I finally broke down in one of those crazy-pregnant-lady puddles of emotion everyone jokes/warns/rants about.
I mentioned yesterday that my back hurts. That’s a bit of an understatement. I’m no beginner when it comes to back pain. Two car accidents in my teens left me with a slipped disc in my between-the-shoulder-blades region. My back is notorious for aching up there and occasionally falling asleep. It’s weird, it’s uncomfortable, it sometimes makes me twitchy and unable to sit still in a desk chair. I used to say, “My back hurts,” but that really meant, “Hey, I’m a little uncomfortable, and I need some Advil and maybe a little back rub.”
Now?
“My back hurts” translates more accurately into “SWEET BABY JESUS, I DON’T WANT THIS BACK ANYMORE. IT’S FAULTY, AND THE PIECE OF GARBAGE HURTS ALL OVER.”
Fortunately, I’ve only had one or two days a week that can’t be remedied with my trusty heating pad/ice pack regimen. Those days suck, but I wake the next day feeling much better. Easy peasy lemon squeezy.
And then last week happened.
I think there were only one or two days with pain that my heating pad and ice pack regimen took care of. The rest of the week was full of pain that left me cursing my back and anyone I encountered who looked comfortable. Yeah, I even went so far as to tell our sweet doggy, Lucky, to kiss my ass the other night because she was snoozing so comfortably next to me. How dare she be comfy?
So far, I’ve written off the especially painful days as particularly eventful growing days. “The babies must be hitting a growth spurt today,” I’d say.
I feel absolutely horrible complaining – even just in my head – after all we’ve been through to get where we are today. Infertility is painful, and I know the dark times were far more painful than this discomfort ever could be. Plus, I won’t be pregnant forever, and this pain will eventually get better, with three amazing little people that will make all the pain a distant memory. I know that. I didn’t know that about the infertility pain.
My growth-spurt declarations helped put immediate, daily perspective on the reason behind my pain. It also put a quick deadline on it. Life has been fairly normal up to this point. I just have to budget my plans and make sure I don’t overdo things. That’s how I prevent self-induced pain. On the “growth spurt” days, I just cleared my plans and rested.
Again. Easy peasy lemon squeezy. Totally do-able. Not at all life changing.
This last week has been a different story. With only a handful of good days, I finally reached a boiling point today, and the unfortunate innocent-bystander victim was Rob.
I woke up this morning to make him lunch this morning, and my felt the terrible back pain the second I rolled out of bed. I made his lunch and decided to ice/heat my back while I ate breakfast and wrote some thank-you notes. After that, I headed back to bed for an early nap and to try sleeping off the last bit of pain.
I woke up and felt better, so I did a few things around the house before sitting back down to ice/heat and lunch. After then, I was feeling pretty decent, so I ventured out to run a few errands. Just in case being on my feet would ruin my whole day, I prepared by wearing my running shoes and strapping on my oh-so-sexy belly brace. The brace is a new purchase, one that’s been highly recommended. I figured there was no better time to test its awesomeness.
I went to the post office. I stopped at a bargain store for about 15 minutes. I went to Wal-Mart for 10 minutes.
Of course, it was in the back of Wal-Mart when the shit hit the fan. Suddenly, the kicked-in-the-crotch pain was back, making each step (can those stores BE any bigger?!) excruciating. My back throbbed from hips to shoulders.
In the time it took me to walk from the front to the back of the store, I felt like I could have laid down on the (disgusting) floor and begged someone to please carry me home.
I made it back out to my car making the most in-pain faces. I’m sure passersby thought I was about to give birth or something. I was a short drive from home, so I got in my car, let my weight redistribute and went on my way.
Pulling into the driveway, Rob called. I sounded funny, he asked what was up, and I said I was just really uncomfortable. He said he didn’t know why. He was joking. It was a sarcastic remark, because I have a very obvious reason why I’d be uncomfortable.
Except, in my pained state, I didn’t get the joke. Instead, I started crying. No, sobbing. Blubbering. I was an incoherent mess, and my poor husband had to try interpreting this foreign, hiccuppy language.
It wasn’t so much the pain. It was the frustration. Everything has been pretty manageable up to this point that a nearly full week out of nowhere spent feeling like a slave to the pain has been a complete slap in the face.
