Hmmm.

As my body begins to re-awaken post pregnancy, I suddenly feel some creative juices flowing again...

I can't promise anything. I have no idea what being home with two newborns is going to be like....

But I can tell you I would very much like for this blog to be the outlet it once was for me.....

We'll see, my pretty pretty Flowers.

xoxoxo

ch-ch-ch-ch-changes....

....turn.....and face the strange....

I gave notice at work today.

I'm the weirdest mix of happy (to be able to stay home with the boys) and sad (because I love my job).

I could realllllllly use a margarita or four right now...

Back to the grind....

After three months, I am finally back at work.

Uhmmmm.....

Eeew.

Sex after twins....

I assume I will get the thumbs up from my doc after my six week appointment...

And I do miss sex...

But....

When the heck are we gonna find time for it???

The twins eat every three hours, and thanks to some digestive issues with them, each feeding lasts an hour to an hour and a half.

When they aren't eating, I am usually doing yet another load of laundry (how do two such tiny humans create so much laundry?!?!), washing bottles, sterilizing bottles, occasionally trying to eat and/or sleep, etc.

I LOVE sex. Anyone who has read my blog a while knows that. Now that my body is almost back to normal, I can feel the cravings for it again... Ugh. Do I ever....

But....

WHEN?

*pained sigh*

I worry that we will become one of "those couples" who allow kids, work, stress, etc to get in the way of a healthy sex life.

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo................................................

Oomph

As I take another peek at my swollen-like-Fred-Flintstone feet, I can't help but feel a little dizzy.

My twins are almost three weeks old, but today was supposed to be their birthday. :)

If any of you ladies have ever had a c-section (or like me, the double whammy of a c-section with multiples) you know how hard it is to recover from this kind of surgery.

I was clueless.

Frikking clueless.

This is not necessarily a bad thing.

I think if I had ANY idea how hard my pregnancy and delivery would be I might have chickened out.

Holy crap. Just.....HOLY CRAP.

Don't get me wrong, I would not trade my boys for anything. They fill me full of joy that I have never known, and I am truly blessed that it was my destiny to be their Mommy.

But crikey Flowers. They nearly killed me.

The last month of my pregnancy was awful. In and out of "labor and delivery", never sleeping more than twenty minutes at a time because I could not breathe, barely being able to get around, going on bed rest from work and losing my Independence...

That's the cliff-notes version, but just trust me when I say it was BAD.

I kept telling my doctor I was not going to make it to 38 weeks (Jul 28th). There was just no frikking way. He was insistant....but look who was right! :)

I developed a condition that put me in the hospital, and a couple days later my doc had to take the boys. I was the weirdest combination of relieved and frikking TERRIFIED. Along with not understanding how difficult a twins pregnancy would be, I did not exactly understand the whole c-section process.

UGH.

Hated it. Hated it. HATED IT.

HATED.

IT.

The anesthesiologist MISSED on my epidural. My husband could hear me screaming in pain through the O.R. door. It was unreal.

They finally got me in the right spot and allowed my husband in the O.R. He walked in just in time to see them slicing me open (I found this out later of course). He saw my guts.

Let's stop and think about that for a second.

Ewwww.

I was pretty panicky the whole surgery, but never said anything. I would like to believe it was because I was strong or something, but it was probably the morphine. ;) I vaguely remember the boys being brought over to me, and someone took our picture. Then we went off to recovery. I have no idea how long we were there. I have vague memories of my parents, my aunt and Cougar coming in the hospital room to meet the boys.

I did ok that night. The next day, we had a thousand visitors, and I TOTALLY screwed up. I was feeling pretty good thanks to meds, and I didn't pay attention to my pain meds. I got off schedule, and that night, BAM! Got hit like a ton of bricks. That was absolutely positively the most painful, awful night of my life. I spent the next three days in the hospital in hideous pain most of the time. I still don't understand why they didn't give me something stronger.

I'm skipping over a ton of stuff here, but it is almost feeding time.

