feeling stressed

I feel stressed. I feel this way a lot lately. I feel stressed on the way to work because I have a giant surge of testosterone in my body because of two little boys in my stomach and I feel super aggressive in the car. Every little thing on the way to work irks me even though I have the most lovely and calm mornings at home (now that I'm not throwing up every morning).

Then I get to work and I feel stressed at work because I don't feel "in" to my job right now. I am distracted by tons of non-stop movement in my ever increasing belly. I'm distracted by hunger, nagging and un-satisfied constant hunger. I am frustrated at not being able to pursue the training role right now because I can't physically do them and because I have to jump through all sorts of hoops to prove that I work well with people ever since I got those anonymous negative reviews back in July.

I feel frustrated and stressed at home because I can't get as much stuff done as I did previously. I feel tired and just want to lay down but then I see my husband doing all 500 things that I was supposed to be doing and I feel guilty. I should do more. How will it all get done if I don't?

I feel stressed about having babies that I don't know how to take care of.

I feel stressed about all the "stuff" I need for babies that I don't even know about. How do I choose a breast pump? What if I have milk issues and I don't even end up using it and I spend all this money on it? What if I end up feeding them like every 2 seconds and I can never sleep and I end up hating them?
Or
How does someone choose a car seat? How much should I trust online reviews? How do you get a baby in a car seat?

And thats nothing compared to the incessant worry about
are the boys ok? what if something happens to them? what would I do? how would I cope? What if one is way bigger than the other? What if they hate each other? What if I can't make it to at least 35 weeks and they end up in the NICU for weeks on end? How are we going to afford two babies?

And then I feel guilty for feeling stressed because I know its not good for the babies.

And on top of it all EVERYONE wants to give me advice. I listened, at first, with ready and eager ears. "Oh, yes of course I should read that book" or "Yeah, make it all business when you have twins because there's no time for cuddles with 2 at a time. Got it."
But then
after a while I just felt annoyed. Maybe its because of all the testosterone in my body but mostly now I just want to punch people. Why does everyone feel the need to tell me how to raise children I don't even have yet? Why does everyone want to tell me what I can and can't do as a pregnant woman?

"oh a boat. No, no. Don't go on a boat"
"a slide. Definitely not. Pregnant women shouldn't go on slides"
"fish? are you sure you want to eat that?
"you need to be drinking this much water"
"pee this many times a day"
"make sure you get enough sleep"
"don't eat junk food. What you eat now is what your babies will crave later in life"
"you should listen to classical music everyday"

and on
and on
and on

And why does everyone tell me how hard its going to be? I'm so tired of hearing that. I GET IT! HOLY HELL I GET IT! But for someone who waited 7+ years to have a kid telling me how effing hard its going to be DOESN'T HELP ME. It makes me dread their arrival. Its hard now but man alive, its going to be the worst time of my life I guess when they are born. Yeesh!

And the worst part is that I feel unsure of myself all the time. I haven't felt unsure of myself since I was a teenager. I don't know how to be a responsible pregnant woman. And I'm already responsible for these little lives and every single thing I do can potentially affect them. It's a lot of pressure.

So that's why I'm feeling stressed.


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on keeping pregnancy a secret

(would've been even better if they were twin boys but whatev)

People have marveled that Doug and I didn't tell our families or the public about the pregnancy until I was nearly 20 weeks.
But let me tell you something, we didn't even talk about me being pregnant for about 2 months.
Then in month three we just joked about it.
Then in month four we finally decided to acknowledge it.
At the end of that month Doug's parents came out to visit us and I was CLEARLY pregnant by that point. So the secret was then out to at least 2 people (besides co-workers and the rest of the people who see me in person) and one of them was my mother-in-law...
This is the sweet woman who told me where I was going on my "secret" honeymoon location about a week before the wedding :) ...
And the woman who can't look you in the face if she has a secret (an exciting secret) because she will start smiling and giggling.
So, we knew we had to move quick and hence the quickly and somewhat shoddily made video I posted a week or two ago.
There were other reasons why we waited (previous miscarriage, sister-in-law having a baby in June, complete and utter denial of babies existing inside me) but ultimately Doug and I are surprisingly private people... rrr wait.
No.
No we're not.

We just love a good surprise!

Have a great weekend everyone! We're going to a baseball game tonight, picking raspberries tomorrow, and welcoming my dad back for the fall on Sunday! Fun times!

on finding out about being pregnant with twins

Let me first say this: I cannot imagine the pain of struggling with infertility. I don't begin to understand the difficulty of that trial. I have friends who are valiantly fighting that battle and I love them. I recognize that my writing on being pregnant could cause some people pain, and for that I apologize. It is never my intention to hurt anyone. I do plan, however, to write on this topic quite a bit for the next few months as this is something that is really consuming my life right now. I won't write on pregnancy or babies exclusively and I'll always do my best to be sensitive to those who may be struggling in this area. I love you and I encourage you to stay strong.

So

Where to start? I got pregnant back in March/April sometime. I found out I was pregnant on May 1st and graduated from grad school a few days later. After the graduation festivities died down my husband and I went to the midwife clinic I had been going to regularly for years to make sure everything was good and to confirm I was pregnant. Because I had had an ectopic pregnancy and subsequent miscarriage around 4-5 months earlier the doctors wanted to do an ultrasound to make sure that the pregnancy was progressing in the uterus and not somewhere out in my butt like the last time (I joke about miscarriage and about most uncomfortable topics as a coping mechanism and it works for me. Don't be offended.)
When my husband and I went to do the ultrasound the tech was very quiet. This had happened previously with the miscarriage and my heart was sad that this would be yet another unfortunate loss. When the tech finally spoke up she said, "Well they both look pretty good".
I was pretty sure she meant my fallopian tubes so I just remained quiet and slightly confused. My husband spoke up and said somewhat hesitantly, "When you say they you mean like her girl part tube things or something?"
The tech responded, "Well you definitely have one healthy baby and I think this one is another one over here."
...
silence
...
Doug: "Mmm?"
Jo: "what?"
...
tech: "It could just be a fluid sac but it might be another baby. Its hard to tell this early on. You'll have to come back in a few weeks."
...
Doug: "Mmm?"
Jo: "what?"

tech: "We'll schedule another one in 3-4 weeks. Congratulations!"
...
Doug: mumble incoherent things
Jo: "ummm ok. Yeah. um. Thanks."

