New England Holidays

For the last five years, I've been having a blast showering my nephews and niece (and now soon to be nieces) with the great holiday gifts from L.L. Bean.  Personalized needlepoint stockings, monogrammed boat and tote bags, and their kids holiday gifts (wooden sleds, radio flyer walkers and trikes, etc.).  After all this time, now it's actually and finally time to start thinking about buying these things for our own kids. 

I'm looking at the new gingerbread stocking for baby girl and the train stocking for baby boy (like his big cousin Ben has).  My sisters and I all had/have homemade personalized knit stockings growing up (each with a different design) and they are much more fun than the classic but plain damask ones we have from Restoration Hardware.



And now they sell tandem sleds!  Isn't it the cutest?!  The question is do I need it or does my sister (w/#4u5 on the way)?  I guess that would be a way to get the single sled back... ;)

And even though now I live far away, and am ironically confined to bed, I'm following along (electronically) with and remembering my now so long ago runway days at Boston Fashion Week, which as they say is "wicked smaht".

The virtues

I love love love these, and they just became available to buy in her Etsy store...

From here, found here...

24 weeks!

Since I don't get to have another u/s for three weeks,

here's what the twins are supposed to be looking like in there at 24 weeks. 

I had a great check-up yesterday.  I'm up 24 pounds on their scale, and she was very happy with my cervix/stitch.  She commended me for being so good about bed rest, as she could tell I haven't been cheating.  I will have my glucose tolerance test next week, since I was just short of 24 wks at my visit.  

For the first time since I left my job in April, I've thought lately that I sort of wish I was still working, though I don't miss my job.  I had no problem keeping busy this summer, but it is difficult day after day when you can't do anything that you want or need to do.  I don't have many sedentary hobbies, as I don't usually sit still for long, but I guess I need to get some.  I might as well be working and at least be collecting a paycheck (or at worst disability) to lay here cooking babies.  Oh well...

We really weren't sure at all over the last five weeks of touch and go whether or not we would get this far, albeit a somewhat arbitrary milestone since we are not anywhere near a good place to be having these babies, but we are obviously very thankful that we have. 

Four weeks of bed rest down and twelve more to go before the cerclage comes out. 

A week of many milestones...  turning 35 this weekend (eek!) and my sister is coming to visit from NYC to hang out for the week.  Yay!  My mom is coming down to join us for a few days too.

Life on bed rest

I know this is going to be just thrilling for you to read, but in case you're wondering what life on BR is like...

I've been sleeping downstairs in our guest suite for some time now. First because of the oppressive heat, now because my OB said that if I'm going to do any stairs, I only can only do them once a day, so I just live downstairs now because it's easier.

After I get up, DH pops his head in each morning to see if I'm ready for breakfast (I always am)

He makes me my first breakfast, brings it to me in bed, brings me fresh water and my day of snacks and goes and makes my lunch for the day (I'm not allowed to do any food prep). Then he's off to work. :(

I start my day... TV on, checking e-mails/voicemail messages, talk on the phone, cruise around online ordering anything I can that can possibly save DH errands (latest: stamps). Fold any laundry that DH has done and brought to me.

At some point, I have to get up to go to the bathroom. I do this quite a bit and it's the most I'm up all day.

At some point, I bathe. Sitting in the tub.

I head to the kitchen to eat lunch, usually picking up the mail (a daily highlight) on the way.

Afternoon nap (sometimes)

Now that we have the nursery set up next to the guest room and we brilliantly got a high backed glider/recliner, I can now camp out in there for a change of scenery to lay and read and listen to the Ipod player, play with my Ipad...

DH comes home and makes dinner and I move to the couch in the family room, which is open to the kitchen, so we can catch up on his day. If he has to work late, I go and get something to eat that he has prepared for me.

Repeat for the next three months...

Our fifth wedding anniversary

“Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking together in the same direction.”   -Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Weekly/post-op check-up and (almost) 23 weeks

We went back to the OB today for our weekly and first post-op check and I have to say it was fabulous to get out of the house.  I am also feeling better today than I have since the surgery, which is very welcome, as my recovery was hairy there for a few days.  I also got my weekly 17P shot and my annual (non-live/thimerosol-free) flu shot for me and the babies. 

The babies look spectacular.  They are up to 1lb.6oz. and 1lb.4oz. and have HB's in the 150's.  Both are measuring ahead/on track as before.  The tech was impressed that they already seem to be doing some respiratory exercises, which is a good sign.  My belly is measuring 27 weeks, and while it is definitely getting bigger, I know I still have a lot of growing left to do.  My pesky cervix (or should I say my stitch) is holding tight.  They stitched me about 1.5cm up my cervix last week and I now have another 5mm closed above that, the rest is hugely funnelled and has a big baby boy head bouncing against it (he takes after his dad). 

My Dr. was very happy with how it looked, but she reminded me not to get cocky (who me?) and that as I sat there in front of her to enjoy the treat (of sitting upright she meant).  That stitch is the only thing keeping the babies in there where they need to be for the next three plus months.  So back on my side I go.  Though I will be going in for weekly checks from here on out, sadly we'll be going back to only having an u/s every four weeks.  I will miss seeing the babies so much.  They are busy beating the crap out of each other in there.

Baby Boy peeking his nose through the pea soup and showing us his big hands

Baby Girl just looking cute

It's hard to believe I'm three weeks into bed rest already (and only three months to go...)  DH fabulously went and got me an IPad to help me pass the time while on bed rest, which even though I have a laptop, makes doing stuff while in bed easier and more fun (and easier on my carpal tunnel wrist). 

