Uppercase Woman

Yawn...so very boring...

So I don’t really know what to write, and this is gonna be totally boring.

Life is pretty much trucking along. I’ve worked a lot, both last week and this week, the most hours-per-week I've put in this summer. I work at a college, and it’s been exciting to see the new students coming in. It’s an art and design college, so it’s always fun to try to guess the majors of the new students…pretty easy, sadly. Funky hair and dirty clothes? Fine Arts. Funky hair and great clothes? Fashion. Schlumpy and earnest? Art Education. Tall, blond, and wearing heels? Interior Design. Wearing a lot of knit? Textile Design. Everyone else? Graphic Design.

I’ve also spent a lot of time at work immersed in Microsoft Excel creating spreadsheets and graphs of my store traffic. Because I enjoyed it, my best friend claims I’m a nerd. That must explain the incredible boringness of my life right now.

I was going to write about picking out names for the boys, but Tertia, that witch, totally psychically stole my idea. All I know is I’ve been told by the few twins I know to be sure to NOT RHYME. We picked some names, then trashed them, and picked new ones, and trashed those. We’re currently thinking about some, but we imagine we’ll wait to meet the babies before we really decide.

The only thing Tertia didn’t cover was making sure the names are still good if your children turn out gay. No gay man wants to be named Ralph or Gulliver. No self-respecting lesbian wants to be named Tiffany or Alyssa. It’s important to consider these things when naming a child. Being gay is difficult enough without a totally crappy name too.

What else? Oh, I’m going camping this weekend, for the first time since the 4th of July weekend. This is really unusual, since my husband and I usually spend about 30 nights outside between May and October. My wonderful morning sickness and bone aching fatigue have prevented much camping this year. I’m looking forward to going, and I’ve called in my pathetic monthly allotment of Zofran. I’ll start taking them tomorrow, so by the time we leave Friday they’ll be at full effectiveness and maybe I’ll be able to eat fairly normally over the weekend (of course, just in time to go back to work, I’ll run out). While my morning sickness is better, it’s still bad enough that I can’t really think much about food other than in an abstract sense.

See? I’m so boring right now.

It is also my darling husband’s birthday…I bought him a fab gift, on line, that he’s gonna love. I’d tell you what it is, but he just might pick today to read my blog early (he usually reads it late at night).

So Happy Birthday darlin’!

And I’m signing off the most boring post ever.

Club Me Over The Head

The only cool thing about infertility has been getting connected into some really awesome communities.

On Fertility Friend, a place to post your chart (awww, remember charting???) and get baby dust, I’ve been lucky enough to hook into a group of women local to my area. We’ve gotten together a number of times in person, and it’s been a wonderful experience sitting face to face with other women going through similar struggles. And most of them avoid using baby dust at all costs.

The blogging community, of course, has not only been the source of comfort and connection for me, but an inspiration. I’ve been a writer for my entire life (although I sucked until my mid-twenties), and was just beginning to move from writing primarily poetry to writing creative non-fiction when I started blogging (someday I’ll post this long piece I have weaving plant life into my infertility, and see what ya’ll think). Writing in the “blogging” style has really opened up my eyes to what I can do.

Recently I’ve connected into an email list serve of fat, currently pregnant, formerly infertile women (I know, how on earth did I find them?). Some are moms already, and many of us are pregnant with twins.

I’ve always gotten great advice from all of those sources, and one of the things that several people have recommended to me is to join my local “Moms to Twins” Club. That way I can benefit from the experience of those that have gone before me.

Now…let’s just speak for a moment about my experiences joining clubs. I’ve only joined a handful in my life, and most for lousy reasons like to cause trouble. I specifically joined my high school’s art club so that I could make our school mascot African-American (we were the Trojans—oh yes—and some poor schmuck had to wear a large paper mache head and dance around). I joined a college alternative newspaper cause there was a cute boy involved (turned out he was gay, so I quit soon after).

Now, of course, I’m the member of a couple of twelve-step programs. The benefit of those are; a) they save my life, literally, on a daily basis; and b) you can’t get kicked out, no matter how fucked up you are.

So, with these experiences behind me, it was with a touch of trepidation that I began researching my local “Moms to Twins” club. After some fancy Google searches, I landed on the website of a group not too far from me, in a local ritzy suburb.

It’s really colorful.

With lots of cute drawings.

And a photo of the moms.

Moms wearing light blue plaid jumper dresses.

