Little Miracles

A Shooting Star

Tuesday evening after a rainy day, Puck and I took Shakti for a walk, and we marvelled at the stars we could see in the cloudless sky. Orion was high on the right, and suddenly, right in front of us, I saw a star streak across the sky. My wish leapt out of me toward the star without even thinking, but before I could point it out to Puck, it was already gone. Puck squeezed my hand and told me, “You don’t have to tell me. I know what you wished.”

Later that night as we prepared to go to sleep, Puck started a new bedtime ritual. He rubbed my growing belly, and then he asked, “Where are our babies?” I pointed to two spots, and as he gave each of our little ones a kiss, I gently held the bottom of my belly. Just as he kissed the second babe, on the other side I felt two flutters against the skin right under my fingertips. Another small, fleeting and amazing miracle.

This morning Puck snuggled with me and had his hand on my belly, and while I snoozed, he thought he felt one of the babies move…another beautiful moment on the way to parenthood.

Note:
I know what some of you are thinking. At just under 10 weeks, it is way too early to feel the babies move, but twin mothers often report feeling the first movements early. Doctors and others tend to dismiss this. However, it was something I have not felt before, and I can’t wait to feel it again. I say this while knowing that in the future my little tykes will be squashing my bladder and practicing their spinkicks on my ribs.

Guest Post From Puck:

My wife had her first spontaneous crying episode last Friday when she picked me up from work. I asked her why she was upset and, with her eyes full of tears and her lower lip quivering, she replied, “Because you washed all the glasses last night.”

It sounds irrational and hilarious.

I admit this is not what a guy typically expects from a weepy-eyed wife when she arrives to take him home from work.  Still, I was ready for spontaneous crying to happen during the pregnancy so it didn’t bother me and later I gently teased her about it.

What is missing from the amusing surface story is the deeper narrative. Understanding the full tale behind the emotion takes some of the randomness out of it and provides a more Mary-specific context.

Puck’s Busy Thursdays

Thursday nights I’m in a serious hurry. I rush home grab a bite to eat and then bolt out the door driving through traffic into downtown Sacramento to teach my fencing class. When I get home I’m tired and sweaty and ready to sleep.

Part of the recent feed-the-pregnant-lady campaign has been about calcium and specifically drinking milk. When Mary drinks water, she typically re-uses a single glass but with her drinking glass after glass of milk, we accumulate a good number of glasses needing manly attention. (You really don’t want to re-use a milk glass.)

On any other night, I prep a mommy-snack and then putter around the kitchen getting dinner ready and washing up dishes. Thursdays are my busy days and Mary had wanted to wash up the dishes despite my insistent declarations that she take care of her own work and leave the other stuff to me. With a limited energy budget each day, she poops out very quickly and teaching, prepping her lesson plans, and grading is plenty already.

When I got home from my class, I sent her off to chat on the phone in the bedroom and then quickly washed up the dishes while she was otherwise occupied.  It was a bait-and-switch ninja-style dish-washing which resulted in a fresh crop of clean and milk-ready drinking glasses.

A clean glass by any other name…

From an outsider’s perspective she’s crying over clean dishes.

What actually moves her is the gratitude and love she feels when a tired husband comes home and washes the dishes in his fencing knickers. She’s sublimating some of her own desires to help and freedom to do and eat the things she wants into motherhood. Her role as a pregnant mother limits her ability to help with household work. We’re both working towards a greater goal, and along the way, we show our affection for each other in different ways.

Mary feels gratitude strongly from the inside out and with all the love and support she’s been getting from friends and family it finally surfaced in a parking lot as we were getting ready to drive home.

The strong emotion is not about the dishes, but rather the full range of emotions. The deeper narrative is the message of love, marriage, motherhood, and our lifelong friendship and respect for each other. These are not silly or random tears but perhaps instead an entirely aware and rational joy for where we are in our lives, how we feel for each other, the support of loved ones, and how we feel for our two little ones waiting to be born.

~P.

