Starting with the good news that I have managed to get both munchkins back on the boob! Monday I just decided that I want to divorce my pump and the only way was if I got them back on the boob. So I put Jed to the boob and he latched! It took a bit of convincing and using a trick from a friend’s mom of holding his jaw closed with the nipple in his mouth until he sucked properly, but we got there. Then next feed we tried Jade and with even more convincing she latched too! So I have been alternating feeds on the boob and while one baby suckles with me the other gets bottle. I have not divorced my pump but am pumping after their feeds to empty the breast and try to drive production and also try to ensure they drink as much breast milk as possible. The magic of having my little wrigglers on the breast with their little hands touching my skin is so awesome. It feels like we have such special time together.

Yesterday was weigh-in day for the twins and they are growing like little weeds. It seems they may be gaining weight a bit too fast and I am meant to try to limit their intake a little, but I am convinced they are just now weighing what they would have if they had been full term singletons and taking it as a sign that they are healthy. It is a long way from that scary first week where they were loosing weight too fast and not eating and so I simply refuse to be stressed by this at all. It is magic to know my babies are thriving. And I know someone is going to ask so their weights are Jade at birth 3.26kgs and now 4.14kgs, Jed at birth 3.14 and now 3.88. Oh and just for the record – have lost ALL my pregnancy weight having lost 30kgs since the birth – if that isn’t magic then I don’t know what is?

My favourite Magic Moments happen at the weekends in the mornings when we have family snuggle time in bed! So precious to have all of us together and Daddy sharing in the making of special memories. If my laptop were working (yes still no time to sort it out) I would post gorgeous photos of Chris sleeping with both our gorgeous babes asleep in his arms. Jade obviously agrees that weekend snuggles are magic because she gave her Daddy a huge grin on Sunday morning which of course made for yet another magic moment. Yes I managed to get a view of her beautiful smile, but no photo.

Chris and I are somehow managing to keep our sense of humour intact through the chaos and sleeplessness and have had some seriously good giggles, like when I made up new lyrics to an old favourite lullaby “hush little baby don’t say a word, Pappa’s gonna buy you a mocking bird. If that mocking bird don’t sing, Pappa’s gonna shoot it in its ring!” Still laughing at that one. Or when I gave Chris a bottle to get Jade to suck to get rid of her hiccups but I had forgotten to put the teat on properly and she ended up covered in milk, well it cured the hiccups. Or when Jade lost her dummy and wriggled over to Jed with her mouth searching for the dummy, until she found his nose and had a good suck on it. Yes we got that on video! Or when Chris ended up taking a milky puke shower when both crying babes ended up sicking up on him at the same time. It’s tough but we are staying sane and hanging in there together.

Last night was a new kind of magic moment, where we got 8 hours sleep! No I don’t have the most sleepy babies in the world, I finally gave in to another one of those things I said I wouldn’t do and we got in a night nurse so we could get some sleep and regain some sanity. All I can say is if you are a twin parent and can possibly afford it, get a night nurse once in a while. You are a better parent when you have had some rest yourself and I can attest to that by the fact that today I feel like I could conquer the world. Okay, I have to admit I cried like a baby when I heard Jed crying for his food at 9pm, I felt like I had abandoned them, but he went quiet within seconds and we never heard from them again.

There are those moments (more frequent than you would think considering our sleep deprived state) where I just have to grin or stare in awe at these cute little guys, with their sweet sleeping faces or funny grimaces and squirms, especially Jed who has such an expressive little face. They are amazing, they completely astound me with their awesomeness! I find myself regularly staring at them in wonder. And then the breath taking moments when I say something about ‘my daughter’ or ‘my son’ and I realise I am really and truely a Mommy At Last!!!

We did not get off to a good breastfeeding start, I think there were a lot of factors which contributed to this including my drugged up state after the anaesthetic, my ignorance on how to get started and how important that start would be, me trying to be very relaxed and not stressing (who would have thought I would look back and think that was a bad thing), and not having the right help at the right time.

I have mentioned my superstar breastfeeding friend and she deserves an award for stepping into the void on our very first night and helping out when no one else did. She was the hero who realised that it wasn’t “cute” that Jade was sucking her thumb but a sign that my baby was hungry and came over to help try to get her latched. By this stage my babies were about over 5 hours old and had not fed at all! Now sober I shudder at this, but I had tried earlier when they were put on my breast and when it they didn’t latch easily I just thought, no stress, give them a chance it will happen. I had no idea what I was doing and now in retrospect I would pay just about any amount of money to have a GOOD breast feeding consultant help us out in those first few hours. In retrospect I should have gone for a consultation prior to their birth to get advice and guidance on the first few days.

