18 Weeks Pregnant... and a Reveal!

I have long neglected this blog due to life being crazy chaotic around here. I am thankfully still pregnant with our twins, and simultaneously navigating selling our home (a two bedroom apartment won't cut it for our soon-to-be family of 5!) and parenting our 3.5 year-old son, Rowan.

Twin pregnancy has been very different to that of my first pregnancy. Everything has stretched faster, ached faster, everything has in fact been faster - including baby movement, which I felt the first flutters of at 12 weeks pregnant! Now, at 18 weeks, flutters have become pokes and I can distinctly feel a baby on each side of my tummy which is kind of fun. 

I am carrying monochorionic-diamnotic twins (or Mono-Di for short), which basically means the babies are each in their own amniotic sac but share a single placenta. This means extra monitoring via ultrasound (scans every two weeks starting at 16 weeks, and will progress to once per week from 24 weeks on). The extra scans are to ensure that both babies are growing as they should be and that one isn't getting more or less blood flow than the other. So far so good with our scans, but I'm always cautiously optimistic as I've been told that things can change very quickly in mono-di twin pregnancies. 

So, want to see our babies? Since 12 weeks, Baby A has been in a better position for photos (the twin closer to the front of my uterus, therefore easier to scan) so we've gotten some great shots. Baby B remains a little more elusive and is very wriggly (but I know we'll get that gorgeous profile shot at some point!).

Our twins at 12 weeks (Baby A on the left, Baby B on the right)

Baby A at 16 weeks (with a profile and nose just like Rowan!)

Baby B at 16 weeks

Twin bump growth at 12 weeks vs 14 weeks (when I started to really pop quickly)

16 week twin bump (see what I mean??)

And lastly, at our 16 week scan we were able to find out what we were having, I'll leave Rowan to fill you in with the details! ;)

It's BOYS!

Mother's Day

It is Mother's Day here in Australia today, my third with a child on the outside (Rowan was 5 weeks old on my first one). As he lay in my arms feeding to sleep during naptime this afternoon, I realised how lucky I am, and the journey that it took to conceive him.

It’s beginning to hit me again that even though we have a terrific toddler and my body carried him well as a foetus, deep down I doubt that my infertility is something that has gone away. Hearing lots of baby news from other people I know personally lately (not online) has left me feeling jaded and envious, rather than genuinely happy for my friends. And this is something venomous that I want to stop the spread of, before it overwhelms me and my way of thinking. The interesting part is that I can understand how some people are happy with one child, their one and only. I completely get it, Rowan is the centre of my world and part of me is reluctant to change that. To go through everything again and perhaps not be so lucky (in conception, pregnancy or a child’s development). But I know that we won’t know until it happens, that so many other people (myself included) falter on the precipice of change.

Reading this back in a year’s time, will I nod and stand by my thoughts? 

Will I smile and remember how it felt to be trying to balance my mind?

Or will I laugh and simply consider myself silly for being afraid to take the plunge?

Our Christmases

We celebrated Christmas with my husband's family interstate this year (we do alternate years in Melbourne and Hobart, especially important now given that grandchildren are involved!), and it was a busy, whirlwind of an adventure filled with family, food and time spent in the inflatable pool that Rowan received. He was a tad overstimulated on the day, not thinking much of opening presents (though exclaiming with joy about clothing with tags on it!) and taking a couple of bites of Christmas lunch before turning it away and asking for strawberries. Very typical Rowan. 

Here are some pictures from our Christmases (the week before we celebrated with my family, who live in Melbourne)

Rowan with my Mum (his Nana)

He served himself up Christmas dinner with my family and was ever so proud!
(biscuits and dip) Needless to say, a plate of 'proper' dinner was also added to his tray.

He was absolutely ecstatic about getting his very own police car
(Rowan had been trying out the buttons on one for several weeks at a shop apparently)

Playing peekaboo games with my Dad.

This picture (and the ones following) were from our Hobart Christmas.
Rowan received an electric car which he had fun 'driving' all around the decking.

Bath time adventures (we don't have a bath at home, so this was a novelty)

Fun in the sun, in the pool. :)

Walking with Daddy on Christmas Eve in Richmond.

Drinking water out of a goblet on Christmas Day (before abandoning his dinner in favour of strawberries).

A family picture, also taken on Christmas Day.

Plane-spotting before it was time to leave Hobart.

Day in the Life - March 3rd, 2012

Last week my best friend challenged me to a Day in the Life project, which is something we do a couple of times per year. The last two challenges I've completed on my iPhone using various apps, but this time I wanted something to print out and keep... so I shot all pictures on my Nikon D700, using the 50mm/1.4f lens. I was also inspired by the idea of Project Life (by Becky Higgins) and Ali Edwards' documentation of her Day in the Life projects, so if you're familiar with Ali Edwards, this style may look familiar.

I love the depth of field that lens offers and it has been one of my better investments (I actually scored it for free from our wedding photographer back in 2008, he had dropped it down a mountain and it needed recalibrating - if I paid for the repairs it was mine; it turned out to be less than half the price of buying it new so was an excellent decision).

I used Picasa (free program by Google, get onto it!) for the collages, and added text (font is WM_kamikaze) and elements using Photoshop CS3. The embellishments are from two digital scrapbooking kits, Scrap & Snap by Faith True Originals and The Bees Knees (released only to creative team members as a Christmas thank you in 2011).

Anyway, enough talk and onto our day in pictures! This is life with a 10.5 month old baby who is currently learning to walk. Click on the first picture to view the gallery of larger pictures (text will be much easier to read!)