My Faith and Joy… and Boys!

Tomorrow the girls turn 28 weeks – hooray!  I still haven’t settled in my mind whether they are starting or completing 28 weeks. The doctors said we’re beginning the week, but doesn’t it make more sense to be ending it?  If I’m counting weeks on a calendar, Day 1-7 equals Week 1, Day 8-14 equals Week 2, etc.  So when you get to Week 2, you’ve had 14 days under your belt, hence you’ve completed two full weeks.  Anyway, I’m sure the doctors have a logical way of explaining the division of weeks.  All I care about is that the Lord has granted us nearly a full month of pregnancy since we were hospitalized! 

Tomorrow is important for yet another reason.  We’re scheduled to have an ultrasound to further assess the girls’ growth and, by extension, to determine if they are receiving the proper nutrition in utero.  I’ve been attempting to “beef up” their little scrawny bodies by drastically increasing my intake of Chili’s and Red Robin’s hamburgers and Wendy’s Frosties.  If this works, you can bet I’ll continue to chow down until delivery day!  The doctors had informed me that my dietary habits were not significantly contributing to either the girls’ growth or lack thereof, but I’m quite willing to take the credit if tomorrow’s ultrasound reveals chunky babies 🙂   I have every hope that the girls are indeed growing, since my personal abdominal circumference is steadily marching outward – that’s got to at least partly indicate a similar pattern in the girls, right?  Like mother, like daughters?  At this point, I would be thrilled if one day my daughters find this blog posting and curse the day I ever prayed for them to have big bellies! 

Since I was very young, I remember my mom advising me of the importance of always wearing clean underwear, because you never know when you’re going to be in a car crash or some other accident which would necessitate a medical professional viewing you in your skivvies.  I usually viewed that piece of advice rather cynically, concluding that if I were in such a life-altering event, the state of my undergarments would be the least of my worries.  Yet now I am seeing the wisdom of the principle my mother was trying to convey, if not the specific application (thanks anyway, mom!).  That is to say, be prepared, because everything can change in a moment. 

There are profound spiritual lessons to be gleaned from such a realization, but as my eternal salvation is secure, I am contemplating much more mundane aspects of this truth.  What brought this adage to mind today was the reminder of how many incomplete projects I have at my house.  My mother-in-law called today and asked if I would like her to hang the curtains I had purchased several weeks prior to my hospitalization.  I had completely forgotten about them.  I had bought two sets of drapes, with the intent of choosing my favorite one and returning the other.  Yet I had never made a decision, and as a result, there are two opened packages of wrinkled drapes lying somewhere in the house (I don’t even recall where!).  These drapes only represent the tip of the procrastination iceberg.  There are clothes that need to be ironed or mended, pictures to be hung, and countless other household projects languishing in domestic limbo.  I had reasonably assumed I had many months to tie up these loose ends before the girls were born and my spare time would vanish along with uninterrupted sleep. 

Of course, these unfinished tasks pale in importance to my current project of “cooking” these babies until they are done.  Shortly after I went into labor, Jim and I observed how insignificant everything else became when compared with the crisis we were facing.  However, now that the immediate danger has faded, I am left with the realization that sometimes, it makes sense to hang the drapes, iron the shirts, and yes…wear clean underwear.     

It’s hard to believe that the temperature outside today has catapulted over 90 degrees – summer is here!  When I was admitted into the hospital three weeks ago, I had been wearing long pants and a long-sleeve shirt, and we were still occasionally using our electric blanket at night.  It’s such an odd feeling to have transitioned from spring to summer and not personally experienced the shift.  It’s also odd to hear the nurses talk of the scorching heat and oppressive humidity and not to expect to feel it myself at some point during the day.  I haven’t felt those summery conditions in a year!  I had been looking forward to spending these early summer evenings on our screened-in back porch, but I’m thankful now to be here, even if it means I have to imagine the warmth outside.  If the Lord wills it, I can spend some of the delicious evenings this fall pushing a double stroller on the bike path nearest our house, and dreaming of spending next summer playing outside with our almost 1-year-old girls.  What a beautiful thought!   

I am pleased to report that the girls cooperated with their monitoring this morning.  Each shift, a nurse places two ultrasonic dopplers on my belly to trace the babies’ heartbeats.  Ideally, the doctors want to see 20-30 minutes of two consistent heartbeats.  However, because the girls are still so little and they have a relatively large space to move around in, it’s often difficult for the doppler monitors to get a continuous heartbeat on one baby, let alone two.  To make matters worse, the girls apparently aren’t keen on being monitored; they kick the dopplers or squirm around even more than normal as soon as they detect they are being monitored.  A week or so ago, the girls were moving around so much, and the nurse was getting more and more frustrated, that I actually had Jim raise his voice and demand that the girls sit still, hoping that they would listen to their father J  However, it didn’t work – they kept on wiggling.   I can only hope that this tendency doesn’t bode poorly for their cooperative skills later in life!  However, today, the girls were docile and consented to let their heartbeats be tracked for the time necessary.  I was a proud mama!