Time with twins

Last night I spent time with my friend K and her boy/girl twins who are 18 months old. It's really cool to "see into the future" a bit! There's no doubt about it - there is a lot of work ahead! At this age, it is hard to contain one wondering baby, but when there are two it is a whole other ball game. :) That said, I absolutely can't wait. Her little babies just melt my heart - it's like double the cuteness at every moment (OK, some double the trouble I'm sure she would say, but I just see cuteness right now). I think the cutest thing was when it was time to go upstairs for baths. The babies can crawl up the stairs on their own (with adults behind them of course) and it was hilarious to see their two little diapered bottoms hovering up the stairs toward the bathroom. I had the honor of soaping up and rinsing one of them and I felt like a little girl playing house - like getting to do something that I hoped someday would be for real for me. It sometimes seems impossible that I will ever have a scene like that of my own where something so cute would be part of a daily routine and not a distant thought. But spending time with K is especially encouraging because she had multiple failed IVFs herself. It doesn't seem like long ago at all that she and I would get together to talk through all the hardships and failures and wonder if they would ever come to an end. To see her now in full mommy mode, looking like a pro who has been doing it for years, is such a wonderful thing. It inspires me so much! On a side note, K also gave us "twin" Winnie the Pooh stuffed toys last night...they are OH SO CUTE! I love Winnie the Pooh so much! :)

I also had some time with twins a couple of weeks ago when I had lunch with my friend A, who has identical twin girls after failed IVFs. That, too, was amazing! She and I cycled at the same times, had similar treatments, and were with the same doctor. I remember vividly similar conversations as I mentioned having with K, discussing all of our most recent research about what could possibly be wrong, what kind of treatments to do, whether or not surrogacy might work for us (something she had considered also), etc. Her babies are now 10 months old and she too looks like a pro. She sat the girls down in their chairs for lunch at Red Robin and then alternated between them with the feeding ... much to the amusement of just about everyone within sight of us! I've read in a several twin books that people in public places are fascinated by twins but I never really got that until lunch with A. People all around us were pointing and smiling and watching their every move. It was like being with a celebrity, though A didn't even notice (she's so used to it)! A couple even came up and told us that their twins are now 45! A lent us her "double snap n go" stroller that infant car seats fit into for a few months (then you go on to a full size stroller with seats). It's awesome and waiting for the babies! :)

Peri appointment today

I'm headed out the door, but I just wanted to make a quick update to say that we had a peri appointment today and everything was great. The babies were active and seem to have grown so much since we last saw them just two weeks ago! I really wanted to make this post right now even though I don't have much time because the pics we got were pretty cool this time. :) Check this out, it's Sara with what appears to be her thumb in her mouth:



Here is Nathan looking straight at the "camera" (head on the right, body to left, with arms up in the air next to ears; the "hole" in the body is the heart):





I'll write more later! Oh and J's belly is measuring 27 weeks for a singleton...though we are 20 weeks! We asked her if she is scared about how big she will get with twins and she said she's not, that she expected it. LOL

The ultimate protector of car seats: Simon

OK, I know this probably shouldn't happen because we don't want little cat hairs all over the car seats before the babies get here...BUT I couldn't help but take a picture when Simon crawled in. It was just too cute.

While I'm in my photo folder from the other night, I might as well post this one of the car seats together (can't you just see a little boy and girl in them??! lol).

On a side note, B went to an Angels (baseball) game last night AND...are you ready...made his first solo purchase (completely unprompted by me) of 2 baby outfits! Let's just say that B hasn't been as excited as I am in general about the cuteness level of baby clothes, so the fact that he bought them little Angels baseball onesies on his own was just awesome. It was so cute to see what he picked out. Unfortunately they are 6-9 months (only sizes they had) so it will be a little while before they can wear them, but they'll sure be cute to look at in the meantime. :)

A beautiful Saturday

Yesterday was one of the days B and I love...a day with no plans. Maybe we are weird in this, but there is always so much going on, so much to do, that days with absolutely no plans hardly ever happen. The two of us, on such a Saturday, are absolutely gleeful and giddy. It's not that we want to be boring ALL the time, but our personalities are such that we both need home-hibernation at some regular interval in order to be sane. B works Sunday through Thursday and I work Monday through Friday, so our only mutual day together is Saturday and that makes it tougher. We only have 4 possibilities per month for a no-plan day so they are few and far between. So what ends up happening on a no-plan day?