Quick wrap up -- on the way home from the hospital, I swelled up like the Micheline (sp) Man, which my doc refused to give me meds for, which is surprisingly miserable by the way, then ran out of pain meds in a couple days and my doc refused to renew my prescription.

I HATE MY DOCTOR.

Obviously, he is a MAN.

Growl. Hiss.

After my six week appointment I am dumping that man, my doc of nine years, like a hot potato.

Buh-bye!

I skipped over a ton of stuff that, like I said, I just don't have time to type out. I'll just say it was all hideous, but the boys are a joy. I'm still a little scared of them to be honest, but I love them desperately. They are beautiful, sweet, and so precious they make my heart pound.

Annnnnd......I hear the starting of the "Hunger Call" (the cutest cacophony of little squeaks, soon to be followed by a ROOOOOAAAAR if I am not fast enough), so it is time to publish this thing!

I heart you, my pretty pretty Flowers....

guess what?

If you're one of my facebook friends, you already know this......

*grinning*

As of Friday July 10 at 10:00am and 10:01am, I am the Mommy of beautiful, perfect twin boys!

Sooooooo.....

We won't know for sure until tomorrow morning, but it looks like July 10th is going to be the twins' birthday! I'm blogging from the hospital, and will fill you guys in more when I can. If Doc doesn't take them tomorrow, it is just a matter of days! Wheeee! Wish us luck!

Sleep is over-rated. :)

It's late.....or early, depending on your perspective I suppose.

Hub has moved a chair and table for my lap top in to our bedroom for me. He's out cold, and I am sitting near the TV, half watching a movie while I surf around the net. Have you guys ever seen "Frailty"? It's the only Matthew McConoughey (sp?) movie that I like. If you haven't seen it, you should! I love the twist....

I don't sleep much these days. My doctor jokingly says it is God's way of getting me ready to be up all night feeding two babies. Technically, the insomnia is due to a combination of extreme surges of estrogen that apparently make me wired like I've had six cups of coffee, and being just plain uncomfortable. And then there's the twins.... Kick kick kick squirm kick thrash BAM kick kick BAM mosh punch kick kick BAM! It's pretty impossible to sleep through two little boys using one's ribs as a xylephone. I realize that sounds like a complaint, but it's not really. I feel sorry for you men. You will never get to feel what it is like to have a child or two bouncing around inside you. Even when my little rascals wake me up, it makes me giggle.

Soooo.....it stinks being tired and all, but I kind of like my new routine.

I'm alone Monday through Friday during the day unless I have my weekly Dr visit. When my husband gets home, I am so happy to see him. We have dinner, we talk, we hang out, we watch a movie or some TV. It's really fun. When we go to bed, as soon as I lay down, the boys start thrashing. Hub snuggles up to me and puts his hand on my tummy. We stay there for a while, just enjoying feeling the boys squirm and punch and kick, and then hub drifts off to sleep.

This is the point in my night when things get realllly interesting.

I never knew this before my insomnia attacks. I suppose I used to just sleep through it. Ya know what???

Hub talks in his sleep.

A lot.

Like, every night, as far as I can tell.

Weird!

The first couple times I answered. I assumed he was talking to me. He never replied in a way that made sense. I'd wait a while, and then I'd hear a snore. I can understand him about half the time. Last night I had fallen asleep, and I woke to this loud, obnoxious crinkling sound. I asked hub what the heck he was doing. He said he was sleeping. I asked him if he was eating smartees (he has some on his nightstand) and to please put the candy down, but he continued to eat it. Finally he sort of woke up and stopped. This morning he looked at me funny and asked if he dreamed that he woke me up by eating candy. NOPE! LOL.....

I keep an eye on him at night now. Maybe he is one of those people who go raid the fridge in their sleep in the middle of the night? Who knows. :)

Six weeks to go.....

I am still on bed rest, and could go in to early labor at any time really, but we are scheduled for a c-section on July 28th.

That's crazy, is it not? Six weeks max.....

There's an illustration here that shows what my boys look like at this point. I'm at 32 weeks, and my doc is determined to get me to 38.

