Getting political again

Newt, come on over here and tell my little fetuses to their faces how holy your heterosexual third marriage is after years of adultery, and but that my little girls shouldn't exist at all.  That's some fascinating "morality" you've got going there.  But seriously.  In June, you come over to my house, and you tell my little girls to their faces that their existence is immoral.

Go ahead.  Mama DARES you!

Newt Gringrich is an evil son of a bitch.

Familiar Territory

I've got pictures!

Here we are at 16w1d.  Cervix is a super long 4.5cm, heartbeats were in the 150s today, and everyone is moving around like they are supposed to be.

Now, technically, they aren't really supposed to confirm gender this early.  It's all supposed to be "Maybe" and "Well kind of looks like it might be...."  But they bend the rules for me a bit because I've got a history and everyone wants to be nice to me.

So before the big gender reveal, how about I put some pictures in your face?  Nothing special, they look like every other ultrasound picture on the planet, but they're mine and that makes them awesome.

Ok, I think it's gender reveal time.  You ready?  Not sure I am, but here we go anyway.






Twin A is definitely a girl!  We got very clear girl bits.  The technician tried to hem and haw and then just went, "Oh yeah, that's definitely a girl."

Twin B is probably .......... another girl!  We didn't get the definite three line indication that showed us girl bits, but she mooned us with legs wide open and there was a definite lack of boy bits so by default.....

Holy fucking guacamole!

I did not allow my brain this possibility.  I was certain it was two boys.  I was hoping for at least one girl, but I never thought it was actually a possibility to have 2 again!

Alternative titles for this post -

Girls 2.0
They're back
Gobsmacked
What are the odds
Please history, don't repeat yourself

When does this get real?

16 weeks today.  Every time I look at the calendar and count up my weeks and days, I can't help but think "Really?  That's it?  That's as far as I've gotten?  This is taking FOREVER!"

I seem to recall that at around 16 weeks is when it all got real for me the last time.  We were halfway through our Birthing for Multiples classes, I was signing up for the local Moms of Multiples club, and I was starting to shop for various things to decorate the nursery.

Not this time though.  This still just seems like an extension of the IVF attempt.  Instead of a 2ww, I'm going to have more of a 30ww.  We're checking on the doppler every other night or so and yes, we still have two little hearts beating away in there.  They tend to remain pretty consistent at around 160bpm.  But that seems about as real to me being told I have a large number of follicles or healthy embryos ready for transfer.  It still seems like part of the process of maybe rather than declaring a success and needing to start preparing for the reward.

The other thing that's pretty consistent is the dark brown blood on my toilet paper that I get to look at every time I pee.  13 solid days now of a small amount of very dark brown blood.  Almost looks like I'm wiping the other end sometimes.  Starts with about a teaspoons worth collected there when I do my first pee of the day, and then it tapers from definitely being there to just being trace amounts for the rest of the day.  Every night I go to bed hoping that it's stopping, or at least it's going to take a break, and every morning we start the cycle over again.

I'm sick of eating all the time because I'm hungry every 2 hours.  I'm sick of the sink being full of dishes because I'm eating so damned often and I don't have the energy to deal with them and K doesn't have the time.  I'm sick of being able to smell every litterbox in the house all the friggin time.  I'm sick of thinking every day I'm going to do something productive, or at least fun, and finding myself having spent yet another day sitting in front of my computer with nothing to show for it.  I'm sick of having a sore abdomen without having the fun of it being kicked from the inside.  I'm sick of feeling blurples that I think might be baby movement, and then 20 minutes later feeling the exact same sensation in a different part of my stomach (like up near the ribs) that couldn't possibly be baby blurples.

I begrudgingly signed up for three baby classes yesterday.  Not because I'm convinced I'm going to actually have a use for the knowledge one day, but because the paperwork we have from the doctor says to take the classes in months 4 or 5 if you're having multiples and I'm about there.  Signed up for Day With Baby, Breastfeeding, and Car Seat Safety.  Since we already took the birthing class, that pretty much covers it right?

And it's starting to nag me that I should start researching products.  Research carseats (but now I'll wait until after I take the class in April), various sleeping options and the products one needs to purchase for whatever choice is made there, strollers, stuff like that.

Meh, fuck it.  Yeah, there's always a chance that I could give birth really, really early in just a couple of months, but if that happens, the babies will be in the NICU for months and I won't need that stuff yet anyway.  Researching and shopping would give me something to do during those stressful weeks in the NICU.  Doing all that stuff right now would be too early, a burden on the 16 week me, and might deprive the terrified 28 week me of a distraction I might desperately need.

I suppose around 20 weeks, I'll ask my brother what equipment he has been storing, waiting to pass it on, and actually begin an inventory of what I have already from a variety of family members given to me during the last pregnancy (thanks again everyone!) and what I will actually need to get.  It will be real to me at that point, right?  I'll know genders, the babies will have the beginnings of identities, I should actually be feeling them move, and I'll have passed the point where I lost the girls.

