Essential Baby Gear

Nothing like babies to open your heart and open your wallet, right? Welcome to part two of my three-part series on baby-related material acquisition. My last post, on the showers, documented a fairly typical aspect of the baby preparation process. The same can be said for the planned subject of the final post of this series: decorating the babies’ room. This middle post, however, is a little more shameful.

Let’s start with the most justifiable of my recent impulse buys: the baby books! Because we have done oh-so-reliable a job of documenting my pregnancy here on this blog, I decided that baby books were a an obvious must-have for us. Actually, I am hopeful that we’ll be able to make ourselves fill these out, because I remember thoroughly enjoying looking through my baby book when I was younger. Also, with twins, we have a unique opportunity to neglect each child’s baby book equally, rather than going all out with the first kid’s and then forgetting about the second kid’s except for a hastily scrawled “you were born and now you’re in the fourth grade.”

So baby books it was to be, although I probably didn’t have to spring for top-of-the-line baby books. But these had several appealing features: first, they aren’t too cutesy. Second, they are both gender neutral. Third, they coordinate without matching. Fourth, the company offers an optional twin insert page pack, which of course I snapped up right along with the books. Fifth, they were running a buy two, get one cat free special.

We’ve started filling out the pre-birth pages, and even Matt, who was initially skeptical, admitted that it’s kind of fun. When you come to visit us after the babies are born, be sure to badger us to make sure we’re keeping up with them.

This next purchase is also not at all frivolous. In planning ahead for our post-partum hospital stay, we realized that it simply wasn’t practical to expect to lug in our much loved but cumbersome SLR with external flash to capture all those wondrous and bloody first moments. We needed something small and fully automatic. But what, were we going to use cell phone cameras? I don’t think so. So a cute little point-and-shoot (one highly recommended by our photography buff friend Ken) is now standing by, ready to go into the hospital bag and snap zillions of photos that you will all have to look at one at a time and go “awwwwww” convincingly for each and every one.

Okay, I’m going to try to convince you that this last item is also a baby gear essential, but I can’t even make myself fall for it, really. This is my new iPod Touch. You might think that this is an awfully impractical thing for me to buy myself when we have two babies, and all their attendant expenses, on the way, but think of all the ways this will improve the babies’ lives:

1) I will be able to enter Trixie Tracker data from anywhere in the house, thus keeping meticulous track of every diaper, burp, and grunt.

2) I will be able to create baby-specific playlists according to their personal musical tastes.

3) I will be able to have hand-held internet access even during the early days when I am confined to the couch constantly feeding babies, thus discouraging me from becoming one of those lame, out-of-touch moms.

4) I will be able to carry photos of the babies around with me on the large, high definition screen, thus enabling all interested parties (by which I mean everyone I run into, of course) to see their adorability in crystal clear technicolor.

5) I will not resent the babies for forcing me to give up my dreams of having an iPod Touch in order to save my money to give them a better life.

I have also tried to distract you from the frivolousness of this purchase by including a photo of my 34-week belly. Big, right? Makes the iPod look insignificant. Hardly worth noting. La la la.

Week 20

So, what have all of you been up to? We bought a house, painted it, moved, sold a house, and unpacked. (Well, we started unpacking. I don’t think we can legitimately claim to have unpacked until there are no more cardboard boxes in our living room)

It’s been a bit of whirlwind, is what I’m saying, so we haven’t exactly been right on top of taking or posting pictures. But the pregnancy continues! Here, at last, are the week 20 photos:

In previous weeks, all of the pictures were taken in front of a neutral or scenic background. We thought for this week it might be fun to take the picture against a backdrop that illustrated what our lives were like when the picture was taken. I think this picture conveys “disarray” pretty well, don’t you?

Things are going very well! Rachel’s feeling good, our house is filling up with our belongings and shiny new furniture from IKEA, and we’re starting to make a big list of the baby stuff we’re going to need. In fact, it’s kind of crucial that we make that list soon, because if we think our house is filling up now…

Week 16

Here I am at 16 weeks! (You can click the pictures to see them larger, if you so desire.) I wanted to start taking pictures of Matt every couple weeks as well. I thought it would be hilarious, but it turns out he does not share my killer sense of humor.

We’ve bid the first trimester good bye and have been happily inhabiting the second trimester for a few weeks now. So far, a vast improvement! I was starting to feel better during week 13, but then I came down with a nasty flu at week 14 that set me back for several days. Once I finally got over that, I began being treated to long stretches of feeling almost…normal? Can that be? And normal is blissful right now.

