Countdown

Well, today's the big day.

Everything's ready.

Every THING is ready. Cot, pram, nappies. Lovergirl and I are not.

It's weird to have it all planned like this, rather than sitting around waiting to go into labour. At 4.30 this afternoon (Queensland time) I go under the knife and shortly afterwards, two babies will emerge. Through no effort of my own.

I don't like Ruth 0str0w's columns - too wet - but at the risk of sounding like her, I want to jot down some of the nicer things about being pregnant. I may never be pregnant again (let's see how it goes first, hey?).

I've got a lovely perspective on human nature from being pregnant. Maybe pregnant women 'glow' because everyone is so nice to them! People love pregnant women - infinitely more than they love women with children, from my observations! They smile, and nod, and ask, 'when are you due?' and shopkeepers give little bonuses - an extra bread roll in the half-dozen from the baker, or a few extra onions popped in the top of the bag by the grocer. I've found that male shopkeepers are more likely to do this than female shopkeepers. Women are more likely to want to stop and chat, and ask to feel the belly (although I haven't had as much of that as I expected), while men want to do some little practical thing. It feels a little bit like Christmas, when everyone is warm and smiling and exchanging greetings.

Being pregnant confers membership to a special club. A bit like being a dog walker - I remember feeling quite lonely after my dog died, because out walking I didn't have the same sorts of interactions with people. I still felt like a dog person but I didn't have dog person markers. In the same way, being pregnant elicits a certain acknowledgment - other pregnant women, new parents and elderly people smile and nod. It's a pleasant change from the invisibility of being an unaccompanied walker or jogger through the city's parks.

I've really enjoyed going to the prenatal classes - yoga on Tuesdays and aquarobics Thursdays. There's something gorgeous about a room full of fat-bellied women all glorying in their bodies and their babies-to-be. The majority of women who go to these classes are first timers - I suppose the others are at home chasing after their toddlers - so there's a very particular excitement and wonder about birth and the specialness of this baby.

Friends have been really delighted for us. Many of them have had their own issues with fertility and decision-making about having a child - more than you would think - but everyone has been gorgeous.

We really haven't bought much at all. Mothers have a secret little hand-me-down cycle going, and once you tap in to it, floods of stuff pass through your hands. The Multiple Birth Association even has a premmie clothing pool - take what you want then return it when you're done - so last week L and I went to pick out piles of the world's smallest clothes for the first few weeks.

I have loved not working. I've been unemployed before but this is the first time I've allowed myself to sink into having lots of time, moving slowly, taking naps and generally moving into a much more internal stage of my life. Blogging helps me remember there is a world out there.

Being pregnant has really changed the relationship between Lovergirl and I. How can I explain it? We have become much more interdependent - which almost feels like a dirty thing to say in this individualistic era. Being two independent, competent, working women who happen to be choosing to live together is quite different to being one competent woman and one vomiting, rapidly expanding, ravenous, immobile sloth on the couch. Pregnancy is good practice for parenting, I think. No longer can we ring each other up and say, 'So-and-so has invited me out, so I'll be home a bit later tonight.' Or, ' V1rg1n was having a sale so I'm popping down to Melbourne to visit the family for the weekend.' Or even, 'I've enrolled in a course in quilting so I won't be home on Thursdays.' No, for the next eighteen (at least) years our movements will be negotiated around what needs to happen for the children.

And of course, there are the babies themselves. Feeling them moving, having L talk and sing to them, having them stomp on my bladder and roll around under the skin - it's going to be odd to feel empty again. And really, there's nothing to this parenting business when they are snugly contained within my body.

It's not hormones, it's just so terribly SAD

Last night Lovergirl cooked me dinner (as she does every night at the moment).

Pan fried fish (caught that day by the neighbour), roasted potatoes and steamed snow peas, accompanied by a salad from the garden - several kinds of lettuce, cucumber, cherry tomatoes and avocado.

I finished the fish.
I finished the potatoes.
I finished the snow peas.

Then I burst into tears.

'What's wrong?' asked L.

'I can't eat the salad (sniff). I'm too full (sniff).'

'That's okay, just leave it.'

'But you went to so much effort, growing it and picking it and making it for me... '

By now I am kind of crying and laughing at the same time (have you ever done this?), realising the ridiculousness of it all.

'It just seems so sad that you went to all this effort and I'm not appreciating it.'

It did seem overwhelming at the time.

