New in pregnancy news this week

Just a really quick update because I tend to forget these types of things I want to remember, and I want to go to sleep.

• I’m 31 weeks 4 days today.
• I can’t freaking breathe no matter what position I sit or lay down in. And if Akinori tells me that my posture is what is making it difficult for me to breathe one more time I may choke him. It is not my posture! It is 2 pairs of little boy legs taking up all of the space my lungs normally do.
• So many pointy parts pushing me EVERYWHERE ALL THE TIME! It hurts! (But I like it 😉 )
• The skin on my stomach feels like it is constantly being stretched. Especially when someone is pushing on me from somewhere. Not a pleasant feeling really.
• Sara came down with the flu today. She’s off school until next Monday. This should be a fun week.
• Amelie’s nose was running tonight. That’s how Sara and I both started out before coming down with the flu. Fingers crossed she doesn’t wake up with a fever because I. Will. Die. with them both home sick, but not really sick because we all know kids get better after day 2, for an entire week.
• Finished the lion’s share of work I have to do. My final deadline is Wednesday (if I remember correctly, and I hope I do) and that will be no problem to meet if I can keep up the pace I’ve been working at. However, if I have 2 sick children home with me, there’s a good chance that won’t happen. 😦
• I have one more biggish translation lined up for early next week and then I decided I’m done working until these bubs get here. My brain is too tired for this shit.

31 weeks

First I need to start out with a wee rant. The kids are driving me insane today! GAH! I want to go and hide in a hole and just be left all alone! I expressly told Akinori last night I wanted to be allowed a lie in this morning because I wake up earlier than everyone on weekdays, or at least I did every day this past week, to get the girls’ stuff ready for kindy and daycare and breakfast going. I really wanted to stay in bed all by myself, but Amelie decided to crawl in with me at the crack of dawn and was not going back to sleep. And then Sara crawled in. And then they started playing chase on and off my bed and over me and on me and not much sleeping was being had by anyone but Akinori anymore, and I was thoroughly annoyed so I just brought the girls downstairs. Akinori finally came down an hour later. I was still really sleepy too and took a little cat nap on the sofa as soon as he made his appearance, but it wasn’t all that restful as Akinori was just laying on the floor playing with his cell phone while the girls fought over toys and screamed and basically destroyed the living room and I had to give a shout for everyone to stop the fighting every so often when the noise would wake me up. I had a deal with Sara. She was allowed to take one toy out of the secret toy closet and play with it. ONE toy! I wake up and ALL of the toys from the secret toy closet are spread out all over the floor, and Akinori is playing on his phone. GRRRRRRRR!!!! So I wake up and Akinori says that Sara has asked if I could take her to see Monsters Inc. in 3-D at the movie theater today. I actually thought  that was a great idea. Sara and I hardly ever have time alone together, and who knows when I’ll get to see a movie in the theater again? So after a mad rush to clean up the mess, I took a shower and Akinori dropped us off at the theater.

Sara got really tired towards the end of the movie and wanted to go to sleep, but aside from that it was actually a lovely time. Akinori came to pick us up after and we ran some errands and both girls fell asleep in the car. They were sorely in need of sleep! Unfortunately they both woke up when we got home and they have been little terrors since. And of course Akinori has been off doing his own thing. GRRRRR!!! We are all just over tired. I am at the point where I could sleep forever and it still wouldn’t be enough.I have started to bitch a great deal about my husband lately, and I feel kind of guilty, but at the same time I am so freaking annoyed with him so much of the time, I need somewhere to vent or I will end up hating him. I definitely tell him when his laziness gets to be too much, and I feel like I am telling him every other day he needs to start doing more, but his favorite retort is, “you’re on your phone or the computer all the time too”. And fair enough. I do spend more time than I should looking at FB on my phone, but a lot of the time I am trying to get work done on the computer too. And fuck me, it’s not like it’s easy for me to move around these days. If I’m going to be laying on my side on the sofa all day, I might as well be looking at FB. It just annoys me to no end when he could very well get up and help the girls clean up and he just sits there and then I have to do it because neither of them are old enough to really clean up properly by themselves yet, although Sara is much better than she used to be and she can at least follow directions on where to put things. It’s not that I don’t appreciate the stuff my husband does do, because I do, and he is better than many I must say, which is why I try to keep these things to myself most of the time, but I need to let my frustration out somewhere. Okay, end of rant.

