the final stretch!

We are down to the final few weeks before the twins get here, and I am simultaneously overjoyed and terrified.

On one hand, I'm more uncomfortable than I've ever been before. I don't know, something to do with measuring 44 weeks pregnant in a hot Arizona summer? ;) I am so excited for when standing up from the floor or getting comfortable in bed isn't a major achievement. But then I think how hard one newborn can be, and I get overwhelmed wondering how I'm supposed to survive two at the same time.

Still, these babies are looking great at every appointment, and even though this has been a hard pregnancy, it's been fairly complication-free. I am so grateful for that. We are counting our blessings over here - and soaking up these nights in which we have no children awake past 7:30pm.

I haven't done a traditional pregnancy recap this time around, and I thought it would be fun to do at least one before the babies come.

How far along? 
33 weeks!

How big is the peanut? 
They're each the size of a large pineapple, and about 4.5 pounds each. It seems crazy to have a combined 9 pounds of baby inside me, plus two placentas and two umbilical cords. But, as much room as they're taking up now, I hope they each get a pound or two bigger before they make their grand entrance!

Total weight gain/loss? 
I'm only 18 pounds up from my pre-pregnancy weight. I know that seems low for twins, but also keep in mind that I lost 15 pounds during the Dark Ages of my first trimester. So even though my net gain is only 18 pounds, my total gain is 33.

Maternity clothes? 
I've outgrown almost all my maternity clothes at this point. I survive on leggings and the few huge tunics that still cover my belly. Or stretchy dresses like the one I'm wearing in these pictures, because IT'S TOO HOT FOR PANTS.

Sleep?
Some nights are pretty good, and some nights I just toss and turn and try to get comfortable as I drift in and out of wakefulness. Preparation for when the babies come and the real sleep deprivation begins, right? :)

Best moment this week? 
Seeing my babies on the ultrasound screen. We're down to weekly ultrasounds, and I can't get enough.

Symptoms? 
This is the part where I really try not to complain, because I have every symptom in the book. Let's just say I look and feel like a whale out of water and leave it at that. ;)

Belly button in or out? 
Definitely out!

Food cravings or aversions? 
Weirdly, none? I keep waiting to have cravings, but alas, when 3pm comes along and I end up eating otter pops and an entire bag of popcorn, I have nobody to blame but myself.

Gender? 
One boy one girl!

Labor signs? 
I have one million Braxton Hicks contractions per day, but that's about it.

What I miss?
Being able to take a deep breath.

What I'm looking forward to? 
SNUGGLING MY BABIES!

Milestones? 
We finally made progress on choosing baby names! If you know Sam and I, you can appreciate how big of a milestone this is. ;) We like to wait and see the babies before we announce anything for sure, but after months of debating, we have some good choices we both agree on.

third trimester twin bump

We're officially into the third trimester for these twins over here. That means I have eight weeks or less until I get to meet these babies. Eight weeks! I can't tell if my pulse is spiking because I am so darn excited to meet them, or because I don't have a single essential baby item ready yet. Ha! I have my work cut out for me for the next two months, that's for sure.

When I get back home next week, the weekly ultrasounds and close monitoring and serious birth discussions with my doctor will begin. My babies are giving me a run for my money, and both of them had turned breech at my last ultrasound. Right now it's looking like I'm on track for a C-section. We'll see if they flip back around in the next few weeks or not!

This pregnancy continues to be about four or five times harder than my pregnancy with Claire. It's kind of funny actually. I was flipping through a pregnancy book the other day, and came across a list of common third-trimester symptoms. Literally I went down the list and I have every single symptom to a major degree. Swollen ankles, major waddling, exhaustion, hip pain, difficulty breathing - you name it, I've got it! I feel like I'm about 40 weeks pregnant, and technically, I'm measuring 40 weeks pregnant (if I were carrying one baby), so I guess it's no surprise!

My countdown maternity tee is c/o The Countdown Shop. It's my go-to look when I'm out and about these days - it's fun, it's super soft, and it's perfect to throw on with jeans and a sandals for a casual spring look. I love crossing off the weeks as I go, and taking pictures of each week, so I can look back and remember this pregnancy (and laugh at how big I was with these twins). You can find the tee here if you're interested! I just wanted to give a shout-out because I genuinely love this tee. :)

Happy weekend, friends!

And if you know someone who is pregnant,

this would make the perfect baby bump gift. :)

a celebration (maternity pictures!)

One weird thing about a twin pregnancy is that the nurses measure your uterus at every appointment and tell you how many weeks you'd be if you were carrying only one child. So when I had my 22-week check up, they told me my uterus was 31 weeks big. Ha! Looking forward to my last appointment, when most twin moms have something ridiculous like a 46-week baby bump.

