The Long and Short of It

I'm back to my curly headed self.  And my hair has shrunk back up to between my shoulder blades.  Also, the blow drying and flat ironing fried my hair.  It was straw on Monday after I washed it.  I put in a deep conditioner tonight and hopefully by tomorrow, it will be somewhat back to normal.

This is the longest time I've had straight hair and the only time I've let people close to me see it.  Carrol is right that being curly is a key part of my identity.  And it freaked both my husband and my family out.  It really changed the way I look.  Fortunately, I do not often look like Kirstie Alley.  But there were other things.

It made my face look bigger.  My curly hair has always dominated my face and my bone structure has looked too delicate.  But straightening my hair made my bones look bigger (I think) and certainly made me look very bloated.  Yes, the weight gain has something to do with that, but I looked like I put on 10 lbs pre to post straight hair.

Second, I've always wanted long straight hair.  But I have to be honest with you:  straight hair is a pain in the butt.  My hair was everywhere all the time.  With my curly hair, I can just pin back a curl or two and go.  With long hair, I had to deal with whole swaths of it and even then, it kept creeping back to hang in my face.  (Probably trying to hide one of the chins)  I'm sure it's just what I'm used to, but I'm surprised to find that I like my curly self.  I wouldn't mind playing with straight hair a couple of times a year and be curly the rest of the time.

As for my weight gain, thank you all for kindly saying that I was not quite yet the size of Moby Dick.  I am, however, about 4 lbs from what I weighted when I gave birth to Conor.  One might note that at 14w5d, I still have a ways to go and a boatload of weight to gain. I know it's for the babies.  And I do believe with every pound I gain, I am more likely to have healthy, term babies ready to breastfeed and take home from the hospital.  That said, when you see my chins, my enormous butt, or worst of all, the rolls of fat on my back (AHHHHHH!), judge me not.

Or I might eat you.  It could come to that.    

Cousin Itt, Jennifer Aniston, and Kirstie Alley

Yes, indeedy.  What do Cousin Itt, Jennifer Aniston, and Kirstie Alley have in common?  Why, me with straight hair.  

Yesterday, while getting my roots dyed to sort of match my highlights, my junior stylist-in-training suggested that we blow dry my hair straight  Since it wouldn't cost anything more than walking out the door with wet hair, I said sure!  Well, 1 1/2 hours later....

Yes.  It took my junior stylist and 2 other senior stylists One and One-Half Fracking hours to blow my hair straight.  Maybe people with normal hair would feel special in a positive way having 3 stylists working on her hair, but I was feeling most definitely short-bus special because of my ultra curly, ultra fine (who knew?), many haired head.  I will be quite honest that when they started working on the front of my hair, I could barely see through the strands, and the image I saw was much like Cousin Itt above.

But then they finished, and parted it to the side.  And maybe it was because my hair was hanging half in my face and I didn't have my glasses on, but my first thought was "Holy cow!  I look like a fat Jennifer Aniston!!!"  When I was skinny and first moved out here, my students thought I looked a bit like JA, but now, honestly, not so much.  Dave, probably just being kind, does agree that he can see a bit of the chubby Aniston look.

Nonetheless, the resemblence to Jennifer was fleeting at best.  No, every time I look in the mirror now, Kirstie Alley peers back.  And not the thin Kirstie Alley.  The current Kirstie Alley.  With bad makeup.  And Dave agrees.  Yes, there is a Kirstie in there, too.

Ok! Ok!  I know you want a picture.  Look how long my hair is!  Friends in real life just screamed that out loud.  Who knew that curly hair could stretch that far when straight?  It's past my bra straight and curly, it's between my shoulders.  

And ((((sigh)))), what I notice most about this picture is how fat my back is.  I didn't realize how much this weight gain is bothering me until I warned a friend that when she saw me, I was going to look really bloated and I started to cry.  Dave keeps reassuring me that I'm pregnant with twins, not fat.  But when I look in the mirror and count the chins, I feel ugly.  (Which explains my recent binge on cosmetics--as soon as I feel fat, I but something cheap to make me feel pretty.  I have 3 new lipsticks, new mascara, and eye shadow de-creaser).  

I believe from the research that the weight gain will strongly increase my chances of carrying the babies to term. And even if they are early, my weight gain will make them fatter, which is one of the best predictors of premie survival.  

None. The. Less.  I am fat.  I've gained 15 lbs already, which is on the low end of what Dr. Luke recommends.  And I'll likely gain about 30 more lbs.  45 lbs in total is, again, what she recommends that I gain.  Bleah.  Fat.  

