Today I’m 28 weeks and finally in my third trimester. I say finally because the math has been a bit hard to pin down so far. On my first prenatal visit, the nurse calculated my LMP due date (look it up, kids) and gave me July 28. I arrived at my first ultrasound on March 10 thinking I was 20 weeks, and along with the news that I was cooking a two-pack came a smaller size estimate than expected. The twins measured about 15 and 16 weeks, so my due date was recalculated to August 20.
Somehow, this information didn’t really make it back to my OB’s office. Unfortunately, I get the feeling sometimes that they aren’t on top of things. Remember that since Craig is finishing up grad school we have Humana Student Health Insurance (Need health care? Roll the dice. Evens we’ll cover it; odds we won’t. Oh, and don’t use those dice. Use ours). The OB’s office we have to use caters to—um—mostly a demographic that I don’t really identify with. Let’s just say that when I first called the office and told them I was pregnant, their words to me were not “How exciting!” but “Do you need counseling?” (read=abortion). And the person waiting next to me in the OB waiting room could be wearing an orange jumpsuit and leg irons.
For whatever reason, my OB stuck with my LMP due date and sonography the measurement one, which is supposed to be much more accurate, and so I was always bouncing back and forth between estimates of how far along I am (22…25…24…27…25...). At my last visit I pointed out the error, the nurse practitioner measured the size of my uterus as a tiebreaker, and now I think that everybody’s on the same page. If my due date is, indeed, August 20, then I’m 28 weeks today.
If I’m not due for 12 more weeks, then why does my blog bio say we’re expecting in July? According to my doctor, everything with twins happens about four weeks faster. So milestones or symptoms I experience seem to arrive about four weeks earlier than I remember with Devon. That includes delivery, too. Twins are delivered at 36 weeks on average, and at 37 weeks ready or not. My third trimester isn’t really even three months, it’s nine more weeks if I’m lucky. So our arrival estimate, the one we’ve been giving out, is August 1st. It’s important to make it to August if I can because with a premature delivery comes a NICU stay and an insurance NIGHTMARE (see above). It would also be nice for sentimental reasons. My maternal grandmother, Irma Meth, was born in August. She is still alive but not doing very well. When I was helping my family downsize her possessions I kept her August Birthday Angel figurine, thinking that I, my brother, or one of my cousins could have a baby girl with an August birthday someday and I’d pass it along.
The new question I’m hearing fairly often is “So, have you adequately prepared Devon for becoming a big brother and the changes that go along?” Umm… he’s 14 months old. His full vocabulary is: Daddy, car, peg, go, ball. How does one use this linguistic platform to have the conversation, exactly? Don’t misunderstand me; I talk to my son a lot. So much that people in the grocery store steer away from us, me filling my cart and narrating like the star of my own documentary and Devon listening soberly. “Kidney beans! Your favorite! No, we don’t eat the bananas until we get home. Do you like the way the bag of chips feels?” Sometimes, while sitting up in the cart he pushes my belly like the button on one of his toys and then looks up to give me a big smile.
Devon is still on the small side for all of this. At Babies R'US I browsed through a rack of "I'm a big brother!" t-shirts looking for his size. The smallest they had was a 3T. I don’t think anything could prepare Devon for the changes we’ll experience this summer. Any of us, really. Not me, crossing activities off my list one by one because I’m just getting too big and awkward. Not Craig, who likes to watch the vague shapes of our daughters’ limbs move up one side of my stomach and down the other like bubbles in a lava lamp. We’re all in for an interesting time.
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