An apt 100th post

It's amazing how time slips away from you when you've got two babies at home. It's also surprisingly hard to do a blog post one-handed when there's a baby curled up in the crook of your arm. This week has been both magical and challenging, and it still feels a bit surreal to look at these children and know that they're ours. So without further ado, a picture of the babies and their names. I don't plan to use their real nameson the blog as I don't want it to be googleable. But I know everyone wants to hear name choices, so they can ooh and aww, or question what kind of drugs the mother was on when she chose the name. The first names are just names that we liked, we wanted something a little different, but not too out there. Our son's middle name is after Elizabeth's father, our daughter's middle name is for my brother. This will be the only time I use the names on the blog.

This is when our son is about an hour old, and our daughter is about 15 minutes old. They've changed so much in the past week, I really don't think they look like this anymore.

PHOTO REMOVED

Thinking in her boppy.

One of the rare moments when our little guy is still.

Lucky Friday the 13th

At 38 weeks 6 days pregnant, I finally got contacted with a date for induction, to happen one full week later. I was miserable. One week seemed like an eternity. Still, Elizabeth and I did our best to enjoy what remained of our free time and made a lunch date with some friends for the next day. We checked out one final daycare, and ended the day with chocolate ice cream. At 4:30 in the morning, I got up to pee and felt a strange pressure on my pelvic bones. Yet the toilet paper showed no sign of a mucous plug, so I attributed it to sleeping funny. I went back to bed, and realized I was still peeing a little. Hmm....I'm not a bed wetter I thought to myself, I should stop this at once. Only I couldn't stop. The trickle grew stronger, and I shook Elizabeth awake. "I think my water just broke" I said as another small gush came out. Elizabeth turned on the lights and threw back the sheets. "Yup, it sure did" she said upon seeing the puddle I was lying in.

I can't ever remember feeling so giddy in my life. We raced around the house following our to-do list...change the sheets, feed the dogs, run the dishwasher. I couldn't stop giggling the whole time. The first few hours of labor were exactly as I'd always imagined- being awakened by my water breaking, and then a drive to the hospital when the streets are dark and empty. The rest of the delivery was completely unexpected.

Once I found out that I was having twins, I knew that many aspects of their delivery would be out of my control. A home birth was out. I knew they would likely arrive early, so I braced myself for spending time in the NICU. I knew they would most likely be born by c-section, with a room full of hospital staff.

I totally lucked out. Both babies were head down, and my OB was excited about letting me go vaginally. While it's policy in this and many other hospitals to deliver all twins in the operating room "just in case", our OB pulled some strings (okay she was downright stubborn and insistent) that we be allowed to stay in the LDR room for their birth. Rather than being surrounded by a team of 8 hospital staff, it was just Elizabeth, the OB and a nurse in the LDR room when the babies were born. Labor progressed slowly and steadily, and I allowed myself to experience painful contractions until I was 5cm. I had a low dose epidural, which my OB asked me to let wear off by 10cm. After an hour and a half of pushing, we had a son.

We waited for the contractions to do their thing and push the next baby down. The baby's heart rate got really wacky on the monitor, and the contractions slowed down. The OB asked my permission to start some pitocin to help bring the contractions back up since the baby seemed to be in a bit of distress. I was exhausted at this point, so I was happy to have any method of help possible. Just shy of 40 minutes after our son was born, we had a daughter. She surveyed the room, pouted, and then peed her disapproval.

One of each. We are over the moon thrilled and excited about these babies, born on an oh-so-lucky Friday the 13th. They could not be more different. Our little boy has dark hair, dark eyes, and is a skinny little thing. Our little girl, a blondie, looks bigger. We learned after having them weighed that her bigger appearance is just due to her chubby little cheeks. He weighed in at 6lb 1oz, and she was 5lb, 11oz. They were 20 inches & 18 and a quarter long, respectively. They're absolutely perfect and precious, and we will post pictures and names, provided we can figure out how to make them un-googleable, very soon!

GUSH!

The race is on, Poppy!

Meds giveaway!

I think we've held on to our extra F0llustim long enough. First, we were keeping it because we weren't sure if this pregnancy would stick. Then we held on a little longer because we toyed with the idea of having Elizabeth create and freeze some embryos for use a few years down the road. We've finally decided that we're not going to use it before it expires on 9/2011, so we have two 900 pens of f0llustim up for grabs. Please e-mail me (gaybyrabies at yahoo dot com) if you are interested. I can send both pens to one person, or split it up. I'll determine who gets it mostly on a first come, first served basis. However, since it costs a small fortune for me to overnight this stuff, priority will go to anyone on my blog roll. Of course, anyone who needs the meds is welcome to ask. My only conditions are that:

A) You are seeing a doctor, I don't want to be responsible for anyone self medicating with this stuff.

B) You don't sell it. I could really use the money too, but I'm pretty sure it's illegal.

The gender post

Sometimes, I'm struck by how little Elizabeth and I know about our babies. We've managed to get this far, through all of the extra ultrasounds that twins get, without learning the sex of the babies. I thought I'd have some kind of mother's intuition and get a strong feeling one way or the other, but so far, I can't say that I have an inkling about who is in there.

As happy as I am to be surprised on the day that they're born, there is a part of me that wishes I knew. Although I love and appreciate all of the clothes we've gotten from friends and family, I'm getting eager to buy things that are a bit more gender specific. There are only so many gender neutral things available at BRU, (which seems to be the only place people shop for showers) so we have so many duplicate items. The colors that have been deemed "neutral" are a bit boring after a while too. No bold greens or oranges, just a sea of orange and lime sherbet colored onesies. Lately when we've stopped at any store that sells baby items, we've been drawn to the clothing - particularly the really gender specific items, like impossibly tiny ladybug sundresses and cupcake onesies, or bulldog and dinosaur outfits. I have to admit, some of them are quite cute. But I can't bring myself to buy them without knowing who's in there.

Let me say that I have absolutely no preference of one sex over the other when it comes to these babies. I know that there are many families (same-sex and hetero, nobody on my blog roll of course) who view girls as the top prize, and baby boys as a distant second. It breaks my heart to see some people who are truly disappointed when they come back from their anatomy scan and must report that they are carrying a baby boy. I've always felt a bit defensive when it comes to baby boys. I think it comes from hearing stories about my crazy grandmother. My grandmother had three daughters, and no sons. She was thrilled when I was born, but when her second grandchild, my brother, was born a year later she refused to hold him for the first three months of his life simply because he was a boy. When my aunt, who had struggled with infertility for years was finally approved for adoption, my grandmother asked "what are you going to do if it's a boy?" And when I approached her, overflowing with joy to tell her that she was soon going to be a great-grandmother to twins, the first words out of her mouth were "I suppose they're both boys?" My jaw hit the floor. I was 12 weeks along at that point and had done my best to remain as detached as possible from these babies, mostly as a defense mechanism because I was so afraid of losing them. But in that moment, I suddenly felt so connected to my babies and protective of them. I had to convey to her that there was no way I would love a son any less than I would love a daughter. Even if I'm not quite sure how to teach him to pee standing up.

Nothin'

I have a question for all of you ladies out there who've already had babies. Did you have any sense in the day(s) before your babies were born that your time was coming? I'm a little over 37 weeks along here, and for far I've got nothing. I haven't felt a single contraction, not even a little Braxton Hicks. I haven't felt any of the signs of labor on the list stuck to my fridge. Truly, I am happy to keep these babies baking for as long as I can. Overall, my body has done really well with this pregnancy thing, and I'm still fairly comfortable. But I'm starting to get a bit impatient, wondering when these babies plan on arriving.