Confessions

Tons of random ramblings at 9-weeks-old….

• It’s dangerous for me to go to the baby section at Target….everything is so cheap so I go a little too crazy! Can’t resist sundresses for Honey and polo onesies for Champ.
• I remember when I was on bedrest, a lot of folks IRL and in blog comments told me the worrying never ever ends when you have kids. This is definitely true, but I must say that the relief that the babies made it into the world safe and sound still has not worn off. I do not miss the intense anxiety of pregnancy one bit.
• Whenever someone asks me the babies’ birth weights, I tend to add a disclaimer along these lines: “But I ate a ton of cheeseburgers and sheperd’s pie and milk shakes and protein during pregnancy!” I need to let it go.
• Even though I was anxious most of the time, I loved every moment of being pregnant. I was pretty worried I’d get the baby blues after birth, but I didn’t. I think being so grateful to be able to walk around and do chores and lift things again took the edge off (since I’d been on bedrest for weeks).
• I’ve been getting phantom kicks since the babies came out.
• The babies are tiny celebrities whenever I take them out. People go crazy for twins. They deserve the attention, sweet sweet things!!!!!
• I’m still amazed and grateful and over the moon happy that I can breastfeed. I was so so so so so worried I wouldn’t be able to.
• I love bonding with the babies while nursing, and I love providing nutritious breast milk for them, but pumping all of the time takes. a. toll.
• Plus, I miss my small boobs. They never grew or got sore during pregnancy, then BAM, right after giving birth, they arrived. I can’t fit into any of my button-up shirts or old tops.
• But it is pretty cool that hubs mentions how “awesome” my boobs are at least once a day. 🙂 I have a serious rack, it’s out of control.
• Even though we’re NOWHERE close to thinking about more kids, I do hope and pray that my cycle/period magically comes back when I stop breastfeeding. I want it to work again. (Pregnancy has been shown to “re-set” the body in some anovulatory women.) I think about that way too much.
• Even though I’m BFing AND I’m anovulatory, hubs and I are using condoms just to be really really really safe. It seems so strange to use protection, considering the lengths we went to for our babies.
• Condoms suck.
• I REFUSE TO GO BACK ON THE PILL. I still blame it for my anovulation.
• I wish I was skinny for my college reunion this weekend. I know that’s totally vain, and I just had twins, and yada yada….but I just don’t feel comfie in my bod right now. I have these huge boobs, a mushy tummy, a soft jawline…it’s okay, it’s just hard to be on display, if that makes sense? OF COURSE our babies are 200% worth it.
• Even though I miss my pre-IF figure, I will say that breastfeeding burns a ton of calories. I’m almost at my pre-pregnancy weight—which is insane considering the amount I eat these days—everything just seems to be situated totally differently.
• I’m running (shuffling) a few times a week, too. I sent an excited text to my little sister last week that I was up to running for 33 minutes straight and she wrote back, “Only that long, are you injured?” Uhhhhhhh, thanks? She doesn’t get that even though I’m “a runner,” you can’t take this much time off, give birth, and then have the muscle strength or fitness to bang out a five-miler. Kids!
• I picked up the babies’ birth certificates downtown yesterday afternoon and tears welled up when I saw their names on those official documents and after signing for them as “Mother.” Wow wow  wow. It will never ever get old, I am in awe of my amazing luck and life.

I think that’s enough random-ness for one night! xoxo

The 3T!

In my year of treatment with Dr. C, Dr. K and Dr. Awesome, I could never ever imagine what it might feel like to be pregnant. We were trying everything under the sun to start our family, but I couldn’t picture it actually happening. Now that I am here…..at 28 weeks and in the third trimester (!!!)…..there seriously are no words…..oh, my gosh…..I am so lucky and so grateful for this miracle I’m experiencing and for these babies who hubs and I love so very very very much.

