nine days later

So it's been nine days since the ultrasound -- I feel a bit like "May 22nd, the Day We Found Out We were having Twins" will be forever indelibly etched in my mind.  Probably not really, though, as I'm pretty sure once they are here there will be a whole lot of stuff that gets wiped out, either due to sleep deprivation or simply not having enough time/energy to bother thinking about it. 

After three nights of rotten sleep, I started to calm down enough to get to bed at a more reasonable hour and sleep longer.  This morning I woke up early enough to do a prenatal yoga workout before the kids were up (though Sprout came down and chilled with me for a while). 

I read online that during a twin pregnancy, 100 grams of protein/day is recommended, so I've been working to do that.  Eating that much protein makes me FEEL VERY FULL!  This highly recommended book came yesterday, and in it they actually recommend even MORE protein than that -- 175-219 grams!  And 3,500 Calories per day, at least through the second trimester.  Crikey!  At the ultrasound, both of the babies were on track for growth, so I am grateful that even without having followed these guidelines prior to now (as I thought it was just one baby), they seem to be growing just fine.  But I am trying to eat healthy, eat frequently, and eat lots.  It's just kind of hard when your stomach is all squished up!

A big thing with twins (and other multiples) is that they typically don't get as long to "cook" in the uterus and therefore their growth starts to taper off sooner than a single baby's growth would.  Full term for twins is considered 36 weeks 4 days or 37 weeks as opposed to the full 40 weeks.  My sister said that she took some herbs from her midwife at 38 weeks and started labor a few hours later, with the babies born that night.  I'm really hopeful that I can carry these two sufficiently long, though I know it is going to be insanely uncomfortable near the end.  I told my sister-in-law a few days ago that it looked highly unlikely that I would be able to do her wedding photography on August 18th, as even if I'm still pregnant (which I'm fairly likely to be), I am going to be HUGE and not so keen on moving around or being in charge of anything. 

P.S. If anybody wants to be in charge of getting me some sweet Thing 1 and Thing 2 costumes/onesies, that would be awesome!