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8 months

by Myg on September 23, 2009

Eight. Months. Eight. Months. Eight. Months.

8 months

Doot (on the right) said “Da da” tonight, while lovingly combing Alex’s face with his little eight month old fingers. Yes, there were tears aplenty.

Meanwhile, Bing was hurling himself backwards on hands and  knees on the same futon where we all lay and tell stories and sing songs every night before bed. He’s about to launch. Real crawling, the kind that involves purposeful movement, is nigh.

And yes, finally, they are starting to sleep all night. Doot has slept from 8pm – 6:30 am three nights in a row. Bing is only waking up once a night, around 12:30am, for a small bottle, then sleeping the rest of the way. This is HUGE folks. But then, you know that.

My mom says they look like they’re ready to take on the world here. If I do my part, here’s hoping they will be.

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Four months in one hand, a third of a year in the other.

by Myg on May 29, 2009

Do you see what I have to deal with here?

Punk Rock Babies

I am talking about badass babies with attitude. In this photo it’s like they’re saying, “Dude, we’ll sleep through the night when we’re ready. Until then, you and Dad can suck it.”

I still try to think of them as 18 weeks old instead of 4 months. I don’t know why. I think it makes me feel like time is moving more slowly, even though there’s no logic to this. But I just can’t bare to think about how fast it’s all going.

I know I continue to complain about the lack of sleep, but in truth, soon they will sleep all through the night. Won’t cry out for me. Won’t need my cuddling and nursing at 3am. And while I’ll be better rested and happy for that, I’ll also be missing those late night/early morning snuggles, where it was all warm and close and we were all here together in some total kind of way.

So 18 weeks is 4 months and 7 days which is over one third of their first year. And when I think of it like that, I think, whoa.

Just, whoa.

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Waiting for you. Week 22.

by Ms. Myg on October 31, 2008

It was pain week. Yes, that’s what I’ll call it.

I have a history of back/neck injuries sustained from two totally excellent places:

  1. Flipping over the handlebars of my Sears Freedom bike when I was 7 years old. It was real bad. So bad, I cracked my brand new adult front tooth in half, landed on my head in the middle of the street and was knocked unconscious. Hospital time!
  2. Rock and Roll. I played guitar and sang in an indie rock band from the time I was 19 until…well I last played a show in December of 2001. I was 32 then. (Ugh. That long ago?) Anyway, I had some terribly shitty posture and managed to herniate two discs in my neck, which became very problematic for me in 1999. With treatment (physical therapy, chiropractic adjustments, drugs) I fully recovered. Or, did I? Herniated discs are like that.

I haven’t had a lot of complaints about these issues in the last few years. I’ve been lucky. Every once in awhile if I was feeling achy I’d make a trip to the doctor and get an adjustment, then be fine. I maybe saw him a couple of times a year. Then came pregnancy. With twins.

The pain I now have in my back is different. It hovers somewhere in the middle, (“Really? Not your lower back?” most formerly pregnant women, aka mothers, ask me. Now, I may know absolutely fucking nothing about being pregnant, but I can tell you exactly where it hurts, damn it.) The pain was particularly vicious on the left side, right under my ribs, every night at around 8:30pm until I went to bed, when it would wrap itself around to my abdomen, making me ponder whether or not I was getting an ulcer. Then magically tonight it appeared on the right side, and behaved in much the same way. I was relieved for the change in scenery, as it were.

This pain started gradually. I first noticed that if I spent much time on my feet, I’d be screwed for days. I learned, hey, don’t spend so much time on your feet. Now it’s to the point where I can’t spend too much time sitting upright, either. I need to spend a significant part of the day laying down. Which sounds a lot nicer than it is – especially when you still sorta have a job, like I do.

Know what’s really killing me? I had to stop walking the dog. Couldn’t make it down my street to the corner without my mid back feeling like it was being ripped apart. I feel so, so bad about not being able to do things with my dog! Soon enough he’s going to be relegated around here to actual, you know, dog status. I was hoping for a little more time I could really dote on him. Poor guy – he’s just 19 months old – still a puppy for labs. [Insert gratuitous adorable dog pic here:]

Man, he still does that head cocked to the side thing when you talk to him too. He’s too much.

