To-do lists and procrastination don't go

When I found out I was having twins it gave me the incentive to make plans to do all the jobs I'd been putting off.  My aim was to do them before I got too big, too uncomfortable or too lazy.

While I'm not as big as I will be in a few more weeks and not yet uncomfortable to the point where I'm constantly moving about trying to ease the pressure from, oh well, from everywhere, I have to admit that presently I am really, really lazy.

I'm finding it hard getting the energy to do the every day jobs that need to be done. Five loads of laundry to be washed, hung or thrown into the dryer, folded (I only iron if necessary - i.e church clothes is about it) and put away, hoovering twice a day, cleaning bathrooms etc.  The usual every day chores.

Plus homeschooling.

Throwing food at the kids is another must do job.  They even want three meals a day.

Who knew?

I haven't even pottered in the garden this week.

I'm unmotivated to do the day to day jobs.

Let alone the to-do list.  The cleaning out the kitchen cupboards, the re-arranging the bedroom drawers, the sorting out of clothes, the cleaning the oven.

All stuff I don't want to do.

I don't want to do it right now.  It's not likely I'm going to want to do it in a few weeks either.  I know it will be better to do it all now, before I'm too big and before I'm too uncomfortable and before I become even more lazy.  Yes, I still think a deeper slump into slothdom is possible.

Instead I've been doing other stuff.  I've been working on the blog.  I've been typing up posts for future publishing.  I've been editing photos and planning ahead.  I've been writing other articles.

I even realised that it's been over two months since we returned from Disneyland Paris and I still haven't told you all about it.

So as that is another notch on the procrastination post.  Only that is one I can deal with.

By next week my oven will still probably need cleaning.  The drawers will still need re-arranging and the clothes will still need sorting.  You'd do well to stay away from my kitchen cupboards too.

But one thing I promise you.

I will bring you Disneyland Paris.

And in return you can work through my to-do list for me.

Deal?

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Twin Pregnancy Diary - 16 weeks 2 days

Twin Pregnancy 16 weeks exactly

Another week of pregnancy has flown by.  I don't feel like I'm very much bigger than last week.  What do you think?

I've been searching all week for signs of reassurance that everything is still going well.  This pregnancy lark is so worrying, no matter how many times you've been through it before.

I've been getting the doppler out every couple of days in order to play hide and seek with the twins.  It takes a while but I've found them in the end, not giving up and tracing over every single centimetre of my belly until I finally find the heartbeats.  The saying goes that if the heartbeat sounds like a train chugging along then baby is a boy, but if it sounds like a galloping horse then the baby is a girl.  Also, if the beats per minute are over 140 it means that baby is a girl and under 140 for a boy.  I haven't tried counting the beats as they are so active I can barely get a few straight seconds before I'm having to play chase with the babies to track them again.  They both sound like trains though.  Given that these aren't scientific theories at all and just old wives tales I don't take much notice of them.  It's fun to do though and then see what the outcome is on Birth-Day.  The last few babies all had train heartbeats and they all turned out to be boys.  I have nothing to compare it to though, as our last girl was almost twelve years ago now.  Long before I even dreamed of being able to own a doppler of my own.  Within another 20 years it wouldn't surprise me if pregnant women could buy their own portable ultrasound machines to get a glimpse of their baby whenever they wanted.  How cool would that be?!

Once I've reassured myself that the babies are fine in their little cocoons I then obsess about not having felt them move yet.  I know it will happen when it will happen and that no two pregnancies are the same.  Heaven knows I've felt first movements anywhere from 15 weeks to 22 weeks and so I'm well aware of how vast and varied the gestational period can be whereby you are aware of the tiny flutters.

But I lack patience. 


So what I do is lie on the bed at night perfectly, perfectly still and wait.  The problem is I am so perfectly, perfectly still and concentrating so perfectly, perfectly hard that without realising I am perfectly, perfectly asleep.

At 16 weeks the babies are each approximately 12cm's from crown to rump and are about to embark on a growth spurt.  The belly pic's are sure to be interesting over the next few weeks is all I can say!  And I'm definitely going to need bigger maternity clothes.  Oh joy.



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Wrapping up

Friday, sweet Friday. Why does it take you so long to come around? Not only does it take ages for Friday to show itself it's seemed even longer this week thanks to the promise of the Bank Holiday weekend. A whole extra day with Mike home!

This week we have had an achievement of sorts.

In our third week of potty training, Paddy, the reluctant potty trainer finally seems to have cracked it!

Hoorah!!

We've had two whole days of no accidents, and I have barely needed to remind him to use the potty. Instead he has progressed to realising when he needs to use it and settles himself down!