Either way, I knew it was time to take maternity pictures. Usually, maternity pictures are taken somewhere between 30-35 weeks pregnant, but with twins, I wanted to take them early and before it gets too hot here. My sweet friend Beverly took the pictures for me (check out her blog here!).

The best thing happened when she started snapping away. I stopped thinking about how hard this pregnancy has been. I stopped worrying about how big I looked. I stopped worrying about everything else in my life right now. It was just a celebration of my two sweet babies growing away.

And it was such a great feeling. I felt proud of my baby bump, and just let myself relax and celebrate these babes as the camera snapped away. It was such a lovely evening. Now I just have to hire her to come help me get into that relaxed, happy head space every night. ;)

^^I mentioned this on Instagram earlier in the week, but you know how pregnancy hair is notoriously awesome and thick and shiny? Turns out twin pregnancy hair is the best thing that's ever happened to this head of mine. I'm probably going to lose it all and be straight-up bald when the twins get here (postpartum hair loss gets me so badly!), but I'm loving my hair these days!

 ^^For this outfit, I wanted something casual, that I wear all the time. For me, this is my favorite fitted maternity tee, my trusty maternity jeans, some booties, and of course a kimono. I've been living in all the lightweight kimonos and cardigans I can find. They just do a great job of highlighting my baby bump while simultaneously covering up other bumps and lumps. ;)

In case you missed it, the first half of my maternity pictures (a more formal, lace + pearls ensemble) can be found here!

Photos by S W E E T  S N A P S  P H O T O G R A P H Y

scheduled resting

Well, it finally happened. I got put on modified bedrest.

This actually happened a few weeks ago, I've just been really reticent to tell people about it. Partly because I'm prideful and don't like people to think I'm weak. Also because I have so many close friends and family battling infertility. Little old fertile me, who got pregnant with twins without even trying, feels bad complaining about my pregnancy complications. But I still want to share my truth and my experience. The line between respecting those I love and also being honest with the world has been hard for me to balance lately.

But today I'm sharing my experience. So, at the risk of sounding like I'm complaining (I definitely complain in this post), here we go!

You'd think, since I'm growing two babies at once, my pregnancy would be twice as hard as my singleton pregnancy. But my honest truth is that this pregnancy has been about four or five times harder. I already complained about The Dark Ages (ahem, the first 20 terrible weeks of my pregnancy), and now I feel like I've jumped straight to the third trimester, with all the aches and pains and exhaustion that goes along with the end of a pregnancy. It's been a very tough few months for me, and there's no getting around that truth.

(It also didn't help that I had such an easy textbook pregnancy the first time around. Who knew I was getting spoiled with a normal, high-energy, low-risk pregnancy!)

The problem is that I'm bad at slowing down. Really bad. About a month ago, my doctor told me to find two or three or four things on my plate that I could let go of for now. Partly to slow down and maintain my sanity, but mostly for the safety of my babies.

But I didn't really slow down. I mean, I wanted to, and sometimes I'd remember to put my feet up or take a cat nap, but I felt like I was just too busy and too stressed. Between Sam in grad school, my church callings, Claire, work, trying to find new housing for next year, and everything else, I couldn't figure out what to cut.

So I kept going. And to be honest, it's been a pretty miserable few weeks. My back ached constantly, my hips ached, my feet and hands would suddenly swell and then go down with no reason, my vision blurred when I changed elevation, I couldn't sleep at night, I couldn't breathe well.... the list goes on.

And then, two weekends ago, I had a pretty scary run-in with preeclampsia. I was taking Claire on a walk, and all of a sudden the headache I had felt for the past two days got really sharp. And then I noticed my hands had ballooned up and my feet were swollen too. And then my vision started blurring really badly. I ended up on my hands and knees in the middle of the sidewalk calling Sam on my phone and telling him to come get us.

Sam wanted to drive me straight to the hospital, but I talked him into taking me to the pharmacy instead so I could test my blood pressure. Sam lead me to the blood pressure machine (I couldn't really see anything at this point) while Claire ran around the store throwing bottles to the floor at random. (I'm just now realizing we never picked up the huge mess Claire left. Sorry CVS employee.)

My blood pressure had skyrocketed, so we called the doctor. My numbers weren't quite high enough to go to the hospital, and the good news is that my blood pressure came down pretty quickly within the next hour. So in the end, the babies are fine and I'm fine, which is a blessing we're still thankful for in our prayers every day.

