I'm Alive! (Despite Inactivity on the Interwebs)

So. Lots of news, if I really think about it. Perhaps I should warn you right off the bat... this one is likely to be long. Pop some popcorn or something.

Tomorrow is our third wedding anniversary! Kind of. Next Wednesday is also our third wedding anniversary. We got married the day before Easter in 2011, which was April 23rd. I gave James permission to remember "the day before Easter" as our anniversary. So... this has resulted in his near-inability to remember that April 23rd is special. Oh well. I personally think "April 23rd" is easier to remember than "the day before Easter" (fewer syllables!), but I'm not super impressed with James' memory for names and dates and such, so I'll let him get away with it.

Just this Monday, I gave him a pop quiz: Name all your nieces and nephews, James. Go. He performed... poorly. [Don't worry, the following embarrassing conversation has been posted with James' permission.]

"Okay, James. Danny's kids. Go."
"Uhhh... [thirty second pause]... Nathaniel!"
"Yes, okay, next kid?"
"...[long pause]..."
"Seriously, James?"
"James!"
"Good. Next?"
"Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh... Oh, um... Lizzy. Elizabeth."
"Good. Next?"
"...[deer-in-the-headlights face]... I honestly don't remember."
"What is wrong with your memory, boy? You should totally remember her name after this last month!"
"I should, I suppose, but I forgot."
"AUGH! Katya."
"Oh yeeeeah!"
"Okay, Jesse's kids."
"...[another pathetically long pause]... Urban?"
"And?"
"... Uhhh..."
"James. You seriously have no excuse. We basically spent four months living right next to them!"
"Uhhh... Oh, Ayla!"
"Okay, good. Next?"
An entire minute goes by. "Um..."
"!!!!"
"Um..."
"Do you even remember which vowel it starts with?"
"...No?"
"O."
"Oh, Oak!"
"Now. Their newest baby?"
Another two minutes. "I have no idea."
"Hint. Think math."
"That didn't help at all."
"Seriously? Eigenvalues?"
"Ohhh! Yes! Eigan!"
"Ben's kids."
"Oh no."
"How long did you babysit for this boy?"
"A lot. Ian?"
"That's number two."
"Oh."
"What is number one's name?"
"... Uhh... uhh... Puma! Wait..."
"They're all Puma." [All of Ben's kids have Puma as their middle name.]
"Oh! Sean!"
"Good, good... Now, the newest baby...?"
"... ... ... ... ... ..."
"Oh, come onnn!"
"I have no idea."
"Uhh... Think Discworld?"
"How the heck is that supposed to help?"
"What is wrong with you, boy?"
"Yeah, I don't know."
"It's Terry, James. Terry."
"What does that have to do with Discworld?"
"Terry Pratchett? [facepalm] You do remember your siblings' names? And your parents' names?"

He did fantastically on those, at least. I'm not going to embarrass him with his attempts to remember his grandparents' names. One of these days I'm going to have to make him niece-'n'-nephew flashcards. With pictures.

Anyway... James is doing all right. This newest term has bestowed him with a schedule that makes me want to wail and gnash my teeth. Or at least it did at the beginning. I suppose it isn't so bad now... (James, you did not see the previous two sentences. My life is horrible, mmk? And it's all your fault! ;) Just kidding...)

James teaches Monday through Thursday during the 5 o'clock hour, which means he doesn't get home until after 6pm. (The doom!) It is worse on Tuesdays when he often just barely has time to eat something before heading out to do missionary stuff, as well as on Wednesdays when he stays on campus until maybe 7:30 so he can climb. (Ugh! Exercise? Service? The dooooom! Poor, poor wife! ;) I am cursed to have a wonderful husband. Cursed.)

Theoretically, James is going to finish his Ph.D. (often pronounced "fudd" in our house) sometime this next year. Which means that sometime in the summer of 2015, we will be moving somewhere new and mysterious. And we will stay there for a year or two before moving somewhere newer and mysterious...er. Possibly permanently.

One very possible possibility (hmm... I should expand my vocabulary) is San Diego, California. The postdoc salary (minus rent, minus taxes) is about twice what James is making now (minus rent, minus taxes), so this is a fabulous thing. He might actually be able to support a family! Huzzah!

Amelia. Amelia, Amelia, Amelia... Um, well, she's alive. Doing well, mostly.

She has suddenly shown an interest in the potty again. She completely abandoned the idea of using the potty in favor of "being too busy playing". Seriously. ("No! Not the potty! I'M BUSY DESTROYING THE HOUSE! I can't cause chaos whilst stuck on a TOILET!")

