Tag Archives: Pregnant with twins

18 weeks – A little bit of grace

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Bayfield 09 067

Bayfield Ice Caves, 2009

For the past five years, we and our college friends have scheduled a weekend getaway in February. We’ve explored ice caves in Bayfield, played snow football in Sauk Center, strapped on snowshoes in Garrison (twice), and this year, braved a major snowfall to relax in the woods by Balsam Lake.

I always look forward to the weekend away. There is amazing food. (Seriously, how are all our friends such gourmands?) Laughter so hard it makes my gut hurt. Serious conversation over strong, dark coffee. Community.

Here’s the rub. For some reason, I have a strange new tendency to get stressed out about things being messy. Ask Jason. He’s dealt first-hand with my no-reason meltdowns. I think his favorite was the recent two-day crab fest I threw about not being able to see the floor of the bedroom. (Which was my own fault – I’ve been mining my drawers and closet for anything that still remotely fits.)

For those of you that know me, you realize just how weird this is. I’m not a neat freak. I’m not even that neat. I get a little punchy about the floors being dirty, but otherwise, I can ignore prize-winning dust collections with the best of them. So getting stressed about messiness is a true pregnancy symptom.

2010 getaway

Sauk Center, 2010

There was plenty of mess this weekend. Eight adults, four toddlers, and one infant generate a whirlwind of paraphernalia. We all had our own bedrooms, but the common areas were an onslaught of crayons, dinosaurs, and Mr. Potato Head mustaches. This didn’t include the various water glasses, mugs, snack plates, books, phones, and keys that multiplied as fast as unpaired socks. It was a very benign version of my pregnant nightmare.

But I decided, Saturday morning, to face it head-on. To sit down in the middle of the chaos. To quit cleaning and play with my daughter, who insists on waking up at 6:45 am even on friend’s weekend. Why? Because pretty soon, there are going to be two more babies in my house. And babies produce mess after mess after mess. I am going to have to learn to live with it. Cook alongside it. Clean it when I can.  2010 getaway 2

What I hope I find buried knee deep in the toy box and burp rag bin is grace. Grace that takes the time to play. Grace that wipes up spit-up and scrubs stains out of white onesies. Grace that puts the dirty details firmly in their place once and for all.

17 Weeks – A little more to cover

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towelHere’s the deal: I work at being a fit and healthful individual, because it gives me energy to live inside my life. But let me be frank. I do not run marathons. I have never been a muscle junkie. And no one could ever accuse me of looking malnourished. (I will forever be in love with butter and chocolate malts.)

I am happy, healthy, and have no qualms about being solidly average sized.

But after I learned about the twins, one of my first thoughts (after the initial holy-crap-we-need-two-of-everything-freak-out week) was, I better start lifting weights – now.

This is tricky though. I’ve taken a hiatus from teaching group fitness (instructing Pilates with a belly full of twins? No, thank you.) I’m not training for a backpacking trek, and my personal hand weights are wasting away next to my painting smock in some improperly labeled box in the basement. So I’ve had to come up with a new routine.

Enter: The fitness center at my workplace. Because everyone loves sweating to the 80’s with their coworkers in the middle of the day.

But if I want to get any exercise, this is the only “free” time in my schedule to do it. So, I dutifully pack my gym bag 2-3 times a week, walk circles around the gym like a lab rat on autopilot, and then lift weights.

Anyway, here’s the best part of the story.

On this particular day, I got warm enough to want to shower after my walk, so I grabbed a couple of gym towels and headed down to the locker room after my work out. Notice I say two towels. Just to be safe. 17 weeks is no joke this time around – at this point I am already rocking a sizable girth.

I got undressed, and proceeded to try wrapping one towel around my hips, and one over my top. Except that neither of them were now big enough to close around my newly grown belly. So there I stood, mostly uncovered save for two postage stamp towels, surveying the 20 foot distance from the lockers to the showers. It may as well have been a football field.

As grace would have it, the room was empty. So I took a deep breath, grabbed my clean clothes, and made a beeline for the shower with my hind end flapping in the breeze.

Apparently, I need to start packing my beach towel in my gym bag.

16 Weeks – unveiling of the genders

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Life is good for Baby B

Life is good for Baby B

So meanwhile, here’s what was happening back at 16 weeks…

Part 1

We didn’t find out the gender of our daughter until she was born. A whole pile of folks thought we were crazy for doing it that way, but we had our reasons. A first baby is a first baby; there are no particular reasons I NEEDED to know what kind of baby it may be. And I didn’t even know what kind of stuff I would need until Ellis lived in our house for 24 hours, and I realized that the purse size packet of wipes that someone had given me at a baby shower were not going to last.

