Sigh.......And Relax

I can finally take a deep breath and relax a little bit. I've hit a big milestone: 12 weeks. This means I can stop freaking out about having a miscarriage. I went to the doctor's today and heard both of the twinners' heartbeats, which means they are both alive and doing well. Of course this doesn't mean that I will stop worrying completely, because I know that twin pregnancies are always at high risk, but I can certainly relax a little bit more and start worrying about other things, like what in the world I'm going to do with two newborns. I can't think about it too much or I'll start talking myself out of being excited about having twins. Right now I just have to focus on how much fun it will be to have two babies, rather than how much work it's going to be.

For those of you who are wondering about my morning sickness, it's still here. It's not nearly as bad as it was the last time I wrote about it, though. I still throw up every morning, but I feel better around lunch time, and then I get nauseous again after dinner. At least I get a 7 hour window in there where I'm feeling somewhat normal and good, which I'm grateful for.

Here's the latest picture of me. I just got a facebook account last week, so a lot of you have seen this pic already posted on there. This was taken last week, so I'm probably even a little bit bigger this week. I already look and feel like I'm 5 months preggers. Hugeness, here I come:)

Christmas, Finally

Wow! It's taken me a long time to post about Christmas. So this past Christmas we stayed here in Utah. My mom and step-dad decided to come up, which made it feel a little bit more like home. My sister lives about a half hour from us, so we decided to spend the night at her house on Christmas Eve. The kids put on a Nativity scene, which turned out really cute. I don't think Hannah got what was going on, but she played a cute little lamb (and Scott got to play the donkey- hee haw). Unfortunately our camera ran out of batteries as soon as we got to my sister's house, so these pictures are all from my mom's camera.




Christmas day was wonderful. As I mentioned, I didn't throw up once, and we were able to open up presents, eat breakfast, and eat a lasagna dinner with sausage and meatballs without any "incidents." We also told our families that I was pregnant, which is always exciting. I made my mom and dad calendars of all of their grand kids that said "Sprague Baby # 2" on the month of August. This was before I knew that we were having twins, who will probably be born in July. We also wrote Christmas cards to Scott's parents to let them know that we were expecting.

Hannah got two adorable tutus from her grandma Julia and decided that she wanted to wear them both.

She also got a makeup kit in her stocking. Bad idea. It got everywhere when she tried to put it on.

Here's Hannah enjoying her eggnog french toast for breakfast.

That Saturday we went sledding. My other sister from Arizona came up to Utah the day after Christmas, so it was fun to have a lot of my family here.

Hannah did really well on the sleds. She's such a little dare devil!

And finally, here are a couple of videos of Christmas Eve and Christmas day. Again, these will probably be boring to anyone except grandparents, but I hope you enjoy them anyway.

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P.S. I have gotten my piece of pizza since my last post, thank you very much, and it was delicious;-)

My Reality

Eventually I will get around to posting about Christmas, but for now, I've got babies on my mind. This post might seem like a lot of complaining, but just know that it is meant to be more humorous than anything and is also meant for me to look back one day and say, "Man, I'm glad I'm not in that stage anymore." I'm not going to sugar coat anything, because this is my current reality, so please bare with me.

Today's topic: pregnancy

Some women love being pregnant. I am not one of those women. Pregnancy and I do not go well together. We're like pickles and ice cream, orange juice and brushing your teeth, peanut butter and mustard. I just named off a bunch of food, all of which I currently can't have because I am too sick. These past few days have been BRUTAL for me. I think I threw up something like 16 times today. I couldn't keep a darn thing down my gullet. It's sad how much I miss food. I would love to take a bite of a delicious pizza, a juicy steak, fried shrimp, donuts, ice cream, a yummy salad, whatever.... Instead, I get to eat crackers most of the day, and then I get to throw them up. If you've never experienced morning sickness like this, just pretend like you've got the stomach flu for 3 months straight. That's basically how it feels. Some days are better than others. In fact, Christmas week was awesome. I didn't even throw up once on Christmas day. It was a Christmas miracle! For some reason, this week has been exceptionally bad. I'm hoping it's at it's peak, and maybe after this week the sickness will go down a bit. I need it to go down because I am almost completely useless right now. The house is a disaster, I can't make dinner for my family because the smell often makes me sick, and I feel like I've been a terrible mother and wife. Don't even get me started on changing Hannah's stinky diapers. If Scott is home I make him do it.

