|
« January 2005 |
Main
| March 2005 »
I was just sitting here at work, working very hard, wondering how long I would have to wait at the bus stop in this rainy snow when I felt this little jolt in the tummy.
I thought, what the hell is that? Um, how about the babies in there?
That is what the first few days of the second trimester have been like. I hardly feel pregnant. I am surprised when the babies move.
I suppose this is the calm before the storm.
Thursday afternoon we see the passengers again. And if they aren't too shy, we will finally find out their gender.
I have been thinking alot about how I would actually be a better mother to boys than girls. I feel like I have been raising or relating to boys my whole life. I have a very low tolerance for image associated self-confidence issues, too. Which I assume would be a bigger problem with girls than boys. I might be wrong, though. It is weird that I have a low tolerance for that kind of thing, but I do. I was never a fat girl who let it affect my relationships with people or who let what other people said about me hurt me. I don't know where my confidence came from, perhaps it is some sort of mental illness, haha. But I am not sure that I will be able to relate to little girls who worry about their appearance all the time. Perhaps that makes me a better future mom for girls, that it won't even be a question. My girls will know how rad they are and it won't ever be a problem.
We will see. At least I am thinking about all of these things. I might perhaps be the first one in the line of mothers before me to even think about these things (meaning my own mom, my grandma, my great grandma). Perhaps I am lucky that I can afford such worries.
Last night, Jeff and I started a new project. We created our first radio show. Our first Podcast. It is about 28 minutes of us talking about all kinds of stuff. You can download the mp3 and listen to it on your computer or put it in itunes and listen to it on your ipod! We even created a theme song (yes, that is me talking at the beginning of the theme song). We did all of this from our bedroom on Jeff's ibook with free software. Amazing. It is just our first show and so, might be a little boring, but it is also a little "lite" and I was really tired so I sound kinda drugged, haha. I am also not showing my most intelligent side. I must say we were also both very very goofy, so it is a little different from our blogs. Anyway, I will get on with it!
Download our first radio show/podcast!
Click on the link to listen in the browser (no fun) OR
CRTL click on the link to download the radio show to your desktop or itunes:
Seamonsters Restaurant Fuel Podcast #1 -- 2/26/05 -- 28 minutes long!
12:43 pm and I don't want to eat. I mean, I am hungry. But I feel like I have exhausted all possible eating options. Over the past 15 weeks, I have eaten all the food in the world. I didn't think it would get this way again so fast after my day of fasting on Wednesday due to the stomach virus. But, here I am, two days later and I am once again sick sick sick of food.
I am sick of picking food and going to get food and then eating it.
I am sick of thinking of what food is right for me to eat and what food is wrong.
I am sick of feeling like I am making the wrong decisions.
I am sick of wondering what foods will stop the dizziness of pregnancy.
Sorry for being so negative. I just can't stand it anymore. I need a chef.
Other things. I want to put the babies clothes in their chest of drawers. I want to pick which clothes that I have will be for which baby. Is this nesting? I think it is.
Oh, weight. My stomach virus made me drop 5.5 pounds! I have already gained back 2. So I think my pregnancy weight gain is now at 15 pounds, rather than 18. I got all these compliments yesterday about how pretty I looked. I looked in the mirror and realized I really looked gaunt. The pretty was from the 5.5 pounds gone. So sad. This morning, I told Jeff that I gained 2 pounds back, expecting him to say "yeay!" Poor boy wasn't sure what to say since we had been so conditioned to boo weight gain in the past. We are all straight on it now. Fatter equals whoohoo!
I have been away. I have been far away in the land of the black cats and the sickies and the slightly melodramatic. :)
On my way home from work on Tuesday, I noticed that the collection of stray cats that lives next to my apartment had a new member. A small sleek black one. I saw it running into the bushes on my way to the door of the aparmtent. Oh frell, I thought. "I am not superstitious. I AM NOT," I whispered.
