Tag: babies

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we’re having…

One girl for sure, and the doctor says she’s 80% sure the other twin is a girl too!!

Baby A, so-called because she’s the closest to an exit, gave us a great view and no doubt about the fact that she’s a girl. Baby B was turned to the side and there was a lot of umbilical cord in the way, so we can’t be positive until the next appointment on my birthday, December 16. This means Tinycat just might be our only baby boy, though my stepmom, who is known to have some fairly accurate dreams, swears we can’t be sure about Baby B, who is definitely a boy in her dreams. We’ll see!

We’re excited, and I can’t wait to finally narrow down our list of names!

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turnips: a week 16 pregnancy update

I’m now 16 weeks pregnant. 4 months! That seems crazy long! According to my What to Expect app, the babies are now the size of turnips, which Jon says reminds him of “those Harry Potter plant babies with the creepy faces.” Which is now exactly what I’m picturing inside of me:

Gotta love Ron’s face in that picture. I have a love-hate relationship with that whiny git. And yes, both Jon and I are huge Harry Potter fans.

Maybe I can start picturing them as something other than screaming turnip monsters if they cooperate at my doctor’s appointment tomorrow afternoon. There’s a chance we might see the babies’ sexes if they’re in decent positions on the ultrasound. So, I thought a little poll might be fun:

In our “real life” no one who knows us has guessed two girls. Almost everyone is split between two boys and one of each. I don’t have a “feeling” one way or the other, but I’m kinda hoping for one of each, just to get to have both experiences (not that I think gender=set experience or even expectations, or really wish to conflate sex and gender, but that’s a whole ‘nother super femininisty pregnancy post that I’ve yet to write). The idea of two boys scares me, but that’s just because I grew up with sisters, so I have very little experience with little boys. What do you think I’ve got in there??

 

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15 weeks

I’m now undeniably, obvious-to-strangers, pregnant. Here’s the twin bump at 15 weeks:

According to my app, this week the babies are the size of avocados! I’m feeling pretty good, less gagging, still tired, but feel like most of the yucky symptoms are on the wane. I’m in an annoying stage, clothes wise. I pretty much can’t wear my regular pants, because even with a rubber band looped through the buttonhole and around the button, they fall down (belly bands are no help in the falling down dept) and the zipper that won’t zip all the way digs into me. But all of my maternity pants fall down too. I can’t blame them– my hips probably have a smaller girth than my gut these days, and they’re just doing what stretchy things do– moving toward the smaller point. But sagging crotch is not a cute look, so I’m left hiking my pants back up every 4th step. Jon suggested a belt, but stretchy waistbands have no belt loops. I need maternity suspenders.

I’m starting to spend a lot of time thinking about stuff we’re going to do with these kids once they’re out and in the world, particularly with a lot of research on cloth diapers. It’s something that’s really important to us and our eco-friendly, less-waste, money-saving values, so I hope to make it work! There are zillions of options and figuring out what to buy is actually a little overwhelming. Luckily, I have several good friends who cloth diaper and are happy to pass on resources and encouragement. Most of the negativity I get about my plan to cloth diaper comes from people who have never even tried it, and I realized yesterday that not one of my good friends who has tried cloth diapering has said, “screw it, this sucks, I’m switching back to disposables.” So that’s encouraging!

Still counting down the days til the 16th when we have another appointment and another peek at the babies! Not sure if they’ll be able to tell genders or not at that point.

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the babies are bankrupting us already

Things are getting more real in Babyville as my belly grows and the impending arrival of two wee ones continues to sink in. Helping us feel reality? Baby stuff has begun to arrive in our house.