I am thinking of all of my bloggie friends who are still in the trenches and hoping so very hard that the end to your suffering and the answer to your dreams is just around the corner. Please lord!

As you all know, I’m not much of  a pic poster. But I’m including a smattering of images from the past six months—proof that this is really happening. Because it’s seriously on the verge of incomprehensible how incredibly lucky and blessed we are. Apologies for the fuzz-tastic quality, these were taken on my phone. I pray with my whole heart and every cell in my being that they continue to grow big, healthy and strong and that we meet these babies when the time is right! Grow, babies, grow! We love you.

One perfect gestational sac. My heart practically burst with love. Thank you, Dr. Awesome!!!

Suddenly two sacs! Freaked out, thanked the lord, flew to Oregon for a long-planned vaca with hubs.

Finished the day we found out about Baby A and Baby B on a beach together in beautiful Oregon.

12-ish weeks. About to go on an EZ jog.

22-ish weeks.

25-ish weeks.

28 weeks. Yeah, I pretty much live in lululemon Groove pants apres work.

We hung stockings for sweet Baby A and Baby B this Christmas. This is my iPhone background. 🙂 We love you so so so so much sweet babies!!!

On the border….yet again

I used to write about how anytime I’d do a medicated cycle, I’d get a “borderline” cyst that RE #1 would always decide necessitated me riding the bench for a month. It. Would. Destroy. Me. I do not miss those appointments.

Well, today at my biweekly OB appointment I found out I am on the border again. (And also that the babies look great and their little hearts are beating away!!!) Last week I took the Glucose Tolerance Test (GTT). My clinic changed its protocol two weeks before I was scheduled for my 26-week gestational diabetes screen, and, instead of having every patient do the typical screening test (drink orange glucose liquid at home, come in and get blood drawn an hour later), they now make everyone do the full GTT shebang to ensure they aren’t getting false positives or negatives on the screen test (fast for 12-hours pre-test, get a fasting blood draw at the office, drink orange glucose liquid, get another blood draw an hour later and then another two hours later…I think some clinics do three hours worth of blood draws but mine stopped at two).

Anyway. My fasting level was normal. My 1-hour level was on the high end of the normal range. And my 2-hour level was 9 points above the normal range. So….bam….I am being treated as though I have gestational diabetes. Oh, and my iron was also low (even though I take a supplement every morning and have iron in my pre-natie Rx, weird). The OB told me to indulge in plenty of cheeseburgers. But apparently SANS BUN and with no chocolate shake as a chaser, if my preliminary research on GD is any indication. 🙂

Sigh!

Ah, well. I am feeling a little weirded out by this news, but it’s because I want the very best for the babies. I don’t want my hormone issues to put them at ANY risk. I want them to be healthy!  The next step is to meet with a dietician (I already left her a vmail…I’m ready to make my body a healthy non-carb/non-sweets sanctuary for the babies ASAP!!!!), then I will need to have all of my future appointments at Dr. Zen’s office in the early morning, because from here out I will come to them having fasted, I’ll get my blood drawn, then eat breakfast, then have another blood draw an hour later. I may have to go in for those blood draws once a week, I think the OB is going to discuss me with Dr. Zen to see how she wants to handle. Because I’m “borderline,” they think diet tweaks and office blood draws will be enough to make sure everything’s okay, I (hopefully!) won’t have to mess with insulin injections and at-home blood draws.

When Dr. Zen’s partner told me the news, I admit that got a lump in my throat. My first question was, “Was it something I did?” I have gained a healthy 22 pounds at 26w5d. I eat healthfully the vast majority of the time. I don’t eat fast food. I exercise regularly. I have a normal BMI. I have no family history of diabetes or GD. I write about nutrition, for gosh sakes! She said it has nothing to do with me, it’s about how my body processes glucose during pregnancy and that’s out of my control. And my body is borderline not-so-hot at it. (This apparently happens twice as often in twin patients.)

