House Arrest

28 Weeks

Another week down and another milestone achieved. 28 weeks. The sea monkeys will get a growth check at this Wednesday's ultrasound and are getting closer and closer to being born healthy. Prematurity has been weighing heavily on my mind lately and while I'm not entirely scared of the NICU, I'm hoping that my babies and I can avoid the experience. In the meantime, I feel like I'm playing a random numbers waiting game. Will I go at 36 weeks? At 29? 38?

Add to that gnawing anxiety an amplified fear of being alone. I never thought I would feel as helpless or dependent on someone as I do now. Mark's trip to pick up the car is scaring the shit out of me because it will be the first time since I've gotten pregnant that I will have to fend entirely for myself. Realistically I know that millions of women go through this — heck, Mark's sister was alone for a couple of months while her husband worked away from home! — and it's not like he's going to Zimbabwe for a month like he used to, but still... Even back then his travel bothered me, and I wasn't even pregnant.

I know that I have friends and neighbors that I can invite over to keep me company. And should something go bump in the hall, I will have a locked door and a big ass rottie to protect me. But my biggest fear is that I will go prematurely or slip and have an accident or something. My fear is that I'll have to call a car service to take me to the hospital sometime in the middle of the night. Alone.

Another related fear is that something will happen to Mark and I will be left to raise the twins alone. Without any help.

Aside: With the fear of something happening to Mark comes the completely unrelated fear that we received the wrong donor's sperm and that our babies will be black / asian / martian / not some mix of hispanic and white. Again, totally random and extremely unlikely and if it did happen Mark and I would be pissed at the fuck up but we'd be happy with the babies. However I think his family would completely write me off...

I can't even begin to imagine raising the kids on my own and it brings on my anxiety so badly that I wish I could take Xanax. Instead I've been dealing by thinking about what needs to be done next Monday, planning for my birthday, going over my checklists. There's a much more likely and realistic future in that planning and thinking and I need to start hanging my hat onto that and letting go of the fear.

Still, anxiety aside, I have days when I feel like crying and get extremely frustrated with myself because I feel so fucking helpless. I can't roll over easily or get comfortable in any position or walk without some level of pain. I know that it's a temporary condition but I really do wonder if I'll ever get back to being the strong, shit-kicking, take-no-prisoners woman I perceived myself to be. The fact that some minor aches and pains have worn down my psyche so much makes me think that maybe I wasn't as strong as I thought I was. Pregnancy can be incredibly humbling.

Tonight Next Monday (another pregnancy brain goof) we have our infant / child CPR course. It's another step closer to become prepared parents for us. A week after that we have a basic childcare class — gotta learn how to bathe the baby, right? After that it's breastfeeding. Somewhere in that time we need to actually start picking up baby stuff like cribs and clothes and diapers. I'm living from class to doctor's appointment to shopping trip.

While my life has been consumed with thoughts of the future, I have been trying not to neglect the rest of my life. The cats benefited from my need to nest this weekend:

I bought them this HUMONGOUS 82" tall cat condo off of E-bay (under $110! Total score!). I've been thinking that the poor guys needed it since all their favorite haunts are getting a touch bit crowded:

Especialy when Maia gets in on the action:

I also bought myself some yarn because, well... it was 100% silk and on sale and my birthday is at the end of this month...

Plymouth Shire Silk, Frost	Plymouth Shire Silk, Silver
for two "Milan Jackets" (12 month size) from Natural Knits for Babies and Moms

(I also bought a few small knick-knacks from Etsy but I'll share those as they arrive...)

And, I finished the knitting on first of the two Oz vests:

I'm actually really happy with the job I did matching the colors up on the trim and on the fronts. Now I have to do the same with the second one:

There is one thing that I will be changing about the pattern on the second go round, though. It calls for a decorative button flap on the right shoulder, which a) was a pain in the ass to work because it was only two freaking rows deep and b) really didn't add that much to the look. And, considering that I've been having a hard time just finding buttons I like for the other sweaters, I figure I don't need to give myself a headache by trying to find three more. Also, I originally thought that it was a functional thing to help get the vests on and off, but having finished the first one I can see that even it were functional, I wouldn't have needed it. So this design detail is getting tossed for the second vest.

And, don't worry, the second of the Harvey Kimonos has been getting some love as well:

The back is entirely done and I'm now up to the quick-going decrease part for the left front.

And before you think that I'm NEVER going to actually weave in ends and finish these sweaters, I'm trying to finish all the newborn - 3 month size sweaters first so that I can block them in one fell swoop. That means I need to finish the second Harvey Kimono and to start and finish the second Hooded Jacket. I should be getting around to finishing things by the end of the month is my guess. (Yes, I know that the vests are not in the newborn size but who can resist knitting with some luscious Rowan...)