I had a really tough day earlier this week when I think the realities of four months of BR really hit me and I actually thought about all the things that I am not allowed to do for the babies and myself during this (my only full) pregnancy as I had planned or was doing already.  No more acupuncture, massages, chiropractic, exercise/yoga, childbirth/BFing/CPR classes (though we can do some online, my OB said she'd be thrilled if we got to a point where were delivering full term babies and were woefully unprepared... :/).  Then of course there's all the other stuff: shopping (which I'm trying to do online), maternity photos, shower(s), etc. which will all also not be happening.  We will do something after the babies arrive and are big enough for a party.  I thought infertility was isolating, but in reality so many people deal with that, it has nothing on extended bed rest.  Good luck finding someone who has been on BR for four months.  As my pg infertile friends go about their lives, I get to lay here with my bottom 1% of the bottom 1% baby carrying body.  So we're back in survival mode, where my plans and expectations of what I should and can do for optimal results are put aside for more basic objectives.

I'm concerned what kind of functional shape my body is going to be in in December when it comes time to labor, deliver, and recover.  And then of course I'll need to be in top form to take care of two babies, after having been laying in bed atrophying for four months.  Obviously way less than ideal, but that's the hand (or rather cervix) we've been dealt.

DH is amazing and my family been really great too.  My mom, step-dad and eldest sister are stopping by this weekend for a quick visit on their way through town, though my mom will be back again, and I have plans for my other sisters and my dad/step-mom to come and help us out in the coming weeks and months.  We are still working on getting MIL (and maybe even BIL) visas to come later.

I've been a busy bee ordering stuff for the babies.  The glider/recliner is being delivered tomorrow and we've got the double snap and go and Maclaren twin techno on their way as well.  I was going to wait on these, but when you've got nothing to do but look for deals, I sure can find them.  We just got our Maclaren rockers as well.  The nursery is actually coming together quite nicely.  DH just needs to put together the 2nd crib and the shelves.  And even though bed rest will save me a lot on maternity clothes, I ordered a bunch of basics to get me through from Old Navy.  It is also very unlucky for my bank account that Janie and Jack (clothes), Zutano (socks, ty Haute Look), and Giggle (et al) are happy to ship me whatever I want.

9.11.11

A decade on, we mourn, we reflect, we remember 9.11.01... 

Ten years ago today, I was in Spain with my then boyfriend on a Kellogg GIM (Global Initiatives in Management) trip that he had organized for his class.  We had spent several wonderful days with the group in Barcelona and that afternoon (morning in the U.S.) we all went to the airport, where he flew to Stockholm to finish his trip and I flew alone to Madrid (where the group had been before Barcelona) to hang out until he returned to meet me there the next week.  I was to later that week travel to Marbella to meet up with some his/our school friends who were flying from the U.S. on 9/11, which of course didn't end up happening as the airspace was closed for days.  Several other SO's were headed back to the U.S. that day and they ended up getting diverted back to Europe to wait out the aftermath.

My plane took off at just before 3pm Spanish time, the same time that the first plane hit the first tower.  It was an odd flight at the time (the Iberia plane reeked of cigarette smoke, the guy next to me was really strange), and then in hindsight of course I realized that the pilot must have known what was happening while we were in the air, but none of us knew.  It was only after we landed and I took the train (passing through the station that would later be another terrorist target) to my little hotel in the center of Madrid, that I saw what had happened and by then the towers had both fallen.  The only English channel that I got in my room was BBC Europe, so I watched them play back what had happened for days.  Watching the BBC now (which DH likes to do) still reminds me of those days I spent alone in a country where I didn't know anyone and didn't speak the language.

I knew as soon as I saw what had happened that people I had gone to school with were surely in those towers.  Two of my classmates died that day.  Two young men who were fellow econ majors and graduated with me in 1999.   I had decided not to take the popular route from our program to work on Wall Street, but both of them had.  One was getting ready to get married at the time and the other was the "man with the red bandana", who was written about so widely after the attacks, having gone back up the building several times to save others and was finally found months later with rescue workers in the lobby of the south tower.

It wasn't until the next day that I finally got out and decided to try to make the most of my trip.  I went to the Museo Reina Sofia and when I happened upon it, spent a lot of time standing in front of Guernica, Picasso's famous war painting, knowing that this must be what scenes back home looked like and that we were at and now would actively be going to war.

I was able to reach home via cell phone and did have some luck connecting with others via the internet cafe near my hotel, but I didn't hear from the boyfriend for days.  After a year and half together, we were newly living together back in Chicago, and it was certainly a definitive turning point in our relationship.  Apparently he was busy dealing with the overwhelming job of dozens of seemingly worldly, but at this time completely panic stricken group of students he was leading, and he knew I was/would be fine.  When he finally met me in Madrid, we took the train to Seville and then drove around Portugal for another week trying to make the most of the trip we'd planned for months.

I had left my job in July, primarily to travel around with him (we were supposed to be in NYC in Aug.), and now the economy which was already bad would get much worse.  So when I got a job offer in the spring of 2002 in Boston, to undertake the unpopular task of raising money to help recent immigrants in the time after 9/11, I decided that as much as we loved each other, things were probably not going to work out the way we wanted and I moved back there without him.  That summer, after he graduated (a degree he rightfully credited to me), he came to visit and we very tearfully said goodbye.  He lives and works in Argentina now and still sends me a happy birthday text every year.  Oh the people who shape our lives and memories...