There are plenty of fun reasons FOR finding out, and I totally get that, but for us, it just seemed fitting to wait.

This time feels different. Maybe I’m feeling a little more nervous about how much stuff we’re actually going to need for two babies. Maybe I think I’ve had enough surprises for one pregnancy and knowing the gender would be one less thing to throw me for a loop at the end. Maybe I’m turning into a control freak. Whatever the case may be, we’ve decided to find out the genders.

And now I’m going crazy waiting.

 

Part 2

I scheduled our 16 week ultrasound on my birthday. Self-gratifying? All the way. And I didn’t care. Jason and I left work early, hopped in the car, and made the trip to Wyoming. (Okay, every time I talk about our hospital being in Wyoming, which is, for the record, a physical town in Minnesota where my hospital happens to be located at, please don’t think I’m talking about some crazy cross-state excursion. I’m not. Wyoming is 15 minutes away.)

Hospital. Wyoming. Ultrasound. This is starting to sound familiar…. Except that this time, we know there are two babies, and now we just want to make sure they look healthy and happy. And, possibly, take a look at their gendered bits.

Which we did. 16 weeks is pretty early, so I’m not going to start getting serious about cruising sales racks for baby clothes until after the 20 week level two 3-D megatron ultrasound two hour marathon in downtown Minneapolis that we apparently need to have. But for now, we are operating under the learned knowledge that we are having identical…twin…

GIRLS.

We’re going to have to start saving for another bathroom. Stat.

 

Providence. Provision. Peace.

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washing machineSometimes when I think about being given the gift/responsibility of having twins, I get nervous. The questions that forever loom in the back of my head go a little something like this:

Why me? Why us? Why here, now?

I don’t have an answer. I don’t have a divine sense of grace, a human sense of accomplishment, or even an animal’s sense of instinct. Case in point – I poured my daughter a glass of milk yesterday, and then casually glanced at the expiration date. It was March 6. Yesterday was March 16.

Most people would say they aren’t cut out for having twins. I might be one of them. It’s not easy to look into the future and see the clock blazing 3:42 a.m. while two little voices wail in tandem, or to figure out how to pack a diaper bag for three kids. When I spend the entire afternoon and evening picking up after my tornadic toddler, I can’t even fathom what it will be like to do this for two of them. I could spend the entire rest of my pregnancy forecasting the potential fright of my future.

But this morning, our pastor asked us to do something. He asked us to think about a circumstance of God’s providence in our lives. And you know what I thought of?

A washing machine.

When we moved into our little farmhouse this fall, the laundry room came equipped with two washing machines. Try as I may, I could not figure out why I would ever need two washers. Two dryers, well, that’s another story. But two washers? Not a clue. So while we had the extra manpower, I asked our friends to kindly take the older washing machine out of the house and put it in the garage.

A month passed, and then the phone rang. Our renters were on the other end, frantic. The washing machine at our house in Lindstrom was on the fritz. Jason stopped by, and confirmed the diagnosis. The machine was having some sort of seizure. It would need to be replaced.

Keep in mind, we had just moved, and spent every available extra penny on closing costs and settlement fees for purchasing our new property. We did not have an $500 for a new washing machine. But we did have something else.

A perfectly good, (if slightly broken in) washing machine, just sitting in our garage.

It’d be really easy to chalk this story up to great luck. Good fortune. Happenstance. But from what I have seen in my short life, that’s not really the way it works. Providence is the fulfillment of a promise from God. It is the visible hand of a sometimes invisible Presence. It is the incarnation of “I will never leave you; I will never forsake you” -Hebrews 13:4-6.

Sometimes, it’s a house with two washing machines.

I choose to believe that whatever I am given, I am given it for good reason. I might not find clarity for my why questions today, and that’s fine. I might tomorrow. Or a year from now. (Or maybe 18?) But in the meantime, that promise of never being left or forsaken fulfills itself every day.

Providence. Provision. Promise. And for those that love a little alliteration, all those things add up to one thing in my book. Peace.