Down to business. Thursday I went for my 31 week check-up.  Akinori came with me to the appointment. I warned him that the wait was long. My appointment time is for 11 a.m. every time, but it can take until noon before the dr. finally sees me, and it did on Thursday, and he complained and complained the whole freaking time about how long the wait was. It’s not like I enjoy the wait either, but there’s not much of a choice. Is this a man thing? I tend to just shut up if I know I can’t do anything about a situation because what is the point in complaining, especially to me, who has no control to speed things up. It just ends up annoying me. Sigh…I’m on a roll here and I can’t seem to stop, can I?

First I spoke to the midwife and just to make sure I told her that I took the full dosage of Tamiflu, and I was a little nervous about it and the harm it may have caused the babies, but she assured me that was the right thing to do, and the potential danger of not taking the medicine and getting my temperature down and the flu bug out of my body as soon as possible was a much greater risk to the babies than actually taking the medicine. I did a lot of reading on the subject online, but I felt better having someone in the maternity department tell me the same thing, rather than the intern who had no idea what my contraction stopping medicine was for tell me when I went in with the flu in the first place.

Next was the ultrasound. Both boys still head down and growing like champs. Baby A, closest to the exit was calculated as 1572 g. and Baby B the kicky/pushy one on top was calculated as 1403 g., which is only a 10% size difference, so well within normal range. And each baby is well within normal range for 31 weeks, though both are just a little on the small side. Honestly, I would rather they be on the small side and still within normal range, than the large side, because we all know they have to come out from somewhere at some time, and let’s face it, pushing out one normal sized baby is painful enough, but two? I try not to think about that part too often. Their bladders are both looking good as is their amniotic fluid. Baby A is always a bit hard to see as he tends to face my back, but Baby B was moving his mouth open and closed and we could see a fairly good image of his face and he was just soooooo cute! I can’t wait to hold them! The tech had trouble measuring his legs though because there are just so many legs all intertwined with ribs and other things. She was surprised to see how high up his legs were and I said that I had a feeling they were pretty high up as my ribs hurt like a bitch, and she was like “Yeah, I believe that. Just looking at where they are makes my ribs hurt.”

Onto the internal exam. I was a little worried that maybe my cervix length had shortened too much because of the scare two weeks earlier and because I’ve been so out of breath lately, and because I’m just so freaking big! And I was worried that perhaps having the flu would have affected things going on in my belly. The doctor even said before he took a look that a fever can cause the cervix length to decrease, and then he laughed and said “Nope, these babies aren’t going to be born anytime soon. You still have 4 cm. of cervix. Amazing!” I laughed too, but then I got nervous because what if these boys stay in there forever? Like until 40 weeks? I really would rather not have them in there 40 full weeks. My goal is to hold on to them until April 2, when they would be eligible for the next school year so they will be the oldest in their class, rather than the youngest. April 2nd puts me at 36 weeks 5 days. I still can’t believe that date is only 5 weeks away! The doctor assured me though that they will eventually come out.

We then had our consultation with the doctor where he said “Well, your boys are behaving according to your wishes. Still no need for hospitalization. They’re doing a fantastic job.” Yeah for my boys! Already getting praise! He said that my next appointment would be in two weeks and then, provided I didn’t need to be hospitalized, once a week after that. The midwife I saw at the end was surprised the doctor didn’t mention hospitalization at all, and made a point of telling me that most moms of multiples are already hospitalized at this point, and I told her I plan on staying out of the hospital for as long as possible.