Fatigue

I'm beginning to get even more fatigued these days and it's causing me to lose my sense of humor. I keep trying not to be a whiny McCrankster but today I feel like it's look out world! I slept pretty poorly again last night — I can't WAIT to sleep on my back or stomach again — waking frequently and finding it hard to get comfortable. Add to this a knotted-up upper back and shoulders, some wicked heartburn and a mild headache and you can see where I'd like to just call in sick and sleep in all day.

I am, however, glad that some of my insomnia was caused by babies moving around. There had been less activity on the left side than usual the past day or so and it had been causing me to slightly worry. Since I had no other symptoms — no bleeding, cramping, low backache, water breaking, fever, etc. — that the nurse / midwife had admonished me to keep an eye out for, I put off calling her. I told myself that if the movements didn't improve by this morning, I would call and ask to be seen. After all, I was feeling movement, just not at the strength or frequency that I was used to. And... this had happened to me before but the decreased movement was on the right. That time I had an appointment the next day so I wound up waiting until I was seen to bring it up.

Well, the party was ON last night and is still going on this morning. The babies are kicking my bladder and partying on the left and right. I'll be calling the midwife anyway to find out when I should start doing kick counts and if there's any special requirement for twins. Usually it's 10 movements per hour of monitoring, but I easily feel that in the first few minutes. The problem is that I can't usually tell which twin is doing the moving. My assumption has always been that if it's low or on the right, it's Aden. If it's higher and on the left, it's Hunter. Any flutters in the middle were fair game but I typically ascribe them to Hunter because Aden seems to revel in hanging out down by my bladder. Of course, this is all speculation on my part and I can only tell where they really are when I get ultrasounds.

Womb party aside, though, I'm feeling a bit, oh I don't know, put upon, I guess. My belly is getting huge and I feel and look like a beached whale. I can't flip over easily in bed so I wind up sticking it out in one position until it hurts and then trying to move my bulk around. My sense of smell is greatly improved so every little smell bothers me and prevents me from falling asleep. Mark's stinky sneakers were making me gag at one point last night and I had to flip my bulk over so they were downwind of me, so to speak. Getting in and out of bed is painful, as is walking. I can't just get up and run to the bathroom. I have to ease my bulk out of bed, wait a minute or two for my legs to get used to the idea of supporting my bulk, and then slowly shuffle my way with the ligaments / tendons where my groin and legs meet screaming the entire time.

And I'm only 27 weeks along. I can't imagine what this will all be like at 32 or 38.

I'm currently working on the shaping of the vest front:

The vest looks — and feels — great and I'm 75% pleased with how everything's been coming along. Why 75%? Well...

The yarn pulled a fast one and this time there were no knots to blame. For some reason or other the gradation changed as you can see above. Up until then, the colorway was acting fairly predictably. I was getting blue going into pink / rust-orange going into green. So imagine my surprise when I realized that my next stripe of blue was not going as expected.

Of course this is going to make it a huge pain in the ass to match the colors on the other side of the V-neck shaping. I'm pretty sure that I can do it — I just have to unravel my skein and find a matching length or two. However, I keep thinking that I might need to order an extra ball in order to have enough yarn for the task.

(Note: This would have never happened if I used a solid color for this pattern!)

Lesson triply learned. Whenever I think I've moved beyond my knitting experience, something like this happens. Next time, I won't be so fucking cheap and will order the spare ball anyway, even if I think I am never in one bazillion years going to need it. I'll probably be right but I won't spend a week worrying if I'm going to "have enough to make it".

Edited to add: I finished the right vest front and actually managed to get the colors to match up just perfectly on the left side without wasting too much of the ball. Go me!

27 Weeks: Third Tri and Sleepless

Hello third trimester! — at least, according to 3 out of the 5 books / pregnancy newsletters I reference. The other 2 have me starting next week but I've decided to start my counting as of this week. I mean, really, with twins everything is sped up anyway so what's one week more or less?

I ushered in the third tri with a bit of insomnia. Mark inadvertently woke me when he came back into our room at 2:30 — he usually goes into the other room when I fall asleep at about 10 or so and comes and joins me later on when the cattens start running laps on his head. This is usually not a problem but for some reason, I was unable to get back to sleep after my bathroom run. My mind just didn't want to quiet down and thoughts of Mark getting the car, premature labor, taxes, finances, being alone, feeling helpless, knitting, doing April's blog design and God knows what else kept racing through my mind, trying to beat each other in the "worry Olympics". After an hour and a half of trying to calm my mind, I gave up on sleep and decided to get up.

So teeth brushed and decaf in hand, I got up and worked on changing the blog face. Here's a snapshot of what March looked like:

As for what I've been up to... The rest of last week and this weekend were pretty busy. Last Wednesday's appointment went well. Dr. Death wound up reviewing our ultrasound again and said I was having a "textbook pregnancy" and that everything was going really well (knock on wood). The glucose test went pretty smoothly also — I'm still waiting for the results but I hope they're good! — although it gave me an all-day sugar crash headache which sucked. Still, the drink was NOWHERE near as bad as everyone insinuated it might be. It tasted like a really, really super-sweet Coke and I chugged it down in like 30 seconds. The woman administering the test said I "must have been really thirsty" but I told her that I'd been dreading the drink and she laughed.