Then it all began. By dinner time, I knew I would be throwing up soon. By 1am, I was awake, throwing up blackberries. And this wasn't "morning sickness." This was the stomach virus that I didn't think i would get from my grandmother's nursing home. We had visited there on Sunday and couldn't see her because her entire ward was sick with a stomach virus. But I got it anyway. So I stayed home sick and talked to my OB nurse who assured me that the virus could not get to the babies and that I needed to drink as much water as possible. At around 10:30, my Jeff came home from work to take care of me. Less than an hour later, he stubbed his toe on a suitcase that I had left in the living room and then couldn't walk. So there we are, me with a stomach virus, him with at the very least a sprained toe (possibly even broken!).
I could see him from my perch in the bedroom, sitting on the couch not wanting to look at the poor toe. We laughed and laughed at our silly circumstances. I thought about how I loved him and how we are so ready to be parents. I thought about how I love that he wears his t-shirts small in a world wear most men wear them too big. I thought about how great it is that we can laugh the way we do.
He made his way into the bedroom, where Archie was very happy to have both of us hanging out in bed all day. Since Jeff couldn't walk and I didn't want to see him hopping about, I told him I would make him lunch. When taking it out of the oven, I promptly burned my arm. I now have a lovely quarter moon burn where my watch should be.
Hopefully today, I am back in the land of the lucky. I am drinking my water, worried that I will become dehydrated.
And it is crazy snowing outside and that makes me mad because I don't want to wear a hat.
Today I am 15 weeks pregnant. 15 weeks! I feel like the weeks are spiraling away from me and before I know it, I will have two children.
We bought our first huge box of diapers this weekend. It had 228 diapers in it. I read that one baby will go through 3000 diapers in the first year. So, double that and you get 6000. 228 down.
Jeff and I spent some time with my extended family this weekend, who I haven't seen since before I got pregnant. I was telling my Aunt Katrina about how the babies told me they were twins before the machines did and all the other mystical craziness I believe I can sense about them. And suddenly the room was completely silent, everyone stopped their conversations to listen to this. And I felt a little silly, like the only person in a room who believes in ghosts. I hope they don't think I am crazy.
dreaming i am one of them
I dreamt the other night that I was one of my twin girls as a young adult. She was at a future-y party and met a boy who had snowflake tattoos on his face. They were blue and were like tears. He was an architect. She was falling in love with this boy. It was cold outside and she was wearing two hats, one on top of the other. He asked her why and she said one was for her sister, who wasn't there yet. She told him that her sister liked parties even less than she did.
what's going on with the passengers this week
Their skin is very thin, and blood vessels can be seen underneath. The skin is covered with a fine, fuzzy hair called lanugo, which will not fall out until the passengers near full-term. Their hearts are now pumping about 25 quarts of blood per day.
and how much do i weight?
I didn't want to weigh myself this morning. I thought, oh who cares what I weigh. I was a little afraid to see 250 on the scale. I hauled the scale out from under the bathroom sink, thinking about how this scale used to be such a source of joy. I stepped on it, thinking, again, who cares who cares who cares. And there it was, the new number. 244. Same as last week! I am holding at 18 pounds gained since I got pregnant. Not bad at all, considering all I do is eat. I was actually disappointed that I hadn't gained the 1 pound that I should have gained last week, but I suppose I can make up for that. It sounds like I am very emotionally involved in this whole weight gain. But surprisingly I am not. I weigh myself more out of curiosity than anything else. I was thinking the other day that I can't wait to stop eating so much. That it is almost a burden to know that I can eat whatever I want, within reason. I think I learned to love the weight loss journey eating habits. The small amounts of food, the restrictions. I am having a hard time writing about this without it sounding like I have an eating disorder. Nothing could be further from the truth, actually. I think that I am finally a healthy person when it comes to food.
I am sitting here humming the song that calls the aliens in "Close Encounters of Third Kind." I wonder how old my girls will have to be before they can see that movie. (Yes. we don't know what the passengers are yet, but I thought "my girls" and thus wrote it.) I always ask Jeff this question, "how old do they have to be before they can watch this?" And he usually says 8 or 9 and I usually say 4 or 5. This was the answer to "how old do they have to be before they can watch Buffy on DVD." I said 5 and he said 9. I was shocked! 9! Jeff was like, "it is full of sex"! But I was like, "but it is funny and has good storytelling"! I want my kids to understand humor and good storytelling more than I care about them seeing sex on TV. I am going to be the weirdest mom. We already decided that we aren't going to regulate bad language too much. I remember my parents sending me out of the room whenever Edie Murphy was on the TV. Lame. Language doesn't bother me. Perhaps it will when I have a 5 year old telling her sister to "F**K off". Haha.