So all is well on the baby front. This evening though we were watching “ER” for a minute, and Sara was asking what was going on, and is that the type of hospital I will go to to have the babies. That prompted me to change the station really quickly, but I explained that she has been with me to the hospital where the babies will be born before and not to worry. There won’t be all that blood and guts everywhere. So she then asked if I was going to spend the night, and I said yes, when the babies are born. And she suggested we take with Amelie’s elephant pajamas and her horse pajamas. And the lightbulb turned on in my head and I realized she thought she was going to spend the night too. Explaining to her that it would just be me was a bit traumatic. I told her that she could come and visit me every day and it would be okay, but she was worried about me being lonely sleeping alone every night, so I had to assure her that the babies would keep me company as would all of the nurses and doctors who would also be at the hospital with me. Now I really hope I don’t have to be hospitalized in advance, because I think Sara would be really upset at the thought of me being in the hospital without the babies to keep me company. Akinori was like “You shouldn’t talk about that stuff with her now. Just wait until it happens.” But I think it’s better to prepare her now, and yes, there will be some tears, but better some tears now than her being totally and completely caught off guard and having nightmares and whatnot later on. I think Amelie will be enough of a handful for him. If Sara at least understands what’s going on she will be a big help with Amelie too.

Just one more piece of twin news. Another woman in AFWJ who was about 5 weeks further along in her twin pregnancy gave birth to her identical girl twins yesterday, on February 22. Is there a more perfect date for twins to be born? There were some photos uploaded to her FB page and the babies are so, so, so, so cute! I wrote not too long ago that I am finally enjoying being pregnant with twins and looking forward to being a mom of twins, but seeing her photos really put it all into perspective for me, and now I am REALLY looking forward to holding my babies and having them here on the outside with me. I just hope I can keep them both well protected from their big sisters who are very likely to want to smother them in love as well. 😉

Out the other side

The flu has left the building! Thank goodness for that, because that sucked! I was feeling much, much better by Monday, but Akinori was treating me like I had the plague until Friday or Saturday. That was probably the worst part. It was nice not to have to do anything around the house during that time. Well I should say it was nice not to be expected to do anything around the house, but there was no way I could actually get away with not doing anything and expect the girls to actually get out of the house before 10 a.m., or for anyone to have clean clothes to wear, or any clean dishes to eat off of. Which scares me because when the twins get here I really won’t be able to do a lot of that stuff. At least it will be warmer and everyone will be wearing fewer articles of clothing every day. The amount of laundry just the 4 of us produce in one day during the winter is ridiculous. I can skip a day or two without washing anything and no one will be short of clothes to wear, but the sheer volume gets completely out of control if I let it go any longer than 2 days.

And the dishes! OMFG! Even though I was fever-free by Monday and feeling lots better, I was still pretty light-headed until about Wednesday and couldn’t really stand long enough to wash a sink full of dishes. I swear the kitchen sink was ready to fall out of its base and into the floor under the weight of all the dishes piled inside because Akinori’s motto is “I’ll do it tomorrow” and then when tomorrow comes “I’ll do it when I get home from work”. Unless it involves uploading a photo to Facebook, or responding to an e-mail he has absolutely no idea what “do it now” means. The man is completely incapable of doing ANYTHING now. It’s ALWAYS “just a minute”, or “in a little while”. God that drives me insane! I think once the  boys get here I am just going to have to avoid the kitchen at all costs. The kitchen is constantly cluttered enough as it is due to a serious lack of storage space, but I do my best to give things a home and keep them put away. Akinori doesn’t know how to put things away, but if he is taking charge of stuff and getting everyone fed, I can’t complain. Well, I can obviously because that is what I am doing here right now, isn’t it? But I shouldn’t. He actually did a stellar job of keeping the girls out of my hair when I was feeling my worst and they were dressed and fed every day, and he kept me hydrated and fed as well, so I really, really shouldn’t complain. I am just a little worried about the impending total destruction of the house when I am in hospital, and in the weeks after I get home. No point in stressing about it now I guess.

I ended up not going to Sara’s kindy production. My in-laws went though and Sara was thrilled to have them there. I doubt I was still contagious, but I was still on meds, and I couldn’t in good conscience go to the lunch afterward when the other mothers knew I had the flu, and in turn I couldn’t then justify sitting in an auditorium full of people. If by chance anyone at all turned up with the flu in the next week, I know it would somehow come back to me, and I figured it was just better in the end for everyone involved if I didn’t go. I did watch the video Akinori recorded later that evening when Sara got home though, and of course I cried. She was just so good and said her lines so loudly and clearly and sang all the songs, and was just plain adorable and made me so proud!

