The universe provides

Dear universe,

The twin news wasn’t welcome. It was scary, and, frankly, you could have chosen someone more, well, motherly. I know lots of people that like children, and want more of them, and would be really, really awesome parents. But no, you picked me. So I’ll have to deal with it, and I will even try to be gracious about it.

Especially in light of todays news.

Mark has just accepted an new job, with a $13k pay rise. And an iPad.

Thank you.

He’s a great help in the kitchen

Mushroom Soup is a great thing to cook with Inigo, it doesn’t matter if the slicing isn’t perfect, and it keeps him occupied for ages – and he gets to say he cooked dinner!

Just in case you’re wondering, the knife is a serrated “steak” knife, not terribly sharp, and apart from trying to slice his hand open at the end of the clip, he really was very good with it!

And in spawn news…

It looks like we won’t be able to fit three baby seats in our current car (which we love and don’t want to replace). And even if we can physically fit them in, the tether straps all go across the boot, so getting a pram into the car is going to be impossible.

So it looks like we’re in the market for a second hand people mover. Hopefully it will seat at least five, preferably more (in case we ever need to give someone a lift), have at least three anchor points for car seats, have a manual transmission, power steering, air conditioning, less than 100,000 on the clock, and not be brown. Oh, and it needs to be reliable, cheap to run, and cost almost nothing (which is what we currently have budgeted for a new car).

Yes, we’re depressed.

Nothing to stress about

We saw the obstetrician on Friday. He doesn’t think there is anything to be overly concerned about. And frankly, if there was, our ability to do anything about it is limited.

Three years ago, when we had the 12 week scan for Inigo, they did far less tests, because the ultrasounds were far less powerful, and they couldn’t see nearly as much detail. So in the opinion of our OB, three years ago, we wouldn’t even have known there was a potential issue at 12 weeks, so we would not have have had anything to worry about.

At this point, I’d like to talk about abortion. If you find that upsetting, don’t read any further. No, I am not planning to terminate this pregnancy, but there are some technical issues which are pertinent to how I am thinking at the moment, and it’s fair to give warning.

With a singleton pregnancy, if there is something drastically wrong with the baby* (it is growing without a brain, or has another condition that is incompatible with life), a mother can choose to terminate the pregnancy, up to about 20 weeks I believe. But with twins, after about 12 weeks, you can’t kill one baby and leave the other – and even at that point it is risky for the other baby. So if there is a problem with one of them, I would have to kill both of them, or neither.

You can’t do a CVS with twins. CVS can be done at 12 weeks, but Amnio can’t be done until 15 weeks, and then it is a 2 week wait for the results. So I wouldn’t know anything until 17 weeks, at which point I would have no options anyway.

I am not saying that I would consider an abortion, but it just seems that testing is pretty irrelevant at this point, because I certainly wouldn’t risk a healthy baby.

I’m probably just rambling, but the last couple of days have been a pretty horrendous roller coaster of emotions. Mostly fear and worry. And that’s no way to grow healthy babies.

*Or if a mother chooses not to continue with a pregnancy.