From there we kept trying each baby separately, together, separately again, but weren’t getting a good latch and the babies weren’t actually getting much out. I know they don’t need much but without a good latch my breasts weren’t getting the right stimulation either. Enter the worst thing to happen… Bad advice, mixed advice and poor breastfeeding consultant!

The stupid breastfeeding consultant at the hospital suggested nipple shields. As I have flat nipples, but never gave advice or guidance on how to use them. Well result, even less stimulation on my breasts. Then a midwife suggested getting rid of the shields, but by this stage the twins were used to the shields and struggled even more to latch. But we persevered and the fact that my babies were sleeping VERY well (up to six hours) I thought meant they were getting enough food. In the mean time they were getting weaker and had to have formula top-ups when their blood sugar dropped below 1!

I so wanted to be the Earth mother who fed on demand and so thought all was fun with them not waking up to eat. Thank heavens the non-breastfeeding consultant staff at the hospital were great and picked up what was going on. I kept going trying to feed and realised I needed to wake my babies to feed every 4 hours. Then came the jaundice, making them even more sleepy, making it even more essential that they feed well and yet leaving them with even less energy to feed. And while all this was going on my supply was dwindling.

Add in another factor, thanks to the sleeping tablets I had been on for the last 10 days of pregnancy to get me to the safe place for their arrival, I couldn’t sleep at all without them and was getting about 1-2 hours a night and no naps during the day. And so supply dwindled more.

Finally by the Friday (them having been born on the Monday) when they were readmitted into hospital for the jaundice I was an emotional wreck, totally in pieces. So when the nurse offered to feed them formula (from a syringe) and let me sleep, I grabbed it. I don’t regret that night’s sleep, it gave me back my sanity and strength to be their Mommy but was almost certainly the final nail in the coffin of my milk supply.

On the Sunday morning, once again back at home, I couldn’t understand why Jed was latching to my breast briefly then pulling back, shaking his head and moaning. I thought maybe my let down was too slow and he was getting frustrated, so I decided to try express to get let down. And there was the evidence… No milk! Almost nothing at all. Yes my milk had come in so this was not the very little of colostrum, I had dried up.

I was devastated but pragmatic enough to get them onto formula immediately and me pumping as often as possible.

And so here we are almost three weeks after that and thanks to some supplements (prolac and fenugreek) and eglynol and an intimate relationship with my fabulous breast pump I manage to express about half their feeds and they are on formula for the rest.

I have tried putting them back on the breast from time to time with mixed success. You see there is one more aspect of breastfeeding the pre-mommy could not have foreseen, the emotional side. When your child cannot or will not get sustenance from you, you feel like a failure. When your child rejects your nipples it feels as though they are rejecting you. Your rational brain knows this isn’t true, but the hormonal emotional side can’t help how it feels. All this resulted for me in each offering of the breast being fraught, scary, stressful and often sad. An emotional and sometimes physical battleground, that of course left me exhausted and the twins stressed. So for now we stick to bottles with as much expressed breastmilk as I can give them.

It’s so not what I wanted, but it’s giving them the best of my breasts that I can. I regularly remind myself when I get down about not exclusively breastfeeding that I do have enough milk for one baby, but two is perhaps just a step too far for my body.

On the upside my babies are thriving, growing well and happy and contented and mostly sleeping very well. And expressing and bottle feeding has some great upsides; I can get help with feeds, Chris gets to bond with them as he feeds them skin on skin when he is home, we know exactly how much they eat and feeding time is no longer an emotional battleground that leaves me exhausted and emotionally drained.

So to all those out there who are simply doing the best your breasts will allow, give yourself a break you are not alone. And I had a paediatrician tell me straight that while we are told breastfeeding is the most important thing we can do for our kids, actually it is just one of the very many very important things we need to do for our kids. We do the best we can, but formula is probably the most researched food to ensure it is as nutritional as possible and our babies will not end up imbeciles writhing on the floor unable to speak because we gave them formula when we couldn’t give them breastmilk. They can still grow up to be astronauts, rugby players, ballerinas, or whatever they were meant to grow up to be.