Of course, in my emotional vomiting, everything looked all gloom-and-doom, like I’ve officially and suddenly hit the wall those pregnant with multiples talk about. Now, in a more sane state of mind, I still have hope that my body has just been slow to adjust to a bigger, more substantial growth spurt (babies apparently double in size between weeks 24 and 28).
But this afternoon, my defeated psyche just couldn’t comprehend that possibility. And so I cried. Hard. For the first time, I cried like a pregnant lady.
Rob and I have been jokingly saying, “Go big or go home” in reference to PB&J since the beginning. OK, maybe not since the beginning. Maybe since about two weeks after we found out – once the “ARE YOU SERIOUS” haze lifted.
Moo point. What I’m trying to say is we’ve embraced the not normal and are pretty stoked about going above and beyond our former expectations. Our battle with infertility taught me to be thrilled with what I’m given, even if that meant we would only have one child in our family.
Ha!
Before PB&J, I hoped for nothing more than an average, event-free singleton pregnancy.
Ha! HA!
Life is a silly bitch, and I’m done hoping for anything average. If we want to get deeply philosophical and shit, I could probably put up a good argument against hoping for anything, but I’m not in a deep mood today.
Plus, certain circumstances in life simply require positive thinking. Good juju, if you will. As far as my experience goes, I think the whole business of making babies (I’m sure raising babies fits, too), if one such circumstance.
If I were OK with average, today would mark the beginning of the third trimester in an average triplet pregnancy. Average gestation is 32 weeks, and I now have 24 under my expanding belt.
That leaves a mere EIGHT WEEKS until the average triplets make their outside-world debut.
Pardon me while I faint. And vomit. And cry.
But, wait. I’m NOT OK with average. My body is spoiling me beyond reason lately. I’m 24 weeks pregnant with triplets, and I’m still not under any restrictions. I’m not at all swollen. So far, I have no complications.
My back hurts, but that’s understandable, considering I’ve put on 40 pounds in the last 24 weeks and can only comfortably sleep in one position. (Speaking of which, sometimes that one position isn’t even comfortable thanks to a baby poking out and making it feel like I’m laying on a boulder.) My blood pressure is higher than pre-pregnancy, but it’s been pretty much the same since my first OB visit. If you ask me, it’s just higher because of my super blood supply. I have some acid reflux issues, but it’s nothing I can’t control with a little planning and Prevacid. (Edited to add:) The newest not-cool pregnancy symptom seems to be the start of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, which is apparently pretty common. Thankfully, I’ve only woken up twice with a tingly hand (just my right), but I wake up daily feeling like I’ve spent the entire night with balled-up fists, ready to fight the monster in my closet. A few minutes of stretching fixes me right up, so you can see why I had to come back and add this little nugget.
Basically, I’d consider things fairly easy-breezy even if I were only growing one person. Except I’m growing three.
So you can see how Rob and I might find it relatively easy to embrace the “Go Big or Go Home” philosophy.
Andthenso, I take back the fainting. And the vomiting. And the crying. I plan to carry these three little body invaders for as close to 36 weeks as possible.
(Yes, 36. I’m fully OK with not aiming for a full 40 weeks. I may be reaching for an above-average goal, but I’m no fool. To be honest, carrying triplets a full 40 weeks sounds downright terrifying. I probably would give birth via belly explosion – no surgery required. YIKES.)
While I’m currently high on an easy pregnancy, I must admit to waiting for the shit to hit the fan. I just know a day is going to come when I am uncomfortable and miserable and praying for time to speed up. Because of that, I’m working on getting all the Stuff done. You know – Shopping Stuff, Stocking Stuff, Washing Stuff, Painting Stuff, etc.
My (short!) to-buy list is slowly-but-surely getting checked off (last week? our Graco Snugrides thanks to Mom & Dad!), and the to-do list is dwindling as well. I’ve been working on getting things organized in the babies’ room, and we’re going to paint the walls this week.
Once all the Stuff gets taken care of, I have big plans to relax, grow some big babies and read, read, read.
The next 12 weeks are going to pass as they pass – easy or uncomfortable – but if I have my way, they’ll pass with as little stress as possible.
* I’m OK with average. I swear. I’d just prefer above average when it comes to the length of the pregnancy.
God bless pajamas. Here I am, 23 weeks, 1 day into this triplet pregnancy – still feeling great aside from almost-constant backaches and a new kicked-in-the-crotch feeling. Not like baby kicks, either. Think steel-toed boots on the feet of an adult linebacker. Super awesome fun times. Ha!
