Betting on Baby

"Call me Judgy McJudgerson. When I was younger, living in a family of 10 kids, I always assumed every womb had the same capacity for creation. I would see people with one or two kids and think what a shame it was that they only had a few children. We had so much fun as a large family and who's going to clean the house with only 4 people there?

Now I am older and have heard the stories of many parents that longed to have more children, their own children, or the opportunity to be a parent.

It is a hard thing to learn by experience. However, I have found out I'm pretty good at keeping secrets. The steps to keeping a secret:

1. Do not anticipate any sadness
2. Have someone dare you to not tell anyone
3. Tell half truths
4. Cry at home
5. Assume that when you finally tell others, they will be impressed by your fortitude

I attended a support group for women going through the process of In-Vitro Fertilization(IVF). There were a couple women who had messed up their medications- oops. That means they had to start the process over again- an expensive and devastating mistake. There were a couple women starting again because sometimes it doesn't work the first time. Imagine giving your body magic pills and telling it to make way for a baby. Sometimes that magic just doesn't work.

There was a woman there who was doing the process alone. She wanted a baby, was in her forties, and her husband was done working toward that dream. So she was in the middle of a divorce and trying to have a baby alone. She advised all of us newbies to tell family and friends about our experiences, so they could grieve with us and rejoice with us.

It is a hard secret to keep. However, we didn't want to let our family and friends down when we didn't have news right away. So, instead of telling everyone the good news, we are telling everyone the bad news. This sadness is hard to share, but it is harder to keep the grief inside."

The paragraphs you have just read are from a draft I wrote up a while ago, but never published. As you now know, the magic pills/injections finally worked for us and we are expecting twins sometime in July. It was a hard road. The nice thing about riding on gravel, is you get used to the bumps after a while.

Infertility is a hard road, but the craziest part about all of it, is pregnancy is also a hard road. Surprise, surprise.

Now, instead of shooting myself with needles every day, I am sitting at home watching movies. Sadly, I cannot eat bon bons while doing so, because pregnancy has put me off chocolate. Oh the sacrifices we make for our children.

I've been relegated to couch potatoism by my doctor, since I've gone into the hospital 3x in the last 3 weeks due to regular contractions. Did you know that having contractions at month 7 in your pregnancy is actually quite normal? One doctor explained it as capacity readiness- once your uterus hits a certain capacity, it is ready to empty itself. Amen, uterus. However, with twins, that can happen sooner than you want, since there are two babies sharing the same space. We're currently 31 weeks in, but would like to at least make it to week 36 before they pop out.

So I sit on our couch, and dream about eating tomatoes, chocolate, oranges, Mexican food, spicy food, and really, any regularly-sized portion of any food that currently gives me heartburn.

Sadly, my heartburn digest is quite extensive. So I sip from my water bottle and keep a tums tally on my hand as the weeks pass me by.

We have been very blessed with baby items. Our babies will be the best dressed babies in the world. Our cars seats were ordered and sent back because they were too large to fit in our Honda Fit. Strange. We are currently arranging our one bedroom apartment into a baby paradise. We have had lots of help- people have come to clean, organize, return items, and to store some items for us.

I have also been dreaming of having these babies, and them being old enough to talk. Last night my dream involved having twin girls- whose names I could not remember and had to ask family members multiple times what they were. Perhaps in my subconscious I am nervous that they will grow up too fast. I had another dream recently about birthing my babies and having them be around the age of 2 years. Very peculiar.

One nice thing about being on partial bed rest is I can sleep from 8-8. I still wake up like 5x a night to use the bathroom, but I usually fall asleep pretty quickly again. I figure if I can stock up on 12 hour nights, perhaps I won't be as tired when those babies come.

On my last trip into the hospital, I was given two bags of fluids. Apparently my baby pools needed some help to be refilled. While I was being re-hydrated, the lady in the room next to mine was screaming bloody murder. Ah, the joys of natural childbirth.

It is indescribably weird and beautiful to feel the aliens growing within me and moving around. I imagine their tiny hands resting against the inside of my belly and cannot reconcile those movements with two babies I will be meeting in the next two months.

I am most fearful of:

1. Painful birthing/recuperation
2. Postpartum depression
3. Ugly babies
4. Babies that cry all the time
5. Never leaving my house again
6. Death
7. Mucus

I am most excited about:

1. Eating food again
2. Beautiful babies
3. My own babies
4. Visitors
5. Tiny clothes

Those are not in any particular order, but do reflect some of my anticipated fears and joys. And now, some photos. Photographical proof that aliens do exist. One from the side:

 One from the front- this one's Cordelia rubbing her eye

Here's a fantastic one of Bruce. We call it angry baby with monocle. 

 Poor Charles, he's so busy all the time. Sometimes life can make you ingenious. Here's what he did to wrap our bread loaves one night.

 Here's how happy he was to have one more thing to do. Pregnancy, it's so easy for everyone involved. In case you were wondering, he just stuck them sideways in a pot and covered it in plastic wrap. We usually wrap them individually in plastic wrap.

That's a wrap!