On Sunday we did a maternity photo shoot with our photographer friend. She’s a great photographer and she takes hundreds of photos and just gives us a CD with all of the data. No need to pick and choose only a handful of our favorite shots to developed in pre-decided sizes and forced to pay through the nose for extra copies. We pay her for her time basically, and that’t that. The drawback is that it takes her several months to edit the photos. We probably won’t get these photos back until July, she said. We took family photos in November with her that we still haven’t gotten back either. Ah well, you get what you pay for. Anyway, I am super excited to see the photos! I think they’re going to be awesome photos and a really wonderful way of visually documenting the time our family has spent together waiting for these two little guys to arrive. I’m really excited to see the finished product!

Yesterday I went to a twins and triplets get-together(?) sponsored by the city. It’s held 3 times a month in 3 different locations, but I guess the same families attend each time? From  April though it will only be held twice a month. Snow was coming down in buckets yesterday, so there were only 2 moms that came with their twins. One set were identical girl twins who were 3, nearly 4, and the other set were boy/girl twins who were nearly 2 or 3, I can’t remember. The mother of the girl twins has an older child too. Both mothers said that the first 2 years are the hardest, and then things get much easier. The mother of the boy/girl twins also gave birth at Nisseki, and the mother of the girl set gave birth at the other hospital I was thinking about switching to. I’m so glad I got to talk to her. She ended up being hospitalized for ages before she gave birth, and having a c-section. Both of her girls were head down, and they were a good weight, and born at 37 weeks, so she was given the option of doing it naturally, but she said the hospital told her it’s safer to have a c-section, and 90% of twin births are c-sections.

It sounded to me like that hospital was just as controlling as Nisseki, and makes me think it’s just 6 of one and 1/2 a dozen of another where I give birth. In the end it comes down to me sticking to my guns and making my wishes clear to the doctor and midwives, and believing in my body. I really think my body can give birth to these boys naturally, and will not go into labor prematurely. I know I had a bit of a scare the other week, but I think that hopefully it will prove to the doctor I am not taking things lightly, and I will go into the hospital if I feel something is not right, and therefore I don’t need to be hospitalized to watch my condition. It can be handled from home.

That being said I do think I overdid it a bit today. I went to Sara’s kindy because it was observation day for the gymnastics class that she takes, and afterward I stood around talking to other moms for another 30 minutes or so. Plus I woke up super early to make Sara’s bento and organize the girls’ stuff for the day, and spent a lot of time on my feet then. Then I went to the post office and ran some errands. It was still only about 1 p.m. by the time I got home but I was finished standing for the day. I had planned on picking up Amelie from daycare, I ended up calling Akinori and having him pick up both girls. My tummy has been hard as a rock since then, so I think it’s really important for me to admit to myself that I have limits, a lot of limits in fact, especially if I don’t want to be hospitalized. Having two babies inside is different than having one baby inside, no matter how well my body is acting as an incubator, it was still only meant to incubate 1 baby at a time.

One little boy in Sara’s gymnastics class is 1/2 of a pair of twins, and his mom was there for the observation day too, and quite surprised to see me. She gave birth at Nisseki too and was sure I would be hospitalized by now. She’s a lovely woman, but she was telling me how my belly will never be the same, which I had thought about before, but I don’t know, it doesn’t feel like that kind of thing NEEDS to be said.

I’m going to be 31 weeks in 2 days, and I have an appointment then, so I’m sure I’ll post again in a few days with the details of my appointment, but just some observations from the last week or so:

• The boys are much stronger and pushing harder. There are lots of sharp corners protruding from stomach these days. Fun, but painful at times.
• Left baby is even higher than he was before, or more likely he’s grown and his legs have gotten longer. I often wake up in the middle of the night with feet in my ribs and it is a horrible, painful, burning sensation. Ouch!
• Heartburn is back with a vengeance. For awhile it had gotten a lot better. Most days I didn’t even need to take any Tums, and then from about a week or so ago, I can’t eat or even think about eating without feeling some intense reflux. Thank goodness for the Tums my guardian angel sent me!
• The constipation situation had gotten much better even without meds for awhile, and now it’s not good again. Not good at all. Back to the meds.