I want to end by giving a thank you to a few friends. My rockstar breastfeeding mom who has helped in so many ways, not just support and advice! And my friend in the cyberspehere over at TasIVF (sorry can’t put in the link, still blogging from blackberry) who wrote an awesome balanced post on expressing breast milk, that helped me to gain and keep some perspective. Thanks.

So our Hope Twins are now 23 days old and everyday does get easier, mostly as we figure out how to read their signals and learn better and better how to best respond to those signals in the way the individual baby needs. But let me tell you that being a Mom and being a twin Mom is not easy! It is such an emotional mind bender. The lack of sleep and constant something to do that people tell you about is NOT what makes being a mother hard, it is the emotions that are wrapped up in these little people. When they said it’s like having your heart walk around outside your body even that doesn’t do justice to how your heart can ache when you look at your miracles, or when they give off that little strangled mewly cry.

I guess I made things harder on myself in a number of ways with my own expectations and fixed ideas on how I would do things and my independence and delays in making proper plans for support. I think I honestly thought I could do it all alone with only occassional help. It never really REALLY occurred to me what TWO babies actually meant. I had visions of our days together with an occassional visitor, but not with someone being in our space all day! I had visions of a baby latched at each boob and never stopped to think about how I would get them there without help or get them to latch or keep them latched. Most of all I could never have anticipated how emotional feeding your baby who relies on you in every way would be. I need a whole post on breastfeeding as I owe you all an apology on my post about breastfeeding from the other side (the pre-mommy side), but another day.

Truth be told, we have it easy (touch wood) so far. Our babies like to sleep and, now they are over the jaundice, they like to eat. They really only cry when hungry or Jed cries especially if you delay a feed by changing his nappy. He also doesn’t like being undressed so cries then too. Or they cry when they have winds or get over stimulated, but really these little heart wrenching cries are few and far between. Jade doesn’t like to go to sleep after the 9pm feed so inevitably ends up sleeping in the bed with Mom and Dad in Mommy’s arms for an hour or so. Yes I didn’t think I would do this, but I need to sleep so I can be the best Mommy possible during the day too. And last night we had both Jed and Jade in Mommy’s arms for a little while. And you know what I love nothing more than on the rare occassion I can have them both in my arms at the same time.

The things I wish for that would make me more worthy of being Mom and carer and feeder and soother to these little people include an extra pair of arms that could sprout from my body when required, more breastmilk, nipples that aren’t flat, the ability to not sleep (so I can just soak up the sight of them more), the hormones that make me so teary to go away, a full time domestic who can keep my house running so I can concentrate on nothing but my children.

And above all else, my one wish is that Chris didn’t have to work so hard, that he could be home more of the awake hours, that we could be the complete family more of the time. I cannot express how much better everything is when Chris is here, how much more time I seem to have for him, for the precious babes, for myself when he is here. How much smoother everything runs. We are such a great team and while he is at work no matter who is here with me I feel isolated and like half a person. You see now I am defined as parent and I think there is a reason it takes two people to make a baby, because parents should come in twos to make the job smoother and provide each other with the support and love and strength to keep the little people happy and healthy.

I have spent a fair amount of time in the last few weeks thinking about what I should have done differently, thinking about what advice I wish I could go back in time and give myself while planning for their arrival. There are lots of things, but the pregnant me wouldn’t have listened. But I wish I could scrub away the expectations I set for myself so I could just be the best Mommy I know how to be without constantly judging myself against the standard that the niaive pregnant and pre-mommy me set for myself.

* sorry if this post is full of typos, but laptop broken so post written from Blackberry

Our perfect little miracles

The birth experience was in no way what I had hoped for and I went under in flooods of tears and totally terrified that I would never wake up to see me angels, but once I lay my eyes on them and held them against my skin it turned out that the way you want your babies to enter the world matters not one iota, all that matters is that they are there, safe and sound and healthy – and they are.

The anaesthesiologist could not get into my spine to do the spinal block due to all the swelling and eventually had to give up for fear of doing nerve damage hence the general anaesthetic.  Apparently the c-sec was not straight forward and the doctor was glad in the end that I had been knocked out.