Skinny, though, I think this hair style would be cute.  And maybe I really would look like Jennifer Aniston.

Waist Not, Rock Not

The pebble in Conor's ear was not too big of a deal.  He was very upset that he had done something wrong.  And quite scared when the doctor had to pull it out.  He said it hurt coming out, but I'm sure it was more of the loud sound of it moving around in his ear that was more frightening.  

There was a moment when the doc was having problems that she intimated that we might have to take it up a notch with a more specialized doctor if she couldn't get it out.  (Do pediatric ENTs specialize in rock removal?!)  Fortunately, she got it out, we put it in a specimen bottle, and she marked to visit with the code "Foreign Object Removal Ear."  I find that amusing.  It's obviously not even close to being a rare event in the pediatrician's office.  

As far as what once was my waist, at 9 1/2 weeks pregnant I am fully in maternity clothes.  I had lost about 10 lbs over the summer and so I was thinking that I could wear my fat clothes in the early pregnancy.  However, they are falling right off of me when I put them on.  (Even colleagues note that "Dude, those pants are way too big.") And I can't wear my regular clothes because I cannot button the tops of my pants.  

And I know that even though there are two in there, my uterus is still not big enough for me to be "showing."  What's up?

Apparently, my uterus, although still small and not visible, is pushing my internal organs around.  Thus, my waist is much bigger than it normally is at this weight.  Even worse, I think it's obvious that, because of this spring's surgery, my belly button is the weak part of my stomach.  Indeed, my belly button has almost already popped.  9 1/2 weeks!  And my belly button has almost popped!  Ugh.  I'm just not envisioning my belly to be the prettiest thing ever seen, what with the enormous scars from the surgery making a smiley face around my belly button and the black and blue track marks from the Lovenox. It causes my dear loving husband to shudder sometimes.  Anyone want to venture a guess on what the heck my scars are going to do as my belly expands with two babies?  I'm voting Not Pretty, whatever it turns out to be.  

Oddly, I look much thinner in the maternity clothes than I do in my regular clothes, so I'm psyched about that.  (Buttons not straining to reach and all that, I suppose)  So I guess there is a silver lining here anyway.  And Conor's rock is out of his ear. That could have ended up being a much worse story than it did.  Thank goodness.

Food and Fatigue

I've been trying to strictly follow the Dr. Luke Diet, but after gaining over 4 lbs in one week, I figured I could probably cut back a little bit.  It occurs to me that she may have written that diet for twenty-somethings and not for women, ahem, over 35.  My metabolism is not the same as it was in my 20's and since I'm still not allowed to exercise, I'm not really burning off that many calories.  So I'm going to try to keep the protein and dairy consumption up a high level, but I am not going to make myself sick trying to get to 3500 calories a day.

What's become more of a problem is the fatigue.  I am absolutely pooped a great deal of the time.  I took a 10 minute nap yesterday when I got home so I could cook dinner.  And then I was in bed by 9:00.  Ironically, Conor was still up by 9:00.  He's been going to sleep later (not to bed later, but to sleep later) and I've been going to bed earlier.  There has been overlap in our bedtimes and I'm just too tired to argue when he asks to come in bed with me.  Also, it's fun to read our magazines together and then go to sleep.  If Dave comes to bed late enough, he can take Conor in for his late night pee-pee and then put him back in his own bed.  It's a win-win for everyone.  

I'm hoping that I'm at the peak of both the fatigue and nausea part of my pregnancy.  I've forgotten what it's like to not feel gross around food.  Or what it's like to not want to take a nap every few hours of the day.  

A few more weeks.  I'll be glad to be back to normal.  Well, normal while pregnant with twins.

Still Looking Good

The ultrasound went really well yesterday. The subchorionic hemorrhage is gone (hooray!) and the babies had a bit of a growth spurt since Monday. I was 8w1d yesterday and Baby A measured at 8w0d and Baby B (the bruiser) measured at 8w3d. Heartrates were at 178 and 180 respectively.

I am *not* doing any cardio exercise though. I may do some walking and yoga, and I'd like to swim, but I'm going to wait until we've gotten past the 10 week Level I screen before I do any cardio. That's when we found out that Colleen (miscarrage #3) had too high of a heartbeat and I didn't stop exercising---which I should have.

In other eating news, I am switching from my regular diet of eating as much food with as few of calories to eating as little food with as much calories as possible. My first day following Dr. Luke was painful because I was just eating more of my "regular" food. I thought my stomach was going to explode. Then I got 2% milk, full fat yogurt, cheese, ice cream and some meat and was not in nearly as much pain the second day. By the way, cheese is my friend: 2 oz of cheese, which is not that much, has more calories than a chicken breast. That certainly explains why I don't lose weight when I'm eating cheese, but that counts for two servings of dairy and 240 very good, non bloating calories on this diet.

