How it has been, how it will be, how it should be.

well it's been forever since I updated, and my brain is feeling so overloaded with thoughts I figured I should get posting! So, for starters, let's talk about where I'm at. I'm at 17 weeks + 2 days pregnant. Woo! For a twin pregnancy I'm almost half way! (At 19 weeks I will be half way, as they won't let me go beyond 38 weeks). Funny thing is, I'm excited, but I'm also becoming terrified. Not only will I be bringing a beautiful baby into the world in around 21 1/2 weeks, but I will be bringing in TWO. Am I ready? No. Am I emotionally or financially prepared?? HELL no. Do I feel like I have a right to be terrified? Hell YES I do! I'm not wonder woman, and I'm not this great organizing genius that some people portray me to be. It's an illusion. I'm really a great procrastinator, and that's why I organize so early in advance. Because if I don't, it won't get done. End of story. These babies are going to completely turn our lives inside out and upside down. I really don't even think that I even come close to understanding how much, and the not knowing, well that's what scares me.

How have I been feeling?? Do you really want to know the honest truth? You don't really, because I've tried VERY hard to hide it. I say things are good, things are fine, I'm better all the time. Ha. Guess what people, I'm actually going to tell you how I've been feeling, because I'm tired of feeling frustrated every time I purse the word "fine" from my lips. But I'm only going to say all this once; after this post, my responses will remain as "fine" or "good" because I honestly don't want to hear everyone's two cents as to how "they felt so much worse" or "I'm lucky because..." or laughing (this is my favorite) actually laughing at me and saying that "It's only going to get worse! good luck with that!". Anyone who laughs at another persons ill feelings at ANY time, nevermind pregnancy, deserves to be slapped. So don't laugh, I don't find it funny, those poor sickies don't find it funny, it's not funny. So let's see, let us start from the beginning....
It started off great, honestly. I found out I was pregnant, and was sooo excited, I felt fine, everything felt fine. One day, I felt a little nauseous, and honestly I felt that it was a good thing, it meant the baby (I only thought I had one) was fine and growing, and things were going along as they should. I was drinking peppermint tea, taking ginger capsules, really feeling that I was doing the right mommy things to curb the nausea and would be strong and battle through it. It was just a little nausea, no big deal, I could get through it. One day I realized that I need to eat breakfast. It hit hard, like the hard rim of the toilet bowl I wound up barfing in. Afterwards I even actually smiled and laughed, and said that "I won't do that again, this baby means business!" Yeah that was the first and only time I smiled and laughed after puking my guts out. After that day, the nausea got worse. Wayyyy worse. I shut myself off from the world, and spent every waking moment that I wasn't working, laying on the couch in a perpetual coma. The nausea was intense, and it never went away. It didn't matter what I ate, when I slept, what I did. I was nauseous. I decided very quickly, that my next appointment would include a request for the pregnancy medication Diclectin. For those who don't know what diclectin is, it is a mixture of vitamin B6 and antihistamine. That's it. It was designed for pregnant women who battled nausea. Why does it work?? I have no idea, but the stuff works, it doesn't harm the baby, let's just let that rest. I needed it, I got it. Period. I started off taking 2 at bedtime, as my midwife suggested. If I needed more, I could gradually add more, up to 8 a day to my regime. 2 a day really REALLY helped, but not for long. I needed to add more and more to get by every day. I was up to 6 pills a day, 2 at night, 2 at noon, and 2 in the morning. By this point, I was finally starting to feel human again. I still had the occasional twinge of nausea, and still felt the need for gingerale, but it was still wayyyyyyy better. Oh, and I forgot to mention the fatigue. A book I have been reading refers to this tired feeling as "bionic fatigue". I like to think of it as "living dead". Now I was still plastered to my butt groove on the couch, not because I was nauseous, but because I couldn't keep my eyes open. Seriously. You know that feeling when you've been up all night having a great time, and you finally crawl home and it just hits you. Bam!! Like you're so completely exhausted you could pass out on the cool linoleum floor right in front of you and be perfectly happy?? Yeah, that kind of tired. ALL THE TIME. So, to combat this tired feeling, you practically spend every waking moment holding your eyelids open with your fingers. Or gradually drifting off to sleep, whichever seems to happen first at the time. To explain how forceably staying awake feels during this "bionic fatigue", I will use 2 examples. 1) for you shift workers, you know that hazy gauzy zombie like feeling you get around 3 am?? How you're so tired but somehow you manage to stay awake?? yeah that's it. Every waking moment. and 2) for those non shift workers, imagine the phone ringing at 4am, you jump up like a shot thinking it's some kind of great emergency, manage to fumble your way out of your room, run around the house aimlessly trying to find the f#%^$ing portable phone that somehow is "missing" in the middle of the night, answer the phone to find it's a wrong number, then exhaustedly fumble your way back to bed feeling groggy and loopy.... That is totally the feeling. I can use both those examples because I've experienced both of those things, and can personally vouch for the fact that the feeling is 100% one in the same. Now I sound like I'm whining I'm sure, but for those who have never had twins, had heard that being pregnant with twins encourages twice the amount of symptoms from our poor hormone infested bodies. Well in case you wanted to know, yes, it's 100% true. Next I shall move on to how I was feeling around 12 weeks. The blessed grace period! wooooo! I actually felt good. Great even. Seriously I did! For about a week. All of a sudden I realized the nausea had subsided, and I was able to cut my diclectin