She's obsessed with walks outside. Um... what else. Let's see. Oh, she likes to give her stuffed animals food and drink, as well as tuck them into blankets for naps. And she "reads" to them. It is cute.

She continues to expand the number of things she can reach. I have had to clear off the top of the piano, because anything I put there is going to get... gone. Like my keys. I foolishly left my keys up there. Amelia found them, and expertly hid them. It took me an entire hour and a half to find them. I seriously looked everywhere I could think of. Every cupboard and drawer. In the dryer. Inside the printer. Inside the computer (not kidding). Inside the couch. Under the couch. Under the oven. Under the refrigerator. In the dishwasher. In the oven. Inside the baseboard heaters. In the piano. In each shoe. Etc. I finally found them inside her stroller... which has not been unfolded for ages. I only found them because I prayed and because I looked in the stroller a second time, only this time with a flashlight. Glinty, glint. Oooh, keys. Shiny.

She's still obsessed with ponies. (My Little Pony ponies, specifically.)

Cheese is her favorite food. (Darn it.) Also popular: bananas, pineapple, yogurt, fruit snacks, mozzarella/spinach ravioli, spaghetti noodles, dry cereal, anything I'm eating, popcorn, anything James is eating...

She gives lots of hugs and lots of kisses.

Bedtime is the devil. (But naptime is her favorite thing...?)

She was resisting toothbrushing as if it were torture... until I got Pinkie Pie toothpaste. Seriously, smalls? All we had to do was put a picture from My Little Pony on the toothpaste tube, and you're good? Whatever. Now, sometimes (like right now), she wants to brush her teeth in the middle of the day. Again... and again... and again...

Amelia is nursing much less, though I suspect this is more my fault than hers. Or rather, if we want to be technical, Microraptor's fault. Pregnancy seems to do different things to different nursing women. What has it done to me? Well...

Oh, I am so sore. Pregnant boobs are sore boobs, as many of you know. Amelia is a ravenous beast, and sometimes, I just don't want to deal with the initial spike of intense discomfort when she latches on. (After the initial latch-on, it's quite tolerable, but still kind of uncomfortable.) So our nursing sessions are shorter and farther in between.

And I'm not making a ton of milk anymore. I haven't "dried up" or anything, but the toddler milk has definitely turned into colostrum. Thick, sticky, yellow colostrum. Amelia likes it just fine (more than regular ol' milk, I sometimes suspect), so I don't think she'll completely wean during this pregnancy. I know it sometimes happens that toddlers wean themselves while mom is pregnant, but it seems Amelia is not going to be one of these. I have sometimes thought she'd nurse if I was making motor oil for milk. (Yuck!)

Yay, bodily functions!

Sigh. So yeah, pregnancy. Microraptor is alive and kicking. I can't really tell you much else. I'm exactly 16 weeks pregnant today, so if you really want to know more besides the whole "baby is approximately the size of an avocado", just Google 16 weeks pregnant and you'll find out all sorts of stuff. This stuff was way more exciting during pregnancy one. Pregnancy two isn't nearly as exciting, except when something is noticeably different.

Like, for example... nearly absent nausea! It isn't completely gone yet, but I'm beginning to suspect it actually will be. I get ill maybe once or twice a week. I get lightheaded a surprising amount, sometimes even when I'm well watered and fed. It's kind of weird.

Still very tired. Remember how last blog post I was like, "I'm so tired, and I'm sleeping like 12-18 hours every day, but I couldn't possibly be hypothyroid... If anything, I feel hyperthyroid..." After I had my blood drawn for thyroid function tests, I skipped a few days of thyroid meds to see if the "hyperthyroid" symptoms went away. Sometimes that's the only way to know if it's just plain old pregnancy being evil, or actually thyroid problems. Well, skipping my thyroid meds did absolutely nothing. And then the lab results came back to confirm my conclusion that I was not hyperthyroid. In fact, it told me I still wasn't getting enough thyroid medication. I was wrong, I guess. So my thyroid dose has been increased yet again, and I feel better. I am now only sleeping twelve hours a day. And, as significant, when I'm awake, I'm not completely wiped out. Huzzah!