And with that I am off to bed! Lots of proofreading work has suddenly fallen into my lap, and I need to rest up so I have some energy to sit in front of the computer totally bored off my ass for hours on end for the next few days.

Emergency Room Visit #2

At least this time it wasn’t related to pregnancy, well not entirely. Friday night when we went to the emergency room I had to take my temperature there, and it was 37.1, which I found kind of odd because my temperature is normally somewhere around 36.3. But I wasn’t feeling bad, aside from the cramping, so I thought the higher temperature was related to that. Maybe it was, who knows?

Saturday morning I felt fine, but my nose was kind of stuffy, and as the day wore on I started feeling worse and worse and my temperature started to rise until I felt absolutely horrid by Saturday night. I was barely able to get any sleep. I slept from midnight to 2 a.m. and then again from 3 to 5 a.m. and that was it. My body and head were so achey I couldn’t get comfortable no matter what I did, and I every time I would start to nod off, I suddenly wouldn’t be able to breathe and would wake up with a start, or I was just so shivery that I couldn’t get comfortable.

Akinori’s uncle in Yamanashi passed away on Thursday morning, and he funeral was scheduled for Sunday. Akinori was going to take the girls and leave me at home from the start as everyone (including myself) is a little freaked out about the “what-ifs” of me traveling anywhere more than an hour or so away from home at this point. Most likely nothing will happen, but it just feels kind of risky. And as much as I would have liked to pay my last respects to Akinori’s uncle, I know, and Akinori kept telling me, that everyone would have been so concerned about me that I almost would have been more in the way than anything. It didn’t matter in the end anyway as I was way too sick to go.

Akinori and the girls left the house at 6:30. I thought about staying in bed, but it was just too uncomfortable. I felt better laying on the sofa. I spent the better part of the morning falling in and out of sleep while half watching TV. It was really hard to get comfortable enough to get good sleep and having a big huge pregnant belly wasn’t helping anything. I was having lots of trouble catching my breath, and one point I got up to go to the bathroom and thought I was going to pass out with lightheadedness. I had been on the fence about going to the dr. since it was a Sunday, which meant I had to go to the emergency room, and because I wasn’t sure I could actually get any medication being pregnant and all. But as the day wore on, and I felt worse and worse, and was fairly certain I had the flu, even though I got the vaccine. My temperature was only at 37.7, which didn’t seem very high, and I’ve had the flu many times before, and my temperature has always been somewhere around 40, so I couldn’t understand why I was in so much pain as I always associated the joint pain with a high fever, but I guess they don’t always go hand in hand.

I called my friend C and asked if she could pick me up and take me to the hospital. So grateful to have wonderful and reliable friends who live nearby! I filled out the paperwork, which is at a table that you have to stand at! I wondered this when I went in on Friday night as well, but why on earth do they not have clipboards and allow you to sit down? Walking from the entrance to the emergency room registration counter was hard enough, people come in wheelchairs, or in way worse situations than I was in, and I cannot for the life of me, figure out why they make you stand at a table to fill out their damned paperwork!

Was then sent to the waiting room with all of the other ill people, which was the same waiting room I was sent to on Friday night when I was not ill. Perhaps no coincidence I found myself there again only 2 days later? And then called in to be seen by an intern, who obviously knows very little about obstetrics considering he had no idea that my prescription for tummy muscle relaxers to prevent contractions for that purpose, and thought it was a stool softener. He then stuck a cotton swab up my nose for a flu test, which I have had performed on me several times in the past, and NEVER did it take so much time or was it as painful. There were no nurses helping him out. I’m guessing they are quite understaffed on weekends and holidays, but jeezus! I’m sure the receptionist could have done a better job!

Back to the waiting room to wait for results. And the result was Influenza A. Crap. Well, at least I now had a good reason for feeling so awful. The dr. prescribed Tamiflu, which I was a little nervous about taking, but the CDC and the FDA both recommend pregnant women who have been diagnosed with the flu take it or Relenza, as the benefits outweigh the risks, or rather the risks to me and the babies of not taking it outweigh the risks to the babies of taking it. I was given fever reducers as well, but told to take them only if my fever topped 38, and it never did.

