My next-door neighbor Lisa, who was due with twins at the same time as me, just gave birth to two girls, Samantha and Zoe and everyone is doing well. She was waiting to be surprised, but had thought it was going to be boys. So now we’ll have 4 girl newborns on the block. Anyway, this birth just reminds me of how close we are now!

I am 35 weeks now and they tell me if I can make it to 36, I’m good; as in they probably won’t have to go to the nicu and may have enough weight on them and could probably go home with us. At my non-stress test today, everyone looked good: amniotic fluid is still plentiful, babies’ movements are normal. It’s funny, all of their legs are sort of tangled together even though they’re in separate sacs, so the nurse couldn’t tell whose was whose. I usually can’t tell who is kicking and moving myself.

Owen and I went to stay by the sea to get away and relax (Oh, I hear it’s a lot harder to do this once you have two babies ; ). It felt wonderful to be able to float and take the weight off my back, as well as to receive a 90 minute pre-natal massage! I’m 34 weeks now and I can tell my body is getting closer to labor. It could happen at any moment, but my fingers are crossed that I can make it to February 13th.

On a different note, it has been very hot in the bay area. It’s a little weird and makes one think of global warming.

My co-workers threw me a little goodbye party with a generous gift for my maternity leave. I’m going to miss work (I never thought I’d say that).

My maternity leave was just approved for me to start immediately (the law dictates that I can only stop 4 weeks before my due date of Feb 28, but since I’m carrying twins and they come early, I was able to stop a few weeks earlier. Even though I’ll be bored sitting at home alone just waiting, I’m thankful, being slow and big as a house now. I seem to make people nervous when I venture out – “any moment now” is a comment I hear daily from strangers. I feel weird correcting them…. “no, it’s just twins”).

So I will have approximately the next 6 months off to dedicate to babies. It feels weird, I have been working without a break since I was 15 (me of hard-working portuguese peasant stock) and my first job at Mars Bargainland in a converted mill in the men’s clothing department back in my hometown, the post-industrial seaport city of New Bedford, MA. My salary was $3.75 per hour. We catered to old Portuguese men with an inclination for polyester and shirts packaged with a clip-on tie attached. It was a thoroughly uncool place to work and we underpaid teenagers spent our breaks smoking over the polluted acushnet river, lined with old factories that had dumped waste into the waters for years without penalty, but I digress…).

It’s ironic that my first break from the working stiff world will be spent doing more work at home than I’ve ever done in any office or store. Why the hell didn’t I ever take that year off to travel around the world?! Oh well, I am very excited about this next stage in life…

My doctor asked me if I suffered from triskaidekaphobia. I said “huh?…” Triskaidekaphobia is the fear of the number 13. No, I’m not superstitious per se, and sort of morbid, so I thought it was cool to schedule my babies’ birth on Friday the 13th in February.

My doctor has a list of seemingly sound reasons for going this route including: my recent perineum surgery, marginal chord insertion in one placenta, two breach positions, and my large fibroid. Also, in general she thinks that delivering caesarian is the safest for multiples. Often during birth, the second baby is a crap shoot, and delivering one vaginally and the other surgically puts an awful strain on the mother who has to recover from both procedures. I trust my doctor – I have to – she has been doing this for 25 years and is one of the most respected physicians at my hospital – but having a scheduled c-section does bring up all the issues surrounding this popular method of giving birth in America.

Because we’re one of the few developed nations to run health care for-profit (maybe the only one?), there has been an increase in c-sections over time, which cut down on the time it takes to deliver babies and require longer, more expensive, hospital stays. Most doctors will also choose this method at the slightest sign of problems to avoid law suits in our litigious society. All medical interventions, from fetal monitoring to episiotomies are controversial and come with questionable outcomes, but the c-section is definitely the daddy of them all.

Some interesting stats:
- In Holland and Denmark, 1/3 of babies are born at home without medical intervention and yet these countries also have the lowest percentages of infant and maternal deaths of all industrialized countries.
- In contrast, the U.S. Ranks down in the 20s in infant and maternal mortality, one of the lowest of all industrialized nations.
- Without a nationalized health service, American women are most like to be pushed towards high-profit medical interventions like C-sections.
- I read that if even 50% of c-sections in the U.S. were avoided, hospitals would lose billions of revenue per year.
- in spite of increases in surgical birth, maternal death rates have not decreased!

I don’t have any illusions about the “perfect” birth, which often don’t go as one planned anyway. My babies were difficult to conceive and I just want them out in the safest possible manner. I am looking forward to Friday the 13th!

The baby shower was fun. We had about 25 friends and family there, and Mark and Patrick created a memory game with, yes, photos of creepy twins. Mark and others made “high tea” food: little sandwiches, scones, tea, etc…

Unfortunately, I forgot to take photos, but here are few that someone took with my camera.

Well the pain got progressively worse and I knew it was hospitalization time. I returned to the doctor on Monday, they did a scan, and finally discovered the extent of the issue – it wasn’t a simple surface problem; the cavity was deep and huge (I don’t think I did an adequate job conveying my pain last week), so I was immediately admitted into the hospital and scheduled for surgery that evening. The surgeon said it was one of the worse she’d seen. The reason why this happened will remain unknown, but she thinks it was just bad luck. I was hospitalized until today, Thanksgiving, and am slowly recovering, but feeling much better! My grandmother always said “your health is the most important” and I gave no thought to such a simplistic-goes-without-saying statement until I took the ease of walking from the bedroom to the kitchen for granted.

I was on bed rest for a week in August with fibroid pain because of pregnancy. In another stroke of bad luck, I’ve developed an abscessed gland and have been in excruciating pain for 6 days. It’s not life-threatening yet, but has become one of the worst things I’ve ever experienced. Surely, labor cannot be this bad (well it doesn’t go on as long and there are epidurals and all). I can’t sit or walk, but I keep looking for that light at the end of this. Doctors have tried to remove it twice this week, but can’t yet (it’s too deep still; too much blood); yet each time they make incisions into me, the pain increases. So for now I’m just doing pain management (living on tylenol and ice packs and trying to keep my appetite up). I may have to go back to the hospital for a 3rd try on Thanksgiving again.

The big dilemma: to cave in before then and take vicodin or not (my doctor readily gave me a prescription, but advises I try to forgo for reasons not to do with hurting the babies). Narcotics are really the last thing I want to take while pregnant, but I’m afraid I might be losing the battle with pain. Owen has been a great nurse. Oh thank you, god, life, universe… for him.

Also slightly disconcerting is that I’ve started having occasional minor contractions. The doctor isn’t concerned unless they become regular, but I’ve got to wonder if it isn’t the stress from pain. Anyway, sorry for the downer post.