I said it once and I'll say it again - Hoorah!!

I did something I haven't done for a while and baked. The chocolate chip cookies were so delicious I even ate one at 6.30 this morning. Yes, very wrong I know. But they were nice. I might even share the recipe with you next week.  If you're nice, that is.

Of course, it was our wedding anniversary on Wednesday.  We didn't do anything special apart from exchange cards which we always keep.  Mike came home with flowers for me, roses and my favourites, lilies.  Then we got the kids off to bed and vegged out chatting on the sofa while he massaged my legs for me.  I don't need fancy meals or celebrations.  That was enough to make me happy and was so very appreciated.

The kids are still unable to control volume levels. I sometimes wonder that if we had six girls in a row rather than boys, would be be living in house of harmonious singing in rounds, of daisy chains and perfectly sweet manners rather than headlocks, yelling, screeching and furniture diving?

We had a storm yesterday evening for which the garden was visibly thankful.  Everything looks so green and revived this morning. Magical!

Shortly before the boys' bedtimes last night was a beautiful double rainbow.  It was one moment in an exhausting day which I was thankful to have to just stop for a moment and look.  It was beautiful.  The picture just doesn't do it justice.

So that's my week all wrapped up.

How was yours?

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Twin determination

I'm not talking about stubborn traits which twins have.  I'm sure my twins will be no less stubborn than their older siblings.

I'm only really going to focus on one thing in this post which is to explain how types of twins are determined - in other words, how to know if they are identical vs non-identical.

In my post "Twin Pregnancy Diary - The top 10 twin pregnancy questions I've been asked so far", question 4 was, "Are they identical?" to which I answered "It seems that they are most likely non-identical". 


I had no set answer.  


This is why.


Twins can be either monozygotic or dizygotic, identical or non-identical.  


Identical twins are monozygotic.  They are created by a fertilised egg splitting  any time within 14 days of fertilisation.  Depending on when exactly during this time the egg splits will determine whether they will share sacs and placentas.  Identical twins will always be the same sex and have the same dna.  


Monozygotic twins who were created from a fertilised egg splitting from around 9-12 days will share the same sac and placenta and a single chorion and are referred to as Monochorionic/Monoamniotic ("mono" in Greek means "only" or "single"):

(I can tell that you are blown away by my technical drawings).


Identical twins can also be Monochorionic/Diamniotic which means they each have their own sac and placenta and a single chorion.  Again, they will have been created by a single fertilised egg splitting but within 4-9 days of fertilisation:

Our twins are dichorionic/diamniotic which means that they each have their own sac and own placenta.  This is the most favourable type of twin pregnancy to have as your babies are not at risk of getting caught up in each others cords or from TTTS (Twin to Twin Transfusion Syndrome - where one twin takes extra nourishment at the expense of the other and can be very dangerous to both babies).  Here is my technical diagram:

This means that although they are more likely to have been created by the fertilisation of two separate eggs resulting in non-identical twins (or fraternal twins), they might also have been created by a single egg splitting within the first three days of fertilisation resulting in identical twins, hence the reason for my answer above. 

How would be know for certain?  

Well, unless a sonogram during pregnancy revealed the genders as being boy/girl twins, which would immediately tell us that they are non-identical as identical twins cannot be different sexes, we couldn't know for certain until they were born and they were either visibly dissimilar, or on testing their DNA or by examining the placentas.  

I hope I've managed to explain that clearly and please, tempting as it may be, please don't steal my drawings for putting in medical journals (although a link back is always nice to have!).

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Nine Years.

Nine years today since we married.

We met when I was thirteen.

We went on our first date when I was fourteen and he was sixteen.

1989.

Perms were all the rage as was black ash furniture and shoulder pads.

It seems so long ago.

We split up, then got back together.

Finally, after lots of ups and plenty of downs and after dilly-dallying for long enough, we got married.

It was 13 years after our first date.

2002. 

The world hadn't ended when 1999 had turned to 2000.

The computers of the world didn't melt down.

Planes didn't fall out of the sky.

And people weren't driving flying cars.

2011.

By now we had a total of nine children, drove a 17 seater minibus and kept chickens in our garden.

It was not what we ever imagined in 2002.

And certainly not in 1989.

We didn't know it when this photo was taken but there were already another two children on the way.  We only knew about one of them.

We've grown up together though not grown old.

We haven't changed, have we?

Happy Anniversary, Mike.

You make me smile every day and I'm so lucky to have you.

I love you more than you can imagine, even when I don't show it.

Thank you for putting up with me.