WHAT?!? opqiwefhlskdjgbaowiefjoasdfnlksgpoeuirh

Over the following four weeks we went on trip to California and then to Phoenix. We didn't speak about the pregnancy and when we did it was mostly me telling Doug that there was NO WAY IN THE WORLD I'm pregnant with twins. We don't have twins in either family. I'm a very small person. My body can't handle twins. I wasn't on fertility drugs. For goodness sake I wasn't even healthy. I was surviving on puff Cheetos and water trying to finish grad school.
No twins, Doug. No worries. And he believed me.

I'd secretly began to wonder though. I was already starting to show. I'm a little person but I was getting big very quickly...

Sometime around the end of May or beginning of June we went in for a second ultrasound. I explained to the new tech that we were there to confirm that we weren't having twins. Just before he placed the goo on my stomach I explained to him:

"Mr. Ultrasound Tech man, my husband and I waited about 6 years to start a family because we felt overwhelmed by the idea of having ONE child. If this turns out to be TWO babies, please understand that 1. Doug needs to be sitting down and 2. this is going to rock our world so be patient with our reactions."

The tech was really great and very understanding. He shook his head at least twice to indicate that he understood me. He put the wand thing on my stomach and within about two seconds he looked down at me and held up two fingers so that Doug couldn't see. Then he said, "shall I tell him or shall you?"

I looked over at Doug with tears in my eyes and Doug immediately started to cry. I think the tech thought these to be tears of joy from Doug and I and he instantly got really giddy and started talking. A lot. He was explaining each baby and the sacs and the heart beats and the everything and moving around arrows on the screen and meanwhile both Doug and I were in our own worlds. My mind was empty and I blankly stared at the screen and pretended to listen to the faint sound of the tech speaking. Doug's mind was racing at a million miles an hour and his face expressed the complete terror that he was feeling.

When we left the hospital that day we had time to go back to work. And we did...for about five minutes. We both realized that there was no way we were going to get anything done and so we headed home...in silence.

I don't think we even spoke that night. In fact we didn't really talk about my being pregnant or about twins for nearly a month. We began dealing with incredible morning sickness (and afternoon and night) and with finding a new clinic that works with MOMs (moms of multiples) and with me trying to do trial trainings and standing on my feet for two solid days and not throwing up during a highly intense period at work while I was being observed as a trainer. It was an intense time.

Towards the end of June we were asked to have our home in the Provo Historic Home tour. We were honored and it was a crazy week of intense cleaning and prepping of our house. Moments before hundreds of people were to walk through our house and with people lined up outside, I started bleeding.

My entire world stopped. I didn't know what to do. I couldn't use the bathroom in my house because people were now walking through it. I couldn't go to my neighbor's house because they too were in the tour. I was afraid to move because I thought I could loose the babies. I slowly walked inside to where my husband was playing host and quietly told him I was bleeding. His face went a bit white and he tried not to look worried as people asked us about the age of the house and what was original and how long we had owned it.

I called the doctor and they told me to stay put and monitor the bleeding. If it continued to get worse I should go to the Emergency Room. If it slowed or stopped I should come into their office on Monday. It was Friday. It suddenly became a very long weekend. My mind was frantic as I wondered, 'how much blood is too much?' 'is this happening because I didn't really want twins?' 'how much movement is ok?'

But for the first time, for both me and Doug, we realized that we didn't want to loose these babies.

It was a magical moment when we went into the office on Monday and saw two perfectly healthy human-looking beings bouncing all around in my stomach. I let out an audible sigh of relief as we listened to their quick little heart beats and watched them move their little limbs.

We weren't in love with them then, but we've been falling for them ever so slowly since.

hello and hello

Watch this video Doug and I put together a few weeks ago.





expect more blogposts

summer and blah blah blah

via

I guess I haven't updated this in a little while. Not much to say at the moment. The yard sale was sorta bunk unfortunately but we got rid of a lot of crap sooooo that was good. We had a good time with the in-laws. We played a lot of games and enjoyed three or four nights of summer storms (and by the way, not to brag but the weather here has been amazing this summer! Not sure why we've had it so good while the rest of the country is in the middle of a record breaking heat wave buuuuuut I'll take it!!)
So yeah. We've just been hanging out, reading a lot, playing guitar, watching movies, avoiding anything warm. I've got a few more weeks of summer fun planned (camping, boating, anniversarying...) and then September will bring the commencement of fall projects and all the wonderful fun things we do in fall, which is about 100x more than what we do in the summer. I've realized I'm not really a summer person that much. I don't like being hot. I'm kinda a wimp in the heat. Maybe if I lived near an ocean or maybe a river that was slow and meandering instead of deathly fast river that can kill you...to death (like, dead) then I would be more of a summer person. Or maybe if summer were exactly like autumn then I'd be a summer person. Yes. That would be best.

Anyway, I hope you are all having an excellent summer. Anyone have a good lemon desert recipe? I think that might help me be more in the summer mood...