To alleviate the pain, I had a full on therapeutic massage last weekend. It was nice, but it didn’t fix shit. On Monday I begged my doctor to squeeze me in and got an adjustment. I think that helped – some. My pain is more localized now. But it still hurts. A lot. And for a lot of the day.

The OB/GYN told me to order the “prenatal cradle.” It’s a crazy borderline S&M looking contraption that will support my back in holding up my belly.

Wear it UNDER your clothes, dummy!

Wear it UNDER your clothes, dummy!

With that shoulder support, it should alleviate some of my mid back woes. If you need one, google it, but don’t order it from the maker, Prenatal Cradle, or you’ll pay about $20 extra for one with shipping. I ordered mine from Target for around $60, shipping was free. I’ll let you know when it gets here if it works. I really pray it does because if all goes well, I’m looking at another 15 weeks of this shit!

So that was my week.

Oh, the kids? Here’s what Bing and Doot have been up to:

  • They’re growing. How do I know? Well, I don’t exactly, other than the fact that I have been growing. And they seem to be crowding my internals a bit more. Conventional Wisdom says they should be about a pound each and a foot long a piece. That makes me crave a Nathan’s. Or two.
  • They are now producing their own hormones. Great – just what we need around here. More hormones!
  • Moving around. I still worry about whether or not I feel them moving enough. But I do feel tap, tap, tap every now and then. First this side, then that. Every once in awhile in the middle of the night, somebody kicks me hard enough to cause pain in a vital organ. It’s reassuring.
  • Other than getting bigger, I’m not sure what’s left for these guys between now and showtime.

And as for me, the pain thing is really tantamount. If you’ve ever experienced chronic pain, you know of what I speak. It just flavors everything in your day. So since I devoted so much of this post with that, I’ll skip it in the bulleted recap of the state of me:

  • Getting clutzy and moving in the vertical plane is more complicated. Unplug something? Pick that sock up off the floor? Okay, I’ll do it, but it had better be REAL important to you.
  • Worrying. Like up at 3am thinking about every single thing that isn’t done. From the hall closet being a wreck to the nursery to work related things to my wedding photo album (yeah, I got married 6 years ago, but still.)
  • I HAVE NO FUCKING CLUE WHAT I’M DOING HERE! SHUT UP! GO AWAY! DON’T LEAVE ME!
  • Denial. Sometimes I just don’t believe they are really, truly in there. Just as I was typing this, I received a message in the form of a swift kick from Doot in the liver. Thanks, buddy.

I’ve got a lot more internal state of mind stuff to spew at you, but it’s late and I’m tired and oh, jeez, did I mention my back hurts? Makes even blogging a bitch.

You may be wondering, as I have, given my complaints above, do I still think pregnancy over 35 = AWESOME?  Well, yes. I do. But I will qualify this with the fact that awesome doesn’t mean easy. It doesn’t even always mean good. The big bang was awesome, wasn’t it?  Mother nature must have gotten a serious damned back ache from that, right?

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Waiting for you. Week 20!

by Ms. Myg on October 17, 2008

WEEK 20! OH MY GOD OH MY GOD!

That’s how I thought I’d feel, anyway. It’s a pregnancy milestone, right? The coveted half way point of your average full term pregnancy, a little more than that for us twin carriers. I’d long said to myself, “When I hit 20 weeks, I’m going to feel like this thing is really on.” But the 20 week mark came and went for me without any huge “Aaaaahhhh” moment.

I wonder if most moms-to-be have a particular moment during pregnancy when they go, “Holy shit – this little alien is going to be outside of my body and I’m going to have to deal with it!” I thought since the beginning of pregnancy that 20 weeks would be the point that happened. But if you’ve read this blog for the past month, you might recall that it actually happened at week 16. That was the week I woke up and realized I was going to be somebody’s mom. Two somebodies.