I keep telling myself that it will pass eventually......only 6 more weeks of this (fingers crossed). The only good thing that comes out of this morning sickness is that I know my babies are developing. Morning sickness is often a good sign that the placenta is growing, and I would actually be worried that something was wrong if I didn't have morning sickness. I must admit, though, I would much rather be one of those women who doesn't get it at all.

So eventually the morning sickness goes away. The second trimester is definitely the best of them all. This is the trimester that the morning sickness goes away, you get to find out the sex of the baby (or in my case, babies), and you usually get to feel the first kick. It's fun to feel the baby kick for awhile, but after a month or two of getting kicked in the ribs, pelvis, or belly button, you tend to get sick of it. Hannah used to always kick when I was trying to sleep and it got really annoying. Again, though, if she hadn't kicked for longer than a couple of hours, I would get worried.

The last trimester is a tie with the first trimester for being the worst trimester for me. Those last two months are hard. Another reason that pregnancy doesn't go with my body has to do with the fact that I gain a lot of weight. According to my doctor, a woman should only gain between 25 and 30 pounds. I gained 40 with Hannah. In fact, in my 6th month alone of pregnancy I had gained 20 pounds. The doctor told me that I needed to lay off the sweets. He told me it was okay to eat canned peaches but that I shouldn't drink the syrup that the peaches are in. Who in the world would be so deprived of sugar that they would have to drink that thick, nasty syrup that canned peaches lie in? I must admit that I was a bit offended at first when he said that to me, but I knew that I wasn't pigging out on sweets, so I brushed it off. It's actually pretty funny now. Anyway, with this pregnancy, I plan on gaining at least 50, if not more. So imagine me looking like this, but 10-20 pounds bigger and two more chins. Also with the third trimester comes lots of heartburn, painful ligaments stretching, having to sleep on your side when lying on your back is your favorite position, not being able to bend over, and waddling like a duck.

Then, there is the labor and delivery. This is another reason pregnancy and I do not go well together. I can't have children naturally. If I were born a hundred or so years ago, I probably would have died giving birth to Hannah. I am SO lucky to have been born in this day so that I can deliver all of my little pumpkins via C-section. Don't be fooled by the size of these hips; they can't bare children because the pelvis is too narrow.

And finally, there is the lovely week after the birth. The actual C-section was very pleasant and easy. You just lay there while the doctor is taking the baby out of you. After the C-section was a different story for me. I think that I'm pretty good with pain, but I can distinctly remember two times when I cried because my incision was burning me. Both times were merely because I was trying to lift my leg over the tub to get in the shower. You don't realize how much you use those lower muscles until they've been cut. Every time you laugh, cough, sneeze, lift your legs, stand up or sit down, try to climb into bed, etc, you are using those muscles. I think what made it worse for me was the fact that I was SO swollen with water after Hannah was born that it was causing a lot of pressure on my incision. I've said this before, but I weighed more after Hannah was born because of the swelling than right before she was born. Look at this picture:


Talk about "cankles." This wasn't even the worst of it. I remember my mom laughing at me as I was walking down the hall because I looked like I should have been rolled down the hall by a couple of umpa lumpas, like this:


Luckily after a week, the swelling went down and I felt really good. Hopefully this time will be better.

After all of this complaining of what I get to go through over the next 6 months, just know that I know that I am lucky to be able to have children. Also, I know that some women have it even worse than I do (those who have to be on bed rest their whole pregnancy or those who have to wear an IV because they are so dehydrated). I would do this over and over again to get another little chubby pumpkin like this:


This time I get two chubby pumpkins, which means a 2 for 1 with this pregnancy. That's great news. Who knows, this might be the last time that I get pregnant (although I think there might be one more spirit out there for us after these two are born), so I had better enjoy every minute of it.