We read a lot, we watched the Olympics, we watched a comedy special, we ate and ate and ate, we played pool (we have a pool table), we napped, I searched for nursery themes online. But then we broke the cardinal rule of a no-plan day: we left the house. If we had PLANNED to go out, it would not have been fun. But on a no-plan day it CAN be acceptable, upon both parties' agreement, to leave. :) I really wanted to go to Babies R Us to get something bigger than clothes...the next step up. B wanted to get a new game for our Wii. Fortunately, Babies R Us and Best Buy are next to each other where we live so it was perfect. B got a trivia game for the Wii which we ended up playing the rest of the day and I got...baby CAR SEATS!

Yes, this feels big. I had picked the ones I wanted online, including the fabric, and Babies R Us had exactly the ones I wanted. We brought them home and I immediately tore open the boxes to prop up our new car seats (one pink, one blue) in the room with us. It seems like the closest thing possible right now to actually having babies in them! I was literally beaming with excitement, picturing our two little people in there. We even took pictures of them for a future scrapbook.

I must have really felt like we were living on the edge by buying something that screams babies as much as car seats do because I subsequently had nightmares last night that something horrible happened to the babies. It's like my subconscious was saying, "something bad can still happen, don't buy any more stuff!" I hate to feel this way, I feel like normal people wouldn't! But on the other hand, I'm a major planner. I feel like we need to be completely ready by mid-November. That's 3 months, and we planned to buy stuff over time, not all on one day or something. So logically the car seats seemed reasonable, but emotionally I think it messed with my head last night. I hope that goes away soon so I can get back to picking things out. :)

Friends and Pregnancies

I can't think of a worse few months in my life than about two years ago when we started IVF, had subsequent failures, started to lose all hope and simultaneously received pregnancy announcement after announcement after announcement at the same time from friends. It was like rubbing salt in wounds. I'm just being honest - it's nearly impossible to be happy about baby announcements when you feel like you will never realize your own dreams of having a baby. And for whatever reason, quite literally everyone we know had a baby that summer. It got to the point that it felt like the universe was against me because EVERY time we talked to someone we hadn't seen in a while, they told us they were pregnant. I even started avoiding talking to anyone I hadn't talked to in a long time because there was no doubt in my mind that they would be pregnant.

When all your friends get pregnant and you can't, it adds to the severe frustration of "WHY is this happening to us?" But I'm convinced that the second most difficult aspect of it (after the constant reminder you can't have something everyone else can) is that you feel left behind. You feel that you are missing out on the opportunity for camaraderie that comes from bonding over one of the most amazing times in life. My friends were all exchanging pictures, having play dates, celebrating at baby showers and getting together to talk about their new lives...I was giving myself shots every day and driving to medical procedures. As much as I wanted a baby, I also wanted to have a baby when our friends did, to take part in the exciting life transitions. I felt robbed.

The exception to the 'all people we know had a baby in the summer of 2006' rule was one of our best friends. He had just started dating a girl that summer whom we loved right away and they later married. They really were on the "last frontier" in terms of close friends without kids and it has been so awesome to share so many fun times with them while everyone else moved on to "familyhood". I am so grateful for that! After we got "pregnant", I started thinking about how much I wished they would be having kids too, so we could all experience it together.

Well, I'm gleeful to say...we found out yesterday that they are pregnant and due just 2 months after us! I'm so very excited for them AND for us. LOL

The Baby Name Saga

My whole life I have loved unique names...really unique names. As a child I used to doodle on my pages in class with the most unusual names I could come up with. One still sticks in mind:
Katridiana Narisia. And that is what we have decided to name our girl.

Just kidding!!! LOL (though that WAS a name I created at one point, I now realize how horrendous that is!)

Later I loved the name Larissa. All of my eventual motherhood dreams included a baby named Larissa. In sixth grade, I made up the name Kella (which, incidentally, I still think is an awesome name). My friend and I decided we hated our names and were going to change them at school. One day we came wearing name tags...mine said, "hello, my name is now Kella". It stuck for a couple of days and then I decided it was too much work to change my identity and gave up.

It's an amazing thing, after years of dreaming about names as a young girl, to have the opportunity to ACTUALLY give someone a name. It's really one of the most amazing things about this whole experience so far. It's just so common for little girls to fall in love with names they want to give their baby eventually...and to actually get to the point to pick one name out of the entire world to give your precious baby, is just an incredible honor. And we get to pick two!