The boys are a little over four pounds each, and kicking the daylights out of me. My favorite thing is when "Baby A" head-butts me. I can literally feel his round little head rubbing against my belly. Of course, the husband likes to say I am feeling Baby A's butt rubbing on me and not his head, but I know from the ultra-sound that hub is wrong. lol...

I look ridiculous these days. I'm officially up twenty pounds from my "procedure date" last November, but I lost twenty pounds in the first tri-mester. I consider myself up by forty pounds, but my doc still says twenty pounds. Whichever amount it is, it is alllllll belly, and boy is that getting hard to carry around. I miss being able to just BREATHE...and don't get me started on the joys of insomnia.... Ugh....

But.....I'm happy.

Hub and I talked in bed last night for a loooooong time about the sense of "awe" we are feeling as we get closer and closer to meeting our babies. Our tenth wedding anniversary is this September, and we were pretty close to just giving up. We've had a happy life together, and I know we would have continued to have a happy life together without biological children. We love each other very much. This journey of ours......all the ups and downs and misfires along the way..... I swear it has made the end result so much sweeter that we are just beside ourselves with joy.

I love my little babies so much already I feel like I am going to just explode.

(...and if you could see my belly, you'd probably think I meant that literally....lol)

Baby Peas....

LL sent this to me.....soooooooo TRUE!

Things I love about pregnancy:

...feeling the boys move...
...the idea of "creating life"...
...knowing that it won't be long before I am holding them and kissing their faces...
...my boys will most likely be Leos like my Dad, which makes me very happy...

Things I do NOT love about pregnancy:

...the waddling...
...the constant back and hip pain...
...the terror that something will go wrong...
...the insomnia...
...the hot and cold flashes...
...BED REST, which I have been on for almost a week now...
...barely being able to breathe...
...the general loss of focus...
...not being able pick anything up off the floor...
...sex = impossible...

Still....

The good out-weighs the bad.

:)

"Giving up the ghost"

Sort of out of the blue, I sent "The Blog Ghost" a chatty email, filling him in on my pregnancy and the last five months of my life. It was strangely cathartic, despite the fact that he did not respond. Honestly, I'll never understand that whole situation, but I've made peace with it.

Today is a good day Flowers.

:)

....and so it begins....

Yesterday we had our 3-d/4-d ultrasound.

Oh Flowers......we are so in love with our little boys. We finally got to see little faces, and holy cow, do they look like their Daddy! I'm almost to 28 weeks. Full term is considered 40, but there is no way I am going to last that long. If I can make it another 6 or so, I will be thrilled. They currently weigh 2 pounds 7 ounces, and are over 14 inches long.

They are currently side-by-side. Baby A is on my left. His head is just under my ribs. Baby B is on my right. His feet are up under my ribs (which explains a lot! lol...). They were on their sides, facing each other, and get THIS. Baby B was KICKING BABY A IN THE HEAD!!!!!!!

Here is Baby A's face in profile. His hand is up on his face, and I think he kinda looks as if he is flipping the bird at the camera. Ahem. Baby B's leg is on the left, upside down. B's foot is on the way to kicking A in the face. Oy.... :)

Oh yeah. We're in trouble. Lol.....

"The Why"

I'm strong about some things. Very strong, in fact.

I am almost to the end of an incredibly amazing (and occasionally crushing) ten year journey for children. I am going to make it out alive, mostly in one piece, and will soon be holding not one but two tiny little miracles.

I can handle amounts of physical pain that would crush an average person.

I suppose the same may be true in regards to mental anguish and trauma.

I can handle just about anything as long as I can wrap my mind around "The Why".

...my body hurts because of thing A...
...my fever is caused by thing B...
...this horrible thing and that horrible thing are caused by thing C...
...the other pregnancies failed because I was destined to be M and L's Mother...
...I feel semi-crazy because of the drugs or the hormones, etc...

...blah blah blah, and so on....

What trips me up is when I don't have answers, either about a thing, a person, or myself.

- Why is it so easy for others, but so difficult for me, to let go?
- How could I allow this or that random person get to me like that?
- Why am I so damn sensitive?
- Why can't I hold pieces of myself back?
- What is the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow?