back to 2 pills a day. I tried more, but just couldn't handle it. Still nauseous, but defenitely bareable. I felt energized, I finally cleaned my house, spent quality time with my husband, GOT OFF THE COUCH. It was a monumental time, a better time... However, shortly afterwards, the nausea and fatigue was replaced with some new fun symptoms. Heartburn and headaches. Now the heartburn really wasn't that bad. I was able to control it with diet and tums. It was present, but as someone who's battled acid reflux before, it was really just a minor annoyance. But certainly worth noting. The headaches however were constant. I returned back to that hazy gauzy feeling because my eyes were only ever half open thanks to the constant pain just behind my eyeballs. I took tylenol with my daily fistful of pills, which I take at night. I took the tylenol then, because there isn't much worse for me than waking UP with a headache. Knowing you can't sleep or rest it away, is a horrible feeling. So the headaches lasted for a good solid couple of weeks. Doesn't sound that bad right?? Well for me it sucked. People were calling me, emailing me, asking me to come out, have tea, have a visit... I wanted to, I really did, but going from one debilitating symptom to another had me once again restrained to my house. Remember, I am also working full time through all of this, doing night shifts, day shifts, evening shifts... I even lost my position at work through all of this. It wasn't an easy time for me for numerous reasons, but right now I'm sticking to pregnancy symptoms. The headaches stopped. Mostly. Enough for me to live a semi-normal life again. Hooray! Then, for a solid week, I experienced something that actually made me want to head to the hospital. I worked all week right through it, and it was awful. Naturally, no one mentions this symptom, till around 17 weeks (discovered this in my books AFTER I had already gone through it). Because I was pregnant with twins, this symptom came much sooner for me, as the additional weight of an additional baby encouraged it much sooner. Round ligament pain. If you haven't had it, you're extremely lucky. Some people I've heard don't get it very bad at all. Again, extremely lucky. For some reason, I had it, and I had it bad. I actually missed work for a day of it, because my stomach was so seized up I couldn't move. The pain reminded me of bootcamp. My first week of it. My stomach muscles just above my groin ached, burned, stretched. Every movement felt agonizing, which proved to be very difficult at night. Around 15 weeks I was advised to no longer sleep on my back, as the weight of the twins could crush major arteries running down my back and potentially KILL ME. Anyone ever tell you that???? Ever been afraid for your life because of your sleeping position??? Freaky shit. So, as someone who chronically sleeps on their back during the night, it became difficult. I also however sleep on my side, but even with a pillow tucked between my legs, my hips were aching. I had to roll over almost a dozen times during the night because the pain would wake me up. Ever tried to roll over, over and over again during the night while your abdomen feels like it's being torn open from the inside?? Not pleasant. Never mind the fact that I still felt like I had to pee every hour on the hour. Seriously. I had a weak bladder BEFORE I got pregnant. Having to rush to the bathroom to sprinkle out a teaspoon of pee every hour got pretty irritating pretty quickly. So, for a solid week, very little sleep, a hell of a lot of pain, and lots of frustration. And so brought on the first meltdown. I had a hormonal meltdown. I cried and cried and cried. I bawled like a baby and went through a half a box of tissues. Why did I cry?? You name it. Everything was bugging me, I felt out of control, I felt fat. Everyone, I mean everyone who's ever been pregnant has been through one of these. It really didn't matter what caused the first tear to fall, what matters is that pregnancy get it going, and going and going until I creeped off to bed, all puffy eyed with a raw nose. By the way, you know what true love is? True love is a man who will hold on to you while you bawl, sniff, snort and blow your nose, calm you down while you completely irrationally get worked up over every little thing and practically lose all semblance of sanity. THEN, that wonderful man picks up your soggy, snot laden tissues for you, and hands you a fresh box. Oh yeah, that's love. So amidst all this, I really am finally feeling mostly normal at the moment. What got me through that?? That wonderful man that handed me my heating pad, hot tea, my fist full of drugs when I couldn't move, passed me tissues, and without complaining carried on the household chores as I laid half dead on the couch from any number of new and interesting ailments. He didn't complain as I spent hours on the phone to my mother needing that motherly love and connection, didn't whine as night after night he ate whatever was in the fridge so I wouldn't have to cook. To all of you mothers and mothers to be out there, I can't imagine how everyone gets through this over and over again, but we do it. We do it for love and for our children. We do it because we must. I salute you. I also salute you husbands, you boyfriends, you spouses. Without you, we couldn't go on. I know it will get worse. The third trimester will be once again a new and different set of issues. New symptoms, new pains, new leakages. (Yes, I left out the fluid leakages, it's annoying, but it doesn't make me feel crappy. If you really want to know, ask me sometime...) Ladies, please don't tell another woman that what she is going through can't be that bad, or could be worse. Because at the time, hormones make you feel like a 4 year old with a fever. It's awful, and shouldn't be taken lightly. Offer a kind word, an open ear and a dry shoulder to cry on. Give a little extra love to your pregnant sisters, and never forget how you were once there, and how everything made you feel. Support is what we need most.

So how have I been?? I have defenitely been better. I don't share, because as you have read, it's a long story. Why share now?? Because. Just because. I felt the need to share, and so I did. And now I feel better. So for right now, this moment, I feel better. And I feel loved.