I had so many hopes for how the birth experience would be and despite these babies being here and perfect I am still finding myself sad when I think about our birth experience.  I feel I missed so very much on their arrival, but my awesome man has filled me on over the weeks.  Like the little detail where the paediatrician said to him, “Come Daddy, let’s count, 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10 fingers, 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10 toes” on each of our perfect little miracles.  And how I apparently said “Hello Angels” when I was finally introduced to them in my drug induced haze.

I woke up in recovery in absolute agony and all I could think was that I had to stop shivering so I could get to my children.  It is sad to me that my first post birth memory is shivering uncontrollably with pain and in shock from the surgery and yet when they were put on my chest at last, everything was right with the world.  It was as though a veil was laid around me and our precious babies and protected us from the rest of the world.  I actually couldn’t see beyond a metre and the only focus I had was right against my breasts.  I hope that veil stays there always keeping us together and them safe close to my heart.

Heaven is where your heart is and mine is in these babies

Jed and Jade are both absolute perfection, very pretty babies (sorry I know I am biased, but they are), they needed no special care at all and went straight from the theatre to the nursery where their Daddy did Kangaroo Care with them skin on skin for over an hour and a half until I was out of recovery.

Daddy giving them all his love

There is still so much to say about the first few monites / hours and days, about the feelings, the overwhelming joy and fear and the intensity of emotion at every glance at them, every feel of their soft skin, every little squeel or squeak and the smell of them.  I hope to get to blog about it all, before these feelings blurr and fade with the passage of time and the new experiences that every day brings.

We had a fairly rough first week, the twins both had low blood sugar, then developed jaundice and with me having a breathing issue (which I think were panic attacks) and high blood pressure spikes.  We left the hospital on the Thursday only to be readmitted due to their jaundice on the Friday, then home again on the Saturday.  Since being home again things have started to settle into a routine (the absolute secret to even beginning to cope with twins) and I am just in absolute awe at being a Mommy at Last!

I want to thank you all once again for your love and support along this road and to let you all know my perfect moment has begun!

Perfection

I have to admit that I never thought we would make it to 37 weeks with our babies on the inside still.  Especially after the really hard days last week, where even crying didn’t really help to alleviate the discomfort and frustration I was feeling.  As of today our babies are full terms for twins!  They won’t need their milestones to be measured by adjusted age.  I am so grateful.

Well a week ago I really never thought I would make another week.  Pregnancy is not for sissies and twin pregnancy is really tough.  I have spent too much of the last week enduring.  Just enduring the pain, enduring the discomfort and feeling terrible because all I wanted was these babies on the outside.  There has been no gradual build up of excitement as we count down the days to the c-sec, just a slow building of relief that the end is in sight.  Feeling this way has made me so sad, the chances are good this is the only pregnancy I will ever have and I have been wishing it away.  There has been no real enjoyment of the little lives still wriggling around inside for the last week or so.

While the meds have certainly helped, I think the discomfort has been growing too and the last two days have been really tough again.  Poor Chris comes home to a sad and desperate wife who cries and is totally pathetic.  Thank heavens for the drugs or who knows how I would have been.

And then this morning dawns.  37 weeks!  And some of the pains are lessened, some of the discomfort seems to have eased and the frustration seems less too.  This morning I have smiled at the little kicks and wriggles again, this morning I caught myself singing to my precious babies.  Today I am so greatful for the journey that has led us to this place and so thrilled that we have made it to full term and that my little babies are still letting me know that they are there and getting bigger and stronger.  Today is a good day.

Only three more days and we will finally hold our babies in our arms.  Only three more days and I will finally be able to kiss their sweet little heads.  Three more days and we will hear their cries and change their bums and feed them and hold them and rock them and they will hear our voices (not mumbled through amiotic fluid) and smell us and feel us (not just poking at them).

Chances are when you next hear from me I will no longer be a ‘Mommy-in-Waiting’, I will actually be a Mommy with babes in her arms.  Guess I may need to rethink my blog.

So today I cherish being pregnant, I treasure these last few days where my children remain closer to me than they will ever be again in their lives.  I can keep them on the inside and protect them and nurture them and finally start getting excited for their arrival.

