Today my husband emailed me this ... poem?...

It made me feel worlds better. He might not like me sharing but I had to.

*******
Good morning sweetiepies!

The fact that you are
exhausted, tired, broken,

carpal-tunneled, weekend-overloaded,
"Psyche"-deprived, iPad-violated, iPhone-cheated, cupcake-tormented,
cake-tempted, pig-hormone-not-cutting-it, trapped-in-kingdom-of-felines,
synthetic-hormone-deprived, buddy-wants-a-human-playmate,
buddy-i-love-you-but-gimme-a-break,
exhausted, tired and broken

may have caused
certain gloomy thoughts
to clot your mind

but, remember

those little shitballs and Jasmine
are worth it,
even if the worst-case-scenario
comes to fruition:

we may no longer have money
but ample debt
we may no longer have sleep
but endless fatigue
we may no longer have sex
but barrels of self-lubricant

still,

those little shitball and Jasmine
are worth it

so,

stop worrying
and learn to love
our new life

i love you and three
balls of you-know-what

:)

We're getting so big, so fast

These days, when I am home, I pump on the sofa in front of the TV - an image I hope will one day unburn itself from my husband's retinas. I imagine I look like some weird experiment in animal husbandry in which I am both the farmer and the cow.
-- Alison B. Hart

I am loving life with my babies! I should have updated sooner but we've been busy :-).

Our summer was great, we got out with the babies right away, going to the pool, visits with family and friends, and even our annual vacation on Martha's Vineyard (during the hurricane no less!)

Having my husband and daughter (7.5yrs) off of work and school was essential to our success at taking care of the babies and enjoying our summer. We were like a finely tuned relay team. We didn't have to sacrifice a thing.

In keeping with the theme "we are super fortunate", a week after we got home from the hospital we, essentially, inherited a nanny. A friend of mine suddenly got transferred to Chicago and her fantastic nanny became available right when we needed her.

Our nanny started right when school started, 3 weeks before I return to work, so I have really been able to enjoy the last days of my maternity leave. Right away I knew I loved her so much I shaved two weeks off of my leave and will return to work sooner. I start work next Friday.

The only downside is that I can't afford this nanny. I can't really afford any of the infant care options for two children (that don't terrify me). When the babies are just a year older, there may be a few more options available. The piece of mind our nanny is giving us is worth the financial sacrifice and effort needed to recoup our savings.

I love where we're at and I wouldn't change a thing. I always remember when I didn't think any of this was going to happen for me. I feel blessed.

OH AND AS IF I HAVEN'T BEEN LUCKY ENOUGH... I am weighing in at 182, EIGHT pounds below my pre pregnancy weight! Truth be told I was down 4 lbs below pre prego weight about a week after birth once the swelling had gone down. I only had gained baby weight during prego-ness.

I am amazed I did so well, my first pregnancy was nothing like this one.

I am hoping to take that further and get myself down another 25-30 lbs.

With out further ado, let me introduce Angela and Stephen.

Now we're home dealing with the disbelief.  

My husband and daughter have been amazing at getting our home organized, changing diapers, and taking care of me.  I'm recovering from my c-section and doing very well. All I have to do is breastfeed and get strong again.

Emotionally, I've been feeling very stable, strong and happy.  I was worried that I would feel the depression and fear I had after my first daughter.  I wouldn't be normal if I didn't feel a little emotional and anxious, but overall I feel great.

I haven't weighed myself yet because I still have my edema.  Once that alleviates I'll weigh in.  

HOLY COW, I forgot to mention that my twins were born at 38 weeks and they weigh 8lbs 2oz, and 7lbs 3oz.!  I had almost 16 pounds of baby in me!!
No wonder I was sooo big!!

I did feel like I was going to fall forward all the time!

I don't have a lot of readers or commenters, but the ones I have are women (and bloggers) who I read and admire a ton. And have for years, that just makes me feel great!

I really appreciate the support right now because I am 3 days away from giving birth via a planned C-section and I'm definitely getting nervous about it.

I am anticipating an emotional whirlwind. There's so much brewing in me I can't even handle thinking about it right now without breaking down and crying.

I just wanted to check in and show how huge I am. I have gained 40 lbs now and the babies are big, each over 6.5 lbs. My infamous edema has surfaced again too. My legs from just above the knees down are huge, it's quite painful!