 

Week 14: Pulling up my big girl pants

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Repeat after me. I will not measure my worth by the size of my pregnancy pants.cargo-pants

My favorite pair of maternity pants are a green wad of faded canvas cargo from H&M. (Yes, H&M sells maternity clothes. They are lovely. And usually on sale. If you are in the market, I highly suggest them.) Anyway, I wore the heck out of my favorite green cargo pants with Ellis, and I have recently discovered that I fit into them again. But here’s one thing I did not remember about my favorite green pants. They are 3 sizes larger than my normal pant size.

Guess what. I don’t care. I didn’t care when I bought them, and I don’t care this time around either. They are cute, comfortable, and if H&M wants to think I’m three sizes bigger than what I normally wear, well fine.

Perception about size during pregnancy is a constant battle. But here’s the deal. In order to healthfully carry and sustain another human being inside one’s own body, it is necessary to gain weight. In normal circumstances, I would cringe to see the numbers that pop up on the doctor’s office scale. But in pregnancy, those numbers mean the babies are growing. They mean my body is being a gracious host. They mean tiny fingers soft as silk, dark eyes, skin that dimples at the knees.

For the record, I am being conscious of what I eat. But I’m also fully expecting to gain more weight, and I’m doing my best not to freak out about it. According to the Mayo Clinic, here are the guidelines for tipping the healthy scales during pregnancy.

  • Underweight (BMI less than 18.5): 28 to 40 pounds (about 13 to 18 kilograms)
  • Normal weight (BMI 18.5 to 24.9): 25 to 35 pounds (about 11 to 16 kilograms)
  • Overweight (BMI 25 to 29.9): 15 to 25 pounds (about 7 to 11 kilograms)

Now, here are the parameters for carrying twins.

More weight gain. Gaining the right amount of weight can support your babies’ health. It also makes it easier to shed the extra pounds after delivery. For twins, the recommendation is often 37 to 54 pounds (about 17 to 25 kilograms) for women who have a healthy weight before pregnancy — which might require about 600 extra calories a day, depending on your activity level. (FYI: 600 calories is roughly the equivalent of 3 Cadbury Creme Eggs. Just in case you’re wondering, or happen to have a penchant for them like I do.)

Weight gain during pregnancy is one of the most difficult things to come to terms with. In real life, there’s far too much focus on numbers, BMI, miles logged, workouts done. We measure our worth by the size of our pants.

It’s time to stop all that. Whether you are pre, mid, post a pregnant experience in your life please hear me out. Weight is one of the most inconsequential, yet easy things to stress about. So do me a favor. Give yourself a break. Take a deep breath, and think about the baby(ies). Be amazed at what God the creator is doing.

And for heaven’s sake, get yourself  a bowl of ice cream. Not a big bowl, but a nice, happy, average sized bowl. Lick every last bit of sweet from the spoon. Take the time to enjoy it.

And once and for all, quit worrying about the big girl pants.

Therefore, be it resolved

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11 weeks – January 2, 2013resolution_032511_p1

I am making a resolution.

It has nothing to do with losing weight (this year I am totally exempt from that category.) As of today, I am no longer allowing myself to read pregnancy blogs about other sets of twins. Or their birth stories. Or their early deliveries, stroller blowouts, or screaming fits in the car. Yesterday evening’s online reading left me snot-nosed and crying for at least an hour. Afterward, all I could do was plot how to keep these babies inside of me until the last possible second (or until my skin exploded.)

Now, I’m deciding to make this formal, so for those of you that aren’t familiar with what I do at work, well, you’re about to see how exciting the life of a Board Liaison can be.

RACHEL RIEBE

PREGNANCY RESOLUTION

#1-2013

Refusal of Twin Pregnancy Supplemental Reading Material

WHEREAS, Ms. Rachel Riebe is pregnant with multiple gestations, as and such, often finds herself in a heightened emotional and hormonal state of being; and

WHEREAS, upon reading publicly posted internet blogs on the topic of carrying and birthing multiple gestations, Ms. Riebe has been known to break down in a slimy fit of tears and excess mucus and generally exhibits traits of fearfulness, worry, and occasionally, hunger;

BE IT THEREFORE RESOLVED, Ms. Riebe is hereby banned from internet blogosphere of twin pregnancy and resolves to care solely for the best interests of her multiple gestations as directed by her obstetrician and cohort of related health care professionals.

Signed,

Rachel Riebe

Winter 2013 328

This is somewhere between 10-11 weeks. Don’t worry. It gets more exciting. I just actually happened to label this picture in my files, so I thought I’d throw it on here.