I do think I am going to have a problem knowing what is appropriate for children. I just feel like my kids are going to be little people and shouldn't be shielded from things. It might also be my reaction to that whole, moral America Republican Party BS. Like remember when Guilliani or whoever was all upset about that Madonna (religious one, not lame old singing one) painting with the dung and butts all over it or whatever? I saw that painting in London on vacation this year. And it was so boring that I nearly walked past it twice before I realized it was the "infamous" one. I mean. It isn't a great work of art not because it defaces the holy mother or whatever but because it is well, kinda obvious. How many people in America would let their 5 year olds see that painting? Not many, I would assume. But for me, it is kinda pedestrian and if it was at a gallery with other cool stuff, I wouldn't hesitate to let my kids see it.
I guess I just feel like there is a big difference between the thoughtful presentation of certain material and recklessly allowing your kids to see whatever is available. This is all very easy for me to talk about since I don't have the passengers here yet, I suppose. END PARENTING RANT. :)
So, pregnancy update. My bottom tummy (you fat girls know what I am talking about, yes, some of us have two tummies) is starting to get really hard. A normal fat tummy is kinda jiggley and soft. But my bottom tummy where the passengers live is getting so firm. Both tummies seem to be finally inching towards each other to form one. And my boobs just get bigger and bigger. This morning in the shower, I saw the shadow of my boobs and thought, my god, I look like a porn star. This reminded me of the time in my senior year of high school when I was working at the movie theater and a boy from school came up to me and said, "If you lost some weight, you could be a porn star with those boobs." To this, I said, "Thanks for the career advice." Who says that kind of thing to someone? Anyway. Boobs=huge. Tummies=merging and so full of squirming babies. Dizziness=bad except when I eat Luna bars or boiled eggs all day.
Being pregnant with twins is great because of the added prenatal care that I get. We will be getting sonograms and/or doctor's appointments every two weeks until at a further point when we will be getting them every week! Whoohoo! This is very exciting because we won't have to worry too much between appointments.
The passengers are now big enough to see through my tummy and not just with an internal scan. That makes sonograms so fast and easy. When we saw them yesterday, they weren't in different positions anymore, they were laying next to each other with their little heads in the same position. TWIN B is on top with TWIN A behind him or her. We got to see TWIN B's perfect little profile, with the tiny nose and mouth and eyes. S/he also waved its little arms around. I said, look it looks just like me. :) TWIN A was hiding and was harder to capture. But s/he is doing fine too. I am good at growing babies.
We didn't scan the pictures, though, because they are too light and I fear nothing will show up. Maybe I will talk Jeff into trying.
I told the doctor about my problems with being dizzy and tired and he is worried I may have gestational diabetes. So, I went down for the glucose test. We will know in 7 days. I am not worried. I don't have time to be worried. I am too busy growing babies.
Still no word on the gender. We will most likely know in two weeks when we have our next high resolution ultrasound.
I am 14 weeks pregnant and have gained 18 pounds. 18 pounds! I am a plumpling. Plump Plump Plump. I am starting to see and feel the new weight and I keep telling myself that it is ok. Ok Ok Ok. Eating has become a job that I have do to.
I asked Jeff to start talking to the passengers last night. We have been talking to them, but mostly just, HI BABIES! And I love you and stuff like that. So, last night, Jeff actually talked to them a bunch. Treating my lower tummy like a big soft microphone, he told the babies about social security. He also told them that they were democrats. He also told them about their grandparents and that their mommy was sometimes weird and silly. The soundtrack to this monologue was my intense laughter. They should be used to my laughter by now, because I am such a good laugher. But Jeff told them that sound was my laughing anyway, just in case.