I'm surprised to discover that my pubic bone has been quite sore... already. This surprises me because even if my uterus is theoretically big enough to house an avocado-sized baby, I still appear normal-sized. (Except when I have to pee. Then I look pregnant. Once I've emptied myself, all of a sudden I'm tiny again.) It turns out that a pregnancy hormone is responsible. Now, relaxin is a wonderful thing... making ligaments and such stretchier so that the baby will have an easier time coming out... But apparently it's doing its job a little too well this time. Poo. Walking, standing, and rolling over in bed all actually hurt a bit. Doom.

Even if I look normal-sized most of the time, I definitely believe things are getting more crowded in there. Wiggly Amelia bumps me in the belly often enough that I am definitely starting to tell there isn't any "give" left in my belly. So when a stray foot bumps me in the belly (even somewhat gently), I want to toss her across the room and roar, "DON'T TOUCH MY BELLY! OUCH! GET BACK, YE FIEND!"

In maybe a month or so we will have another ultrasound and will likely find out the baby's gender if all goes well.

Love and fiends,
Jenna and Co.

Why So Tired...?

First, I shall answer a couple questions I have been asked repeatedly.

1) Do you think it's a boy or a girl?

Sigh. You guys. Did you not catch the "I'm crazy, I'm convinced there's two" statements littered across the last two months' blog posts? I think there's one of each. If I had to force myself to admit that there was one baby, I would tentatively guess this is a boy. (I did feel that Amelia was girl way back when.)

2) Are you hoping for a boy or for a girl?

I honestly don't get why so many people's immediate response to finding out that I'm pregnant has been, "Oh, I'll pray for a boy!" or something to indicate that I want a boy now that I have a girl. I think I'd prefer a girl, and maybe have a boy next time. The reasoning for this preference is dumb: first, I honestly cannot think of a place to store tubs of boy clothing in our current apartment--I had enough problems finding a place for all the girl stuff we have; second, I cannot for the life of me think of a boy name I am completely satisfied with. Which leads into...

3) What are you going to name the baby?

NO IDEA.

4) Uhhh... name ideas, then?

If it's a girl? Most likely Abigail Joy.

If it's a boy? Wo unto us, for I have no idea.

5) Uhhh... very, very tentative boy names, then?

Oh, I don't know. Henry? James? John? Jack? Thomas? William? I am not really completely satisfied with any of these. And James has not been much help in selecting names either.

6) What if it's twins? What would you name them?

Uhhh. I still don't know? If I needed two girl names, Abigail Joy... and Adella Katharine. Probably. Less certain about that second one. If a boy and a girl, Abigail and... perhaps Henry. Abigail and Henry sound kind of nice together, yes? Two boys? Definitely no idea.

7) Why all the A names?

I just happen to like them. 'Tis purely a coincidence.

8) Not making up names?

No, I'm not.

9) Just for kicks, if you had to make up a name, what would it be?

Seriously? Under what circumstance would I have to do so? I don't know. Alloria? (A quick Google search tells me I'm not the first person ever to come up with that. I guess I'm not the most creative person ever.) Don't hold me to that. Especially if it's a boy. Because then I'd for sure have no idea what to name him. Probably something I'd have to write an apology letter for. ("Dear son, I am sorry for naming you that. In my heart, I knew it was a mistake...")

Now, for the rest of the blog post.

Still very tired.

You'll be glad to know that I actually went and got my blood drawn for thyroid function tests yesterday. Hopefully all I need is a dose adjustment on my thyroid meds to make me feel a bit better. Hmm. Speaking of which, I should probably plug in my phone and turn it on so that when I get the call with the results, I'll actually know about it. I let my phone die a few days ago and haven't bothered with it since.

The thing is, if I had to predict the results of the blood test, I'd guess that, if anything, they'll have me decrease my dose... but I am far from sure. I find it much, much harder to pick out hyper/hypothyroidism symptoms when I'm pregnant because everything changes. Many of the symptoms which I have been attributing to just being pregnant just happen to also be the same things to watch out for if you're hyperthyroid.

The only thing that doesn't really fit in is how tired I am. Although fatigue can happen when you're hyperthyroid, it is more common during hypothyroidism. That's been especially true for me. More common with hyperthyroidism is difficulty sleeping, and I am hardly having that problem.

My next prenatal appointment is on Tuesday... April Fool's Day. If my thyroid labs come back as I suspect, maybe I'll ask them to check if I'm anemic or something.

I have no idea what else could be possibly going on, so if it's not a thyroid or anemia problem, I'd just have to assume "I am simply tired because I am pregnant" and that's all there is to it.