I could talk about baby names with B for days and days on end, as he quickly found out. B is the type of person who HATES indecision, even about fun decisions like this. He hates ongoing discussions about possibilities. It makes Christmas shopping (or any shopping) with him excrutiatingly painful because we'll find something and I will have to continue looking to make sure we have picked the perfect gift...while he thinks we had already found it 6 hours before. :) I could see that we would never come to a decision unless I implemented a more structured process so I did.

I went through the top 1000 boy and girl names from last year, copying into a document all the ones I would seriously consider for our own kids. I guess I'm pretty picky because I only had about 12 names each for the girl and boy! I LIKE lots of other names, but love a lot fewer. So here was the list I made:

Boys (the number in parentheses is the rank of popularity in 2007):

Ethan (4)
Connor (8)
Alexander (15)
Aaron (16)
Tristan (18)
Nathan (23)
Collin (38)
Luke (46)
Mason (56)
Tyler (66)
Carson (none)

Girls:
Ava (1)
Hannah (11)
Haley (15)
Ella (16)
Savannah or Savana (33)
Sara (49)
Riley (52)
Alexis or Alexa (74/60)
Rachel (62)
Avery (71)
Kenzie (81)
Kenna or Makenna (none)

B agreed that if I made the first step to make such a list, that would be the list we would work with. I made this list and sent an email to B. It said, "your children's names are on this list somewhere. Please remove your least favorite name from each list and send back to me." I didn't know if I could finally intrigue him enough to pick names, but the process was just what he needed...a couple of minutes later I got an email back that he had taken a couple of names from. Gleeful that I had found a way to engage him, I removed 2 more names and sent it back to him. Couple of minutes later, he removed 2 more names. We continued the back and forth. Through this process we got down to the following:

Boys :

Ethan
Connor
Aaron
Tristan
Nathan
Carson

Girls:

Ava
Ella
Sarah
Kenna

I have to say something about Kenna. When we did our first IVF, naively thinking it might actually work, we went to lunch at the beach to have fun talking about names. At some point we came up with the name Kenna and both felt it was perfect. In the course of the last 2 years, whenever we would refer to our future possible child, it was always by the name of Kenna. Kenna has felt like a part of our lives for much longer than before we knew we were pregnant. I just always assumed if we had a girl she would be Kenna. The problem with the name is that it is unusual and people always have weird/uncomfortable reactions to it (when we have mentioned it) - friends, family, everyone. That said, it was a given that it was on the table since it had been with us so long. At the end of the list I provided B with "suggested pairings" (yes, like wine and cheese) that I thought worked well together:

Connor/Carson and Kenna
Ethan and Ella
Nathan and Sarah

I have to say that Nathan is one of the few "classic" boys names that I have always loved, so it seemed to fit nicely on the list. It seemed like it should go with a nice classic girl's name so I wrote out "Nathan and Sarah". For some reason, they instantly sounded right. I've never thought twice about the name Sarah in my life. If you had asked me to think about it I would have said it's a pretty name but it never stood out to me. The fact that it struck me when going through the top 1000 names is really interesting in retrospect...but even more interesting that it made it to our mutual top 4 girls' names. Nathan and Sarah just sounded like they belonged to our family.

The more we talked about various name pairs for the twins, the more we realized that although we love a lot of modern names, we don't picture US with kids having those names. We just don't seem like a family that would have unusual names. And then the most unexpected decision came. After a legacy of unusual name creations like Katridiana Narisia, we are going to name our children.......Nathan and Sara.

After deciding on the names once and for all I was really excited...then I felt sad about losing Kenna. So after further discussion, this has been solved and all now seems right in the world...the full names of our children will be:

Nathanael Bryan (B's name is Bryan)
Sara Makenna (Makenna sounds better than Kenna with Sara)

Now I can go buy those cute wooden letters to hang in the nursery. :)

THE GENDERS!

THE GENDER RESULTS ARE IN:

Yes, they are boy/girl twins! And everything measures great! We went to Target right after and bought a cute little outfit for each. :) The babies have grown so much since we last saw them. They weigh 10 ounces and look so much more human now. The girl even yawned on the ultrasound! At the end, they were facing each other where we could see both at the same time and the girl reached out and punched the boy a couple of times!

I will post ultrasound pictures after I have a chance to scan everything in!