I also talked to them a little, telling them we were happy they were two. Because Jeff and I have had some conversations about mourning the singleton that we thought we were going to have. That is totally normal by the way; most parents of twins have to mourn the idea of a single baby. I have been over that for some time now, and am glad. But I thought I would reassure them, anyway.
I wonder what today's topic for Jeff to talk to the passengers about will be? Prescription drugs? Ancient history ? The Buffyverse? I will have the smartest clones in the universe.
For this pink and blue haired pregnant girl, Washington, DC is like a tiny town.
Around every corner, I encounter people who I might not remember, but who know me and ask me how I am doing. I feel like I am living in Mayberry rather than a fast moving capitol city. The woman at the post office asks if I know what they are yet. I am taken off guard. A downtown direction-giver chases me down the street to ask me how I am feeling. A homeless man says, "hey blue, I haven't seen you in a while, when you gonna dye your hair a new color?"
Of course, this is all because I have been walking around town for over a year with a full head of blue or pink or green hair. And people wanna talk to me about it. And now that it is growing out, I have to tell them why I am not coloring it anymore which means I tell complete strangers that I am 3 months pregnant. This delights people. People love pregnant women. They all love to tell me how wonderful it will be for my kids to have such a cool mom. And I am stunned and touched by the ability of people to be so loving and sweet to someone they don't even know.
***************************************************************
On Saturday, Jeff and I met up with a set of 5 year old identical twin boys and their mom, Kristen. It was really interesting to spend time with the boys and see how while they were identical, they were very different. I never once couldn't tell them apart. They were charming and happy and wonderful kids. At one point, their mom told them to tell each other secrets, which resulted in them huddling together, all whispers. Brilliant! I put that one in my pocket for later.
Benn who likes and wears blue told us about how babies come out of your "'gina" and Dylan who likes and wears green liked to tell us who was who in the baby pictures that they brought with them. That was the second thing I learned. The kids will want to know who is who in baby pictures! I never would have even thought about it. Their mom really did a lot to quell my fears about giving birth and dealing with the first year. She also brought us all these books about twins, which Jeff and I are now reading through.
***************************************************************
I am now in full maternity clothes. Before I started to grow, I was horrified at having to wear them, but not now. It is such a relief to put on this huge flowy shirt. I feel so much better. Every night, twins girls continue to show up in my dreams. Last night, they were about 14 and one was goth and the other was dressed all vintage June Cleaver. The goth one was a happy goth who really secretly wanted to be her sister. The vintage one was very proper. Then I dreamed about two clear eggs with tiny full grown people in them. I cut the top off the eggs and pulled out these slimy people. Gross, but funny. It made me think about making gummy placentas with babies in them. I know, have a sick sense of humor.
This is what is going on with my passengers, thanks to ivillage:
:::Measuring in at about seven centimeters crown to rump, and weighing about two ounces, your baby-to-be (babies) will spend the rest of the pregnancy concentrating on growing and becoming strong enough to live outside the uterus. Your babys' intestines have now moved from outside the body to inside the abdomen. While your baby won't be saying "Mommy" for some time, vocal cords are now developing. Your fetus also has developed many reflexes and will squirm inside of you if your abdomen is prodded.:::
***************************************************************
It is official. I just bought all the food in the world. I have been battling dizziness for the past two weeks, so I am now trying to combat it with food, mostly protien. I just got back with my lunch which includes:
fruit smoothie with soy protien
roast beef sandwich with cheddar cheese and veggies
hard boiled egg
banana
apple
cheese and crackers
cashews
bagel with creamcheese
I just finished the sandwich and can't even think of eating anything else. But the goal is to finish it all by the end of the day. It was hard for this former fat girl to buy all of that food at once. It will be even harder to eat it all considering that during my weight loss journey, just months ago, I would have just eaten the egg and the fruit for lunch. What a change. Wish me luck.