The doctor told me that they wanted to get me to 38 weeks, if possible, so that's given me a more solid time-frame to base my maternity leave around. As for birth plans, she told me to continue to think about them and bring my proposed plan (or at the very least my list of what I don't want if it can be avoided) to my 30 week visit. So, based on this information, I'm currently planning on "officially" beginning maternity leave at week 37 with plans to work from home starting at week 35 — which happens to be the Monday after Memorial Day. I don't think that I'll want to commute the hour each way from Brooklyn to the office on the subway as I'm expecting to be very round and somewhat uncomfortable. I've kinda hinted at this with my boss, and he's okay with everything so long as I train the dude that will be covering for me while I'm out. Mark will probably work out a similar arrangement to work from home during the same time, so he will be around to help me and take me to the hospital in case I go early, and that will bring me much needed piece of mind. Still, I have the belief that my water will break at work or I'll feel contractions and have to rush from the hospital from there. It's still of course way too early to determine what my body will do but having a "tentative plan" for two months from now does help me feel like better.

My next visit at 28 weeks will be another growth check on the twins and then I have my 30th week visit before I start going weekly. It's hard to believe that next week will be 10 weeks away and I can begin "the countdown..."

Mark and I had the second half of our multiples birthing and parenting class on Wednesday night. I think I was the only person in the class that was not cringing or averting my eyes at the births. I mean, have these people never watched Discovery or "miracle of life" shows? Fortunately, the video portion of the class took 15 minutes and the rest of the class focused on what happens after the babies are born: getting support, items you must have, breastfeeding, baby care and a bunch of other stuff. Mark and I really enjoyed the class but I think the best part of the day was when we went to the diner on the corner and had a simple adult meal together. No worries about the dog (she'd already been walked) or the cats or rushing home to do something. Just the two of us talking and bonding over an omelette (for him) and grilled cheese and matzoh ball soup (for me). Mark told me how happy he was that I decided I wanted to try and how much he was looking forward to being a dad.

I wouldn't trade that meal for anything.

The weekend was spent getting ready for our visit to H&R Block — although, I did manage to get a lot of knitting in. I found all of our tax papers, shredded old crap, filed old bills and shredded some more stuff. I am happy to say that eight, back-breaking hours later all of our paperwork is filed and up to date:

Mark and I have vowed to not let the mail turn into an insurmountable pile going forward. I literally went through a year's worth of mail this Sunday — we pay all our bills online so there's no need to open most of our mail — and am sooo not gonna do THAT again next year.

In knitting news, I got yarn for some new projects:

Rowan Tapestry, Rainbow	Rowan Tapestry, Rustic
for two "Oz Vests" from Natural Knits for Babies and Moms
Handmaiden Sea Silk, Ebony
for a "Storm Water Scarf"
and Debbie Bliss Baby Cashmerino in Chocolate, Dusty Pink and Pale Blue for two "Classic Baby Cardigans" from Spring/Summer 2007 Vogue Knitting

The Oz Vests and Classic Baby Cardigans will be made in the 6 - 9 month size, in anticipation of the holidays. The joke that Mark and I were going to have little goth babies didn't go over well with his relatives in West Virginia so I plan on knitting some cute, traditional stuff for Hunter and Aden to wear when visiting Mark's grandmother and aunt.

I, of course, got shiny-nickeled by the Rowan Tapestry and instead of continuing on with the 2nd "Harvey Kimono" began the first of the two Oz Vests. Bad Liz!

Well, I did more than began... I finished the back of the vest and am roughly 1/4 of the way through the front.

For those unfamiliar with Rowan Tapestry, it's a 70% wool / 30% soybean yarn, in a DK weight. My gauge was spot on with the recommended size 6 needles. It knits like a dream but tangles when you try to rip or tink back.

Likes: Super soft yarn almost akin to mohair; great vibrant-looking colorways; long gradual gradations.

Dislikes: My biggest issue so far has been the knot in the middle of the ball that joined two TOTALLY different gradation sequences — blue going to green joining orange going to yellow. Sadly, I have found this happening more and more with "high-end yarn". I had to unravel the ball until I found a point that matched the first sequence, and to cut and join the yarn. I'm hoping that there are no more fucked up sequences as for the first time in forever I did NOT order an extra, "just in case" ball of yarn. Other minor and forgivable (at least to me) issues are the fact that the yarn is hand-wash only — a "no no" for kids' knits — and it seems to get fuzzy just looking at it.

I plan on alternating between the Oz Vest and the Harvey Kimono during my morning and evening commutes. That way both projects will get some love. But I'd be willing to bet good money that the Oz Vest will be finished first.