On not opening like a lotus

This is where it all started - here I am, nine months ago, at the IVF clinic about to be 1nsem1nated. I'll be popping that attractive gown and shower cap on again in just a few days.

Well, after months of daily meditations involving visualising diving below the surface of the water as waves crash overhead, and my body opening like a lotus, and breathing into the 'chalice of my uterus', not to mention pelvic floor exercises and perineal massage (you'll have to look that up if you don't know what it involves as I am not about to tell you), Dr K tells me he highly recommends a caesarean. Miao, the presenting twin (i.e. the one closest to my cervix) is breech.

'What does highly recommends mean?' I say.

'Well, at your age, and given how long it took to get pregnant, and that they are twins and therefore smaller and more complicated to deliver anyway, I wouldn't be taking risks with the birth,' he says.

I look cross, or maybe just disappointed.

'Enthusiasm is not a factor in deciding for a vag1nal birth,' he adds.

Bad Miao.

No, it's not the baby who's bad, it's the behaviour.

Miao, we don't do breech in this family. The mummies still love you, just turn over.

Anyway, apparently it's highly unlikely Miao will turn now. Despite acupuncture and moxibustion and leaning forward over chairs and swimming and cold packs of frozen peas on my chest.

'Think of it more as opening like a watermelon,' said some helpful person (can't remember who).

Lovergirl, strangely, seems relieved that I'm having a caesarean. I, meanwhile, have spent the past few days sorting out power of attorney (in case I get paralysed under anaesthetic and can't make decisions) and a will (in case I haemorrhage and die and they want to give the babies to my biological next of kin).

I think I've been reading too many books exhorting the wonders of natural birth and the myriad dangers of caesareans.

So - I'm booked in Wednesday. That'll be the 5th, for all those who voted.

Wednesday!

Well I've gotten this far....

But I'm a little uncertain so here I am up in the middle of the night, googling 'what do labour pains feel like?'

I mean, I know they feel crampy, but how do I tell them from the 'false labour', Braxton Hicks?

My pamphlet says the babies will go very still, which they haven't. They are kicking around quite enthusiastically.

There's no 'water' (ie amniotic fluid which I have recently discovered is mainly baby-wee) gushing out.

My pamphlet says I may feel nauseous. Of course as soon as I read that I started to feel slightly nauseous.

My pamphlet says, 'Go for a walk. False labour contractions will subside while true contractions will get stronger.' It's two o'clock in the morning! Not really the time for a stroll around the block.

They're about fifteen minutes apart. They're very mild, like the warning cramps I get the day before I start bleeding. I'm leaning over the fitball, rocking myself, the way I've been taught in prenatal yoga. I s'pose I'll just wait and see. If you don't see a post from me later this morning, you'll know where I am...

Back to do more googling.

Even more disturbing

These are my options for twin breast feeding positions












This is the most highly recommended.








My life as a cow starts in about a week.

Pregnancy memories to treasure

1. Skin tags - funny little warty things that 'may fall off after the birth,' advises my book.
2. A strange blood filled growth on my gum that explodes every time I brush my teeth, giving me a foaming rabid Dracula effect
3. Balloon woman - my feet have become strange fluid filled cushions at the bottom of my legs, that ooze over the upper edges of my slip-on shoes (I haven't tied any laces for Quite A While). Puffy face - unusual goitre-like paunch happening about my neck. Puffy fingers - I left my ring on too long and now I'm going to need to get it cut off.
4. Brain drain - it's not that I feel dumber, just that it's so much harder to pay attention. We went to see the movie Michael Clayton last week and I spent the whole time saying to L, 'What's happening now? Why did he do that? What happened to Cate B1anchett's character?' (answer: she was in a preview, before the movie started)
5. Inability to fold in the middle - anything that falls to the floor stays on the floor, at least until Lovergirl gets home
6. Not being able to fit behind the steering wheel
7. Insatiable desire for mangoes. Nothing unusual about that. Lovergirl was in charge of fruit today at the market and she has come home with one mango. How is that to get me through the week?
8. Sleeeeep. Sleeeeep. Sleeeeep.
9. Wee. Wee. Wee.
10. The most bizarre rippling and rolling effects across my belly as the babies move beneath the skin. It looks like time-lapse photography of an earthquake. There really are babies in there, aren't there? Either that, or a litter of puppies. Which is also not so bad.
    

Gift giving tip

No matter how cute the actual garment is, most lesbian mothers-to-be do not really want a jumpsuit that proclaims, 'Papa is very proud of me.'