Week twenty did bring with it a surprisingly gruelling ultrasound session, one in which the tech marked down every single length of every bone in each of my boys’ bodies. You know what? That was a pain in the ass. It took like an hour and a half, and then the doctor had to come in and try to get better picture’s of Bing’s heart, because they like to get 8 views, and in his position they could only get 1. “It looks beautiful-perfect-in the one view, but we’d like to get at least a few more.” In what could be a sign of things to come, Bing said, “Screw you guys for interrupting my nap with your pesky technology” and would not offer himself up for a better view. The doctor said better luck next time and not to worry. So for once, I won’t!

At this point, it looks like Bing is a teeny bit bigger than Doot. The doctor said it wasn’t a difference that they were worried about because it’s a very small difference. Do you ever wonder how doctors do it? How they worry so little? They must practice.

However, I know that with twins, you do have to worry about one growing bigger than the other, so I’d rather at this point they were more or less the EXACT SAME SIZE. Is that too much to ask? Ah well, I suppose it’s one of the ways they’re asserting their individuality. No doubt one will have a mohawk in the third grade, while the other will be playing the violin. I do know that during the ultrasound Bing was caught kicking Doot. We’ll have a little chat about that when they get here. No kicking your brother just because he’s a mm shorter!

Other things my boys are up to in week 20:

  • Growing! I don’t know why, but the ultrasound pics I have include magnification and other tech specs, but don’t put my babies’ size or weights down anywhere. Like, why do I care about Hz? I want to know about them. Internet wisdom and the Mayo Clinic tell my my boys are nearly 6 inches and half a pound each. My insides tell me they’re growing all the time.
  • They are now noticeable. I mean to me. The movement I feel with them feels nothing like “popcorn popping” or “soda bubbles” or anything cute like that, that most people tell you it feels like. So much different, I didn’t understand I’ve been feeling them move for awhile now because I couldn’t recognize what it felt like. I normally don’t feel their kicks and punches, per se. I have felt them, I think, and can only imagine I will soon feel them regularly. Instead, what I feel is a sensation of my insides moving around. It feels more like my organs are migrating or as though I have indigestion in the wrong part of my body, to be honest. It feels like “there something IN there!” It’s not uncomfortable, except one night when I’m fairly sure Doot kicked me in the stomach and I woke up with a mouth full of stomach acid. I thought I was going to puke. I didn’t. Rah!

My week?

  • Working SUCKS! I actually have a really nice job. Anyone would envy my job, if only it wasn’t going away. But a large part of my job is to train people, meaning to stand up in front of groups of people and tell them all I know about various subjects. Ego strokes galore, it’s a nice thing for someone like me who likes that stuff. Thing is, my fuckin feet hurt! Who knew I couldn’t think sitting on my ass? Who knew being pregnant and off coffee would be such a drag on my training style? One thing I hate is doing something I love half assed. I’ll cook half assed or clean half assed, but gas bagging? I want to blow everyone out of the water. I can’t do that now, plus, my body really hurts if I stand for too long.
  • I can’t bend down too well. Oh, and I’ve started to waddle. Hat tip to Cheryl Lage again, who dutifully warns of this in Twinspiration. The saddest part of my newfound physical limits is the toll it’s taken on playing with Mason-the world’s cutest and most amazing dog. I can’t bend down, over and over and over, to pick up the slimy toy and throw it to him. And he has yet to learn how to bring it to me without dropping it on the ground. Good boy! That reminds me, here’s the gratuitous adorable dog picture (yes, from puppy years – I need to take some good new pics):

    Mason at 13 weeks old

    Mason at 13 weeks old

  • Emotional. I cry! Wow, do I cry. Sometimes in the middle of the night I cry without any actual good reason. I am also a bit clingy. I am lucky because Alex is nothing if not patient with me and my profound emotional neediness during this time. Okay, writing this is making me cry. See what I mean?
  • Sleep, I miss you so, so, so, so much. It’s going to be a long year or so for me I realize. I am trying to accept it. I do sleep, but I am not able to sleep as soundly as I once did. And I’m not able to sleep for as many hours either. I have been obsessively worried about sleeping on my back, as I still find that I roll onto my back in the night. I had lunch with a friend of mine today – a mother of 7 year old twins – who admitted she slept on her back the whole time. “It was the only way I could sleep at all.” That made me feel a little better.

