Thursday, March 22, 2007

Spring and babies

My Sister just gave birth to a baby boy, what a wonderful thing in spring when new life is all starting to come out! This is her third baby and first boy so and I am SO excited for her!

I too have news. I am expecting again, (yay!) but not due until I've gone through spring and all the heat of summer with a big belly. It's been a really fun pregnancy though, and I want to write about it.

Being my third pregnancy, I started off feeling very confident. How nice not to have to worry about all the goofy little symptoms that I now recognize as "normal". I went to my first doctor visit feeling like a veteran, ready to tell the doctor what to do.

On this visit, my doctor decided to do an early ultrasound to find the baby's due date and make sure that there was a heartbeat and all that good stuff. I had my kids with my on this visit, so I kept pretty busy trying to threaten 2 yr-old Capt. America so he wouldn't play with the machinery while the doctor set up and asked me routine questions about how I was feeling.

I had just finished telling the doctor that inspite of the usual tiredness and morning sickness, I was feeling just fine, when she looked at me funny, asked, "Are you sure?" and turned the screen toward me.

There went my confidence.

As I looked up on the screen, all I could say was, "You're kidding." The doctor replied, "I'm not kidding." I said again, "You're KIDDING." "I'm not kidding." I think we went through this six or seven times until finally I could manage to ask, "Why do I see two of them?" She smiled.

My next thought was - hey, twice the chance for a girl! So I asked, "Fraternal?" "Probably identical" she said. (Dang - although identical twins sounds fun, I just new that with my luck, at least one was going to be a boy, so identical would probably mean two boys.)

At this point the Captain was really starting to mess things up in the room, so I had to shift my attention towards my children and try to somehow listen at the same time to all the things the doctor was telling me - something about an earlier due date, gaining weight, and trying to find someone who could be "me" when I couldn't be. I didn't know if she meant before the twins were born or after. I think both.

The doctor gave me a book about expecting multiples and a big congratulations, and I walked out of the room dazed and in shock.

I waited until I got home, and then immediately called my husband's cell phone. He answered and replied, "I'm in the bedroom." "Oh." click. He had been sick and had apparently gotten bad enough to come home early to rest. So I told Superman not to say anything to Dad, and went to the bedroom for a "chat".

"So," I said to the object under the covers, trying to sleep, "I just got back from the doctor's office."
Object: "That's great."
Me: "I got an ultrasound."
Object: "zzzz...."
Me: "Do you want to see it?"
Object: no response
Me: starting to pull his covers off and more aggressively bug him, "Maybe you'd find it interesting."
Object: "Ok, sure, whatever. Let me see"
With a big grin on my face, I showed him the picture of two little beans with the word, "Twins" printed across it.
Object: Studies the picture, squints, looks again. Finally says, "I think I need to go back to sleep."

Of course I didn't let him, I made him wake up enough to let me freak out a bit and talk with him about all the crazy stuff like - "Holy cow, we're going to need another crib!" and "Good thing we decided to get the minivan!"

And so it has been a very different pregnancy for me after all, just when I thought I knew what I was doing. It has been a lot of fun, although I've been really tired, and at 19 weeks, I'm already into my larger-sized maternity clothes! I've gone in and out of stages of giddiness and sheer panic, but mostly it's settled into a happy excitement as I get ready for not just one, but two little souls to join our family. We feel so blessed and lucky.

And yes, I was right, our last ultrasound indicated that we'll most likely be having two more little boys! I couldn't be happier, I'm so glad I like being a mom of boys.

Now to find two more boy names....