Yesterday was a bit of a better day, it’s all relative and I decided I would see how the night went before deciding whether to speak to the OB about an earlier date.  So last night a bath and another amazing foot massage from Chris and we turned out the lights.  At exactly midnight I woke up with contractions!  YES Time at last, the babies were takign the decision away from me.  I dozed off waiting for the second contraction, but was woken up 17 minutes later with another one.  I thought great, now I can make sure they are getting longer stronger and closer together before I wake up Chris to take us to the hospital.  Next contraction came only 7 minutes later and I was thrilled, but I still wasn’t 100% convinced it wasn’t just Braxton Hicks.  The next contraction was about 11 minutes later and less strong and I realised the babies were not on their way.  On the plus side I never made a fool of myself, I resisted the urge to destroy another night of sleep for Chris and I even managed to get some sleep afterwards.

But when I woke up this morning still feeling like a house and in pain I decided that the person who said I was a mother not a martyr was right and I should call the doc.  So at 8.00am I was on the phone to the OB.  His receptionist was great asking how I was and I said struggling could I talk to the doc.  She must have heard someting in my voice, because I was put straight through.  I think he heard the depseration straight away.  I did resist the urge to beg him to take the babies out, I just said “I’m really struggling” and straight away he had some suggestions.

He started by checking my dates and said he was not at all keen to get the babies out now, he said we could do an amnio to check their lung function and if everything okay we could do the c-sec, but the risks of an amnio at this stage just not worth it.  He said he did not want to do the c-sec until 37 weeks (7 November by his calculation) and suggested booking me into hospital for the next 10 days so they can put me on a drip which can ease my pain and increase comfort levels and where they can monitor me more closely.  I said I was really not that keen unless it was necessary as no matter how uncomfortable I am sure I will be more comfortable at home.  So he said he could prescribe some things to help me get through.  First off he has prescribed some sleeping tablets which he swears are 100% fine for the babies so much so that if I am really struggling I can take the sleeping pills during the day too to help keep me more comfortable.  He has also prescribed some pain meds and some nasal spray to help me breathe.  Funny enough he knew exactly what I needed most without even asking what the worst part was.

So I agreed to take the drugs (yes this is the same me who believes in everything as drug free and natural as possible) and I figure if I can get some sleep and I can breathe I can make the next 10 days.

So our next OB appointment is on Monday to check everything again, but chances are looking very good my c-sec will now be on the 7th Nov!  I would say that htat is just 10 sleeps away, but the reality is that if I sleep during the day and with the number of times I get up during the night it’s probably a lot more than 10 sleeps, but 10 days away sounds bearable.

Amazingly just knowing the end is a little closer and knowing that there is something I can take for some relief has me feeling a lot better already.

Yesterday was the hardest day yet.  I had hoped to head out with a friend to a market (ambitious at nearly 36 weeks I know) but by the time I had got myself ready I knew there was just no way I could go anywhere.  Well disappointing but no hardship.  But by mid afternoon I was in such pain and discomfort from the pressure of my big babies that I just sat in a chair and cried.  I tried a nap and couldn’t breath as soon as I lay down (babies pressing on my diaphram).  I eventually cried myself to sleep in the chair.

Then last night I think I got a total of 2 1/2 hours sleep (again eventually in my chair).  Our little boy seemed to have decided it was time to come out, only he was trying to crawl out my rib cage (well that’s what it felt like anyway).  I am in such constant discomfort and struggle to move at all.   My legs, knees, ankles and feet are so swollen that just sitting hurts.  My hands are so swollen that my joints ache if I flex and stretch my fingers and my wrist joints are so sore that leaning on them to push myself up to get out of bed say, is agony.

It’s all getting too hard and I feel like a terrible mother becuase if I am honest I just want them out.  I know the very best place for them is on the inside and I know that the longer they stay there the healthier they will be, but I am now ready to hold my babies in my arms and I find myself wishing my waters would break so this can be over.  I never in a million years believed I would wish my pregnancy over.  I waited so long and went through so much to get here, how can I want it over.  And I will miss being pregnant, the little kicks and squirms.  But I have said it, I am ready for the babies to come.

My hubby is a star.  He sat and massaged my swollen feet last night before bed to help alleviate the pain of the swelling, which was heavenly and I really thought would help me sleep better.  Then in the middle of the night when I eventually decided I needed to move to the lounge to sleep in my chair he got up with me, brought me a duvet and tucked me into my chair.  I know I simply don’t say it often enough or express it well enough, but I love that man with all my everything.