I obsess over the things I do not understand. Occasionally it works and I have some sort of an epiphany. The epiphanies are comforting, but tend to be rare. Mostly, I just torture myself over never knowing The Why, when I should be happily drowning in The Now.

Grrrr.

Dignity? What dignity.

I worked a 13 hour day on Wednesday, and wound up in the hospital thanks to CONTRACTIONS. Yes, CONTRACTIONS. I am only 26 weeks along, so it scared the ever living hell out of us. The babies are fine, thank God, but it has been a pretty traumatic couple of days.

I've now learned the hard way how they check to see if you are dilated. Uhm. OUCH. I think I would prefer to still be in the dark on THAT.

As I was laying there hooked up to multiple machines with my ass hanging out of a gown whilst periodically being violated by multiple strangers who must have German or Soviet ancestry (picture the "questionally" female athletes from communist countries in the 70's - would you want them anywhere near your kitty? HELL NO) I realized all of my dignity and modesty has officially flown the coop.

God I miss alcohol.

I know, I know, I'm bad bad blogger. :)

I think of things to blog about all the time. They just never seem to make it out of my head and on to the screen. Sorry about that Flowers.

A quick update....

The babies move all the time now. One of them stays in the same place, the lower left of my abdomen. He likes to kick a lot. The other baby is my spaz. He moves from my upper left to my upper right a lot. I guess he likes changes of scenery(?). LOL

We have painted their room. We bought their cribs, and those are built and in place. We had to special order our changing table, wardrobe and glider. Those should be here within the next week or so.

I had my first baby shower yesterday, and I feel ridiculouly spoiled. I pretty much cried for four solid hours. The boys received lots of amazing gifts. I have one more shower to go, in mid May.

We are hoping I can hold off on pre-term labor until the first week of July. That is when I hit 34 weeks, and their little lungs and organs will be fully developed. After they hit 34 weeks, they mostly just fatten up in there apparently. :)

I'm feeling ok I guess. I have good days and bad days. I am tired most of the time, but I do tend to have a smile on my face.

Miss you guys.

xoxo

Guess what?

We're having two boys!

I just have to say....

...my first Dom is soooo freaking cool.

Ok, so....

I'm not feeling quite as blah as I was last week. Thank you Flowers (in particular, my "special" ones.....you know who you are).

I've been on jury duty this week. Have any of you ever served? My case was difficult, but I was very glad to have been chosen for it. Our defendant was a teacher who CHOKED a student (choked as in wrapped his hands around the child's throat and applied brutal sounding pressure). We convicted him of assault. I was afraid I would feel guilty for affecting a man's life permanently like that, but seeing the pictures of what he did to that poor kid wiped my conscience clean. The kid is doing fine, by the way.

On a much lighter note....

I have received several inquiries about when I plan to write about my "accidental orgasm". I posed this question to someone today, and I think I will pose it to you Flowers as well. Would you rather hear about an accidental one, or a recent one that was on PURPOSE?

*evil grin*

Let me know.

Hi.

I'm still here, lurking quietly in the dark corners of my fantasy dungeon…

Hmmmm. Maybe lurking is the wrong word. "Moping" might be a better description.

*sigh*

I had an uncomfortable sort of "break up" with one of my two best friends that I originally started this blog for all the way back in 2005. "The end" was probably coming for quite a while I suppose, but it was still very difficult for me, and honestly, I'm still not fully over it. Post break-up, I managed to keep the blogging going for a while thanks to a new source of inspiration, but this place still feels kind of "haunted" for me.

And then there's the "joys" of pregnancy...

*whimper*

Ohhhhhhh sweet baby Jesus. Being pregnant with twins is far more difficult than I ever imagined in a million years. I've been so sick for the last four months that even if I wasn't having a little "blog ghost" issue, I probably would have gone quiet for a while anyways. I'll write more about the "joys" of pregnancy (still waiting for that "joy" thing to start. ahem.) soon.

I promise I don't plan to quit blogging. I've just been feeling......blah.