And then the little crazy part of my brain adds, "It's 'cuz there're two of 'em in there. Little buggers." I had nearly succeeded in convincing myself that there is only one, but honestly, being so tired is beginning to re-convince me otherwise. Clearly there is no other explanation. And it certainly doesn't help that I'm also half-convinced I have already felt the baby move, even though I didn't feel Amelia moving until something like 18 weeks. Seriously, I should not be feeling a singleton moving already. It's a wee bit early for that.

Perhaps I will not be entirely convinced there is only one baby until the 20-week ultrasound. I just keep finding something else that could mean twins and it is just too much. I sincerely hope I am not this crazy during subsequent pregnancies.

Love and zzzzzz...

Jenna and Baby Delta

Nearing the Second Trimester...

Only a week and a half until I hit the second trimester. Woohoo!

Theoretically this means the nausea will be completely gone any time now. In any case, it hardly bothers me at all right now.  And headaches? Those have become more infrequent now, too.

The big, big problem is... Drumroll, please...

Fatigue. As in EXTREME fatigue. I sleep--not kidding--something between twelve and eighteen hours each day. I often get twelve hours of sleep at night and then I take a four hour nap in the afternoon, and heck, I might even have a second nap sometime.

This whole shebang is reminiscent of when I had uber thyroid problems in college. The thing is, I'm relatively confident I'm not low thyroid right now. If anything, I'm nearing hyperthyroidism right now. And if that's true, I shudder to think how tired I'd be if I were truly hypothyroid. Ugh. Theoretically, I'm supposed to go get my blood drawn for my monthly thyroid function tests. Problem is, I'm so tired that I haven't managed to roll out of bed and go.

James has been home for the last week or so break for "spring break" (i.e. reading "Words of Radiance" and playing the new Diablo III expansion...), so I've been all right. It's been fabulous. He and Amelia will hang out, and then I can snore myself to high heavens without worrying about Amelia getting into massive trouble.

However... he says "spring break" is over. As in, "I should really start being responsible and doing my job again". So, he's going back to work/school/whatchamacallit tomorrow.

I have no idea how I'm going to manage.

Let's see. Is there anything else interesting? Uhhh... I don't know. Oh, I brought a box of cookies for my class of eight-year-olds on Sunday, and I put it, along with all my stuff in my classroom during sacrament meeting. And the doom! I walk in afterward and find three-quarters of the cookies gone! Dooooooom! We have a cookie thief... And I totally let the pregnancy hormones take over and I burst into tears...

Anyway, that's about it. Just general tiredness and doomage and such.

Love and all that mooshy, squooshy stuff,
Jenna and Baby Delta

P.S. Can you tell which movie I just watched a few days ago?

Crazier Than Ever

Well, the good news is that I am nauseous less often and seemingly less severely, though this morning I'm not sure that's the case. I feel awful.

I often feel as if I've been run over by a steamroller. I'm so exhausted all the time. I literally find it difficult to do more than sit on the couch staring into space for hours at a time... of course, I am occasionally interrupted by Amelia insisting that I read her this or that book (for the umpteenth time). I need naps during the day, and if I don't sleep at night, I'm an utter wreck the next day.

Inside my brain, things have gotten... interesting.

I feel like a witch. I don't ever recall raising my voice so often and for so little reason. For whatever reason, I am getting "touched out" much more quickly than before. Sometimes when Amelia pounces on me (for the umpteenth time) I find myself leaping away like a yowling cat, exclaiming, "DON'T TOUCH ME!" And then I lock myself in the bathroom.

Maybe part of it is that I am, for whatever reason, quite sensitive to body heat right now. Our thermostat is down all the way, and I still require air blowing on me in the night to keep cool. And at times during the day, I have to pull out a frozen fruit bar to cool myself down from the inside. So, unfortunately for Amelia, cuddles are much less welcome right now.

And then there are the migraines... I can't figure out how to make them go away. And I also can't figure out what's triggering them. I thought maybe dehydration, or hunger, or heat, or fatigue, or all of the above was triggering it, but I am at least one of those things all the time, whether or not I have a headache... Migraines make me grumpy. Very much so.

Of course, that's not all. I am having way more panic attacks than I am used to. I sometimes feel completely irrational. I often find myself thinking, "Seriously? I'm seriously having a panic attack about this? This is so stupid!"