Moms with perfect chin length bobs.

Moms with diamond rings that cost more than my house.

So, picture me at this club.

With my all-black clothes.

With my foul mouth.

With my elbow-to-shoulder tattoos (not to mention the huge titted and huge assed super girl that looks a little like me covering half my back).

Should be fun, no?

I emailed, in good faith, the contact on the site. My dear hopes are that there will be a group here in the city, instead of in the suburbs… and maybe then I’ll find one or two other tattooed souls.

Or I’ll start my own club! Oh! Good idea!

Did you suffer from infertility?

Are you currently pregnant with multiples?

Do you have tattoos?

Then please come to the next meeting of the

“Tattooed Whores Begetting Twins Club”

At each meeting, we’ll discuss local tattoo artists, whether or not you should wear long sleeves to parent/teacher conferences, and oh yeah, maybe we’ll talk about the best strollers and what not. Don’t miss it!

Fat, Fat, Fat

I went on my first diet, a liquid protein diet, when I was twelve. My mother was doing it, so I thought it would be fun (ug, protein drinks in the seventies. What was I thinking). Plus, the boys at school called me fat, so it must be true, right? I lost weight, and felt very cool and skinny, and was devastated to discover the boys still called me fat. In fact, they called all the girls fat.

Since that time, I have been on 65465196 diets. The don’t-eat-all-day-and-then-drink-all the-beer-in-the-universe diet was my favorite during my twenties. The Carb Addict’s Diet put me in the hospital for six days (something about the sudden decrease in fiber caused my intestines to prolapse). I’ve seen two different nutrionists. Weight Watcher’s was my most recent success.

But I’m an emotional eater, and I hate to deprive myself. These are bad traits in a dieter.

So it’s not a terrible shock that during my months and months of fertility treatments I found myself gaining weight at an alarming rate, both due to the actual side effects of the drugs (progesterone, we all know, makes you RAVENOUS) and the fact that I kept getting those fucking negative pregnancy tests.

So when I finally got that positive pregnancy test, I went ahead and weighed myself for the first time in four months, only to find I’d gained back all the weight I lost with Weight Watcher’s.

At first, I lost weight, due to my morning sickness. But after I read that damn book, I began forcing myself to eat every two hours, and have successfully managed to gain fourteen pounds.

And now, I’m hovering at a number on the scale that is so obscene I won’t even share it with you, you lovely supportive people who don’t know where I live. It’s just too awful.

I have excused this in all the old favorite ways: I’m retaining water (and I am—you should see the water buffalo feet I have at the end of the day, and you could store things in the craters I get in my calves from anything pressing against them); I’m drinking a lot of water; etc, etc.

Plus there is the fabulous new excuse—I’m carrying fucking twins!

So I’ve worked hard, these last couple of weeks, to accept the changes to my body--my barely-existent waist disappearing, my huge apron of a stomach pushing out farther and farther.

It’s so difficult to switch from being a person obsessed with losing weight to one that sits back and just lets the pounds creep on. While I know, and the midwife confirmed, that gaining weight now is better for the twins in the long run, it’s still so hard to be ok with that huge, obscene number on the scale.

Another way I’ve comforted myself is by remembering that at least one of the twin books I read claimed that the uterus of a woman carrying twins is at least two months ahead of a singleton pregnancy. So my waist was vanishing because my twelve week uterus thinks it’s really twenty weeks pregnant.

So imagine my dismay when the midwife checks the size of my uterus and says, “Perfect! It’s about the size of a fourteen week uterus, normal in twins!”

So…even with all my sickness (and my unrelenting whining thereof) I have managed to gain weight without much in the way of help from the boys…

Yep, I’m a loser. Not about the fatness or the weight gain. It just puts the sickness in perspective, if you know what I mean. To realize that the weight I’ve gained is not all contributable to my boys and the side effects of pregnancy is to realize that I have been maybe just a teensy bit overdramatic about my illness.

Ah, the pain and humiliation of perspective.

Of course, I can see this because today is a good stomach day. Yesterday was a bad one. But the good ones are increasing, and the fatigue has really faded away quite a bit.

It’s time for me to begin exercising again. This will help the water retention, I hope, and will help get me in shape to actually squeeze these kiddos out. I’m thinking water aerobics and pre-natal yoga. And maybe walking my dog again. Got any other suggestions?