Not even if it is in French.

I told you so

So the first thing the doctor says at the follow up ultrasound is, 'Oh, the bladder's not really that big at all. Maybe it was just hanging on last week.'

Followed by,

'You know, that foetus is not really that small at all. Maybe I took a measurement at a strange angle last week.'

So you can all go back to whatever you were doing.

Ultrasound - smultrasound, I say.

(Did I mention my week of sleeplessness and obsessive movement-monitoring?)

Dang and blast that newfangled technology

The jacaranda blossoms are falling. Possibly it looks even prettier now than when it is on the trees.

We had another ultrasound on Friday and one baby, the one Lovergirl has pet-named Miao-Miao ("wondrous"; the other is Pung-Pung which means Little Fatty) has fallen behind in weight gain. Pung-Pung is right in the middle of the bell curve, which is exceptionally good for twins as they do tend to be smaller than average. Miao-Miao is right down the bottom in the 5th percentile. Up until now M has only been a little behind P.

Also, Miao Miao has an unusually large bladder - a possible sign of bladder obstruction. 'Nothing to worry about,' said the ultrasonographer. 'Just a small procedure once the baby comes out.'

Meanwhile, of course, I'm worrying. Perhaps these factors are signs of a more sinister, comprehensive syndrome? Something with some unfortunate European scientist's name, like Sminton-Terre Syndrome, where I sell our house and travel the world looking for stem cell research to cure it and we occasionally get featured on tawdry current affairs shows in a bid to raise awareness of our plight.

We have to go back in two weeks to check on the babies again. If M hasn't put on enough weight, I'll have caesarean the next day. Pung Pung could be hogging all the food. 'Just keep an eye on movements,' said the obstetrician. I couldn't sleep for the next two nights, just keeping an eye on the movements.

Someone is kicking me lustily in the bladder right now.

And I'm trying to recall the eminently sensible advice I gave the Muriels some time back when they had a worrying ultrasound result - something about the overmonitoring of our pregnancies nowadays, and how our mothers wouldn't have even known about these mid-pregnancy anomalies, and look how well we turned out.

Things they never taught me at deportment school

1. How to walk elegantly down a hallway into a crowded doctor's surgery carrying a specimen jar of my own urine.
2. How to arise from a doctor's bed (note: without the doctor in it) in a graceful manner when my trousers are 'just slipped down over your hips, thanks.'
3. How to announce my weight, which is edging perilously close to triple figures, in a confident manner to nurse across aforementioned crowded waiting room.
   

Blessed

Every now and then I'm a part of something that is so breathlessly gorgeous it leaves no room for cynicism.

On Sunday I had a Blessing Way. Every pregnant woman should have one. Apparently, it's taken from a Native American tradition, where women who have already given birth gather to give the mother-to-be blessings and wishes for the new baby's journey into the world.

We held ours down in Byron, of course - Brisbane is pretty squarely Baby Shower territory, if we're talking pre-baby rituals.

Although a Blessing Way is traditionally a woman-only ritual, we had two men at ours. Sweet Byron men - you wouldn't want the sort of men who stand in a huddle and snicker and talk about football. We also encouraged people to bring their children, so the whole thing was a lot more chaotic than the usual intense circle, which I liked. We had about fourteen people there, plus maybe twelve kids.

We gathered down at a grassy picnic spot, just behind the beach. Radha and Leigh organised the whole thing for us, so when we arrived there were cushions and blankets set out in a circle defined by flowers and boughs, and painting stuff in a separate area for the kids to make special pictures for the babies.

First, each person in the circle talked about their connection to us. It was a beautiful experience - Lovergirl kept dashing away tears, she's emotional like that - having our friends give their stories of how they met us and how they see our relationship. People who'd known us for a long time, some for a short time; people who knew me then met L, or knew L then met me through her; people who'd been there in the first heartstopping days of our relationship. And all of them had witnessed the long journey of us trying to get pregnant.

Next, each person gave us a bead and a blessing for the babies.

Bella gave us one bead for each of her four births. Lovergirl used to work with her partner Angus. Bella and Angus have two year old twins, so since we've been pregnant we've felt a special kinship with them.

Lovergirl's sister Anya gave us two red beads like this. I can't remember what they're called - are they malachite? The red is to do with blood, and she said, 'I chose these because these babies are my blood as well,' which just about made me cry.

