Have you seen my motivation?
April 20th, 2012 by ariana
So I’m in my second trimester, you know, the one where you are supposed to get this sudden burst of energy and feel all glowy and fabulous. Um, not me. YES I don’t feel as insanely tired (and nauseous) as I did in the first tri, but I can’t seem to get motivated to do much of anything.
Which is alarming because I am rapidly becoming aware of the fact that the window of normalcy in a twin pregnancy is TINY. In a singleton pregnancy you feel at least semi-functional until around the 8 month or so, but with twins (from what I’ve read) the max is about 24 weeks. That’s around the time when a twin pregnancy is the size of a full term singleton pregnancy. I’m having a hard time even wrapping my head around the idea of feeling full term pregnant and THEN going another 10-12 weeks (god willing).
Not only that, but I’ve been living under this illusion that we will do all these great things “BTA” (before the twins arrive) because we sure as hell won’t be able to do them once they are here. At least not for a few years anyway.
For example, I had the fabulous idea of meeting our friends Jay & Sarah and their two girls (who live in FL) half way between FL and NY for a beach vacation in July. I would be about 26 weeks. Sounded ok to me, being the naive 14 weeks that I am.
Until I posted on the multiples message board on the Bump.com and everyone said no FREAKIN WAY they would have felt up to a 12 hour road trip at that stage.. thinking back to being 41 weeks pregnant with Jasper, I can see why.
Not only that, but many Doctors don’t even want you traveling more than 1 hour away after 24 weeks (this seems to vary doctor by doctor). At first I thought it would be OK if we went somewhere that had a high level NICU, but then someone mentioned the frightening scenario of the twins being born very early and needing to spend weeks-months in the NICU at a hospital far from home.. you would be stranded there!
Summer vacation plans aside, the other thing that needs a lot of attention is the house. I have yet to get my “office” into any semblance of organization, Jasper’s room is pink and has no furniture and the “nursery” is an excess furniture storage room at the moment.
But instead of tackling these projects head on, I seem to be paralyzed by indecision and lack of motivation, which will only get WORSE the bigger I get so I need to snap out of it!
Even decorating has felt like a chore. Thank god I have my wall guides to at least help visualize what we should hang on the walls, otherwise those might go bare for eternity too.
Yesterday I designed this grouping of beach pics for our dining room:
Unfortunately our REAL dining room doesn’t look quite this fab, but I do like the wood paneled walls, this is what it will look like (I scaled it down a bit from the above):
I figure this way we can add to it after our cape cod trip (for my best friend’s wedding in June) or pics of the twins’ first trip to the beach.
I only have like 4 other giant wall to go!
Perhaps once we find out 100% sure the twins’ gender next week that will get me excited about designing their nursery.. god knows I need SOME spark. (I sure hope that my nesting instinct doesn’t decide to kick in in the 3 trimester when I will be too big and uncomfortable to do anything!)
Motivational comments greatly appreciated :)
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I hope that wasn’t a scary story – that wasn’t my intention. And for what it’s worth, that teeny baby is now 9 years old, completely healthy and nearly my height. No one can ever believe she was a preemie. :)
I didn’t hit the wall with my twin pregnancy until the 29ish week mark but it’s a great idea to get stuff done earlier rather than later. The last couple weeks I had the desire to nest in theory but the reality was I ended up on bedrest for 3 weeks. And yeah, a car trip would have been pretty miserable in the third trimester.
Stephanie that sound AWFUL! And to be away from Jasper that long would kill me.
Pam, DUH, I totally didn’t put your Bump screenname together with you (or your siggy pic bc your boys are so big now!). The fact that you felt so good so late in a TRIPLET pregnancy just further proves what I already knew, you are and always have been a super mom! :)
It always easy to freak out when you’ve got big changes (like twins!) on the horizon but think about how much you already have tackled… it’s okay if you don’t get everything perfect before their arrival (although I did love seeing Jasper’s nursery!). Hope you’re finding time to relax a bit this summer too, you deserve it.
I know I was one of the naysayers on the bump about the trip (sorry for that) but don’t assume you’ll start feeling bad at 24 weeks. Even with triplets I felt great, even almost normal until 27ish weeks. So with twins you could last a lot longer. (Plus I think it helps that you’ve had a kid already.)
Exciting about finding out the sexes already!
Re: visiting a NICU away from home, I’ve done it and it’s awful. The first two nights were OK because I was a patient at the hospital too and could visit my daughter whenever I wanted, but then I was released. The NICU was in Massachusetts and our home was in Rhode Island, over an hour away. I wasn’t able to drive because I had 27 stitches (and I didn’t have a c-section) so I had to wait for my husband to get home from work to drive me. (He went back to work the Monday after she was born so we could save up his paternity leave for when she actually came home.) He was usually able to get home by 4, but we wouldn’t get to the hospital until 5:30 or later. And as long as our baby was stable, visiting hours ended at 11 pm, so we’d have to say goodnight, drive home in the dark and fall into bed after midnight. The whole next day, I would stare at pictures of her and call the NICU every few hours to ask how she was doing and then when my husband got home from work, we’d start over again. The weekends were OK because we could drive up early in the morning (parents were allowed back in after 7:30am) and stay with her all day. We were fortunate that she was released after only two weeks. She was hospitalized again a week later, this time, five minutes from home and because she was in the pediatric unit and not the level 3 NICU, we were able to sleep in her room with her. Much different (better/less stressful) experience. I had a stress-free, low-risk, textbook perfect single pregnancy and never could have predicted my water would break at 35 weeks.
I’m not suggesting never leaving your house until the babies are born, but it seems like staying within an hour of your hospital isn’t a bad idea after a certain point. If you did start having contractions, and hour drive is possible. But if you’re three or four hours away…
Listen to your body…maybe BTA should be all about relaxing and enjoying life with just Jasper. The new kiddos won’t mind if their room isn’t “ready.” They will just want to snuggle.
Lol, that was terrible! As an inherently lazy person, I am not a good motivator at all. Feel free to disregard!
xo
jbhat
You can do it Ariana! You are brilliant – you will probably have a great dream about it and wake up one morning with it all worked out in your head. We can’t wait to see how it all turns out!!