Respond, don't react, or that's what they tell me

I thought a lot about whether or not to respond to recent goings-on. If you’d rather not get involved, or get riled up again, don’t read any further. OK? I still don't know how to do that text hiding thing, so just scroll down or, you know, not...

I spent the better part of the last few days feeling much like I did once back in fourth grade. On that day, my two bestest friends, Jenny and Veronica, decided they hated me. I begged and pleaded to know what I’d done, and they just laughed at me and skipped away holding hands while I wept on the playground.

I didn’t realize that my discussions of my pregnancy difficulties were causing pain. I realized that it could be difficult for some people to be sympathetic to my troubles, but I didn’t think my plight would actually hurt anyone.

I remember how it felt when a stupid twit at a meeting came up to me with her ultrasound in hand and said, “We weren’t even trying!” I remember my entire day of rage after I saw a woman with not one but two—TWO—kids (a boy and a girl) waiting to get blood work done at the infertility clinic. I was convinced, at that moment, that she was hogging the limited number of babies that were available to us infertile women. I remember.

I GET IT.

My infertility struggles have clearly sucked, but they’ve also clearly sucked less than those of many, many other women.

I’ve never lost a baby.

I’ve never had a failed IVF cycle.

I’ve never been told my uterus won’t carry a baby to term.

I’ve never been told I carry a dangerous genetic defect.

The truth is, since my infertility issues were 95% related to a male factor, I most likely will be able to carry these babies successfully to term.

The truth is, I have 14 frozen embryos still, and I could easily have more children, possibly even that deeply longed for little girl.

I GET IT. On the infertility spectrum, I got off easy.

But there are other truths you don’t know.

You don’t know that this will be my only pregnancy—not just because being pregnant has turned out to be difficult for me—but because my husband and I are financially poor (we hover a bit above the poverty line). It’s a choice, to some extent—we could both make more money in our fields but we’ve chosen to be happy with our lives instead. The only reason we were able to do ART at all was because my not-poor mother-in-law desperately wants to be a grandmother and paid for it. We only hoped for one child, since we knew we could provide a decent life for one. Now we’ll have two, which will be quite a financial struggle for us--one we welcome--but a struggle nonetheless. Doing this all over again isn’t an option (unless we win the lottery or something).

You also don’t know that part of why I wanted a girl so badly is because I have tremendous fears about raising boys. As the only child of a single mother, I grew up without any close contact with men or boys. As a result, the only relationships I’ve had with male humans (with a few rare exceptions in recent years) have been sexual. Now, that doesn’t mean I’m going to be a pedophile, it just means that I’m scared—this is uncharted territory for me.

I read back over my last few months of entries, particularly those I’ve posted since I found out I was pregnant. I did, indeed, complain a fair amount about my morning sickness. But each time I did, I talked about being grateful. Or, if I couldn’t talk about being grateful, I talked about the fact that I knew I should be grateful.

If I hadn’t had this blog, and the supportive comments that I’ve received--particularly these last ten weeks or so--I’m not sure how I would have survived. Being a part of this community has saved my life. Sadly, no one handed me an etiquette book or gave a gentle list of rules to follow. I had no idea I’d crossed a line.

Since discovering this, and reading everyone’s comments about it, I’ve thought a lot about my responsibilities to my audience—and to myself.

Writing here has become as much a part of me as breathing. I can’t imagine going back to a life without it. Censoring myself will rob me of much of the joy that I get from blogging. It’s not that I don’t want to be sensitive—I do—but as Getupgrrl pointed out to me, it’s impossible to speak honestly and not step on someone's toes.

Instead, I’m changing the subtitle of my blog to reflect a little more honestly where I am at the moment. Perhaps, like Indigo Girl, once I have the babies I’ll start a separate blog about parenting.

But I’m going to continue to talk about how I’m doing. I’ll probably also begin to write about my fears and doubts about parenting. If this will make you uncomfortable, by all means, please stop reading my blog. I’ll miss you, and I won’t stop reading your blogs, but I completely understand.

I wouldn’t dream of trying to make you come to my baby shower either.

I guess as my life evolves from someone struggling to get pregnant, to someone who is struggling with being pregnant, to someone who is struggling with parenting (my middle name should be struggle), my readers will evolve as well. That’s fine, and perhaps the change in my blog subtitle will draw some other women like me to this blog and I’ll learn even more.

Back in fourth grade, Jenny and Veronica eventually changed their minds and we were all bestest friends once more. I changed schools the next year, so I don’t know if being ostracized would have happened again.