I still get pretty sleepy around 8:30 p.m., but overall I have much more energy and zest for life. I can now contemplate a future with babies in it with excitement rather than a sense of “why did we think this was a good idea, again?” I have finally discovered that I do have the capacity to coo over frickin‘ adorable onesies (when I was sick, all I could do was dread how much work it would be to wash them). And today I went shopping for some maternity clothes with my mom (thanks for your help, Mom, in all its varieties!) and am ready to embrace my soon-to-be gigantic self.

We’re starting to pack up the house in anticipation of our move. It’s daunting, so I prefer to avoid thinking about it. As far as I’m concerned, we’re just putting all our stuff into boxes as part of our new cardboard-based organization system.

Week 12

Let’s take a look at the twins at the end of the first trimester from the inside and the outside, shall we? Here’s what the little critters look like now:

And here’s what Rachel looks like now:

Starting to look like there’s some babies in there, huh? She’s been feeling pretty awful for the last few days, but I’m hoping it’s related to the low barometric pressure… or something.

Reaction

It’s important to know your own foibles and faults. It helps to be aware of them to try to minimize them and their negative impact or impression on others. It also helps to exploit them for their humor value, especially if you’re looking for a way to introduce a short piece of non-fiction writing.

Here’s one of mine: I like attention. Well, I like the good kind of attention. I definitely dread public embarrassment, but public successes are the fuel that powers my engine. (Apparently, I also like clunky metaphors. And I’d rather undermine my own writing with disclaimers than edit.)

Anyway, there are very few opportunities for an attention-lover that are as gratifying as announcing that you’re having a baby. I admit it: I love watching people’s eyes widen and their mouths start to form expectant Os when I say, “Actually, I have some exciting news…” So far the reactions have been entirely gratifying.

It sucks, a little, to think about telling people my wife is pregnant as a performance (see above re: foibles and faults) but from a performance point of view, there are few pauses as delicious as the pause between, “Rachel’s pregnant…” and, “… with twins.” Can you think of anything that could be better? Even, “I bought a lottery ticket…” and, “… I won,” can’t compete, because even the greenest rube has to see it coming. (No one tells a story about losing the lottery.) Seriously try it out now on your own:

Rachel’s pregnant.

…

With twins!

Feel that? You’ve got one of the best one-two punches ever. The first one is pretty amazing. Everyone loves to hear that a friend is pregnant. They’re so excited! They’re surprised! They’re so happy for you! They have so many questions! And then, just as it’s sinking in, just as the waveform starts to curve over the top and start to fall off—BAM. Twins, sucka.

With at most one or two exceptions, nearly everyone has said something on the order of, “No.  You’re kidding.” (Which kind of makes me wish I were. That would be hilarious.) Our friends seem as knocked on their asses by the news as we were. We almost always get a big hug after “pregnant” and slack-jawed shock after “twins.”

I think I’ll be a little sad when we run out of people to tell.

A Passover Feast

I admit that we haven’t been blogging much recently. On the one hand, it’s because we’ve been very busy buying a new house and trying to get ours on the market quickly. On the other hand, it’s because there hasn’t been much to say about the pregnancy, assuming you don’t want to read post after post saying “My stomach doesn’t feel good,” “Wow, I still feel nauseated,” and “Ugh, nothing sounds good to eat but not eating makes me feel sick.”

We told Matt’s siblings the news last weekend, which was a lot of fun. They were in town for Passover, and I think this photo from the seder illustrates my current feelings about food. Can you guess which plate is mine?

And I didn’t even finish my portion.

Looks like we overshot a little

It’s twins. We’re having twins. There are twins in my uterus. As in twice as many as we thought. As in Bobbsey or Olsen. As in 40 percent of a basketball team. As in two-ninths of a Supreme Court.

Well, either it’s twins or it’s an alien. (Big hollow eyes, little mouth underneath, and it’s even giving a little thumbs up — see its hand just below and to the left of its head?)

Of the two options, I was sort of hoping for alien, but the doctor seemed pretty convinced it’s twins. Matt laughed and I cried when we got the news. How did twins happen? At my ultrasound right before my trigger, they told me I had just one follicle ready to go, but at today’s ultrasound the doctor was clearly able to see two spots on my right ovary where two eggs had been released. So much for the exactness of science.

This is going to take a little getting used to.

Positive!

After much waiting and hoping, Rachel was able to wake me up this morning with good news.

That’s right: she took two, for good measure. Needless to say, we were quite excited…

… until it occurred to me just where the sticks we’d been joyfully waving around had been.