But I got put on scheduled resting, which is a type of modified bedrest. Luckily, it's the easiest type of bedrest there is. I just have to be sitting down (with my feet up) or laying down from 7pm to 7am. I can still work on my laptop, I can still get up early to do seated prenatal yoga and my breathing exercises, I can still rest or be on the phone or watch Netflix or whatever I want. Plus I get one or two late nights a week if I need them. Party animal!

Sam teases me that I'm the only person in the world who requires a doctor's orders to actually take care of herself and get some rest. (Bless him for putting up with me all these years.) I still have the back and hip aches, the trouble sleeping, the trouble breathing, all of those other really fun pregnancy symptoms I mentioned earlier. But I feel much calmer, more in control, and better rested. And no more preeclampsia scares, wahoo!

So that's an update on my pregnancy. We are still so darn excited for these two babies. They are moving around constantly, and even though I'm only 25 weeks, Sam's been able to feel them move quite a lot too. Also, I have at most 12 weeks left, which is a really exciting thing for me, because I have NOT loved being pregnant like I did the first time around. Ha.

Any takers to come join me for a night of scheduled resting? We'll lay on the couch and watch movies and eat snacks and chat. It's a party!

Photos by my sweet friend Beverly of SWEET SNAPS PHOTOGRAPHY. Check her out!

coming this summer

We are so excited! And so overwhelmed!

that right there is love

There was one night, when I was seven months pregnant, that I woke up with an excruciating leg cramp. They had warned me about pregnancy leg cramps in the pregnancy books I was dutifully reading, and this one lived up to every painful expectation. It was like a charlie horse times a thousand. I sat there in bed, gasping and yelping and desperately trying to straighten out the muscles in my leg and foot. What the pregnancy book didn't tell me was that my muscles would suddenly become stiffer than concrete, and straightening them out would be impossible. I realize I'm making this little leg cramp sound overly dramatic, but it's going somewhere, I promise.

As I sat there in bed, gasping in pain, Sam jolted awake and, in his panicked half-asleep state, thought I was going into pre-term labor. Our friend had just gone into early labor, and I think it was on his mind. "Brooke! Brooke!" he said. "Is this it??!?!"

He jumped out of bed and haphazardly started throwing things into a backpack that we might need. A phone charger. His wallet. Keys. An empty folder. (How useful an empty folder would have been during pre-term labor remains to be seen.)

At that moment, the cramp abruptly stopped.

"Sam, stop," I said. He had one leg through some shorts he was hopping into. "It's fine. Just a leg cramp."

"You're not in labor?!" he demanded. 

"Nope. Just a leg cramp."

We looked at each other in the darkness. Me and my gigantic belly and my hair all over my face, him with half a pair of shorts on. It was silent for a second, and then we started laughing.

We laughed as I stretched out my leg. He dropped the backpack on the floor (alas, it wasn't the empty folder's day to shine after all) and crawled back into bed. We spent the next hour or so whispering about "wow" and "what if" and "aren't you glad it wasn't" and "I can't wait to meet her, but not like this" and "don't you ever scare me like that again." I eventually fell back asleep, but Sam was awake most of the rest of the night, just thinking about the realities of becoming a dad, and our future.

And that right there? To me, that's love. Panic attacks at 2am, and bleary eyes at work the next day, and the dreaming and the whispers together and the half-packed backpack on the floor. That's love. And I'm so glad I get to share it with Sam.

a list of things that made me gag in the first trimester

Just because I think it's funny how many crazy things happen to your body when you're pregnant. And because I can. So, without further ado, a list of things that made me gag:


anything that had been in the fridge more than three days

leftovers of any kind

bread dough rising on the counter

me touching the bread dough

cooked bread

anything that had once been in a dough form (I didn't have a roll, bagel, pizza slice, cookie, or bun of any kind for three months)

"Mrs. Emery, look at my braces! I got brown and red for Thanksgiving!"

milk approaching the sell by date

people making gagging noises (thanks for nothing, Sam and Jason. It's not funny!)

"Mrs. Emery, remember that lunch box I lost in October? I found it, and look what happened to my sandwich!" (this was the closest I got to ever throwing up)

the smell of incense

the smell of dryer sheets

any time I walked past the dryer

any time we use the dryer

the different brand of dryer sheets I got to try to solve the problem

_____________________

The good news is that my nausea is almost all the way gone now. I swear, it's a different world now that food in general doesn't make me sick. I have yet to eat an actual slice of bread, but I've had english muffins, breadsticks and even a bagel, so I'm getting there!

And here are some pictures of my tiny 15-week bump. Most people probably think I overindulged during the holidays, but there's a real live baby in there! We have a chance of finding out the gender on Saturday and I'm so so so so so so so excited. To put it lightly :)