Take, for instance, the twins obsession. I know (or at my frontal cortex knows) that if I actually am pregnant with twins (that's unlikely, says my frontal cortex) that that's fine, all will be well. My frontal cortex also likes to remind me that I have no rational reason to be so convinced there's more than one in there. It also also likes to remind that my pregnant sister-in-law is also somewhat convinced she's got twins too, and she doesn't seem to be off her rocker. So, concludes my frontal cortex, I just need to stop feeling crazy, and that's that.

I had an ultrasound yesterday. Kind of.

The midwife agreed it'd be a good idea to peek inside so that I'd be less anxiety-ridden. But... well... maybe if I only knew as much as the layperson does about ultrasound, maybe the ultrasound actually would have convinced me there was only one.

But then again, not only did this particular woman seem to have very little expertise with ultrasound, but I'm almost certain she hasn't ever personally dealt with anxiety and panic attacks of this sort before. If she was trying to comfort me, she probably shouldn't have said "Well, I'm very bad at finding twins. And they like to hide at this age. Sometimes twins are obvious, but just as often, they're not."

And I'm pretty sure she wasn't thinking two-dimensionally when we did get an image on the screen. She just took the transabdominal transducer and put it over my belly, turned on the machine, didn't move it once, and said, "Well, I only see one." She printed the image and then turned the machine off.

I wanted to shriek, "You didn't rule out twins! You didn't rule out ANYTHING!" (Well, maybe she ruled out monoamniotic twins, but that hardly counts.) I wanted to yank the transducer out of her hand and do the procedure myself. Either that or demand she pull out the transvaginal transducer, but I had a feeling she was even less skilled with that. (Invasive? Pshah. She just did a bimanual exam AND a Pap smear. And both of those suckers hurt. Transvaginal ultrasound would have been NOTHING!) She didn't scan across the uterus once. For all I know, there is another one hidden in there, and the edge of a second gestational sac was just slightly to the side of where we were looking.

But... I didn't shriek. Nor did I grab the transducer. Maybe I should have. Surely she has encountered absolutely insane pregnant women before, so surely she would have forgiven me that small misbehavior.

"So, feel better?"

... "No. I was sure I would, but..." And then I burst into tears. Fabulous.

While I got dressed, I examined my feelings and discovered, contrary to what I should logically be feeling (a small measure of relief), I was instead even more convinced that there are indeed two and I was angry. Furious with myself. I so badly want to feel like my normal, rational self. Instead, I seem to be growing more and more irrational by the day.

I got dressed and went home. I was tired. I'd been in the office for an hour and a half (wrangling a hyperactive toddler at the same time) and I just wanted a nap. I got a call when I got home and discovered that the midwife had meant to come talk to me some more, so then I felt even worse.

Ugh. I cried a lot yesterday evening because I felt so... unstable and irrational and just plain panicky and even a little bit actually crazy. I don't actually care about there being one or two babies right now; I just want to having my thinking brain back--the one that is actually pretty good at neutralizing irrational feelings like these ones I'm overwhelmed by.

I almost feel like I'm convinced the sky is falling, and I'm angry at the sky for not showing any evidence of doing so BECAUSE THE SKY IS FALLING, DANG IT. That's just crazy.

Mentally, I didn't feel anything like this when I was pregnant with Amelia. I mean, I suppose I wasn't so stressed back then. I did just move back to Oregon, when I didn't want to... at all. And there's no sunshine. And there's no family here. And etc., etc., etc.

In the meantime, I'm going to... try and convince myself there is only one kid in there. Maybe I'll feel more sane that way. After all, it is much, much, much more likely that there really is only one baby instead of two. Once I make it to the second trimester, I'll start calling Baby Delta by his or her dinosaur name: Microraptor.

Love and steamrollers,
Jenna and Baby Delta

Milestone!

So I just had to share the big news... Amelia is doing so much better at night now! Huzzah! For a few nights this week after her bedtime nursing session, she went progressively longer and longer without night nursing (2am, 4am, 6am) and last night she didn't ask to nurse until 8am. Huzzah!

I've been sleeping in the queen bed and James has been sleeping on the twin in the next room. We still like each other just fine, of course, but recently this has been the sleeping arrangement most likely to result in us all getting enough sleep.

Anyway, what usually happens is that I nurse Amelia, hand her over to James, and then they go fall asleep on the twin mattress in Amelia's room. Sometime in the middle of the night, Amelia usually wakes up crying looking for me and desperately wanting to nurse.

Last night, though, she apparently needed to fall asleep with me. So that's what happened. But! Sometime in the night she ambled back over to her room and cuddled up with James without waking either of us. I actually had to search for her in the night when I woke up to pee for the third time (ugh, pregnancy is fun) and she was GONE. WHUT?