My Thoughts On Twins

First off, I just wanted to say thank you for all of your comments and/or phone calls. They really helped to make Scott and I excited in this confusing time;) I will try my best to answer all of your questions. I've been reading a lot on the internet about twins, and a few websites that I've read said the most common question that the parents of twins will get asked is if it runs in the family. Yes, it does run in my family on the Irish side. I guess almost every generation has a set of fraternal twins back into the 1800s. I don't personally have twins in my immediate family or even in my extended family (my cousins/aunts/uncles). But, my grandma has cousins that are twins, my mom has cousins that are twins, and my mom's cousin has twins. So, my guess is that my twins are fraternal and somewhere I picked up that gene from my mom, but we won't know for sure until they have run some tests on them. Yes, they have their own sacks and placentas.

We will not be moving back to California after the babies are born. Scott will still have 8 months left in school, and then we will move where ever the job takes us. It would certainly be nice to have all of those extra hands to help, though. Oh, and no, we will not be going to the family reunion in August.

And finally, Angela, I would LOVE it if you took some pictures of them.

Alright, hopefully that answered all of your questions. Now, onto my thoughts and feelings about having twins. I always wanted to have twins when I was little. I used to pretend that my barbies were twins or that they had twin babies. In fact, I had two sets of quintuplet dolls that I used to play with a lot. I was down with any type of multiples. I also wished that I had been a twin. Then, when I started to grow up and become a little wiser, I realized that I didn't want to be a twin. How hard it would be to have to share EVERYTHING (I'm a selfish person) with someone else and always be compared with someone else. I've heard of people saying things like "He's the cuter twin" or "She's the smarter twin." Not only are twins often compared to each other, but they don't seem to have their own identities. They are always labeled as "The Sprague Twins" or whatever the last name may be and they always have to do everything together. They have to share the same birthday, clothes, friends, presents, etc., and I remember thinking how awful that would be.

After I got married, I decided that I didn't want to have twins because of that comparison/sharing thing, and also because it would be hard to raise two babies at once.

Well, now my mind has COMPLETELY changed. Scott and I are SO excited to welcome two babies into our home.

Let me tell you how it all began........ I found out a few weeks ago that I was pregnant, and I was really excited. We didn't tell our families until Christmas because we were afraid of having another miscarriage. All last week I kept joking about the fact that I could be having twins because my belly seemed awfully big for only being 8 weeks along (see Exhibit A). Of course I didn't really think that I was having twins, but it was always on my mind. Then on Monday I went in for my 8 week checkup, and the doctor felt my uterus and said that it felt pretty big. I knew I wasn't just imagining it. He scheduled an ultrasound for the next day to make sure we knew the exact due date. Monday night I couldn't sleep because I kept thinking what would happen if we were having twins. Then on Tuesday, the ultrasound technician did her magic and immediately said, "Well, I have some big news for you." I knew instantly that we were having twins. I started to cry and Scott just looked confused/worried the whole time. As the days have gone by and as we are finally starting to realize that we will have two more kids here in a short few months, we have grown incredibly excited. And as worried as I am about them having to share an identity, I've also heard of some amazing stories of how twins LOVE being twins. They always have a friend that they can count on, someone who knows them better than anyone else.

Sure, it will be hard. I probably won't get any sleep for months and months and will constantly be annoyed and impatient with people. I have no idea how I'm going to breastfeed two kids at once or how we're going to fit 5 people in this apartment and in our car. I feel sad for Hannah because she won't get as much attention anymore. But darn it, we are going to try to be the best darn parents that we can be. I will do my best to give all of them attention and treat the twins like they are individuals rather than two halves of a whole person (Sure, if they're the same sex, I might dress them alike occasionally, but not everyday).

I keep praying that they will be healthy and grow stronger everyday. I am still terrified of having another miscarriage. How sad I would be to lose one or both of these babies. Right now, I just feel so blessed that Heavenly Father has given us this opportunity to almost double our family size. It will be a long and hard ride, but I think we are going to grow tremendously from it.

Exhibit A