Oh!
(Buckeye fans say what what!)
No, but really, hi there, readers. Holy craptastic blogger – guilty as charged.
I firmly believe in only writing when one has something to say, and, well, I haven’t had much to say. Well, not anything of substance. Sure, I could ramble on about how disappointed I am in this year’s Glee, how disappointed I am in my recent reading drought, how much I love not paying a cable/satellite TV bill or how I’ve buried myself in reading about how others not only survive but straight-up ROCK at being parents of multiples.
But, you know what? You don’t really care about that stuff. It’s blather that everyone else goes through in some fashion. TV, reading, paying bills, peer admiration – we’ve all been there, done that.
Plus, I have new neighbors who look a whole hell of a lot like my parents. They even feed me dinner like my parents. The only problem is their house is Internet free for a few more days, so all the time we’ve been spending over there has been pretty much unplugged time.
Crazy, I know.
So, yeah. I’ve been a bad blogger recently. I hate it, too. Swearsies. I miss writing. I miss dusting off the cobwebs of my brain and coming out from my thoughts to share Things with the World. I’ll be back at it soon. Swearsies.
Pretty soon, I’ll have lots of baby stuff to show off. We’ve already accumulated a ton, but we’re just now starting to organize that ton into more than just piles on the floor of their future room. Once it looks more like a place we like and not the household dump, I’ll show it off. Our stockpile of Stuff is amazing.
Until then, I’ll leave you with a few housekeeping updates. First, the recent stats from PB&J’s growth scan on Monday: Baby A (girl) has an estimated weight of 1 lb. 2 oz., Baby B (boy) is estimated at 1 lb. 1 oz., and Baby C (girl) is estimated at 1 lb. 2 oz. All three are right on the money for the gestational ages, and the perinatologist said they’re beautifully proportioned and perfect for their ages. She said they’d all be wearing size 3T in everything if we were talking about three 3 year olds.
I’m pretty proud.
PB&J are all kicking me on the daily now, and the kicks can be felt from the outside. It started this past Saturday, with Baby B giving me a few good thumps. By the afternoon, Baby A joined in the fun on my opposite side (B is on my left, A is on my right, and C is on the top right of my belly). Baby C didn’t start partying till Sunday, but her kicks have been some of the strongest. Just today, I felt two different babies kick at the same time in two different areas.
The first flutters that I felt really freaked me out, but now I smile and/or laugh and pause to pay attention to each thump. I’m enjoying these gentle little individual kick sessions. God knows I’ll soon feel like a human UFC match.
As for me, I’m up a whopping 37 lbs. so far. I about had a heart attack (both from seeing the number and because HOLY HELL, that’s a fast weight gain) when I saw the number, but then I realized that I’m right on target for my weight-gain goal at this point (anywhere from 35-45 lbs.) – that made me feel better.
Is it any wonder my back freaking hurts all the time? Ha!
And, for all you belly-watchers out there, this is me today, 22 weeks, 3 days pregnant with triplets:
Everyone knows a side effect of pregnancy is having to listen to unsolicited pregnancy advice. Then you get the child-raising advice. I’m a pro at the smile-and-nod, and I’m pretty quick with a witty response when the advice is just too silly/dumb/assinine to let slide.
I just never expected to get pregnancy-type advice from my dad.
“Jenny, did your doctors tell you about the cream you can put on your nipples to help desensitize them so breastfeeding won’t be quite so painful?”
Inside my head: DIG THAT HOLE IN THE SAND FASTER, WOMAN. YOUR HEAD CANNOT BE OUT HERE ANY LONGER. COVER YOUR EARS.
I’ll admit. I had a bad knee-jerk reaction and basically responded in a la-la-la-I-can’t-hear-you fashion.
Super mature, I know.
But just now, I realize how wrong I was to be such a weenie. My birth mom died when I was a toddler, so I’m missing out on all that motherly advice so many pregnant women find invaluable (I know this isn’t the case with all moms).
My dad, who talks so infrequently about my mom, is telling me about nipple cream because he wants her experiences to be available in case they help me out.
Don’t you feel like a jerk for me? GAH!
The other mom-experience he shared today is that my mom drank a beer a week when I was a fresh baby. Apparently beer helps with breastmilk supply, and she had some supply issues. Beer helped.
Bring on the Guinness, and throw in a side of humility, please.