But this time, I’m not moving. I like this town, and all of you living in it.

Oh yeah—and I heard the heartbeats today at the midwife’s. Both of them.

Pretty darn cool.

Um, wait a minute...

Well, it's 11:30 on a Saturday night and I'm feeling compelled to post again.

I also suffer from a compulsive need to explain myself... (I'm smiling here, people!).

First of all, I never thanked the twenty or so people that told me my sadness over not having a girl was normal. I'm so grateful to all of you--it really helped.

Second of all---whoa on the whole depression thing! Wow! While I may be suffering from some mild depression (again, directly related to feeling crappy all the time), I don't think I'm fatally depressed.

A couple of things about me: first off, I suffer terribly from post-event let down. By this I mean when anything I work toward for a long time finally comes to fruition, I always have a brief period of depression afterwards. This has happened with work projects, with pieces I'm writing, and the worst came after a recovery convention I worked on for a year. Perhaps, to some extent, that is going on here now--now that it's over, I'm pregnant, I don't know what to do next.

Secondly, I'm in recovery. I know, I know, I've said it a million times, but here's the deal with that: I always talk about how I'm feeling--honestly. Even when it makes me look like an idiot (I can't TELL you the number of times my deepest fears have made an entire meeting crack up), or incredibly self-centered, or small and petty. Whatever it is, I share it, because if I don't, it makes me crazy--and when I'm crazy, I drink. Perhaps it hasn't been fair of me to share in my blog the way I share in meetings. I don't know. But I don't know how else to be, and I'm not sure I want to be a different way.

Thirdly, and lastly, I realized something today. After I got done crying about the comments (hey, I'm pregnant, hormonal and wacky right now--I didn't really take it personally) I realized that in some ways I haven't been completely honest about this pregnancy process.

I haven't written much about the funny conversations my husband and I have had about naming the babies (like if we call them Jack and Zach, will anyone get the "Down By Law" reference?). Or about what it's been like to see the babies dancing on the screen during an ultrasound. Or about how, in a way, every time I puke I feel vaguely comforted, knowing it means I'm still pregnant.

I haven't written about those moments, because I believed that sharing my hope, my positive thoughts, my small and precious few moments of joy, that--THAT would be what would hurt my friends that are still waiting to discover what lies at the end of this road.

I couldn't tell you about those moments because I believed, THEN I would be 'flaunting' my pregnancy, and rubbing everyone's faces in it.

I felt that if I shared my pain and sadness that you all would let me stay in this club. That pain and sadness were the price of admission, and if I didn't have any, I wouldn't be welcome.

How sick is that, huh? It was only because Getupgrrl, my personal blogging hero, worried that I might need some help that I realized I HAD been censoring myself, even as I was feeling like people were telling me I needed to do some censoring.

I didn't expect to cause a minor controversy; and I certainly didn't mean to hurt anyone's feelings. I should have known that I had when most of the comments I received were from names I didn't know well.

I also shouldn't have reacted so strongly this morning when I posted my last entry; I probably should have answered the phone when my sponsor called me this morning instead. But, just for the record, when I said that we (meaning infertile women) have to give up the idea that we will ever see two pink lines or ever get to be pregnant, I was speaking of myself. Before I got pregnant, I had to accept the fact that it might not happen. I HAD to "prepare" myself in that way. Because Hope hurt too much. So while those things did come true for me eventually, I had to let go of the idea that they could.

Ah, hell, I'm probably not explaining that right.

If it's any comfort, it's my doctor's office's fault that I'm so pissed off. And I'll tell you why...

On Friday, I went in for my final ultrasound with my RE. After the ultrasound, I had a brief meeting with the nurse and asked her how soon I could get off the medication (I was still taking one Estrace tablet a day, two progesterone gel thingys up the twat a day, and 2cc of Progesterone in Oil every other day). My doctor is very conservative, and tends to keep his patients on the medications much longer than anyone else I've heard of. I figured that since I'd come to the end of the first trimester, I would be free, finally--free to not have gross discharge, free to not have the water retention from the drugs, etc.

So when the nurse told me that it would take another 3-4 weeks to wean off the drugs, I flipped out. It wasn't fair, really, to flip out on her since she wasn't the "pregnancy nurse" but flip I did.

Later that afternoon when the pregnancy nurse called me with the blood results, and told me to continue the medication, I was able to say simply, NO. Then the nurse said, "What?" and I said, "NO. I will not continue the drugs this way anymore." Then she put me on hold and put on the doctor and we got it all straightened out.