Sometime later she woke up again and decided she needed me and came back to sleep in the queen with me. Only she didn't nurse... she just wanted to cozy herself in my armpit. Gross, I think, but whatever floats the kid's dreamboat.

So I'm super excited about last night for several reasons. Mostly I'm excited that she ambled back to her own room on her own. But also, I'm glad she is nursing less at night. It's been disturbing my sleep more severely lately.

Now if only I could tell you that Amelia night nursing less and spending more of the night in the other room with James were actually helping me sleep.

Baby Delta is making nighttime AWFUL. I've been getting up at least four times in the night to pee. And then I can't fall back asleep because I feel sick and/or too hot and/or headachy and/or anxious and/or sore all over. Last night I was all of the above. Fabulous. Yeah, so the last half week has been horrible for me.

I hear that around age 14-18 months, little kids are still extremely needy (must have Mother ALL the time, no exceptions!) but are also hard to keep up with thanks to the whole "must run everywhere", "must climb ALL the things", "must destroy ALL the things", "must flail ALL the limbs when near Mom's face", "must create ALL the messes", etc., etc., etc. Amelia has fit into this stereotypical development stage PERFECTLY.

It has been extremely demanding on me, particularly during the last few weeks while I've been feeling groggy. (I am SO tired ALL the time. I attempt to stay in bed until noon every day and then take a nap later.) Amelia is so difficult to deal with a lot of the time. Now, I do not mean to say that she is a bad kid or an unhappy kid or an angry kid or any of that sort of thing. She is SO happy. I seriously don't think I know of any other kids her age who are so happy, so friendly, so boisterous, or so loving. She is very, very nice.

Everybody at church thinks she is so well-behaved... and by this they mean she doesn't really get angry and throw evil tantrums. She is definitely mischievous and laughs maniacally as she constantly gets into all sorts of trouble. Amelia is simply irrepressible and always adventuring in some way.

She is NOT quiet in church, nor do I think she even remotely has the capacity to sit still, but to my surprise even the people I was sure would say, "Why can't you get your kid to sit down and shut up and act like a tiny adult?! What is wrong with you? You are obviously doing this parenting thing wrong!" ... Well, instead they are saying, "Why, isn't she just the sweetest thing? So well-behaved. Not like some brats I know..." So I don't get it, but I'll take it.

Oh, and the pediatrician told me, "Yes, I know you're tired. But Amelia is the happiest and most well-behaved 18-month old I've seen in months." She told me this while Amelia was driving me bonkers with her energy level. In some ways, I apparently have got it easy right now. For instance, I suppose we don't ever have any battles of wills.

Maybe the secret is this: if the kid is grinning ear-to-ear and isn't mean, it doesn't matter how many grey hairs or bald spots or black eyes or bruises or bags under-the-eyes or quasi-electrocution hairstyles or twitching facial features Mom and Dad have. That is one good kid.

Theoretically, Amelia should be approaching a new stage: emerging independence. Oh my, this sounds like exactly what I've been dreaming about and my current energy levels warrant.

We are actually beginning to see this happen, I think. Sometimes she plays by herself for all of fifteen minutes. Egads! Sometimes in the night she actually rolls over and takes up the OTHER half of the bed instead of sleeping on top of me! Sometimes (semi-regularly) she lets us completely abandon her while she sleeps! (This is good. Given the frequency that I'm waking up in the night to pee, I shudder to think what would happen if she bolted upright each time I got out of bed in the night... Ooh, ooh! Last night, even, she did wake up when I got out of bed. She looked up to see what I was doing... and then laid back down and went back to sleep. Of course, this did happen after a few instances of her following me to the bathroom to see what I was doing in the night, but still. Success!) Oh, and of course, the transition to nursery could not be going more easily.

And, of course, the biggest evidence that she is getting more independent... more SURPRISES. I found her giant blue ball inside the dryer today. James found that she had ripped off all the pull tabs on our soy milk food storage. (Ugh.) Art on the walls. Sticker wall art ripped off the wall and shredded into pieces and spread throughout the house. Cheerios in the heater vents and inside the computer case (... ... ... I do not like the implications of that one). Baby covered in pen and/or marker. Toilet paper EVERYWHERE. All our apples pulled off the table, each of which have one or two mysterious bite marks in them (Bunnicula?). Pieces of tissue shoved up into the innards of our printer. Giant puddles of water dangerously close to things that should never under any circumstances have puddles of water nearby (i.e. computers).