I knew all along that one of our bigger purchases would be a stroller. A lot of my friends with only one baby don’t wind up using their stroller all that much– it’s usually easier to just strap the kid to your chest, or carry him, or put him in the car seat and carry it, than it is to haul out a big bulky thing and wheel it around. However, with two babies, that’s less of an option. Pretty much any time I attempt to go somewhere in public with the babies without Jon, I’m going to need a stroller, so it needs to be one I like. Unfortunately, I hated most of the double strollers I looked at. The tandem ones (a friend described them as “fighter jet cockpits”) seem long and unwieldy, but the side-by-sides sometimes don’t fit through doors and store aisles. And the strollers I didn’t hate? Well, they were really, REALLY expensive. I fell in love with the Baby Jogger City Select, because it’s not ridiculously huge, it takes 2 infant carseats (actually a rarity in double strollers, as most are meant for parents with two kids of different ages rather than twins), and the seats can be configured a bajillion different ways. It was expensive, but not as expensive as many of the fancy stroller brands, but still, we were not so in love with the idea of spending $650+ for a stroller, and I figured there was no way I’d ever get one.

But then I found one for $499. And then I read my friend Suzanne’s rave review of her Baby Jogger City Select, which she uses for her baby and her toddler, and when she told me even her husband agreed the stroller was a good buy even at full price…well, we decided it was the stroller for us. I’m not crazy about the fact that it’s white, but with the $150 we saved, I’m sure we can buy some Scotchguard or something. We’re both pretty excited for it to arrive. Maybe we’ll have to put Tinycat in it to test it out or something!

In even more exciting news, we don’t need a new car. We went to Babies R Us, where they kindly let you test carseats in your actual car before you buy, and discovered that the Chicco Key Fit 30 actually fits in our car on the passenger and middle seat while still allowing Jon to scoot the drivers’ seat into a comfortable position. In fact, he can even put one behind the drivers’ seat and still drive, though we like being able to have one of us sit in the back with the babies, at least at the start.

So, lil Pontiac Vibe, you will remain with us a while longer. We picked out the orange and grey version (in stock it was that or black/gray), and orange happens to be Jon’s favorite color. We’ve put the seats in the car and driven around the block, so we know it works. Lots of people keep telling me I need a minivan, including the ladies on the Mothers of Multiples message boards, but somehow people in Europe manage to have multiple children in small cars, so I’m sure we can make it work. We have the added incentive of this car being paid off and not wanting to add car payments on top of baby expenses, so we don’t even need Tim Gunn to tell us to make it work.

I’m hoping the excitement over fun baby stuff can help distract me until our next doctor’s appointment on the 16th. I’m hoping we can get a peek at the genders then, and the anticipation is killing me!

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weeks 12/13

So, it’s been a bit since I’ve done a pregnancy update, huh? Tomorrow marks 14 weeks, but since the pic I’ve got is from the middle of week 12, this is sort of a combined update. Check out the bump on the beach (ignore the windblown hair):

I’m feeling pretty good as I start Trimester #2. Still sleepy pretty much all the time, but not AS sleepy as I was before. I spend a lot of time like this, still, though:

Tinycat is an excellent nap partner.

Still no puking, but I feel the general queasiness has increased. Everything makes me want to gag. Getting some of my own hair in my mouth? Gag. A seatbelt touching my neck? Gag. Trying to wear a scarf? Gag. Brushing my teeth? Gag. Even the sheets and blanket touching my neck in bed? Gag. It’s super fun.

Though I’ve written about struggling to get the calories and protein level recommended by my multiples pregnancy book, I’m gaining weight right on schedule. About 14 pounds, for those of you keeping track at home. It’s a weird thing to be cheering myself on for every extra glass of milk I drink and pound I gain, but I want nice big, healthy twins, so I’m doing it.

The reality of TWO BABIES seems to sink in more and more as my belly grows and grows, and we’re starting to think about all the stuff we need for the twins. One of our big concerns is that we might need a bigger car. We have a 6 year old Pontiac Vibe and are a one-car family. We’re a little concerned that my tall husband won’t be able to scoot his seat back far enough to drive with a carseat behind him, and not sure our backseat is big enough to have one seat behind the passenger and one seat in the middle. We really need to get some carseats and just try it, but we’re researching cars and trying to figure out what we need, and stressing out a little bit. How do you know what kind of car you need? Do I really have to get a minivan? How the heck are we going to afford these kids?

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my baby just cares for me

Mush alert.

