Clearing the house

Once the decision was made, I knew that I could not walk back into the house and see all the baby stuff.  That's been my MO before. 

K and I have lost 2 old kitties over the course of our marriage.  Both after a bout with fatty liver disease and there were medical implements around the house such as feeding syringes and medications.  And both times, I sent K home from the vet ahead of me to clear the house of those reminders before I walked in the door again.

And we did that this time too.  Once the decision was made, I wrote out a list of objects in the house and where to find them that were baby related.  We gave the list to my dad with a set of house keys so he could move everything to the back room for us.  It's all still there if I ever need to look at it for some reason, but I can also avoid it.

Prenatal vitamins on my desk.
The 40 week calendar book under some other books by my desk
The pregnancy books on my shelf.
The various handmedowns we hadn't sorted yet on the dining room table and by the couch.
The plastic double tub still sitting outside waiting to be brought in and given a place to be.
Twin tips books on each of our bedside tables.
Glucose meters and testing supplies.
Healthy pregnancy food books mixed in with the cookbooks.
The monkey face pancake pan in the kitchen.
Ultrasound pictures on the fridge.

And when I got home, I had to clear out my computer.  Because work has slowed to a halt and my social life disappeared, I was spending all of my time on being a mommy.  Mommy blogs, twin blogs, your pregnancy this week emails, coupon sites for diapers and such.  Delete, delete, unsubscribe, delete.

All of the ultrasound pictures and videos and pics taken for this blog were in a folder in My Documents.  Any pics in that folder are accessed for a small slideshow I have running in the sidebar of my desktop.  So move that folder to the "stuff" folder on my desktop.  Don't delete but don't have to look at it.  Will archive later.

The most recent ultrasound video we were given was from Oct 8th.  Just fluttering blobbies.  I so wish we had a video from that last ultrasound appointment.  The legs bending then kicking straight, and the perfect little spines, and Christina spinning around over herself.  But that wasn't recorded so it's lost.  I never bothered to post the last ultrasound pictures we were given because unlike the ones before that, these were just blobs.  The ones before that looked like babies, but the angle of the last one was from the top of their heads or they were mooning us, but just blobs, no baby profiles that look like babies.

And then of course, this blog.  What do I do with this blog?  And the forums I frequent. My preggie hormones have been a source of an ongoing joke there, how do I prevent people from asking how the preggers is doing?

I went online and used one of those blog to print services and created a book of this blog up to the end.  It will arrive in the mail in a couple of weeks and we can tuck ultrasound pictures and other various bits of paper into that and then put it away somewhere.  In 5 years, we can look at it if we want to and revisit our girls, or we don't have to.

Posted the end post to this blog, linked to it on facebook so I don't have to tell people over and over again. 

A friend in the forums had noticed I was missing for a couple of days and emailed to see where I was.  I responded from my phone while still in the hospital and asked her to announce for me so I no one would ask me about the pregnancy again but I wouldn't have to be the one to say it's over.


I don't know how I'll deal when I run into neighbors I had told.