blood test because they felt they were getting too many false positives. So they told me to scrap the orange glucose fluid they’d sent me home with in November and to come in for that 2nd test most folks only take if they fail the first one, after having fasted for 8 hours. I know twin Moms tend to develop gestational diabetes more often so we’ll see what happens…..at least I’ve had my fill of egg nog (gallons worth, seriously!) before I get the news!

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I rolled my ankle and fell again today. 😦 Hubs and I were walking some groceries into the apartment and I bit it as I crossed a small patch of snow to the sidewalk. WTF?!?!? I twisted my body and landed on the snow on my side, but it scared me again and I’ve got new bruises and my right ankle is swollen and blue again. (I felt them bumping a little bit after lunch so that made me feel better.) I guess that old saying that pregnant women lose their sense of balance/have looser joints is not a myth. I have been so careful, but I guess I need to take it up a few more notches!

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Between the weird discharge, the stress and fatigue of traveling and being stuck away from home due to the snowstorm, I’m starting to see why many clinics encourage preggos not to travel past 24 weeks. I have one more trip to KC for a shower with my Mom’s girlfriends the first week in January and that’s the end of airports for me. I am obviously so very very excited for this shower and to be home with my family again (three times from Oct 31 to Jan 7, that’s totally a record for us!), but the honest truth is that nothing sounds worse to me at this moment than traveling again in 9 days. I pray we don’t get stuck again and that it goes a lot more smoothly than our recent trips to NYC and Philly!!

Maybe?

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!!!!

We visited my family over the holiday weekend. My older brother and his wife couldn’t be there because of work, but it was great to see my parents and little brother and sister. Hubs and I split the holidays between our fams, alternating who we visit at Christmas and Thanksgiving every year. I know my Mom is reallllllllllllllllllllllllllllllly sad we won’t be flying home for Christmas….and that manifests itself as intense guilt in me. But beyond little comments here and there bemoaning missing us already at Christmas, we had a wonderful weekend.

Early on Thanksgiving morning, I braved a 16-degree, windy morning for a 5K Turkey Trot with my Dad, sister, brother and hubs. I shuffled the entire thing! Usually I’m out in front of my family, but this year I was the caboose. 🙂 Totally fine by me, I was happy in my snail slow pace. It has been getting uncomfortable to jog/shuffle….I think I am just getting too large. So that was probably my last “run.” From now on, it’s going to be swims, yoga and maybe the ellip and light weights. All of it super EZ, of course. A tiny dose of exercise a few times a week keeps me sane!

After the Trot we began cooking the Thanksgiving meal. Fun fun fun!!! (Even though I totally ruined my dish—what should’ve been a delish sweet potato hash—by over-salting it. I would’ve been cut in a second if it was an ep of Top Chef. So JV!) Later that afternoon I relaxed for a loooong time on the couch to watch football with my sibs and hubs. A couple of times, I thought I felt a very very gentle “bump” in my lower left stomach region. Not bubbles or flutters or tickling or kicking, but a so-subtle-I-could’ve-imagined-it bump. It made me so happy! I willed it to happen again and again. Since then, I THINK I’ve felt it a couple of times….usually on my lower left but also right by my belly button.

I have no idea where the babies are located in my tum, but I sooooooo hope this is them, beginning to make themselves known. It’s not kicking or crazy movement or anything close….it’s MAYBE MAYBE MAYBE something.

I also realized that I’m never sitting for an extended amount of time or laying around unless it’s bedtime. At work, I’m “officially” at a desk-job, but the reality is that I’m on my feet walking somewhere and doing something away from my desk every few minutes. And then I come home and cook or clean or whatev….I finally relax after dinner in front of the TV…and my then I’m so tired that I usually scoot into bed and promptly fall asleep within a few minutes.

SO. The point is….it’s hard to find long spells of quiet where I can replicate my lazy Thanksgiving afternoon during which the babies MAYBE moved. Or maybe I didn’t really feel them move. It could very well be that I want this so badly that I’m imagining things. But I would really really really love to feel more of it. 🙂 It would so help soothe my anxiety!