And a bunch of other stuff, but my absent mindedness and ever present tiredness prevent me from thinking of what it is. Sorry!

In other news, one of my favorite pregnant bloggers, Amy of Amalah.com had her new baby boy! For super special adorable newborn pics, head on over here. They made me cry, of course. But in a really, really good way. Congrats to you Amy. I’m not long behind!

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Waiting for you. Week 15.

by Ms. Myg on September 9, 2008

My, it seems like just yesterday we were only at week 14! They’re not kidding when they say it goes fast. Indeed, nearly as fast as my feet trot me to the john in the middle of the night.

This week was fairly different because it was also vacation week. We went to Maine with our closest friends, which was super ultra nice. I can’t rightly tell what new experiences were a direct result of Week Fifteenness, and what might have been simply vacation head. But here’s how it went.

We had an 8 hour car trip up to Maine from where we live in NJ. We borrowed a…a…a… MINIVAN so we could travel with our friends (who are childless) and our exceedingly adorable and wonderful dog, Mason (see gratuitous adorable dog pic here.) My husband says “No, we are NOT getting a minivan.” And he’s said this for several weeks now with good reasons (gas prices and desire for a hybrid among them). As for me, I love cars, I love to drive and the idea of even craving a minivan makes me die a little inside. But the roomy interior! The cargo space! My God!

I have to tell you, 8 hours north is a much more pleasant drive than even two hours south of here. When you’re pregnant you’ve got to stop every two hours or so and walk around to reduce the risk of blood clots. Blood clots! Can they make riding in a car a bit more ominous sounding? (Does this mean I have to get off my ass every two hours at work too?) With a dog in tow, stopping every so often isn’t such a bad idea anyway, so while it us slowed down a bit it also helped break up the ride and make it seem fairly pleasant.

I do pass each Wednesday as a milestone, much like when you have your first boyfriend in junior high you celebrate every month as an anniversary. So when last Wednesday came, in celebration I poured over my Mayo Clinic book and some other places and found out that the little tomatoes inside of me were:

  • about 4 inches long
  • doing Tai Chi or something in there, though I can’t really feel them yet. Unless maybe I’m not that gassy afterall…
  • covered in fine hair, I imgaine kind of like little gorillas
  • just starting to develop their hearing, which prompted me to start jacking up Mogwai as loud as I could in the car, just to help them out
  • beginning to sense light and feel outside pressure. Now it’s mutual.
  • are getting fingernails and toenails. Awwww!

This has been my experience of week 15:

  • The feeling of um, am I still pregnant? Every so often I’d actually forget I was pregnant.Whether that’s the Maine air or that forgetfulness they say comes along with pregnancy, I couldn’t say.
  • Rosy cheeks. Still with some zits.
  • Extra protective husband saying things like, “I don’t know if you should go kayaking…” which was great because I totally didn’t want to go kayaking, sorry.
  • “What’s that dark line that goes from your belly button to your love jungle?” he asked one morning (okay, I’m paraphrasing). “What the hell?” I said. It’s actually called the linea nigra, and it is exactly that. It, like everything else it seems, is the result of pregnancy hormones.
  • Crying. Lots of it. I thought the Second Trimester was the honeymoon? Last honeymoon I remember involved a lot of good sex and lobster, not nights of sobbing into my pillow for unnamed reasons.

You know, it’s still a lot better than the first trimester. I really overall feel pretty good. If I could stop crying. I mean, I was crying on the way to work today as I was playing Glasgow Mega Snake (by Mogwai, of course). There’s no damn words in the song! But it was so – beautiful – *sobs* yeah. That’s kind of how it goes.

I’d write more but I need to go hunt down a box of tissues and a candy bar. So folks, stay tuned for a “Does crying during pregnancy make your fetus a wuss?” and other related topics, coming your way via Wisermom.