My friend C offered to pick me up after the hospital, but I just took a taxi. I didn’t want to burden her again, and I just wanted to get home and go back to laying on the sofa. I was able to get a little more sleep after the first dose of Tamiflu, but I was also feeling much, much worse than before I went to the hospital with more aches and chills. I spent the rest of the day floating in and out of sleep until Akinori and the girls came home a little after 9 p.m. The 2nd dose of Tamiflu was what really kicked in I think because I was able to get a great night’s sleep last night.

Akinori and the girls slept in the girls’ room and Sara was the first one up as usual and came bounding into my room around 6:30 or so, to chat about I cannot remember what. I asked her what daddy was doing and she said sleeping. I told her mommy wanted to sleep too, so she said she would go downstairs and find something to do. Good girl!

When I finally regained consciousness, like for real, it was 10 a.m.!!!! Being sick is the only time a mother of two toddlers gets to sleep in until 10 a.m., and sadly, it was’t worth it. I would rather wake up early than feel as crappy as I did yesterday. But I did feel worlds better when I woke up. Like a completely different person than the day before. I was still kind of dizzy and woozy, so I knew I wasn’t 100%, and my nose is still annoyingly stuffed, but I am over the hump! Unfortunately I had to cancel my mama-tomo lunch planned for tomorrow, and Sara’s performance at kindy, that she has been looking forward to for weeks now is on Thursday. Thursday is the last day of my official quarantine. Akinori is taking the morning off work to go. I am on the fence about what to do. I don’t want to infect an auditorium full of people, and there’s a class mother’s lunch afterward and everything. If I no longer have any symptoms by then, do I wear a mask and risk it? Is that totally irresponsible? My fever was gone when I woke up this morning. Isn’t the rule for kids they can go back to school after 3 days of no fever? What would you do?

29 weeks – Things are starting to get exciting!

It’s been a little while since I updated. There hasn’t really been that much news pregnancy or otherwise (I titled this blog post AFTER I started writing it yesterday afternoon. The exciting part will come later), and while little things here and there have happened (like Amelie’s 2nd birthday!) that I wanted to blog about, I’m usually far too exhausted at night to write a blog post. I’ve also had little bites of work here and there which have kept me busy in the evenings and turned me off of sitting in front of the computer for any reason other than work.

Let’s backtrack a little, shall we. Amelie turned 2 on January 31st. I cannot begin to express how thankful I am to have her in my life. I love both of my girls to bits, but Amelie is just the very definition of love and happiness wrapped up into a little body. Sara is sweet and affectionate, but also moody and emotional and stubborn and difficult. Amelie is just all smiles and sweetness. Of course she has her moments like any child does, but they are so very mild in comparison to the theatrics her big sister is capable of. It’s hard not to make it sound like I don’t love Amelie more than Sara, because I don’t. I love them the same, but maybe I don’t like them the same. I do my best not to show it to them. I hug and cuddle Sara as much as I can when she is in a hugging and cuddling mood and not being horrible, but it’s hard. And the hardest part is knowing that Sara is the reincarnation of myself when I was younger.

On Amelie’s birthday I hit 28 weeks. An amazing milestone in a twin pregnancy! The size of my belly basically hit the size of a full-term 40 week singleton belly. The following Monday Amelie started daycare full-time. She has always been super excited to go to daycare. Until now it was only once a week, but as soon as we turned the corner towards daycare, and not Sara’s kindy, in the morning, she would start yelling in the car “Sensei! Sensei! Sensei dai-suki!” (Teacher! Teacher! I love teacher!) But on Monday, at the same corner she started saying “Ikanai. Ikanai” (I’m not going). I had to bribe her by telling her when she got there she would get a snack (considering we were late and it was already snack time when we arrived). There were no tears when I said goodbye, but she wouldn’t look at me. Obviously not happy with the situation. When I went to pick her up though she was all smiles and giggles and we haven’t had a problem since.