The long and short of it is I'm free of the progesterone gel (and was FINALLY able to have sex with my husband...ah....) and the Estrace, but I still have to do the shots for another week.

I can live with that.

But I was still chomping at the bit, with some unexpressed frustration and anger this morning, so for that, I apologize. If anyone is still reading this silly post at this point!

Let's move on now, shall we? And I promise to share at least one happy thing a week. 'Kay?

Cuts Like A Knife

I knew when I posted about feeling a loss because I'm not having a baby girl that I would hurt someone. I thought I acknowledged that when I posted about being stuck in a place without gratitude.

Perhaps I said it wrong.

For me, infertility has been a slow and steady series of losses. We all know that. It's being in a constant state of mourning--mourning over innocence lost, mourning the ability to hope, all of it.

We have to let go of the idea that a baby will be created by an act of love. Instead, babies are created in petri dishes and injected into us.

We have to let go of the idea that we will be in charge of our bodies. We become a slave to synthetic hormones and a doctor's schedule.

We have to let go of the idea that our bodies are wonderful, magical things that can create a new life. Instead, they become pointless and fat from the drugs and ugly.

We have to let go of the idea that even though we are paying all this money, spending all this time, it most often still doesn't work.

We have to let go of the hope that we will ever see two fucking lines on the home pregnancy test.

Sometimes, we have to let go of the idea that we will ever have children of our own, or experience pregnancy at all.

For me, once I got pregnant, this process continued.

I had to let go of the idea that pregnancy was beautiful, that I would be happy and thrilled about it because all of my time was spent hanging my head over a toilet bowl until blood vessels burst in my eyes and the corners of my mouth cracked and bled.

I had to let go of my dream of giving birth at a birth center because I was pregnant with twins.

Then I had to let go of the idea of having a little girl when I found out both babies were boys.

As happy and relieved as I was to find out that both babies were healthy, I just simply couldn't believe that God was such an asshole that he would take away this, my very last hope and dream, my longing for a little girl. It's going to take me a while to forgive God for this--for all of it, all of the last two years of pain and struggle.

I imagine that I will be able to forgive shortly after my babies are in my arms.

I'll say it again. Please understand--I realize that I am a lucky bitch. I realize that it only took me two years. I realize that I got pregnant, with healthy twins, on my first IVF attempt.

I KNOW THIS.

But I'm still hurting from letting go of all my hopes. ALL OF THEM. I won't apologize for that.

Good News, with a side of regret

About ten years ago, when I switched from being someone convinced that I didn't want children to someone who did, I began dreaming of my child. I could picture her perfectly; she has dark curly hair, like her dad, and big huge blue eyes, like me. She's beautiful, of course, so much so that people stop us on the street to tell us so (my mother tells me that this happened to her with me).

When my husband and I began trying to conceive, back in the early fun days, we talked about names. We decided we would name her Victoria Anne--after her aunt, who only lived for a few days after birth, because my mother in law didn't know that thalidomide could cause defects. Anne is also my mother's name.

Then of course, we embarked on the nightmare journey of infertility. Throughout the struggles, I clung to the idea of little Tori (the way we would shorten Victoria, much less common than Vicky) and she helped me get through.

When we finally did get pregnant, and then found out it was twins, we got very excited. My husband, while not a "I must have a boy to carry on the family name" kind of guy, confessed that he would love to have a son, someone he could share his enthusiasm for trains with, and call his buddy (although he calls the dog his buddy, so he might need to think of something else).

It seemed like we could have everything we wanted in one fell swoop--one boy, one girl. After all the years of suffering and weeping during the infertility treatments, and my horrible sickness these last two months, we awaited the preliminary results of our CVS testing all day today with bated breath.

It is with great joy that I tell you that we have two wonderfully healthy....boys.

Being the self-centered person I am, it took a minute for me to get to grateful--grateful that there are no chromosonal abnormalities present in these two tiny lives. I felt a pang of regret so strong at first that I nearly shut my heart down.

It's awful--living here, in this place completely lacking gratitude. I'm sure lots of you reading this are like, "Jesus Christ BITCH, first all the complaining about the sickness, and now--we would KILL to have two healthy babies, whatever they are!" Maybe it's because I'm an alcoholic--alcoholics classicly suffer from a strong sense of entitlement--or maybe it's just because I'm human, I don't know. But damn it, I wanted a baby girl. I really did.