Love and surprises,
Jenna, Amelia, and Baby Delta

Feeling Slightly More Sane

I've been a bit more sick this week, but I still think this counts as normal pregnancy nausea. I have yet to actually vomit, which is also nice. Somehow though, I am still losing weight. Doom. And here I thought for sure I was eating so well. Maybe I'm just eating well compared to how I was eating last pregnancy, but still not actually eating much. That might be it.

Maybe? I don't know. Sometimes I think I never actually redeveloped a healthy relationship with food after the last pregnancy. I usually don't have a problem eating food dumped in front of my face, but... man, if I have to prepare food (even minimally), a little piece of my mind groans and decides food isn't worth it. A little bit of me has remained convinced that food is gross. I don't really enjoy eating that much any more. And so now that I'm nauseous so often again, I'm struggling a bit with the whole eating thing.

Ironically, Amelia is saving me. She is not shy about demanding food. And if I'm forced to find something for the tot to eat, I might as well eat a little too.

Yes, I'm still having those crazy thoughts about having twins. I think my psychiatrist is a little concerned about my mental health at the moment. She was like, "I would feel better if you had some Xanax for when you have these panic attacks." And I was like, "Oh. Really?" I'm not sure I'd use the stuff, but the twin thoughts are pretty invasive, even if I think they are getting less so.

I think what I had to do to get myself to calm down was pretend for a day or so that I really am pregnant with twins for real, and then allow myself to sit down and analyze all the stuff we'd have to do differently than we were planning to had we been pregnant with a singleton, particularly financially.

I suppose I wasn't letting myself sit down and think the issue through because I was caught up in the whole "I have no good reason to think I'm pregnant with twins in the first place" issue. But that was bad because I deal with stress by thinking things through. So I was essentially trying to tell myself to solve the problem by ignoring it. Oops.

Anyway, the things I came up with that we'd need were: three new car seats, a stroller that can fit in the trunk and fit two or three kids in it, and a twin nursing pillow. And maybe a kid leash to prevent Amelia from running out into the street while I'm trying finagle three babies in a row into car seats. That's really all I'd need. Besides more baby clothing, which is relatively easy to come by. Oh, and maybe another twin mattress to put on the floor by our bed.

If we were actually financially well off, it would probably be smarter to just upgrade to a minivan rocketship, but that doesn't really make sense for us right now. We don't have a car payment on our beloved Fred right now, and he's never broken down and is quite reliable. It makes more sense to dish out the moneys for car seats that are designed to fit three-in-a-row in the back of the car than it does to dish out all the expenses associated with a new vehicle. A minivan is quite tempting though... sigh. That's for kid four, I guess.

...

You know, now that I think about it, I vaguely remember telling Heavenly Father if he ever decided that He absolutely HAD to send us twins, he'd better do it with either the second pregnancy while we have room for twins in our car, or with the fourth or fifth before a minivan fills up, or... you get the idea. It's one thing to go into a pregnancy knowing you'll need a new vehicle before the baby arrives. It's another to have that little surprise while pregnant.

Hmm.

That thought didn't help. WHAT IF MY PRAYER IS BEING ANSWERED!? OH NOOOO.

You see, I am quite good at freaking myself out.

Anyway, once I actually spent a few days and went "shopping" and selected car seats, a stroller, and a pillow, I suddenly felt better. And just with the way our insurance works, even if the twins ended up in the NICU for weeks (sad!), it would only actually cost us another $1000 more than a singleton birth. I was all like, I CAN DO DIS TING WIT'OUT FINANCIAL RUIN! YUSSS! Only I don't know if I'm doing dis ting in the first place. But if I am, I CAN DO EET. I think. As for the actual managing two beebees at once, I was just planning on winging it anyway.

I have resolved to ask for an ultrasound on my first prenatal visit to reveal the number of babies. One or two... it'd be nice to be certain about SOMETHING finally.

Tomorrow I hit 7 weeks, and my first appointment isn't until nearly 11 weeks. I seem to recall that the midwives have an ancient ultrasound machine in their office, so they might look during the first appointment, but I suppose it is just as likely they'll tell me to schedule an appointment with the actual sonographers a bit later than that. So we have a while. I can make it, methinks.

