Waiting with Bated Breath

For your grandmother, it seems that being sworn to secrecy was the hardest part. She had been waiting so long to be a grandma that she just was fit to burst. She insisted that on our way back from Bertram we stop in Georgetown and tell my grandparents. She HAD to have someone to talk to about this. I couldn’t leave her all week with my Dad back in Lubbock and no one to talk to about it. So, although we were both exhausted, we headed to Grandma & Grandpa’s house to share the news. My Mom met us there. I guess she couldn’t wait to see the looks on their faces. We came in and G&G were settled in their den for the evening, Grandpa in his chair, Grandma on the couch. I told them we had some news and told them we were expecting in May. They seemed very happy, but not really overly excited. I mean, they already had quite a few great-grandchildren by this point. But, when I said it was twins, they got pretty excited. We briefly mentioned the mo-mo possibility, but breezed right over it. We asked them to pray for the babies to be healthy and every time I saw them after that, they told us they prayed for the twins each night before bed. I am sure they asked for more details from my mom later that week, but I imagine she glossed over it just as my dad had done with her. It really was too awful to think about for long.


And there were lots of other folk that prayed for you too. My Mom told a missionary couple they have known for years that we needed prayers and they prayed for you. You were unspoken prayer requests at church until the news came out. Little did you know it, but we prayed that darn little membrane into being.

Glenn and I really were on pins and needles waiting for that 12 week ultrasound that would reveal our fate. Glenn would say “It just can’t be mo/mo. The odds are so slim for a mo/mo pregnancy.” We were very hopeful, but the stories we had read online gave both of us nightmares. Glenn didn’t sleep at all at night It might have kept me up at night too, except that I was so darn tired I would fall into bed right after work and never get out. He stopped eating and I didn’t realize it until we had dinner with my parents several weeks later and my Mom pointed out how gaunt he looked. He lost about 15 lbs worrying about you guys in there.

For my part, each day I got sicker and sicker. Smells overwhelmed me and made me sick to my stomach. If I didn’t eat soon enough, I got sick. If I ate, I got sick. I would get up at night and eat toast or applesauce trying to stave off the nausea. During the day, there wasn’t a smell that escaped my notice. I would walk down the hallway thinking: Hmmm, strawberry yogurt, oh boy, someone needs some deodorant, wow, that lotion is really strong. I have always had what my co-workers refer to as a dog nose. I can smell someone peeling an orange 4 cubes away when not pregnant. Add pregnancy senses and I was almost kind of scary. I would suck on peppermint, which did seem to help both mask smells and soothe my stomach. But, the further we went, the more miserable I got.

At one point, in the middle of the night, I got up feeling sick and went into the spare bath. Glenn had taken off his tennis shoes in there and left them by the tub, for some unknown reason. I began feeling sick, but I needed to use the restroom. I realized I was going to be sick before finishing and tried valiantly to turn to throw up in the tub and managed to spew into his shoes. I told him that for the next couple of months, anything in the bathroom was fair game. Move it or lose it.

I had several close calls at work, but always made it to the bathroom in time. But, driving to work, I had to pull over one day, so I finally bit the bullet and ordered a box of air sickness bags to carry with me. Those suckers are worth their weight in gold when you really need them.

However, it really troubled me that I was having issues with swallowing my prenatal vitamins. I had been taking them for months without a hitch, but I had noticed they smelled pretty foul. I was able to overlook this before the pregnancy, but as just about every food started to bug me, the prenatals became a daily battle. I would save them until a meal, dreading taking them. It didn’t matter what smelly drink I tried to take them with, I could still smell them and just could barely gag them down. I worried that I really needed the vitamins so you guys could grow strong, but I just couldn’t get them down. And then one morning, I had the brilliant idea to use tropical fruit punch to wash them down. Using grape juice had been successful the day before. We were out of grape juice, but I thought fruit punch might mask it enough to get them down. I tried swallowing one and ended up throwing up while on my way to the toilet. I dry heaved until I was exhausted and I lay down on the bathroom floor trying desperately to convince my stomach that it was indeed empty and didn’t need to purge any longer. Glenn came in to find me on the floor with bright red vomit all around me and almost had a heart attack. He helped me to bed and cleaned the whole mess up like a champ. In fact, he was very helpful through this phase. I often was embarrassed and didn’t want him to see me that way, but he always brought me cool wash rags, and helped me to bed. He re-purposed a trash can and stationed it by my side of the bed. He took great care of me and commiserated with how miserable I felt.