While Amelie was at daycare I went to lunch with my friend H and her husband and son who came up from Osaka to go skiing in Hakuba. Tuesday I went to yoga in the morning, and decided to treat myself to lunch after. I was in an Indian food kind of mood after doing yoga, so went to this really yummy Nepalese restaurant (close enough) a friend introduced me to awhile ago. When I walked in there were only 2 other customers, an international couple. The husband looked Indian or Nepalese, but I later found out he is Sri Lankan, and the wife is Japanese. We ate our meals in silence, but at the end I wanted a chai and couldn’t get the waiter’s attention, so the Sri Lankan husband did for me and ordered a chai for himself and his wife as well. And then we got to talking.

Nagano is such a small place, and everyone knows everyone, so we compared notes on mutual friends and acquaintances, and what brought us to Japan, and their trip to America a few years ago with their FIVE kids, and of course my heavy twin belly. I had actually planned on eating super quick and getting home to work on the proofreading project I needed to finish by the following morning, but they were so lovely to talk to I didn’t want to leave. But obviously we couldn’t all stay there forever and we all got up to leave. They paid their bill first and when I went to pay mine, the waiter said that the couple had already paid for me. I was floored! I was extremely grateful, but so astonished at their kindness! And of course being pregnant and hormonal it doesn’t take much to make me cry. The husband said that in Sri Lanka there is no such thing as splitting the bill. One person pays. But it wasn’t even like we ate our meal together! They wrote their phone numbers and mail address on a piece of paper for me, so I sent them a mail thanking them the next day, but I still can’t figure out what I have done to be so lucky and deserving of people’s generosity. But I am incredibly grateful. I’m afraid I’ll never be able to show people how truly grateful I am for their kindness.

After I drove home feeling like my heart was about to burst, I sat down in front of the computer to do some work, but it was time to pick up Amelie before I even really got into. I ended up staying up most of the night, going to sleep at around 2 and waking up at 5 to finish. I had Akinori take the girls to daycare and kindy the next morning because I was so sleepy and groggy I didn’t trust myself to drive on top of the fact that it was snowing. Of course I didn’t let that get in the way of going to the mama-tomo lunch I had planned later in the day.

The moms are all from the class that Amelie and I did once a week at Sara’s kindy until she started daycare full-time. Of course all the other moms had their kids with them. God, it is so much easier to do things without young children in tow. All of the kids who came were little boys between the ages of 1 and 2.5 as well, so it was basically chaos while we ate. One of the moms is a pediatrician. I think we all make a concerted effort not to ask her too many work related questions, but it’s hard.  When moms get together they tend to talk about their kids, including their kids’ health issues. I don’t mean to ask her questions, nor does anyone else I think. We just talk, but I always feel guilty if the conversation turns medical, and being pregnant with twins, it tends to turn medical.

Everyone keeps asking me when I’m going to be hospitalized, so I was explaining that I’m putting it off for as long as I can possibly keep the doctor at bay, and I don’t get why I need to be anyway if everything is fine with me and the boys. And the doctor mom said “Twins are high risk. Lots of stuff can go wrong, and when it does it tends not to be just one thing.” She was also saying that in this day and age there are lots of people who sue hospitals in Japan when something goes wrong at their child’s birth, which makes hospitals extra cautious too. So basically, the hospital is interested in protecting themselves, which is what I suspected. Anyway, I’m still not sold on the idea.

Thursday was my regular check-up at the hospital and everything was looking so good I think the doctor was genuinely disappointed he couldn’t find one reason to even suggest I might need to be hospitalized any time soon. Both boys are still head down. The one closest to the exit and on the right is 1296 g. and the one a little higher up on the left is 1185 g. Their bladders were both the same size and they have plenty of amniotic fluid. The saloon doors are tightly sealed with 37 mm. between the bigger baby’s head and the outside world. I’m not retaining any water, and I only gained a kilo since my last appointment, which puts me at 13 kgs. up from my pre-pregnancy weight, which I think is kind of excellent. I think it’s actually where I was at about the same time with Sara. And it’s perfectly normal to have gained this much with twins at this point, and the midwife even praised my lack of weight gain. I know I shouldn’t let the comments that they make according to Japanese standards get to me, but it’s kind of impossible to completely let them roll off my back.