I have had this theory, which so far has proven accurate, that if I am not ready for the twins they will not arrive.  So I have procrastinated with some of the last jobs that needed doing and the last of the sorting to keep them in.  And it has worked.  Well yesterday I decided enough… so the last of the jobs got done.  Chris put the car seat bases in our cars so we are ready to bring them home.  I sorted the last of their little (prem to 3 months) clothes.  I made up the cots with fresh clean linen.  And last night we sat and put together the sms notification list so we are ready to let people know when they arrive.

So now if my theory holds true if everything is done they will come now.

36 weeks tomorrow!  I never thought I would make it this far.  I never believed that my short body could accommodate two big babies for this long.  I have been so busy bracing myself for tiny prem babies that it never occurred to me we would find ourselves in a place where I would be doing the impatient wait for their arrival.

And don’t get me wrong as much as I know I am now complaining and as much pain as I am in and as much as I am wishing this was over, I am so grateful to find ourselves in this place I so longer for.  Pregnant with twins (my dream come true), 36 weeks with big healthy twins and married to the perfect man.

I could never understand women who got so impatient in the last few weeks, who wished their babies on the outside.  I couldn’t understand wanting to rush the natural process and not just allowing your babies to come when they are ready.

That was because I could never have imagined being this uncomfortable.  I could never have imagined that just sitting could be so painful.  I could NEVER have anticipated just how much a twin pregnancy can take out of you.  I could never have forseen that nights would become so endless and I would find myself sitting on the edge of the bed becuase it is more comfortable.  Who would have known that all this could make me so exhausted that I am ready to throw in the towel.

Yesterday I finally admitted that I am ready for these babies to arrive.  When I say ready I don;t mean their room is ready (it’s not), I don’t mean we have everything (but we probably do), I mean I have had enough.

Then in the dark hours of the night, when the pain seems to be at it’s worst and it felt as though they were actually trying to climb out, I felt all guilty for wishing my babies out.  I just kept thinking that they would still be prem, and that out is not yet the best place for them and I cannot wish this over just yet.

Somehow I did resist the urge to beg the doc for an earllier date at our appointment today.  But by the look on his face when he saw me, he doesn’t think this can really keep going for very much longer.  He said that every week when he sees me he thinks, “she can’t get any bigger” and every week I somehow do get bigger!

It gets harder and harder every week to get accurate measurements on the babies and I think personally they are a bit of a waste of time, but seems our boy is roughly approaching 3kgs and our girl around 2.8kgs, but who knows, I think it’s juts a guessing game now.  What the doc can say is that they STILL have PLENTY of fluid and are active and growing and doing very well.  He did an internal today and my cervix is still closed TIGHT!  He also did a swab for Strep B just in case my waters break he wants to know if he should get me on anti-biotics early.  I like his proactive approach, my SIL only had this checked when she went into labour at 41 weeks?!?

Then we talked about what I want at the birth (c-sec).  I said to him I had pretty much held back on my requests until now because it has felt like if they came before now they would be prem and I would have little choice but to go with the flow.  We talked about how important skin on skin is to me and I stressed that while I know it won’t be easy for instant skin on skin after the c-sec with me,  I want our babies to have it and want Chris to do it.  I don’t want them whisked away from us.  He was great and really understanding and in fact got out a photo book he has of a c-sec showing pictures of someone going throught he process, so we could see what everything actually looks like.

And suddenly discussing the birth it hit me that this time in three weeks (if not sooner) we will be getting ready to kiss our children for the first time!  I am so overwhelmed by this it takes my breath away and in fact I found myself crying a little cry at the doctor’s rooms while paying.

Today’s scan showed still plenty of fluid and two huge babies.  They are both around 2.7kgs now which at 34w3d is measuring well ahead for a singleton.  Our little wrigglers know what is best for them and are just growing beuatifully.

My blood pressure is still high although not really much higher than it has been, but the OB has put me on some mild blood pressure pills to help keep it in control.  In addition we went for a full blood count today just to double check for any signs of pre-eclampsia, but there is no protein in my urine and also did a glucose test but again no sugar in my urine.  So he is playing is cautiously and I am very happy with that.

So now we are at weekly scans so will have another update on how these little guys are fareing next week.

I’m going to start with one of the most overwhelming experiences of my life – our Babies’ Shower!  My sister turned 21 this weekend and rather than have her 21st Party in Jo’burg without me she brought her party to Cape Town and the whole family came down for it.  So Sunday while everyone was here we had our Babies’ Shower.