I’ve read blogs where the writer finds out she has GD and she talks about feeling responsible. I would read those posts and think to myself, Of course it’s not her fault, she shouldn’t feel that way! But then, when it happens to you, you do feel like it’s something you did. I’m trying to shake that feeling. The important thing is that there is something I can DO about this diagnosis.

So. It’s all good. I am okay with being on the border this time. I’m so happy my office caught me when I might otherwise have flown under the radar—this way we can make SURE that the babies and I are perfectly healthy. We’ll get it in check. These babies are going to get whatever foods the R.D. says is best for them and they are going to be healthy kiddos! 🙂

I’ll update on this topic when I’ve done the requisite hours of Googling and the meeting with the R.D., of course.

Blogiversary + an awesome new bloggie

I started my blog a year and two weeks ago. (What!? How did that happen?! Crazy.) I never ever would’ve dreamed that I would be a “blogger,” but as I got deeper into this IF mess, I found myself finding so much information and solace on blogs I’d discover through Google, or via other blogs, that I started to see the benefits of having a place to share my own thoughts and fears. Plus, I began leaving the world’s longest comments (no joke) and realized I had a lot more to say than I realized.

Blogging has been wonderful to me. Through it I have been able to vent, share, commiserate and learn so much. It has given me a place to articulate my darkest fears and my brightest dreams. It has allowed me to record everything I’ve learned along the way. It has made me feel so much less lonely. There is nothing like a thoughtful comment in my inbox to pick me up on a tough day. (Thank you for all of them, I treasure them.) I honestly don’t know how women endure IF without this support system, it has been so huge in my life.

But blogging has evolved since we found we were pregnant in August. It just doesn’t feel right to go on and on about pregnancy stuff all the time when so many of my bloggie friends are still stuck in the trenches, fighting the good fight. Even talking about the anxiety of pregnancy feels insensitive, because I know that all a TTCer wants is to be pregnant, anxiety and all thankyouverymuch. I know this because I have been that person for much longer than I have been anything else. I think about you guys all the time, and want you to make it out of the IF purgatory with my entire heart. I know it must be hard to come and visit my space….I know this because some days (weeks, months) it was too heart-wrenching for me to visit my pregnant friends’ blogs while I was still riding the bench with yet another cystie, or doing more follow-up RE consults, or bemoaning Clomid, or pretty much constantly fearing that this would never ever ever work for me, oh no, I would never be so fortunate as those freaking lucky pregnant bloggers. I mean, I left Twitter because I couldn’t deal with the pregnancy 24-7 updates. Of course I never begrudged them their success in getting pregnant, it’s just that I wanted it so very very very badly for hubs and me, too, and sometimes that hurt feels too heavy to bear. I have not forgotten, and I never ever will.

The other ridiculously cool thing about starting this blog is that I have made some awesome friends online and in town because of it—that’s a whole other post in itself—but as I’m having this reflective moment (haha), I wanted to mention a new IF blogger you should visit, Mrs. Brightside. Mrs. B lives in Chicago and I met her during weekly IF mind-body meditation classes at Pulling Down the Moon over the summer. At our first class together we were both pretty much sobbing during the pre-meditation “sharing” portion of the class and went through half a box of Kleenex between the two of us…..it’s amazing what a class like that (and an awesome instructor) can release in you. Something just clicked between the two of us and we stood outside for eons afterward, sharing our stories and commiserating….and we’ve pretty much never stopped. In fact, I felt so safe and comfortable with her that I even shared my blog’s address—something I have never done with anyone else in real life (besides hubs of course). She has become a dear friend in this journey and I know everyone will welcome her into the blogging world as she has just taken the plunge with her very first post!

In other news, I miraculously survived some crazy-late nights this past weekend and didn’t get TOO cranky. Hubs and I have no visitors and no trips planned until Thanksgiving and I am so excited to be at home in a more mellow state for a while. There’s no place like home! 🙂