Ordinary Time

[J] While pregnant, E's usual sleep-based superpowers are even more astounding. Being home for Christmas break from my regular work schedule, I get to see her regularly nod off for an hour in a kitchen chair surrounded by noisy waves of children crashing in and out of the room. E's method for approaching any project, including adding two more babies to the household, involves research. She recently picked up several books from the library on twin-related subjects. However, she was disappointed to find nothing particularly enlightening in any of them. The books seemed aimed at highly uninformed new parents. She pointed out that what she really needed was a book of tips for mothers of seven (or more) children who were pregnant with twins. ("Well, dear, I'm guessing that you may be one of the few qualified to write that book. And one of the few audience members clamoring for it, too.") Another comment on one of the books she checked out: "I certainly don&

As you can probably guess by my prolific posting this past month, I have been feeling fairly rotten. This pregnancy has seemed one of the worst as far as energy levels and general yuckiness. I had been chalking it up to that advanced-maternal-age-thing, but now I have a much, much better reason to explain why this pregnancy has seemed more difficult. Yesterday I went to have my first midwife appointment and when she couldn't find a heartbeat with the hand-held ???, (I'm realizing I have no idea what the thing is called that is used to listen to fetal heartbeats) she suggested we go down the hall and use the ultrasound machine. So we did. Without too much effort she found the baby and saw it move, but didn't see the heart right away, so kept trying to see it. And while she did find the heart, she also found something else...another baby with another beating heart! Yes... twins. (Which means we are going from 7 children directly to 9, skipping the stop at 8.) They are still