I have to admit to being totally excited about the shower, you see I had appointed six (yes 6) awesome women to arrange the shower and I had a feeling they were getting more than a little carried away.  Also I have spent so much of this pregnancy scared that these precious babies would arrive before the shower that reaching the actual shower seemed like such a massive milestone.

My hubby helped to get me totally overwhelmed before the shower even started.  We got in the car to head to my MIL’s place (where the shower was being held) and he said to me, “before all the chaos and people are around us I want to say well done and thank you.”  I was a little surprised and asked for what and he said for keeping the babies in and for being brave enough to ask him to get treatment so we could have babies and making this possible!  Cue the tears!  How special, how awesome!  I love that man with all my heart and am so thrilled he is holding my hand down this road.  He is truely going to be the very best Daddy ever!

Then we walked into the Shower and WOW!   Every detail had been taken care of.  Beautiful cut-outs hanging on a line with the names of our babies strung up and teeny tiny little socks and baby grows (onesies).  And balloons which matched the cut-outs perfectly.  And food – food and drinks for Africa!

There were so many people there, not sure on the exact number, but I think it was around 40.  And if that wasn’t daunting enough, there were gifts and gift bags literally packed from one end of the huge room to another.  I have never in my life seen so many presents together in one place!  It took three hours just to open all the presents.  The down side of all those presents (if there can be a downside ) was that I spent to much time opening presents that I never got to chat to everyone who was there and it felt a little like I was only interested in what people had brought for our babies.  But the reality was that what made the day most special was all those people were there celebrating with love our little medical miracle twins.  All those people were there to share our joy and that is what I will take away as the most precious memory.  There were practical gifts and cute gifts and really special thought out gifts and one’s which were hand made with so much love.  Needless to say there were plenty of tears too.

Then my hubby overwhelmed me again on Tuesday night.  We were out to dinner with some of the family (Chris’ and mine) and he arrived with a little gift bag.  In it was a stunning eternity ring.  He always said that I would get an eternity ring when I delivered his third son, but remember that was when we believed we would never have our own biological kids.  To really understand how precious that ring is you need to understand some of the symbolism.  My engagement ring (chosen entirely by Chris) is yellow gold with a beautiful diamond in it.  My wedding ring is rose gold and we always said the eternity ring would complete the set in white gold.  Well this eternity ring completes the set even better than that – it is all three golds, in three rings which are joined together.  The white gold band is covered in tiny little diamond chips and for me represents our eternity together.  But each of the rose gold and yellow gold bands has one little diamond on it to represent each of our precious twins.  The three together symbolise the completion of our family.  How many men would think of all that when choosing a ring?

So you are now doubt wondering how the twins are doing.  They are both doing brilliantly – both weighing in at over 2kgs now, which is really awesome as it means that they are both still ahead of the curve for singletons and their growth has not slowed down, which is typical by this stage in most twin pregnancies.  They still both have plenty of fluid and are moving a lot (my favourite thing ever, but I think I’ve said that before).  We can’t see my cervix as our baby girl is sat on it, but it seems to be hanging in very well.  The only problem remains my blood pressure which is high, but being monitored.  There is no protien in my urine, my blood count and glucose tests continue to come back normal, so all is going strong still.

The doctor has now warned me at our last two appointments that I MUST be ready to dash to the hospital, because I am so big it is likely my waters will break before we reach our c-sec date (C-Day).  In fact I had to laugh at the OB on Tuesday, when I walked into his rooms, he looked at me and said “sjoe Juanita you are big!  Are you okay?”  But he did go on to say that if we can make it to 34 weeks there is a strong possibility that these babies will only need oxygen and no specialist care.  That was music to my ears and 34 weeks is just over one week away.  Personally though I am still hoping to make it to 36 weeks, for me that is the magic number and every day after that is simply a bonus.

As for me, the hugeness is extremely uncomfortable.  I can’t lie and say it’s all wonderful.  I am in pain a lot of the time now.  Sitting really hurts, lying down makes my hips ache, standing is almost impossible and when I walk it feels as though my pubic bone is going to just break and my tummy is going to burst and the babies are going to fall out.  So obviously I am pretty sedantary and have had this awesome set of family visitors who run around after me, making me tea and looking after everything that needs doing.

And then in a quiet moment I lie still and feel the movement of our babies and think about where we were and how far we have come and the miracle of life that is happening and just how much our lives are about to change, and I am filled with such overwhelming joy and wonder that how can this experience be anything but wonderful.