Anyway, the midwife kept going on about how wonderful it was that everything looked so good, and the doctor said it looks like we’ve still got quite a way to go before the twins get here. I was feeling super awesome top-of-the-world fabulous when I left the hospital. I measured my waist around my belly button at home, and it was 105.5 cm., which is bigger than I ever was with Amelie, though not with Sara. My measurements with Sara were all over the place though. Getting up to 109 cm., then going back down to 107 cm., then up to 112 the week she was born. Who knows? All I know is, I probably have a little ways to go before I enter unknown tummy expansion territory, and the possible threat of stretch marks. My bare belly, and showing my face has a much bigger impact than just photographing my clothed belly I think. I’m big!

I was thinking about how well I am actually doing with this pregnancy yesterday morning. I was thinking that when I got this big I would just be dying to give birth already and the last trimester would be sheer torture, like the week or two before giving birth to Sara and Amelie were. I just wanted them out of me! I was done! But so far I don’t feel like that. Even the crotch pain that had been causing me so much trouble in the last few weeks seems to have gotten better.

Friday I debated going to yoga or staying home and resting. Resting won out. I didn’t even take a shower all day. I got a bunch of laundry washed and folded and that was about it. I had planned on doing lots more, but I have a lot more energy in my mind than in my body, and I figured I won’t be going into the hospital anytime soon, so I still have time to get the cleaning and organizing done that I want to before the babies arrive and while both girls are out of the house during the day.

I think I had started to get too cocky about how well I was doing because around 6 p.m. last night I got a funny cramp in my lower belly, like a period cramp, that came and went, like a contraction. And then again. I was in the middle of writing this post, so I put away the computer and laid down on my left side, and continued to cramp, and I was getting more and more nervous, which probably didn’t help anything. I never really had Braxton-Hicks with Sara or Amelie, just tightening around my upper belly, and I don’t know if that’s really what a BH contraction is or not. So I asked on FB if people who had experienced BH contractions could tell me if there was a difference. Most people said there was, which made me even more worried, because what I was feeling was what I remembered “real” contractions feeling like.

So I called the hospital and Akinori called his sister to come and stay with the girls and we went to the hospital. I was a little surprised at how long it finally took them to see me, but I guess I didn’t sound like I was too urgent a case on the phone? I guess I have always assumed that if someone went into pre-term labor you’d want to get in there and stop it as soon as possible before it progressed to a point where you could no longer stop it. Luckily that wasn’t what was happening to me. A doctor gave me an internal exam and said there is no change in my cervix length from yesterday, he did an ultrasound and found that both babies’ hearts are beating happily, they are both moving around like the little fish that they feel like, they both have plenty of amniotic fluid. I then did an NST (non-stress test), and the nurse was surprised that she was able to find both of their heartbeats so easily. I wasn’t. Since I’ve known I’m having twins I have never had a problem finding both babies’ heartbeats right away. They’re good little boys. Let’s hope that’s a sign of things to come!

Although the nurse found their heartbeats right away, they were both awake and squirming and they kept moving out of reach of the sensor and the annoying alarm went off 3 or 4 times in the 40 minutes I had the monitor on. I felt bad that the nurse had to keep running back. There was only 1 or 2 contractions that registered mildly on the NST, but it was enough to convince the doctor to send me home. Yeah!

Honestly, after we got to the hospital the contractions seemed to let up quite a bit, instead of getting stronger so I was pretty sure it was just a false alarm, but I’m glad we went. Akinori is pretty shit in these types of situations and tends to panic, which drives me nuts. When I’m in labor, I need someone to calm ME down, I don’t want to be the one doing the calming. I suppose I should be used to it by now as we are on round 3, but jeezus! Can he not get used to it too? I have my fingers crossed we won’t be back at the hospital until my next check up, and that will prove to MY doctor, who will obviously find out I’ve been to the hospital, that I still don’t need to be hospitalized. I’m still holding out for a natural birth sometime around 36 – 37 weeks. We can do this babies!