Our visit with the passengers this week was fairly uneventful, mostly because the other two visits were so very eventful, I think. Visit one showed us there were two. Visit two showed us the precious membrane between them. The most exciting part of visit three was that we got to hear their heartbeats for the first time. Lovely, but not as emotional as the other two visits. As with last time, both babies are growing and seem happy. Twin A is still two days smaller than Twin B, which means that the egg split at two days if they are identical, which we still think they are. This is a good sign because problems start when one baby becomes markedly smaller than the other. Twin A was the star of the show this time, as s/he was in a better position for the camera. It is hard to see, but in the picture below, Twin A is the one on top and you are looking at a side view, with the head on the right and you see the spine. Twin B is looking at us straight on at the bottom of the picture. I think s/he moved so the face is blurred. Both babies were far more calm today than last time. I think it is because we weren't looking for the membrane between them, so they didn't have to jump around to show us anything like last time.
passengers at 12 weeks
Still no idea what they are. I thought we were going in for that crazy 3D ultrasound, but it was actually just high resolution. Oh well. Our doctor says in a few more weeks we will be able to see what they are.
I was just in a meeting at work and was asked when I thought I would be going on maternity leave. The date July 22 came to my mind immediately, even though my due date is Aug. 16th. It will be funny if they are born on July 22.
look at me shrink. now, look at me grow. look at me age. and the world moves around me.
My daily walks have turned into bus rides and I now love riding the bus. If i sit far enough back, I can make it so that my feet don't touch the floor of the bus and that is magical. Suki sings to me on shuffle from her little white and silver frame and I dangle my feet. Lalala. The whole ride, I am itchin to get off and walk the next block home or to work, just so I can move move move. And I do, like a race horse, I'm out the gate, surrounded by cold bus air and people and I love my world.
I have been thinking of the things that I want to teach my kids to love or do or appreciate. Here's my list so far: color, feeling their muscles work, jumping on the bed, making noise, laughing big and loud and deep and for real, animals (but specifically small details about animals, like a seal's teeth or a bird's feet or a dog's nose), calling old people dude (it always takes them off guard), weather (good and bad). Oh there is so much more.
Things I wanna teach my kids are bad and should be avoided: the circus, joining the military, organized religion, smoking, most mass market fiction, hunting, the lottery, the actress meryl streep. I am sure there is more, but those are the most important. But really, I don't want to be the kind of parent who ever tells their kids they can't do something. If my kids have some crazy idea, I want them to be able to see it through. No matter what it is (unless it is in the list above). Like if my girls become nuns who play the lottery and love meryl streep, I will be so disappointed. I am being funny, but I really don't like the selflessness of giving your life to God or your country. I don't want to raise selfish people, but I do want my children to love life enough to want to take it and make it theirs and enjoy it and live it. I know that in America, these are not popular views, but I can't curb how I feel about those things. END RANT. hehe.
My clones should be about 2-1/2 inches each now. My tummy is starting to grow. And I am in love with the world today. It moves all around me and inside of me and nothing could be better.
I have to stop worrying about things that I can't control. Well, we all have to, I am sure.
I have spent the past few days worrying about what will happen after my passengers get here. How we will take care of them, daycare, etc. I need to stop putting any any any energy into these things right now. Instead I need to put my energy into growing my passengers.
I also need to stop worrying about the possible problems they can have from being identical twins. One of which is TTTS, which is when one baby gets more fluid and nutrients than the other. What can I do about this until I actually see it on a sonogram? Only 15% of idenitical twins have this problem. And there is nothing I can do to prevent it. So I obviously have to stop worrying about it.
Since I became a healthy, non-depressed person, I have firmly believed that if you think things will be ok, that they will. That if you worry too much, you make bad things happen. I mean, sure, bad things happen no matter what... but I don't want my worrying to bring on bad things.
So, I now pledge to not worry. I need to be a happy ship. When did I change from the captain of a great ship to the ship itself? Weird. ;) So. I am a happy ship. My passengers are enjoying their stay. They still have a long journey. As do I.
I am 12 weeks pregnant today. Thursday I will see my passengers again. It will be the best view yet; a 3D sonogram. When I just typed that I felt one of those surges of happiness that I know doesn't come from me, but comes directly from them.
*******************
thank you to sam in the UK for the amazing email this morning. all future parents should get so much support from people. i am a lucky captain.
|
Copyright © 2005, Tina Henry-Barrus, all rights reserved.
Design by Jeff Barrus, 2005. |
|
|