I will update with how I'm doing, even if I'm a little slow to.

Check me out...

I've been doing very well, feeling well. My weight gain has stayed quite minimal. Last week at the doctor's I had gained 5 lbs which is the most I've gained in a two week period so far. That jump put me at 20 lbs officially, but I'm guessing I'm at 22 since being weighed there.

The weather is starting to really get hot now and my feet just started swelling on a regular basis, so I can tell this last month will be the toughest yet.

I've been a little powerless to the feeling of needing a lot of rest. I have been making sure I go easy on myself, but am getting nervous that I'm not ready and that there is a ton of preparation left to do. Yet my brain feels incapable of figuring out what actually remains to be done.

Emotions and anxiety levels are beginning to rise. I still feel like I'm holding it together better than I have in the past and have to just go with it.

I have more confidence lately, and for a while now, that I can handle what life throws me (ever since my mom passed away because that felt like the worst). Drawing from her strength as inspiration, I'll do it.

Here are my pics. My mirror and room are a mess! Pardon me.

According to the doctor's scale I gained 13 pounds so far! Wheh-hew! I'm doing better managing my weight while prego, than when I'm not prego.

I had a bit of a scare two weeks ago when my doctor sent me to the hospital for monitoring because she thought I was dilated and showing signs of pre-term labor. After five hours and many tests it turned out to be a false alarm, but it really threw me for a loop.

A day after that I found out I failed my glucose test (not to what extent, just that I failed.). I was really bummed out thinking it was the beginning of a very difficult phase I would have to endure for my last trimester.

Thinking that I had gestational diabetes really motivated me to cut down on refined carbs even more. I ate super well prior to taking my three hour gluose test. During that week I LOST a pound and a half.

Just today I found out that I passed and don't have diabetes! YAY! I still want to eat well, keeping the carbs low, because I don't want to trigger whatever made me fail my first test. As I mentioned, they never told me what my numbers were for the first test. Maybe I was close to passing, I don't know. I'm happy, I'm healthy, I'm going to continue to eat well, period.

Here are pictures of me at 26 weeks

My manager received it well, thank goodness, as I was expecting him to because I do consider him a friend.

I stressed my dedication to work, which is true.  I love this job because they allow me to work completely from home in a location that is far from any headquarters.  It is the best situation for me and I will work hard to keep it.

Not working is not an option for me because I am the primary earner in our household.  We can't be without either income, but if I lost my job it would have nearly twice the impact on our financial situation.

In an ideal world I'd get to do more with my children.   Although, I can't say I'm unhappy about how it has worked out with my daughter.  We have a wonderful life together.

AS LUCK WOULD HAVE IT...

Remember in my last post I whined about coming off of maternity leave 5 weeks early?  

The reason I had to start so quickly was because a very good friend of  mine started a consulting company (to save the butts of all of us who had just been laid off) and needed me to help land a client.  Well, that man, who I feel completely indebted to because he also helped me get my current job, was just hired by my company in a very high position.  I think he could be a great ally for me in this situation and speak to my work ethic and dedication.

I hope and feel confident that everything will work out well with my job.
I will make it so.

At this rate My post prego weight could end up being the same or slightly less (miracle).
Holy cow.

****

A second ago I just finished writing the first draft of my letter to my manager announcing my being prego. This has, already, brought on a sense of relief. Over the next couple of days i'll get a few second opinions, then I'll send it to his personal email on Sunday.

Even though I haven't met my manager in person, we've had many personal conversations, and I consider him a friend. It has been a little hard not telling him for that reason. I will be SO relieved!

The next big obstacle, that I will have to battle not putting off, is hiring a nanny. As much as I wish I didn't need to, I have to work.

How different it was with my daughter.
At that time, my boss took me to lunch at his favorite italian restaurant, which alone freaked me out. I thought he was going to fire me or give me an indecent proposal. The twilight-zonian conversation consisted of him asking me if I thought about having children, and when I choked out some sort of "I guess so", he said "good, you should, and you should do it soon."

That must have been some sort of omen because, I swear, I got pregnant within a couple of months. Of course I told him right away. What a diligent employee I had been :-) !

It turns out he was going out of business and laying everybody off and thought I should do it while I had good insurance. I'm dead serious about that. My last day of maternity leave was my last day of employment with him. Actually, my maternity leave was cut short by three weeks, but who's counting.