My love forever,



Edit: This post was also linked to Cafe Bebe's Flashback Friday, even though I didn't post it on a Friday.  What can I say?  I'm a rebel. 

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In the garden

Our garden isn't very big.  It's normally covered with toys, piles of mud, toys, piles of mud, toys, piles of mud and occasionally, chicken poop.

There hasn't been much grass there for a couple of years.  What the kids don't dig up/slide on/eat (depending on the age) gets pulled up by the chickens.  Mike's been diligently working on that for the last month or so, and now we have the finest lawn we can ever remember having.  It's like the courts at Wimbledon.  Except not quite.

A few weeks back my mother in law gave me a few pots and seed trays which made me very happy.  We had a couple of stacks of terracotta pots of differing sizes piled up safely out of reach of the kids - and where I couldn't get to them either.  I asked Mike if he'd get them for me, which he gladly did and I had plans of making a feature of the old, "dangerous to use cement step"s going up to the main part of the garden.  They were closed off once Mike had built "safe steps" that weren't so steep, weren't so dangerous and had a handrail to hold onto.  The first time Mike had built the "safe steps" Sid missed his footing and fell down them.  He'd never fallen off the "dangerous to use cement steps".  Murphy, your law sucks.

Anyway, I digress.

My plans were that I would use a few of the larger pots for growing different types of lettuce in, then the smaller pots would be home to tomato plants and flowers.  I wanted a lot of pots dotted about the bottom part of the garden with lots of pretty flowers growing in them.

All I had to do was wash the pots and get them ready.

Before I could do that Mike knocked them over.

And broke lots.

I was not happy.

Still, like the little soldier I'm not I made the most of what I had left.

Here is how my container garden has grown in the last month:

Here is my pot of strawberries.  Yes, more strawberries.  I told you before I was determined to have home-grown strawberries this year.  And they're growing.  Can you see them?  To stop the plants and fruit from touching the soil and rotting I had bought some Mulch Mats.  I was expecting them to be more than they were which was ridiculously overpriced black cardboard.  In future I shall go to the cheapo store and get some cheap black cardboard from the kiddy art aisle.  £4.00 for ten squares of card just doesn't seem worth it to me. 

Here are some more pots on the "dangerous to use cement steps".  Some have flowers, some have tomatoes and three have lettuce.  I should have had more pots to show you but Mike knocked them over.  And broke lots.  

And here is a better view of one of the lettuce pots.  I started off some different types of cut-and-come-again lettuce in small pots, including Red Salad Bowl, Mizuna, Rocket, and Lamb's Lettuce.  Once they'd grown a little I transferred them into the terracotta pots.  Cut the larger leaves as they grow and allow the smaller ones to grow and, together with successional sowing of new seeds you can have a regular supply throughout the summer.  I do need more than three pots for all of us to have enough to eat over the summer months.  But as we know I can't.

Because Mike knocked them over.

And broke lots. 

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Twin Pregnancy Diary - 15 weeks 2 days

I had a wonderful development last week.  On Friday, at 14 weeks and 6 days I finally heard both heartbeats on my doppler.  It's such a wonderful sound.  So reassuring and eagerly awaited.  I've been checking once or twice a week for the last few weeks, not really expecting to hear anything until possibly 16 weeks in.

Now I'm impatient for the first flutters.  Sometimes I wonder if I've just felt something and then I put it down to wind or imagination because there's nothing more.  Yes, I'm aware that I'm impatient to feel the babies move now and in another few weeks they'll be causing me great discomfort as they contort into any space available within me to get comfortable, but it's always something we as expectant mothers wait for with baited breath, and it can never happen soon enough.  It's always magical to feel.  Does having two babies moving about feel much different to one, I wonder?

The babies now apparently measure approximately 10cm's each from crown to rump. Now I know there are two of them growing in there and I knew I'd get bigger than normal faster than I would with a singleton but really...

Twins 15 weeks

This big?!

Already??!!


I'm going to demand a recount at the next scan to ensure they didn't miss another one... or ten.  Honestly, my maternity clothes are just not going to last the distance.  I'm going to have to get... bigger clothes.


Soon.

Does my bump look bigger than last week, do you think?

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There is always "I love you, Mummy"

These last couple of weeks haven't been the easiest for me.

Teething baby is waking four, five, six times a night.  Every night.  I'm lucky that Mike and I take turns but still, it's tiring for us both.

Progress is very slow with the reluctant, argumentative potty trainer which has resulted in daily scrubbing of the carpets/child/me, sometimes more than once.

I've been nursing the constant headache from hell, one which I've woken up with, has stayed with me all day and I've taken to bed with me. Yes, I know I said "hell" and I know it's a bad word for a bad place but this is a bad headache.  And I've had it for the best part of a fortnight now.

