Once Upon A Time

Since all my friends have started blogging, I decided to join the band wagon and start one too! I may not post as often as I'd like but you will know the days when the boys decide to nap at the same time, or go to bed at a decent hour, because I will have had time to write a new post! This blog is going to be about my crazy wonderful life of raising twins, twin boys specifically, and my journey of bringing them up as "twindividuals". Basically, I want them to always have that special twin bond but to also be two separate people who are able to have their own likes and dislikes. I am going to back date this post, just to play catch up for those of you who don't know the entire story. Here's how it goes:

Once upon a time, 6 years ago, Paul was the "man of honor" in my cousin Misty's wedding and I was the maid of honor-cute huh? Anyway, fast forward to October 12, 2010 and we find ourselves standing in the middle of a gazebo in a park in Bishop Hill, Illinois, getting married by a family friend, in our jeans and sweatshirt. Our wedding cake was a low-fat pumpkin cupcake with cool-whip frosting. I know, I know-we outdid ourselves! The reason behind our oh-so-fabulous "wedding" was because I didn't have time to plan the wedding of my dreams in time before Paul had to go to officer school and then we would be moving to Texas. So we wed on that Tuesday afternoon, with all intentions of having the real deal on October 12, 2013-then life happened.

We started trying for a baby a couple of months before moving to Texas (for pilot training). Month after month of nothing happening clued me in to the fact that something was wrong-I just had this gut feeling. I went to the doctor on base and lied stretched the truth about how long we had been trying so that she would give me a referral for an RE (Reproductive Endocrinologist) in San Antonio. After just one appointment, we were told that our chances of conceiving naturally were less than 5% and that IVF (in-vitro fertilization) was our best option.

My baby-makin' concoction!!

After weeks of daily injections, multiple times a day, I went in for the retrieval on February 15, 2012 and woke up from anesthesia only to find that no eggs had been retrieved. Cue the tears! We started right back up again the next month and I went in for my second retrieval on March 28, 2012 (with 14 eggs retrieved-yay!!) and we transferred 2 Day 3 embryos on March 31st. I got my first ever BFP (big fat positive) on April 8th and obsessively peed on sticks for the next 2 and a half weeks. Not joking about that either, I had 37 pregnancy tests lined up on my bathroom sink because I liked to be reminded on a daily basis (sometimes 2-3 times a day) that I was FINALLY pregnant!! When we found out it was twins, I wasn't all that surprised as we knew there was a pretty good chance of it, afterall, we did transfer two rockstar embryos. See for yourself!

We lovingly referred to them, at the time, as Petri and Bubbles.

I spent the first 16 weeks of my pregnancy hunched over the kitchen sink or the bathroom toilet because I was so.darn.sick. I had to be admitted to the hospital for an overnight stay around week 12 because of hyperemesis gravidarum (aka extreme sickness that results in dehydration). The smell of boiling water was so repulsive that I had to wear a swimming nose plug whenever I cooked mac and cheese (one of the few things I could actually eat during that time). The thought of hamburgers would make me puke and I am just now starting to be able to eat them again. Paul and I went to Boston the middle of July and elected to have a gender ultrasound done there, and the u/s tech wrote the genders on a piece of paper. I gave the sealed envelope to a baker who made cakes that we cut into at the gender reveal party. Needless to say, there was lots of blue that day!

The cakes!

Baby A is a boy!!

Baby B is a boy!!

I thought for sure we were having a boy and a girl so imagine my surprise when I found out we were Team Blue!! I must admit that I was sad, and remained sad, for most of my pregnancy that I wouldn't have a little girl to take shopping or get nails done with or anything "girly" but now that I am 5 months into being a mother of boys, I couldn't imagine life any other way and I say bring on the dirt, dump trucks, skinned knees, and wrestling matches!! Be on the look out this evening for the boys' birth story. I already have it saved on my computer so I will just add some pictures and voila, two posts in one day! :-)