Ultrasound tomorrow morning.  With the girls, the big ultrasound was around 17w or so.  I think it was a different machine because the picture was so much clearer, and they suddenly looked real rather than like fuzzy blobbies.  So I'm not sure if my 16w ultrasound is going to be the big one or the 18w will be.  I'm not sure which I'm hoping for actually.  If tomorrow is the one where the reality suddenly smacks me in the face (like it did with the girls) will that rachet up my fear several notches?  Is my current state of apathetic "maybe" a better place to be for the time being?

I suspect tomorrow we'll also start my weekly progesterone shots, and I'll probably be taking the glucose test for gestational diabetes within the next week as well.  Since I'm pretty certain I'm going to have it again (I have twice the placentas this time so twice the chance, and since I got it last time, it only stands to reason), I'm pretty sure that my cookies and other treats are about to be taken away from me.

My conclusion is in reference to this post.

I guess what this all boils down to is that even though I've been told I've hit my goal weight and that I don't need to diet anymore, I'm allowed to eat the brownies, I'm still scared to go into the bakery and actually make the purchase.  I'm allowed?  Really?  Are you sure?  Maybe I should just lose another couple of pounds, just to be safe.  Ya know, cuz that one bite of brownie might undo all the work I've done to get this far.

Recitations

Once again, some forum drama leads me to another set of thoughts that I'm going to plop here in the blog.

After several rounds of discussion and disagreement, someone declared that I am a mindless sheep and that she is able to think for herself, because she is religious and I am not.  I think her argument was that I'm brainwashed by the liberal media or something.  When some other liberal popped up and started quoting bible versus and prayers commonly spoken amongst the religious community, such as "The lord is my shepherd".  Ha!  And that a preacher usually refers to his congregation as his "flock".  Ha ha!  Clearly, she has willingly declared herself to be one of the lords sheep many times throughout her life.

This got me thinking about how many things come out of our mouths that we just kind of recite mindlessly, never really thinking about what the words mean.  And wow, are there a lot of them!

"Every breath you take"  Damn that's creepy.
"Hungry like the wolf"  Holy crap, he's stalking and going to rape that woman!
"And if I die before I wake, pray the lord my soul to take"  Really?  We're planning to randomly die in our sleep?

My mother is a singer.  She was offered a record contract as a teenager, but being a good girl in the late 50's her father turned it down due to the kind of life it might have lead to.  So she's been singing in various barbershop groups for decades.  I was raised on a combination of ragtime, jazz, show tunes, and unfortunately, barbershop.  And my voice is exactly like my mothers.  So while some mothers like to braid their daughters hair, my mother got giddy over singing with me.  She taught me this song with 2 short versus, and we would switch off who would sing the lead line, and who would sing the harmony part.  We sang this damned little ditty pretty much every time my mother wanted to kill a few minutes during a drive in the car.  Someone please tell me you know the tune to this too so I don't feel like such a freak:

I know, you belong, to somebody else,
but tonight, you belong to me.
I know, with the dawn, that you, will be gone,
but tonight, you belong, to me.

When I was about 25, it suddenly occurred to me what I had been singing about since I was able to speak.  I can't believe my mother had me singing about being someones booty call!  WTF Mom!

The big one to me is the Pledge of Allegiance.  To my non-American readers, when I was in school (and I'm assuming this still happens), children all stand up at the beginning of their day, put their hands over their hearts, face the flag, and recite the following in a very monotone, robotic voice, all pauses are preprogrammed:

I pledge allegiance
to the flag
of the United States of America
And to the republic
for which it stands
one nation
under god*
indivisible
with liberty, and justice for all.

How many times in your childhood did you say that?  And if you were asked if you had ever taken a oath of a loyalty to this country, would you answer yes?  Well, ya did.  Every school day morning for years.

What is the point of this practice?  The people speaking this oath have no clue as to what they are saying!  They learned this poem phonetically, it hardly ever clicks that they are saying actual words, and they certainly don't comprehend what the words mean, or what it means to say them.  And if you want to argue that it does matter, that pledging your allegiance is important, why do kids have to do this every single day?

I gave my husband my wedding vows one day, several years ago, and I don't have to recite them every morning when I wake up to still be held to the promises within those vows.  So why do American children have to recite this every day?  Wasn't once enough?  Did their allegiance fade over the last 24 hours and it needs to be renewed?  Goodness, how do we ever remain American over summer vacation when months go by without reciting this!

Some time when I was in junior high, it just dawned on me what this was.  That this was like a brainwashing technique.  That we were swearing our allegiance, almost without our consent since we were made to do it without understanding it, every day since we were really little.  I refused to say it again after that and just stood silently so I didn't make a spectacle of my personal objection.  I figured that when I was older, I would be better educated on the various countries out there and when I could choose for myself who deserved my allegiance, I would swear it again at that time, when it actually meant something.

So tell me in the comments.  What things have come out of your mouth, be it a song, a poem, a prayer, or whatever, that just shocked you the day you realized what you were actually saying?



*For any American who uses this line to try to prove that America is a Christian nation, learn your history.  This line was added during the McCarthy era as a big "fuck you" to the soviets.  The soviets were discarding religion and McCarthy types wanted to remind them that we are different in any way possible, so they added this stupid line into the pledge of allegiance, much in the same way that Bush renamed french fries "Freedom Fries" when he was pissed off at the french.  Americans were too afraid of being labeled a communist that no one argued with this stupid crap and it's been a pointless part of the poem ever since.