Moxie told me, a long time ago, that she knew that she wanted a baby girl so badly that she decided not to know the sex of the baby when she was pregnant. And when El Chico was born a boy, she couldn't regret anything, because he was there, in her arms, and she was in love. I thought about that, briefly, right before I asked the sex of the babies. I thought maybe I shouldn't know. Maybe I should wait and see.

My husband, wonderful, darling man that he is, keeps telling me he's sorry--like somehow he caused this. He also said, "Hey, maybe the results are wrong--maybe they did the same placenta twice!" meaning that when they did the extraction of tissue during the CVS that they didn't manage to get it right.

It's possible. Plus the results we got today are preliminary--only 95% accurate, as opposed to the results we'll get next week, which will be 99.9% accurate.

But I doubt it.

Even if it was wrong, it would be just like God to give me one healthy boy and one unhealthy girl. At least, that's what the God of my Infertility would do. The benevolent God that I've tried to believe in these last few months doesn't play games that way.

I know one thing for sure; I am lucky. I'm lucky that I got pregnant from my first IVF. I'm lucky two embryos stuck. I'm lucky that even with my age, my husband's age, and the use of ICSI in that IVF, that both babies are healthy.

I know that we could do this all over again--we have 14 frozen embryos, for God's sake--but we can't afford to do PGD to find out if they're girls, and we can't afford to have three children. I also cannot bear the thought of being pregnant again. My husband said maybe we could adopt a little girl, and maybe someday we will. I don't know.

Tori will live on in my heart. And I'm not going to feel bad for regreting losing her. Over the years I've learned, through many painful lessons, that what I want the most is not neccessarily the best thing for me. Years from now I know that my heart will be bursting with love for my boys, and I will be so glad that I had them.

But right now, I think I'll go cry a bit.

Celebrate Good Times, maybe!

Tomorrow is that magical day: I will be twelve weeks pregnant, and out of my first trimester. Well, unless you believe that 14 weeks is really the end of the first trimester. Whatever.

All I know is that I want to stop fucking vomiting. It’s been better, these last few days—I had a great weekend, really did well. But both Sunday and Tuesday nights I threw up AGAIN. I’m really frustrated and exhausted with it. I need to feel better, and I need to feel better soon.

There has been some interesting discussing lately by getupgrrl and others about how insensitive people are always telling us infertiles that “pregnancy isn’t all that great, you’re not missing out on much.” I agree, wholeheartedly, that most of these people are shitting, rather than speaking, out of their mouths, and that they don’t think before they do either (shit or speak, I mean).

But I wonder if some of them feel like I do—completely and utterly ripped off by the whole pregnancy thing. I’ve spent the last two months being so sick I can barely function, and barely live my life. I have moments, frequently, when I wish I wasn’t pregnant, just so I could feel something resembling normal. I feel fairly certain that if I were to lose these babies, I would never be willing to succumb to pregnancy again.

If those insensitive fertiles are anything like me, they are bitter and angry that they didn’t to have a magical pregnancy. Plus, they’re probably pissed off that parenting is such hard work and so difficult too. Maybe their bitterness just flows out of them unintentionally. Maybe that’s why they shit out their mouths. I don’t know.

___________________________________________________________________

Yesterday we had our CVS testing. Well, I had the testing, while my husband sat next to me and ate the free crackers they kindly put out in the Gowned Waiting Area for us pregnant ladies.

The genetic counselor we had was one of the loveliest women I’ve ever met. I was so anxious, my heart was going 5465987 miles a minute (I was terrified they’d take my blood pressure), and she calmed me right down. She explained everything about the procedure to us, outlined all possible results, and then took our family history (which is TOTALLY boring if you take out the white trash elements and the alcoholism).

Then we got the long ultrasound where they measure everything under the sun. Everything came back normal, although they could only do the nuchal fold measurement on one baby (it was 1.7!) because that baby was on top of the other one.

I think they also had some trouble with the ultrasound because of my weight (obviously, they did not use the dildo cam!).

I have been cursed with what us fat people call an “apron” which is a huge roll? flap? mound? of fat that hangs from my stomach like, uh, an apron. In order to do abdominal ultrasounds, I get to suffer the humiliation of lifting said apron out of the way.