Guest Post from Shakti:

He Smells Like Mud

I am a big dog and I have friends that are big and some friends that are little. My friend Eric is somewhere between little and big and he smells like fresh mud on a Spring day. Most people don’t know this but sniffing people is the best way to get to know them.

Eric the Mud-scented

Fun in Space and the Smelly Dollar

In my calendar picture this year I am riding a rocket ship into space. I can tell you that this is very fun but like most things this is more fun with friends. To keep me from getting lonely, Eric the mud-scented mailed a picture to me. It showed him chasing me is his own spaceship which is very nice because this means we can play together by bouncing off of comets.

Eric chases me with his red and orange spaceship.

He also sent me a dollar which was very nice because I knew exactly what I would buy with my new dollar. (I can tell Eric sent the dollar because it smells exactly like him.) We went to the dog store and I used the dollar to buy a dog cookie.

This is the dog cookie and I'm sniffing it.

Please can I taste it just a little bit?

I really want to eat this cookie!

Oh my gosh! This is the best dog cookie ever!

More Pictures

Eric also sent me more pictures so that his Mommy and Daddy and his big sister could all go to space with me too.

Eric

Eric's Whole Family goes into space.

Now we get to have lots of fun together in our spaceships. We can race through the Milky Way. (I love milk!) We can play tag on the moon, and we can ride in circles around Saturn’s rings. Outer space is a good place to play with friends.

Friends Forever

Photos taken by my wonderful husband yesterday at just past 9 weeks. The overalls I’m wearing are an old pair of my dad’s, but it looks like I won’t be able to wear them for much longer.

Click to view the full image, and then click on the full image if you want to see it larger:

For those with a weak stomach or who are easily offended by discussions about the body, I recommend that you skip this post, and some of you simply won’t want to know about some of these things. Plus, I probably wouldn’t read this post with your kids. So, you have been fairly warned and proceed at your own risk.

Why am I writing this post and sharing it? Eventually, we will open this blog thread to the public, and some other pregnant woman might find something useful here.

Breasts
Some of the earliest changes that I noticed in my body were my tender breasts. They have been fairly persistently tender and extra sensitive. However, there was one day that they actually ached, and that day they grew half an inch in 24 hours. It will be interesting to see just how large they get. Soon they just won’t fit in my bras anymore. I foresee a trip to a store in my near future, though the pregnancy books recommend only buying one bra as it won’t be long before I outgrow it too. I’m left a little bewildered by the idea of just how large they might get. Of course, they’ll have double-duty, so getting large might be a good thing.

Spotting
Probably the most disturbing part of this pregnancy has been the fact that I spot 1-2 times almost every day. It’s not a lot, and it’s only when I go to the bathroom. Still, it just adds that little bit of stress to this joyful experience, especially after the scare we had early in the pregnancy. Fortunately, this week has been better. From Monday to Thursday, I enjoyed 4 days spotting free. Friday, I had just the tiniest bit of spotting, and this morning I had some regular spotting. Here’s hoping the spotting continues to appear less.

Burping
My most common symptom has been burping. Fortunately, I haven’t had to burp in class, but Puck has been witness to my whole symphony of burps. Thank goodness I feel comfortable in our relationship and confident in his love.

Fatigue
I had already written the above about burping several days ago, but I realized yesterday that it isn’t exactly true. Fatigue is my most common symptom. It has worked out well that I teach in the morning this quarter because after lunch with Puck, I head straight for home and my bed. I sink into a very deep sleep for at least an hour and sometimes up to 3 hours. Then I swim back into consciousness and can function again. In some of the twin pregnancy books, the mothers had to take a one-hour nap on their lunch break (hopefully, not skipping eating), and one mother said she would get so tired that on the walk to her car she sometimes wanted to just lie down on the cement and sleep. Fortunately, if I’m ever too tired to drive home, I can just stretch out in the minivan for a nap. In fact, the day of my last appointment I did just that since the appointment was during my normal nap time.

Sneezing
Sometimes, it almost seems like I’m allergic to being pregnant. I’ll get a whole string of breath-taking, full-chest sneezes – the kind that in a movie might knock someone over, and I can’t help but think, “Hold on down there!” What must they think of these body-quakes?