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Waiting for you. Week 14.

by Ms. Myg on August 28, 2008

One of the things I obsessively do now is check those pregnancy week-by-week calendars. I want to know what to expect, you know? Only thing is, no matter what they say, it’s not exactly, precisely, definitively exactly how I feel. And this is an issue for me. It’s partly my fault for bearing twice the fruit, and things are a little different for us pregnant with multiples. But still, since I read every single “week by week” pregnancy website ever created, it seemed only appropriate to litter the net with yet another take on the experience.

By far, the best pregnancy calendar out there is Amalah’s, hosted at Alphamom. Go on, see for yourself. It’s totally the best out there and I’m not even going to try to compete. So instead, I’ll rip. According to Amalah, who is also currently pregnant, (and due damn soon, I think) this is what’s going on with my little masterpieces-in-waiting:

Your Baby:

  • Is about the size of your fist, unless you have giant man-hands or something, so maybe I should just compare it to a peach instead.
  • Has a strong, whoosh-whooshy heartbeat that can usually be found pretty easily now with a doppler. It’s much faster than yours (between 120 – 160 bpm), and sounds vaguely like a washing machine.
  • Has probably started sucking its thumb.

I don’t have man-hands, but I still prefer to think of them as little lemons. Maybe it’s all the lemonade I’ve taken to drinking since I’m off the Diet Coke wagon.

Other developments with my little ones:

  • they’ve now formed their baby cajones! I hope they’re big like their mama’s.
  • they are covered in a fine fuzz, kind of like baby chicks I think, only hopefully less yellow.
  • they can each make a little fist, but hopefully haven’t taken to biting it yet, like my Aunt Gloria used to do whenever you’d bring up thin crusted pizza or living together before marriage.
  • they are moving around a ton now, though they say I can’t feel it yet. I’m not saying I believe them.

And, how do I, the ever expanding watermelon-woman feel?

  • like I always have to poop, even after I just did.
  • my neck and back ache. Really ache. I thought it was bad posture from being hunched over the computer, but multiple sources (here, and here) say it’s part of tri-2.
  • I get weird pains in my abdomen, but they are extremely mild. I don’t even feel right calling it “pain” as it’s more, “what the hell is that feeling?” than pain.
  • I had three days of headaches. That sucked, but it seems better now. Yes, I called the doctor (as I always call the doctor when I have an excuse. In fact, it’s hard to stop myself from calling when I don’t, just to be like “Hey, it’s me. Just calling to see what’s up…”). The doc’s word on my headache was “Take two extra strength Tylenol and have a cup of coffee.” Well, I took the Tylenol but skipped the caffeine. I did not put myself and my husband through two weeks of hell getting off the stuff to jump back in bed with java now. And I’ve been headache free for a few days, so that’s cool.
  • like, should I tell everyone yet? My parents have told nearly everyone, but I haven’t told a lot of my friends yet. My husband says, “week 20″ and I’d agree but I can hardly see my feet now – I think people may begin to notice in the next 6 weeks that something’s up. “We’ll deal with it then” he says, and is probably right.
  • I wake up happy every day. I guess it’s a combination of things like not being sick to my stomach all the time like I was. And having the world’s most amazing dog at my feet, licking my toes when I wake up. And the guy next to me, who rolls over every morning and puts his hand on my gut and says, “hi guys!” with just about the sweetest voice you’d ever imagine.

Week 14? So far, good times. For me, anyway. I can snark all I want about it, but the truth is I’m really, stupidly happy. I’ve got plenty to worry and fret over. Finances. Health insurance. House repairs. Politics. But I’m not really feeling stressed at all. Hey – is this me? Hellooo? Who the hell just wrote that sentence?

Well, I wish whatever magic these hormones are doing would stick around when the pregnancy part is over, because something tells me when I’m not getting my 9 hours of sleep a night and trying to balance two sets of diaper changes and feedings, I’m going to need some in a hard way. Until then, I’m all schmaltzy smiles and stuff. And I like it.

Gratuitous adorable dog pic:

That’s my amazingly wonderful black lab, Mason. This was taken when he was a 13 week old pup, but still, how could you not wake up happy looking at that face? God, I hope my babies are half as cute!

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