Methinks. Every once in a while I'm tempted to call their office in a "panic" about something I know is completely normal... just so MAYBE they'll look inside to see what's going on. An even crazier part of me wants to make up stuff like "oh no, I is bleeding and cramping is ouch, please halp is beebee OKAY please halp i is scared" just to be certain they'll look. Sigh. Sometimes my better judgment makes my life so boring. And man, ignorance could be convenient, too. I'm already noticing round ligament pain (apparently not too unusual in second or later pregnancies). If I didn't know what it was and that it was completely harmless, I could totally call in a panic and get an ultrasound. Le doom.

I seriously sometimes scratch my head perplexedly at how utterly clinically unremarkable this pregnancy actually is. I cannot thing of a SINGLE good reason besides my mental state to demand an ultrasound at the moment. I want one.

Also, I begin to wonder if God is exercising His sense of humor at me. He is being so vague. And every time I notice a new pregnancy symptom, I'm like, "OH NO! NOT YET! IS TOO EARLY! I IS PREGNANT WITH TWINS! THE DOOM!" And I think He knows it. So it keeps happening. He must be rolling in the clouds laughing like a maniac, wiping tears from His eyes. And, just to keep things on the iffy side, he makes sure that it's not too rare for a mom with a singleton to have the same experience.

WHY I MUST TO KNOW THE TRUTH NOW HALP,
Jenna
plus the contents of her womb
whatever that means
confused
is i sane?
wut

Feeling Crazy!

You'll be glad to hear that so far, the pregnancy nausea has continued to be quite mild. I keep a stash of Junior Mints and ginger ale and they seem to work just fine. The thing is, though, I still dislike it when people give me advice on how to manage pregnancy nausea. Like, "Oh! Have you tried soda crackers?" And, "Just make sure you have some food right next to your bed you can eat before you get up. You'll be fine!"

Pretty much throughout my pregnancy with Amelia, giving me advice on how to combat nausea was a surefire way to get me grumpy. I saw an e-card meme-type thing on a friend's blog lately that described precisely what I was feeling and thinking every time someone suggested a well-known cure: "Why no, I haven't tried crackers, ginger, small meals, or sipping water. I enjoy morning sickness so much, I thought I would just embrace the whole experience."

The issue with me and nausea so far seems to be mostly the ubernose of pregnancy. Yes, I feel somewhat queasy in the morning since I haven't eaten all night, but that's no biggie. It's the nose. Oh, the cursed nose.

The number one culprit: Amelia.

Pee diapers. Poo diapers. Vomit breath. Sour milk breath. Whatever-she's-been-eating breath. Whatever's all over her hands. A food item she scaled a 10-foot cliff in order to grab and has now thrown in my face for me to open (i.e. banana)... that also happens to smell awful to me. In short, Amelia.

The number two culprit: Any and all food that requires heating.

Quesadillas. Eggs. Chicken nuggets. Even pizza. Popcorn. Anything that James wants to eat. Anything that Amelia wants for lunch.

In the meantime, I am eating ALL the hummus.

Other pregnancy ailments I'm not so happy about... indigestion! Seriously? Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.... And horrible, horrible, horrible headaches. The worst thing is that Tylenol does nothing, and caffeine helps a little bit. Unfortunately, the caffeine also makes the indigestion and heartburn worse. Is there no "just right" sweet spot? Augh.

I'm still feeling super silly. Actually, no, I think it's gone past feeling merely silly and into feeling just downright crazy. I still can't get the twins thought out of my head. I'm tempted to call the midwives and beg for an early ultrasound because it's bothering me so much. I'm almost at 6 weeks, so the baby/babies should just barely be visible now.

Mentally, the idea that I'm just absolutely nuts is bothering me WAY more than the idea that it IS twins. I don't like being crazy. Like, at all. I think I'm more tempted to get the ultrasound to see if I'm crazy or not rather than to find out how many babies there are.

I made the stupid mistake of turning to Google to convince myself that in all likelihood, it isn't twins.

Boy, was THAT a mistake.

Lo, and behold, I run across a study that found that the twin rate amongst women who conceive while breastfeeding is 11.4% versus 1.1% in the general population. I couldn't actually look at anything besides the abstract on PubMed, but it makes sense to me given what I know about fertility, so I am inclined to trust that, to some degree at least, breastfeeding does in fact increase the chances of twins.

Also Google informs me that feeling like you are pregnant with twins is actually somewhat predictive of actually being pregnant with twins.

So.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

Moral of the story: Don't Google it.

Love and respect to our Google overlords,
Jenna and Baby Delta

... and possibly Baby Epsilon. Possibly.

Augh.

I'm crazy.