Being pregnant has given me the warm fuzzies for my husband. I feel closer to him because I know we’re basically jumping off a cliff together, and because I know that we’re making something beautiful together, and because there’s no one else in the world I’d be willing to take this kind of adventure with. But I’m also feeling the love because he’s taking excellent care of me.

I shouldn’t be surprised– he’s always taken great care of me. When we were dating, we were in a car accident one Thanksgiving. I was driving us to my grandparents’ house on a wet road and hydroplaned while trying to grab my ringing cell phone (don’t phone and drive, kids!). The car spun into a ditch, and the airbag did a doozy on me. It turns out, thanks to mild scoliosis and an extra mutant vertebra that’s shaped like a wedge, I had a perfect spot for a compression fracture of my spine, and to this day am a quarter inch shorter on my left side as a result. After the accident, when deciding whether I would go back to college or go home with my parents or stay with him, he was adamant that he would take care of me. And he did– he fed me my pills on schedule, let me sleep in a recliner, and kept me supplied with my favorite ice cream until I felt well enough to go back to school.

A year into our marriage, we moved to Charleston, SC, where he was doing his residency in pediatrics. I had a hard time with the move, far away from everyone I knew and loved, in a strange new place, working a job I didn’t really like much, and for the first few months I was pretty much a mess. One day, I attempted to go for a bike ride with our dog Bessie, and she pulled me off and I scraped up my knee really bad. Bleeding and hysterical, I called Jon. I’m sure it sounded awful on the phone, because he biked all the way home from the hospital, bandaged up my knee, which was really not as bad as my hysterics made it sound, held me, hugged me, kissed me, and then biked back to work. He never said anything about how crazy I’d acted about that skinned knee. He knew it was just an emotional catalyst that broke the dam that had held back my sadness and depression about the move, and he loved me through it. Eventually we made friends and settled in, and when it came time for us to leave Charleston, I was sad then too.

Last winter, I got the flu. People who tell me they think they have the flu, I have one response for them: “Do you feel like you’re dying? Do you think maybe death would be preferable to the way you feel right now? OK, maybe then you have the flu.” It was the sickest I’ve ever been. I had a fever of 102 for 8 days straight. I coughed so much and so hard that I bruised my ribs and was sore for a month afterward. All told, I was sick the entire month of December. Jon was working lots of shifts in the ER, and, in between, when he should have been sleeping, kept me dosed on meds, made sure I was fed, and prevented our house from falling apart. He held me as I coughed and cried and promised me I’d feel better one day, even though in the middle of that illness, I didn’t really believe him.

Now he’s dealing with me, hopped up on a double dose of twin hormones, admittedly acting insane a lot of the time, the kind of pregnant person they make jokes about. While he did jokingly reassure me that my insanity isn’t a new development for him to deal with, he has made me feel so cared for. He encourages me to nap when I’m tired, he picks up the slack that I’m leaving in all the things to be done around the house, he bought me Miralax and reminds me to take it (and he’s not grossed out by talking about gross pregnancy symptoms like constipation!), and he helps me find things I’m willing to eat. He gets me wet washcloths and anti-nausea medicine and holds my hand as I sit next to the toilet and cry, because even throwing up makes me cry these days.

In other words, he’s doing what he’s always done: taking amazing care of me. Just like I know he will take amazing care of our babies. And maybe I’m hormonal and mushy and this whole post is making you want to barf (hey! welcome to the club!), but telling the story of this latest adventure would be incomplete without a little insight into the awesome partner I have along the way. This whole thing would be entirely too terrifying without him.

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no more negative nellies

image via Flickr user AMERICANVIRUS under a Creative Commons license. Image links to Flickr page.

People seem to have two parallel reactions when informed that we’re having twins. The first is the excitement that Jon says only happens when the person having the twins isn’t the person expressing the excitement. The second reaction is to attempt to terrify us.

