I was measured at the doctor’s office yesterday. This time they were respectful of my time and only made me wait for 50 minutes chasing a bored and wild toddler around the incredibly small waiting room with no cups for the water cooler. So gracious. Anyways they were proud of me for finally catching up on my weight gain. 7 lbs in 2 weeks. Yay? Sigh. I may be a pregnant woman, but I am still a woman! I don’t think I am ever going to look at the scale for a weigh- in again.
My fundus is measuring 34 weeks. I look like I am about to drop a single child from my body on accident. Comments from strangers in elevators like “Any day now huh?”, “Oh how exciting, are you due soon?” etc only reinforce the fact that I have a fearfully long time to go before I am actually going to give birth. The human body is amazing, but I just don’t understand how I can grow and/or stretch any more and still have functioning lungs. As is my meals have started to shrink because I get the painful I-ate-wayyy-too0-much-at-Thanksgiving-dinner feeling. Painful and not worth the last bite. I don’t even know where my stomach is currently located in my abdomen. I think it is sort of high and to the left under a rib. Not sure though. If that is where my stomach is, then where is my liver? I digress…
Anyways, the doctor says that the next month I should still be able to function and then it is going to really hard. Then I will be disfigured and lugging around the weight of these kids quite awkwardly. Back pains, difficulty sleep, doom etc. Anyways, I will try to glow this next month because the glow may become a laborious grease streak from the effort of this in 4 weeks. She said that my cervix is holding up “long and strong”. Thank you Cervix! High five Cervix! If I could buy you a latte and a massage I would. Hang in there cervix, you are the plug keeping the kids in the bathtub.
I got another quick ultrasound with the grainy machine they have in the regular OB appointment room. Twin A is head down but she said that twins can still move until about 34-37 weeks too. I thought the space was about too be limited and they would get pinned enough for me to not worry about breech presentation. No such luck, but I am still proud of my second born for orienting correctly in the little womb world we are creating. Stay put kid!
Oh wow. I am not exactly daunted by my current size. I mean, I am. If I was going to deliver next week, it would be ok. The current level of back pain, the about-to-pop feeling in my abdomen – all ok. But knowing that I still have 3 months to go! I have no idea how I am going to make it! I don’t know how I could possibly continue to grow at this rate. It is scaring me.
The one thing that should just keep me calm is to know that others have done this. I am not the first person to have twins. My body spontaneously created them, so I can handle it right? Besides, octomom and others have carried higher order multiples, why can’t I carry 2. Of little consolation when I feel like breathing in too deeply will snap a stomach muscle…
Posted by mama playground | Posted in Stretching belly, Twins | Posted on 24-06-2009
Did you ever handle a waterballoon when you were a kid, and think “whoa danger, this one is going to pop before I can even do anything with it”? Well, that is my abdomen. Not even five months pregnant and no longer fitting in to clothes that fit me through my 8th month with my first child. I had a whole heap of clothes that I told myself I wouldn’t be able to use for a while (back at naive month #3 of this pregnancy). Twin pregnancy is just different. I somehow managed to completely skip the second trimester bump and fly straight in to the third trimester bump over the course of the last three weeks.
No stretch marks yet, but I probably got one as we speak for even typing those words. The babies are moving around quite a bit. They really, really got a kick of that 1/2 gallon of peanut butter ice cream with butterfingers in it that I consumed after my healthy dinner tonight. Maybe they are girls because I got a kick out of it too.
I notice that I have suddenly reached that hilarious part of the pregnancy where food falls down to the top of my belly or on to my enormous rack. Funny. The napkin on the lap during a meal is pointless. Food would have to completely dodge my oversized mellons, and somehow scale the face of the mountain belly in order to find its way to my lap. Nah. Instead I have the embarrassing (and much more visible than the lap location) collage of all crumbs and food strays displayed on my chest and upper belly. Oh the glory.
Yowswers! Things are really picking up speed now. I can feel the stretching and growing pains in more way than one. Maybe it is just going to be in spurts. Or else my body is going to be fully challenged on a daily basis from here on out. Anyhoo the last couple of days have been amazing. Ask a gestating woman how they “know” they feel kicks. How do you “know” it is ok? Hmm, the indescribable intuition involved in opening your physical being the entering universe when you create a human being from scratch – describe it. Nah. I will just tell you though, that I “know” my body has been really going through something the last few days.
It could be the achy feeling occassionally, or the sharp pain when trying to carry the weight of my toddler in my arms and partially resting on my belly. It could be nearly constant exhaustion. It could be the fact that 1/2 an hour ago I oscillated from feeling hearburn to dizzy spell, to babies kicking, to hunger, to nausea all in one minute. Wow. What is going on in here? Dunno, but that is a range of symptoms I more often cover in a week. Maybe the twins are multiplying. Haha. No wait, that is not funny. I have no idea what they are doing in there, but I am going to give it the respect it deserves and head to bed now. Yes, that is in fact the solution.
