I had a positive ultrasound today. My cervix now looks great (>3 inches), the babies look fine, everything is normal. Baby A weights 3 lbs 13 oz and Baby B weighs 3 lbs 15 oz. They are both facing down. Baby A’s head is way down low resting on my cervix, and Baby B’s butt is up under my rib cage. This explains my discomfit at both ends.

They couldn’t get any decent ultrasound images though, and Baby B was turning away.

Today my doctor put me on bed rest because my cervix has started to shorten. I have to remain horizontal until my ultrasound on Monday, and monitor my contractions closely. Oh, how am I going to make it to February! My next door neighbor is due to have twins at the same time as me! She was put on bed rest 2 weeks ago.

It’s coming at a bad time as I am crazy busy at work transitioning my tasks to prepare for my leave of absence.

I really hope my babies don’t arrive early as the survival rate is decreased, but Owen and I don’t have much plans for the holidays since I can’t travel and no family are coming to us (except Mark of course!). We’re going to have a very Jewish christmas; perhaps with Chinese food and a movie. But the movie will have to be at home

As I get closer to the end of my pregnancy, I am filled with anticipation and occasional nervousness. Annoying late-stage pregnancy symptoms may be affecting this; you know stuff like swollen ankles and difficulty breathing. But there’s also the fear and excitement of the upcoming birth process itself and everything that goes a long with it, including the questions and concerns that most new mothers probably have about meeting their children for the first time. In her book Misconceptions, Naomi Wolf states that pregnancy is a lonely journey (it’s primal, lonely, and “physically dangerous”) that one can never really share it with others. I’m not sure that’s entirely true, but surely the physical and psychological symptoms make you feel like another person and they affect every woman differently.

Will there be complications? Will I give birth too soon? Will the babies be healthy? Will they be normal? Should I have had amnio? Will I be a good mother? Will I have patience? Will we have enough money? What if we lose our jobs in the recession? Will the babies be safe? Will Owen and I be happy? Are we really ready?!! The questions keep circling through my mind… I’ve also never as emotional as I am now, flooded with hormones.

Each creature I saw, someone, a mother, had given birth. Someone had succumbed herself to this endless yielding motion of the world, this cleaving, of which I was now a part. Motherhood was the gate. It was something that had always been invisible to me before, or so unvalued as to be beneath noticing: the motheredness of the world. – N. Wolf

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!

Although we still have a ton of stuff to get, the nursery is just about there.

We took a class in newborn care, breastfeeding, and CPR today. It was tiring, but a lot of fun playing around with dolls. If only babies were this easy. I learned that breastfeeding can be hard, but it is so stupid not to try and there are lactation specialists who will come to your home to help. We were all surprised to learn that the average length for breastfeeding around the world is 5 years (3 in Europe)! That seems unfathomable here. The teacher posited that it was because breasts are so sexualized in America and I have read about situations where mothers breastfeeding in public were actually reprimanded (fortunately there are laws to protect breastfeeding mothers in these backward places).

We learned that babies who breastfeed:

(We think that some of these “stats” seem a little spurious, as in too good to be true)

Mothers who breastfeed:

Sounds perfect right? Except that I do have friends who just couldn’t do it for a variety of reasons. So I’m hoping that I will be able to breastfeed the twins, and will have enough of a supply to feed them both. I was not breastfed. I wonder how much my life would be different if I had been. Maybe I wouldn’t suffer from eczema? Maybe I’d be smarter? Prettier? Happier? Richer?

Owen’s team at Google threw us a baby shower, with generous gifts.
Meanwhile the nursery is coming along. We’ll take photos soon and post.

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.

It’s getting harder to get good ultrasound images now that they’re are big; only bits and pieces are possible. They did manage to get twin A’s face. Eek, I hope she has a proper nose and eye in reality. Twin B wasn’t cooperating.