Oddly, I'm also finding that although I'm eating a substantial amount of food at each meal and snack---I am STILL getting hungry! I even had a double 1/4 lb cheeseburger for lunch at school on Thursday, and I was still quite hungry afterwards. Yikes!!

It is cognitively Very Weird to try to get fat. It's why Dave has to listen to me repetively cite the benefits of this early weight gain. He doesn't care, but I am still convincing myself.

It's 9 am on a Saturday. It might be time for another nap.

I Am Full

Everything is going well with the spotting, which means there is none.  I am taking it easy, although I'm no longer trying for full bed rest.  I'm just trying to not stand on my feet all that long at any one time.  

We go back Friday for another ultrasound and I'm really looking forward to it!  I am also imagining two little beans in my belly with two strong heartbeats as they start to grow their arm and leg buds.  

What is more on my mind, or more literally in my belly, is what I'm eating and going to be eating during this healthy pregnancy.  In the infertile world where more people than you would imagine end up with twins, I have constantly heard women sing the praises of Dr. Barbara Luke, a professor/researcher/epidemiologist/MPH/registered dietitian who runs a program to help women with their nutrition during twin pregnancies.  She is also a full professor at the University of Miami Medical school, which in my world means she's done significant research and is recognized by a prestigious university as an internationally known scholar.  

So, yeah, she has a few academic credentials.  

But because I am a critical scholar, I also checked out her academic publications through our school.  (We don't have a medical school, but we have a big school of nursing and have a ton of medical journals available to us)  The most impressive peer reviewed, academic study I found by her and her research team involves comparing 190 mothers of twins who've followed her nutritional program to  331 "regular" mothers of twins, all of whom gave birth over 6 years at the University of Michigan hospital.  These women were not randomly assigned to the program, it's one main drawback, but they are all using a university hospital, so they are not completely different populations.  

In any case, the mothers who followed her nutritional program reduced by *more* than half their chances of having preterm labor, preeclampsia and babies' time in the NICU.  They also increased their chances by more than half of giving birth after 36 weeks and increased by 2.5 times their chances of having a baby who was not low birth weight.  Those are impressive results.

I know from some of my criticisms of non-randomized research that you can often explain health outcomes by the "healthy" third variable.  For example, people who very strictly follow their doctor's advice on taking medications are more likely to have healthy outcomes.  And this doesn't matter if the medicine is real or a placebo!  So people who follow her nutritional plan may simply be part of this healthy third variable group--they are just naturally and conscientiously healthier people.  

Nonetheless, when one sees changes as big as these changes--reducing problems by one half and increasing positives by more than a half---one is more likely to believe that the results of the study are due to real program effects and not population differences.  

So yay--a way to improve the odds of us "going all the way" and taking the babies home with me when I leave the hospital.  Which just so happen to be my two main goals with this pregnancy.

What's the nutritional program?  Gaining a boatload of weight the first 20 weeks.  How much weight?  (((Gulp))) 25 pounds by 20 weeks.  She wants a total weight gain for someone my size (which I would like to point out is exactly in the middle of normal for my height.  Ha!  I keep thinking I'm really fat.  But after living in LA, maybe normal/average is fat) of between 40 and 55  lbs for the whole pregnancy.  Yes.  That *is* a lot of weight?  And how do I do it? By eating around 3500 calories a day.  

Holy. Shit.  Do you know how much food 3500 calories represents?  It is a LOT of food.  I thought that it was supposed to be just a lot of protein, but in all honesty, it's the same proportion of proteins to carbs to fats as the FDA food pyramid; it's just a boatload of food.  

Oh. My. God(dess).  I feel like Rene Zellweger gaining weight for Bridget Jones' Diary.  It is not fun at all.  It's one thing to go overboard and eat 2800 calories in one day.  It is quite another to eat 3500 calories every day and not be training for an ultra-marathon.  I am telling you right now that this is worse than any "diet" I've ever been on in my life.  

And yes, I can see why one would think this was bullshit and just eat a little bit more than normal.  But when I see that I have at least some control that is clearly within my own power to go to term with these babies, to not have them be in the NICU, and to take them home with me as fat and healthy as Conor was, I look at the clock and plan when I'm going to have that piece of whole wheat fiber toast with cashew butter and a banana for a "snack."  (That would have been a hardy breakfast a few weeks ago)