Meredith and Alice have two little girls. They gave us two translucent beads and said, 'These reminded us of crystal balls. We can't see into the future of our children but we do know that your future now will be filled with indescribable love and purpose.'

Jaye and Ally had just the day before returned from Hawaii. They gave us a little string of shell beads. The beads are representative of the Hawaiian goddess of the volcano Pile (pronounced pi-lay), a powerful goddess of creativity and change

And on it went. Gill gave us three Chinese coins, 'for divining, and abundance, and in acknowledgment of their Chinese heritage.' Perri sent along a jarrah and a sandalwood bead, for grounding. Kimberley, our old dance teacher, brought along three silver beads from a Latin dance costume, for joy. Leigh's daughter Lucky, who's eight, gave us two pearl beads, 'because kids can be annoying sometimes but they turn into something beautiful.'


Finally, Leigh tied everyone in the circle together with two strands of cord - one for each umbilical cord. She'd chosen a blue cord for communication and a brown cord for grounding. Each person tied the cord around their wrist, so we were tied in a circle together. Then each person (with a pair of very blunt scissors) cut the cord and said, 'Let the circle be open but never broken'.

Now Radha and Leah organise a telephone tree and everybody leaves the cords on their wrist until I go into labour. Then everyone cuts the cords to symbolise a successful entering of the babies into the world. Also, each person commits to bringing around a meal in the first weeks following the birth - a very practical contribution to the intention to making the babies' transition into the world as smooth as possible.

Then we went down to the beach and people floated me around in the water. I had my eyes closed, and Lovergirl supported my head. That was quite an amazing experience. I thought they were floating me right out to sea but when I finally stood up the water was about knee high! This part was my special request because I had really wanted a waterbirth but it was one of the many visions I had to relinquish with the 'high risk birth' of having twins.

We finished up, of course, with tea and cake and I staggered home exhausted for my afternoon nap. In the afternoon, Lovergirl and Leah and Anya and I put together our Blessing Way mobile. It's hanging on the wall and every time I look at it I have a warm feeling, remembering all the gorgeous things people wish for us and our babies. I'll be taking it into the hospital!
I think what moved me the most about having a Blessing Way was the positivity of everyone who took part. I've noticed a strange competitiveness about how awful birth and childrearing is, among mothers. People seem keen to share terrible birth stories and talk about how our life is going to be hell from now on, with sleeplessness and cracked nipples and so on. My body is never going to be the same, with stretch marks and saggy belly and broadened hips.

At my Blessing Way, women talked about the power of their bodies, and the overwhelming love they felt for their children. Meredith read a poem:

Women are like plants.
We turn light into matter.
Plants do photosynthesis -
We do embryogenesis.
How do we do this magic?
No one knows.
Women take the light
in our lovers' eyes and
in ten moons give light
in the form of a baby.

And Perri offered:

Making a decision to have a child - it's momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body. - Elizabeth Stone

Aww shucks

I couldn't resist posting this.

I never thought I'd see the day

It's hot here.

I was cooking dinner last night when Lovergirl came home and I discovered that I was

Barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen

It seemed funny at the time.

And the moral of the story is...

Wash your belly button.

Because one day it might just POP OUT and you will discover layers of grime somewhat akin to an archaeological dig caught in all those little creases.

This happened to someone I know.

I really don't like those bare-belly shots

...but I can understand the urge to share.

F*%$ me, is that my body?

What happened?

(How much of it is babies and how much is almond mini-Magnums?)

And these are just the necessities, darling

It's quite expensive having a middle class pregnancy.

Yoga - $25 a week
Pregnancy aquarobics- $20 a week
Hypnobirthing - $90 per class - 4 classes
Naturopathy - about $120 a month for pills
Acupuncture - $65 every three weeks
Organic food - maybe an extra $20 per shopping bill

How on earth do people manage to give birth to healthy babies without doing all this?

They're baaaack

It begins with a gently unpleasant stirring in the pit of my stomach, a slight sour taste in the back of my throat.

I'm slumping on the couch, in exactly the pose not recommended by the physio who took our antenatal class, proofreading an article.

Then there's a sudden, all-too-familiar rising and I run like I haven't run for at least four months.

Same position, different venue - bent over the front verandah railing, splashing vomit onto the pebble walkway below.

I thought all this was behind me?

It's much harder to heave with an extra fifteen kilos of belly, I tell you*

*Yes, it's supposed to be fifteen kilos by now, with twins. I've had enough of that sort of comment from the grandmothers, thank you.