As luck would have it, or unluck depending on how you look at it, my husband had just dropped out of graduate school and was, too, unemployed. I call it luck because we had no need for a nanny.

I hightailed it back to work five weeks after my c-section (looking for some sympathy with this) and my husband stayed at home for the next three years (I was jealous).

Looking back, I feel so fortunate about all that. I had blessings from work and my daughter had her loving father at home.

I hope the outcome, this time, goes as well as that one. It will certainly be different.

Everything is still going well and according to my scale I've gained about 12 to 13 pounds. I'll try and remember to update after tomorrow's doctor weigh-in.

I've been hustling to get my house in order, the nursery set up, and everything else I need to get done for the babies. I'm nearly there. It'll be nice when I can just sit back, relax, and ride out the remaining days.

Not a whole lot of change going on here on a daily basis (on the outside, that is, on the inside I am starting to feel kicking).

Here are pictures of me at 22 weeks

I still feel great, albeit a little tired. Some friends have supplied me with a lot of hand me downs and I have my office all cleaned out and ready to become the nursery. I'm confident I will be extremely prepared and organized by the time these babies arrive home.

Here are pictures of me at 19 weeks

I'd say it's official but technically my anatomy ultrasound isn't for another three weeks.

Everything is still going super smooth and as icing on the cake, I've only gained 1 pound this month for a total of 2 pounds since the begining!  And that's on the doctor's scale!! Yay!

Now my new most pressing obstacle and thing that has me most nervous is telling work.

I am planning to hold off for at least another month.  FMLA states I only need to give 30 days notice.  I'm going to give much more than that but, luckily for me, I can conceal it for a little longer.

I work soley from home and haven't met the majority of people I work with in person.  My offices are in two different states far far away.

I work in a male dominated industry that hasn't given me the impression they are family oriented nor would take too kindly to me taking three months off.

I hope I'm wrong.  I feel very fortunate to have my job and wouldn't want it jeopardized.  

On the other hand, I have worked very hard and deserve three months to start my children off right upon entering this world.  Because then I have to return to work 100 percent.

I'll save more details for another post. I really just wanted to update about my gender news and minimal weight gain!

I'm so happy to see so many cool people from my past commenting on here! Thanks for checking in despite how infrequently I've been posting.

I'm feeling great at 4 months and have gained 3 pounds now (according to my scale, not the Doc's). I have been very motivated to only eat foods that are healthy and purposeful and am doing quite well at it.

Last week I went in for an unscheduled ultrasound because I was having a little spotting. Everything is totally fine and it was nothing to worry about but I did get a sneak preview at the possible gender of the babies. The doctor is almost sure one is a boy and one is a girl. That would be ideal! The boy is a definite, because once you see his package, there's no mistaking it. There is a possibility that the "girl" was hiding something or not at a good angle. And it was still technically a little early yet, so this Friday they should be able to confirm.

That news makes me so excited.

My confidence has been soaring lately and my anxiety has been real low. Yay! I'm not exactly sure why and it's unexpected because I have been a nervous Nelly my whole life. I am not going to question anything and will just try to hold on to this feeling.

Even my husband is starting to get excited and he was petrified before. As we start to share our news with more people it is becoming more real and it's just great.

A few nights ago we ate at a Chinese restaurant. The process of receiving our fortune cookies is very important to us, at least to my daughter and me. We really try to focus and feel which cookie was meant for us. I save my fortunes, unless they're completely ridiculous, as a constant reminder and to "will" their prophecies my way.

The picture above is of the fortunes that were left for my husband and I after my daughter dove for hers.

I am sooo sure they are accurate! :-)

We've just started telling family.  I can't believe we managed to keep it secret throughout the holidays when I saw so many people.

I got all my risk test results and my first ultrasound this past Thursday.  They weren't able to tell the gender but everything looks great in the ultrasound (there are still two in there) and the risk results are great too.  My risk for down syndrome was 1 in 2,281 the same as a 20 year old! And the risk for trisomy is 1 in 4,061 which is also the same as a 20 yr old.

So I feel loads of relief.  I won't be able to find out the gender until I go in for another ultrasound in one month.

My weight has remained stable too, I haven't gained an ounce yet.  I've been eating very well making sure that most everything has a healthy purpose, no junk food.

I can feel a small baby bump below my layer of chub and think pretty soon I'll start photo documenting things.

I'm very happy.