ANYWAY! Tomorrow will be 20 weeks. And it’s T-minus seven days until our big anatomy scan. I am thankful for so so so so much this year, but mostly these babies, who hubs and I cannot wait to share our lives with. We love them so very very very much. And I pray and hope with everything in me that these babies are growing and healthy and strong and that everything is okay.

I will leave you with our first purchase for them. We saw these Dr. Seuss jammies discounted on the baby-deals site Zulily.com earlier this month and couldn’t resist. 🙂

When does it feel real?

I wake up every day hoping that today is the day I will feel the babies moving. I scour  twin blogs and read posts to find out when those bloggies began to feel movements and then swallow a lump in my throat because it’s inevitably by where I am in this pregnancy. I’ve read that twin Moms feel movement a little earlier because there are two babies in there hopefully kicking up a storm. I’ve read that women can begin feeling movement at around 16 weeks. I’ve read about bubbles. I’ve read about flutters. I’ve read about twitches.

I’m 18 weeks and a couple of days and I have nada going on! The truth is that with my constie-situation, I have “bubbles” a lot of the time. But they always end in…you know…gas. A couple of times I’ve thought MAAAAAAAAAYbe I felt a “thump” of some sort, but I’m pretty darn positive it’s in my head because I want to feel something so badly.

I guess this isn’t surprising, right? I am, after all, the same person who didn’t get pukies, who’s boobs have barely changed, who never ever experienced a faux pregnancy symptom in the 2ww. I know I am SOOOOO lucky for all of that, but gosh, I tell you what: I would love to feel some reassurance from my body any day now. I hope I feel them soon.

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About a week ago hubs and I were talking about my daily cocktail of suppies….iron and calcium and a Colace in the morning, then my 2-pill pre-natie Rx, another Colace and a baby aspirin at night before bed. We started talking about why the heck I still take the baby aspirin and the truth is that I felt superstitious stopping it, both because of a horrific story I’d read on a blog and just because it’s hard to do anything different when you’re in a comfie routine. I went on baby aspirin back in March due to some research that showed it helped thin lining in some women, and I never stopped it. At my very early pregnancy appointments at Dr. Awesome’s, the nurses said to go ahead and stay on it. At my first OB appointment at 9 weeks, the midwife said I should go ahead and stop taking it—simply because it was one more stressful thing for me to take every day. But I kept taking it….because I was afraid of changing anything.

ANYway, we decided that I was 17 weeks and that without any diagnostic reason TO be taking the baby aspirin, I should just go ahead and stop it. [There is some evidence it can be bad for a pregnancy if not necessary for observable structural reasons relating to the placenta, etc.] So I did, cold turkey.

This month has been INSAAAAAANE at work. So busy with the holidays and a litany of deadlines. I’m getting home late at night, totally exhausted, and I felt almost pukish with fatigue when I finally crawled into bed last night. I think it was the craziness of work + residual hangover from the stress I’ve been under with taking on too much freelance outside of work + I think I was emotionally drained too, as I have my 18 weeks check-up tomorrow. I’ve spent the past few days getting ever more anxious, hoping and praying that the babies are strong and healthy—sometimes I really don’t know how my heart/mind can LITERALLY be two places at once: crazed at work and always thinking about the babies. So last night in bed when hubs asked me when I had last taken my baby aspirin, and I said not for a week, and he said “let me go get you one, I’m being superstitious but want you to take it again,” I got very quiet and scared and didn’t sleep more than a few hours. That is SO unlike hubs to say something like that. He is my calm, Zen rock. I’m the freak-y superstitious anxious one.

It made me wonder if I have jinxed myself by being so happy and loving these babies so much. Or by stopping the baby aspirin. My heart has been pounding ever since.

These appointments, I tell you what, they make me so nervous. I hope I don’t sound ungrateful or sad or annoying by sharing these swirling thoughts. I had hoped that by this point I would feel more confident and comfortable with all of this. But I still get so scared. I still use the words “hopefully in March or April” when people ask when the babies are coming, because I just feel too anxious to say anything else.

I think feeling the babies would help me a lot! That, and a great appointment tomorrow. Please please please let these babies be strong and healthy!

Thanks for letting me vent. Zen zen zen zen.