Now, I don’t think people are actually intentionally attempting to terrify us, but they’re doing it anyway. I liken it to a hazing ritual, or the way the old-timer attendings like to make medical residents feel small and sleep-deprived because “that’s how it was in my day.” In terms of baby-having, this usually involves telling us we’ll never sleep again, we’ll never have sex again, we’ll never have money again, I’ll never not have a baby attached to my body again, I’ll never finish school, etc. And the thing is, I think most of the people making these sort of statements mean well– they might be telling us something they wish someone had told them before they had a baby, or maybe they’re passing on something they found genuinely helpful.

But the thing is: we’re freaking out enough, thanks. Anything you could possibly say to us has already crossed our freaked out, holy shit, what’s gonna happen to us minds, and then some.

I’m worried about bed rest and NICU time. I’m worried about whether or not I’ll ever get my PhD and become an English professor like I planned. I’m worried about how the dynamic of my marriage is about to change. I worry that I’ll never be able to go to the grocery store again, because you can’t put two infant carriers in one shopping cart. I worry that I won’t be able to have that special first-baby bond I see with my friends and their firstborns, because I’ll always have some other baby with needs distracting me from cuddles and eye gazing. I’m worried I won’t even be able to keep two tiny humans alive. When I really get on a roll, I worry about double terrible twos and threes. I worry that we’re going to be shut-ins who never leave our house. I’ve got plenty of worries.

And Jon does too.

So the other day he made a declaration: we’re not gonna take it anymore. We are not afraid to get rude with people who are saying things that scare us, and we’re not afraid to tell them to knock it off, because we are trying our hardest to think positively and be excited, and it’s really taking some effort because right now, all we can think is HOLY SHIT. I’m literally already growing out of my pants, and I’m only at 8 weeks, and shit is just gonna keep getting real. So, if you know us and speak to us, could you maybe help us be excited and not scared out of our minds about this? I know everything in our lives is about to change, for better or for worse, and we could sure use some stories about the better parts right about now.

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insane, crazy, giant news

So, you may have noticed that the blog has been quieter than usual. It’s because I’ve been keeping some really big news under my hat, and I’ve been unable to even think of anything else, let alone write about anything else. And today that news got bigger and crazier, and though we were planning to wait a little longer for the reveal, we just can’t keep this in. So, we’re telling the world…

THAT WE ARE HAVING TWINS.

I’m not kidding, I’m not joking, and no, I don’t even believe it, but the doctor tells me the two fuzzy blobs on the screen are in fact two babies. Two babies that I will be birthing in April. Holy crap. Totally insane. What was already giant, life changing, you will never sleep again news has now doubled.

In case you doubt me, or you enjoy looking at fuzzy blobs on ultrasound images (if you don’t, that’s cool, I never know what I’m looking at and find ultrasound images a little weird, myself), here is my proof:

Apparently this is happening, people.

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bufflo and babies

I have a weird relationship with kids.

Scariest movie Ive ever seen.
Scariest movie I've ever seen.

On the one hand, I absolutely love them.  I’m the girl making googly eyes at your baby in the grocery store checkout.  I am the one who will hog your newborn when I get the chance to meet her, and will beg you not to make me give her back.  Heck, I volunteer rocking babies in the Special Care Nursery just so I can hold sweet, adorable, sleepy teeny-tinies once a week (I call myself a semi-professional baby rocker).  And not just babies, kids crack me up.  They say the funniest things, they have the craziest theories on the way the world works, and their sweetness can absolutely melt my heart.  I spent one summer as a camp counselor to a bunch of eight year olds and loved almost every minute of it (almost because the world’s worst sound is puke from a top bunk to the floor at 4 a.m., and I learned this the hard way).

On the other hand, I am terrified of almost everything related to childbirth.  Yeah, yeah, I know, you’re like, uh, Ernie Bufflo?  Everyone is terrified of childbirth.  Yes, I’m aware of that.  I’m telling you that I’m even more insanely terrified than most people you’ve met.  Terrified and squeamish, which I know is super strange from a girl who just loves to gross people out with medical anecdotes at the dinner table.  A girl whose entire family is in the medical profession.  A girl whose mother used to teach Lamaze and wrote a master’s thesis on special anti-nausea acupressure bracelets for pregnant ladies.  That’s me! Continue reading “bufflo and babies”