My belly grew much faster than I had thought possible, even though eating was something I did out of necessity only. I always felt at least slightly sick to my stomach, but I had to eat every two-three hours or so, otherwise it got much worse. I won't get into any more specifics here, but, like all pregnancies, I was a mix of your mostly average, run of the mill grab bag of symptoms at first. I made the adjustments I needed to make dietary and lifestyle-wise and soldiered on.
When they told me I was growing TWO babies, I'll admit, I was thoroughly freaked out. This was going to mean a way bigger change than I was mentally prepared for. Me and a little against the world was something I could handle, but with two, I was out numbered!
This was going to have to be a much bigger commitment than I could handle on my own. However, my BF assured me he was still on board, so we embarked on our version of the insta-family. Turns out, we make a pretty good team, and everyone in both our families were super thrilled about our new, well, life.
I was going to be 35 years old when they made their way into the world so this qualified me as 'advanced age' and, with the whole twin thing, (turns out they were going to be monochorionic, diamniotic ('mono/di') identical twins, pretty rare) and the fibroids, I was considered high risk.
I also developed gestational diabetes and I ended up having to rely on western medicine WAY more than I'm really comfortable with, but I followed my gut (haha) as much as possible and, overall, was happy with my experience. My boys decided to come earlier than we had anticipated, baby A ruptured his sack, and at 31 weeks, 5 days they pulled them out. They weighed a bit over 3 lbs and almost 4 lbs at birth. Due to the fibroid placement I knew early on that I would be having a cesarian birth, so I didn't get to hold them or see them for a couple hours, and when I did get to see them, I could only touch them a little.
I didn't hold them until they were a couple of days old and only for a couple hours at a time. I went home after 3 days, and they stayed. I felt really guilty about going home to sleep every night, but now I'm glad I did. I gave myself time to recover fully, but every day for at least a few hours I would get myself ready, go to the UW NICU and hold and feed my tiny babies.