In turn, the constant headache and complete lack of energy is leaving my already impatient self even more impatient and consequently very, extremely crabby and bad tempered.

It was with relief when three of the boys set off to Boys' Brigade last night. Paddy was relatively quiet, falling asleep on his potty (again) and Cait was getting ready for Girls' Brigade. Joseph was kicking away on the carpet leaving me and Oliver to have a conversation together.

A conversation we have several times a day.

Because no matter how fraught, how frazzled and how tired you can get, there is always "I love you, Mummy!" to make it all better.

(Oh, and please excuse the mess!)

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Allotment update

We went along to the allotment a couple of weeks ago after a few weeks break. Oh my, what a mistake that break was. The place was over-run with weeds. Every single carefully cleared part of the space was now covered. The space was no more. It was a giant weed party.

I was heartbroken. I know it was our own fault for not keeping on top of things but really, the weeds grow this much this fast?

We wasted no time in getting to work clearing out the raised beds which already contained plants. I headed straight for my strawberry plants. I had to save them. If there was one thing I wanted to grow successfully more than anything else it was them and come hell or high water, I was going to get my wish.

Bit by bit and a couple of hours later we'd cleared the beds containing strawberries, garlic, onions, potatoes and lettuce, plus the areas around the fruit bushes. The mangetout didn't seem to have grown at all, bar about three plants in a 16" row, making me theoretically kick myself for not putting up the netting to stop the birds/rabbits/whatever the culprit was from getting to them. The peas were bound by some climbing weed that I'm not horticultural enough to identify.

Hopefully we'll be able to get back there this weekend. It looks like the empty and very overgrown beds will need rotovating again but the problem then is all the weeds get chopped up and dug in. I need a way of getting rid of the weeds without using chemicals and without damaging any crops we're trying to grow.

Logic and commonsense tells me the best way is by visiting regularly and using copious amounts of elbow grease. My laziness tells me there must surely be something in a bottle to do the job.

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Twin Pregnancy Diary - The top 10 twin pregnancy questions I've been asked so far

I've been getting lots of support through messages and emails sent to me which is always lovely. Curiosity is natural and so I've decided to compile a list of the top ten questions I have been asked most often along with my replies.

Here goes! 

1. Has the shock worn off yet?


I'm less shocked than I was when I first found out but still finding it very hard to believe it's real sometimes.  I flit between excitement to "Oh my goodness how am I going to do this?!" in an eighth of a second.  I wouldn't have it any other way though and feel completely blessed. 


2. Do twins run in your family?


There are no twins on my side but Mike's dad was a twin and we found out I was pregnant two days after his dad's funeral so find that a bit of a co-incidence! 


3. Did you ever think you'd have/wish for twins?


I always liked the theory of twins but didn't think I could handle it in practice.  Well look how things turned out!  We'll soon be finding out how it goes in real life, God willing.  I never expected that we would be blessed with them though.


4. Are they identical?


It seems that they are most likely non-identical.


5. Will you find out the sex of the babies?


No, we like to be surprised at the end.


6. What are you hoping for?


Having had six boys in a row I'm pretty used to sticking to boys now.  Plus we don't expect to have a girl now anyway given our run of boys.  I think it would be a complete shock to hear "It's a girl!" and I really don't think it's likely to happen anyway.  It would be nice to have a boy/girl mix as the girls are desperately outnumbered and girls clothes are just so pretty, plus we could dress one in pink and one in blue and it'll make it easier to tell them apart!  Two girls would be a complete shock but would also be nice to have, although we have no girl clothes at all.  So in short, two boys, two girls or one of each would be fine by us!


7. When is your actual due date?


12th November 2011 but I think that full term for twins is 37 weeks which brings us into October (the 22nd to be precise, a day after my dad's birthday and two days before mine).


8. Why do you have to have another caesarean?


The last three pregnancies were c-sections, all but the third being emergencies due to fetal distress.  I'm considered high risk anyway given the number of children I've had, add to that my thalassaemia trait (low iron and higher risk of haemorrage) plus the three previous c-sections and the hospital won't even consider anything but a c-section now. 


9. How will you manage?


By the grace of God and the seat of our pants.


10. What do the other children think?


They are very excited and pregnancy takes far too long for them. The boys want twin boys, but they'll accept one of them being a girl.  They're not happy at the thought of two girls. 


And the bonus question...


11. Will these be these be the last?


We were thinking it would be a nice idea to make them the middle two children. 

Do you have any questions for us?  Email them to family@largerfamilylife.com or come and join us on Facebook or Twitter for a chat.

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