Small, localized pain
Recently, I’ve started getting brief twinges of light, localized pain on different areas of my tummy. It feels like a tiny pinprick of pain right behind my layer of skin, and it goes away quickly enough. I’ve only experienced this three or four times so far. Puck suggested it might be due to my stomach starting to expand, and the Ob/Gyn we saw last Thursday agreed.

Nausea
While I have only thrown up once during the pregnancy so far, I have had my own brand of morning sickness. For the first few weeks after we discovered we were pregnant, it was just a mild queasiness that I could mostly ignore. In the last two weeks, it has upgraded to nausea. Enough so, that I often take the elevator to my third-floor office rather than carrying my roller bag up the stairs.

An interesting aspect of my nausea is that it is often tied to hunger. Now, I don’t feel hungry. In fact, the nausea actually makes me not want to eat, but Puck and I have discovered that when I do eat the nausea lessens or goes away. Apparently, this is not an uncommon form of nausea for pregnant women, but it is not true for all women. My heartfelt sympathy to those of you who have to suffer through more intense morning sickness.

Constipation
This is another common pregnancy symptom, and supposedly it will get worse as the pregnancy progresses. When I hit my first rounds of constipation, my attentive husband immediately went out and bought me prune juice. I have been dutifully drinking around a 1/2-3/4 cup every night. It has cleared up the constipation (at least for now), and I’m almost used to its strong aftertaste.

Sex – If you don’t want to know, don’t read this.
During our first visit to the Ob/Gyn (when we discovered that not only did we not miscarry but we were pregnant with twins), we asked what we could do to help protect the pregnancy. The Ob/Gyn’s one comment was, “No pelvic activity.”

Considering that we were still in shock from the announcement that we were pregnant with twins, we didn’t think to ask for further clarification. Obviously, the doctor had meant no sex, but what specifically is included in that phrase? In a loose interpretation, could even exercise focused on using the legs be included? Was there some wiggle room for orgasms that didn’t involve putting anything in any orifices?

It’s also one of those strange moments. How often have we heard in movies and on TV that it is okay to have sex while pregnant, that it won’t hurt the babies? Perhaps they should add a disclaimer, “It’s okay to have sex while pregnant, unless it isn’t. See doctor for details.”

Reading on the web, this recommendation for “no pelvic activity” is relatively common in cases where women spot, have blood clots, have uncooperative cervixes that don’t always stay shut, etc. I read stories on forums from women who were warned away from sex for weeks, months and in some cases the whole pregnancy. It is a price women are willing to pay to help keep those little lives healthy inside them, but it can also lead to some sexual frustration.

On my second visit to the Ob/Gyn, I was prepared with more detailed questions about what fell under the umbrella of “no pelvic activity,” and I came out with some good and bad news. The Ob/Gyn we have been seeing is an Irish fellow, and when questioned about what exactly “pelvic activity” referred to, he hemmed and hawed a little. Unwilling to back down or get too embarrassed (hey, this is an important topic!), I took the reigns. I told him that I understood that it meant we shouldn’t introduce any objects (my husband’s, mine or battery-run) into any orifices (he nodded), but I wanted to know if it was still okay for me to orgasm. With a look of relief, he nodded again and said, “Yes, be creative.”

That was the good news. (And yes, he said light exercise was fine.)

The bad news? He recommended we stay on “no pelvic activity” for the rest of the pregnancy. Yikes! The next day, we also received our twin pregnancy books, and reading through some of “When You’re Expecting Twins, Triplets, or Quads,” I discovered that as the pregnancy progresses they don’t even recommend orgasms for women because it might set off contractions and one of the greatest risks with multiples is premature labor (meaning before the 37th week with twins). Yikes again! It does make me wonder, “Oh, why did I get pregnant in less than a month? Shouldn’t I have been forced to work at it for a month or two more?” Still, we all take our diverse blessings the way they come to us, and we are thrilled to be nurturing two little lives inside me.