And the CVS required my exposed belly be shared with at least five new people. I don’t like this—pregnant or not, I’m ashamed of my belly, and I don’t like it being acknowledged in any way. Let me just say, it was awful, and I spent much of that time wishing desperately that I wasn’t pregnant so I could get back to the business of weight loss, and possibly a tummy tuck (don’t laugh—after the babies, I may do that).

The rest of the time I was in pain. The ultrasound hurt, because she had to push so hard to see, and the two CVS tests sucked. They did one through the cervix, and one through the abdomen. It didn’t last long, but it left me shaking and weak.

But they got a fair amount of tissue, and I’ve already stopped spotting. Full results take about nine days (which means about the 26th) but I could have some preliminary results tomorrow after 3pm.

Very excited. Not really scared—I think the kiddos are ok, but I’m excited to know for sure. Combine that with the end of the first trimester, and Thursday’s FINAL visit to my RE, and maybe I can start to enjoy this pregnancy.

If I stop vomiting, of course.

Gratuitous Baby Crap

Ok, after a long delay, there are the photos! Baby 1, Baby 2, and then one of the two of them--that's their heads you're lookin' at.

_____________________________________________________

We had another little spotting scare on Monday, had another ultrasound, and all was well. The twins were playing “Ow! Quit it!” (sorry, Simpson’s reference!), meaning one would bump into the other and the other would bump back. Yeah, my head nearly exploded with the cuteness.

Other than that, things have been about the same or slightly worse. I had a bad food experience on Saturday that knocked me down until today; it’s been really tough.

I’m 11 weeks now, so one more week of morning sickness to go. Right?

So I’ve been reading “When Your Expecting Twins, Triplets or Quads” by Dr. Barbara Luke and Tamara Eberlein (. The doc ran a multiples program at some hospital or other, and the other woman is a mother of twins who wished such a book existed while she was pregnant.

It’s quite fascinating, and terrifying, at the same time. Terrifying because it seems nearly impossible to keep multiples out of the NICU, and bed rest is required by 24 weeks, and early labor is to be expected.

Great.

OK, they give examples throughout the book of full term twins that weighed 6+ pounds at birth, so it must be possible. How to do it?

You eat. A lot.

They recommend 3,200 calories a day.

3,200.

My most recent diet was Weight Watchers, where I was allowed between 1,400 and 1,650 calories a day (plus more if you exercised). Sine I’ve had this morning sickness, I’ve learned how to sustain myself on about half of that, and if only I could have done that on Weight Watchers, I’d be thin now. Right?

So, I’ve tried to take the book’s advice to heart (particularly the recommendation to eat Ben & Jerry’s—a very efficient way to get BOTH calories and dairy in—yeah!) and make myself eat every two hours.

While I don’t feel any better, I have managed to eliminate my dry heaves and retching that must have been related to hunger. I started this on Sunday, and maybe it’s a coincidence, but the babies had a big jump over the weekend (I had my regular ultrasound on Friday, then the emergency one on Monday). They went from being 33mm/38mm crown-to-rump, to 40mm/42mm in just three days. Damn. Maybe there is something about eating for three.

The book recommends that you gain most of your weight in the first (hah!) and second trimesters, since by the third your stomach is squished down to the size of a pea, making it harder to eat enough to keep up with the babies’ growth.

I did have my first gain this week, about seven pounds (and I had to buy bigger undies), but according to the book, I need to gain another eight pounds in the next week. Over all, because of my high BMI, I’m supposed to gain 30-40 lbs. A skinny-mini like Tertia should gain up to 56! Dang!

All so you can have big babies at delivery.

The only other thing that I found rather fascinating is that twins traditionally have mature lungs by 35/36 weeks gestation, while singletons don’t until about 38/39 weeks. Interesting how nature takes care of itself, since twins are usually born around 36 weeks.

I’m sure you’re bored silly with all this. But hey, I’m having twins, dude!

Oh. And six days until CVS testing. Eek.

Lookin' Good

I had another ultrasound yesterday. Sadly, for the first time in this pregnancy, the tech was The Cunt. After a moment of bantering, she got down to business (of course, turning the monitor away from me so I couldn't see).

The twins look great. One is measuring at 10.5 weeks, the other at 10-- 33mm and 37mm crown to rump. One sack is still smaller (measuring at 9.65 weeks) but no one seems concerned, so I'm not either.

The one that's easiest to see was positively dancing, and I saw the other one literally kick off from the side of the uterine wall.

Unbelievable.

I'm almost beginning to believe this will all be OK. I'll post some images later.