We will return to normal viewing in a moment

Two o'clock in the morning and I'm jolted awake again by another dream about the lesbian-mothers-of-wrongfully-born-twins case, my third rude awakening in three nights. In my dream they have been trapped in my childhood laundry since their children were born, which is why they are suing. I suppose that might accurately represent their view on how the situation feels. Tonight - just a few minutes ago - I was the unnamed mother in question, and was just about to be chloroformed.

There's been a lot of internatter about the case, and the bloggers I respect have been much more thoughtful than my initial explosion. The Muriels have been frustrated by how the ignorant hordes have picked up and run with the fact that the parents are lesbians. Over at Larvateus Prodeo there's a long string of mostly sane comments on the issue. Both of them, and a few of the less-hysterical newspaper articles, focus on the fact that this is a simple and rather dull medical negligence case, which happens to be newsworthy because the parents being lesbians taps into people's prejudices about same-sex parents.

So for sensible, thoughtful comment, click on those links and off you go. I want to work out why I am so affected by this, why it wakes me up night after night. It may not be pretty. It's my thoughts and emotions and gut feelings, okay? A proper teenage journal entry. Then I'm going to leave it alone, because really, who am I to comment?

There seem to be four issues that disturb me.

There's the lesbian thing; not in the way the media is beating it up, but that they are lesbians is relevant for me. I've realised that I do expect a higher standard of parenting from lesbians. I'm not sure whether it's gender stereotyping (of course two women are going to be better than a woman and a man) or a natural inclination to believe that one's own family structure is the best, in the same way I would believe that a Christian upbringing was best if I was Christian, or a traditional Greek upbringing if I was Greek. I'm disappointed to realise that lesbian parents are human, get overwhelmed and say they have 'lost their ability to love.' I'm making a judgement, of course, that what is reported in the paper represents less-than-ideal parenting. Maybe once I've had twins for three years I won't feel quite so opinionated.

In the last couple of months, three of the lesbian families in my extended social circle have broken up - two of them quite amicably, one with great acrimony. In all of the cases the (single) child was about three. I suppose I fantasised that, well, we have to put so much work into getting pregnant that it somehow creates a more solid base, more realistic expectations of childrearing and the pressures on a relationship that it creates. Now I wonder whether the difficulty of getting pregnant actually can create a fantasy world, a belief that everything will be wonderful if only we get pregnant.

I thought we were going to demonstrate a brave new world, a model of women-led families that would demonstrate the potential of families for listening, caring, being co-operative, child-focussed and nurturing. All of those derided 'feminine qualities' would lead to a better sort of family and thence to a better society. Gentle, secure, non-bullying boys and confident young women leading the next generation.

God, I should have written a novel! A science fiction one along the lines of 'The Shore of Women'.

That's only the first part. The second aspect that I wonder about is the medical negligence part. Maybe the doctor made a mistake or maybe he didn't, the courts will decide. But I wonder about the expectations we have of superhuman infallibility in doctors. When I make a mistake, a typo gets published in a magazine, or a bunch of trainees goes away with a misremembered statistic from a journal article sloppily cited. But a doctor can never, ever make a mistake. Obviously i don't want doctors making mistakes on me, but isn't some human error inevitable, as long as we have humans doing the job? Perhaps the doctors have brought this on themselves, with centuries of marketing themselves as superior to all other forms of healing. But it seems a bit harsh that someone can have a written document expressing one set of wishes, then articulate a change of plans minutes before they go under anaesthetic, and expect that that will be communicated all the way down to the lab.

I don't know how we would resolve this, practically. If we accept that some fallibility is inevitable, does it pave the way for sloppy work generally? is the only thing that keeps doctors practicing effectively the threat of punishment if they are found out? Yes, in some cases, I'd say. But should the test of a 'reasonable person' (I'm not a lawyer so I'm not exactly sure how this works) be not, 'Would I have made this mistake in this particular circumstance?' but rather 'Would I have the same mistake rate - is this a reasonable rate of error to expect from a competent human?' Obviously this would radically change medicine. Imagine if your doctor said, 'This operation has an eighty percent chance of success and a one percent chance that I will make a mess of it.' I wish I could find out doctors' mistake rates so I could truly make informed decisions. How many times has my ob crushed a baby's head with forceps? How does this compare with other obs? How many incorrect decisions to caesarean section - or an incorrect decision to not? How many people have been paralysed by my anaesthetist's epidurals? The risk, they say, is one in 100,000 - what if all of those ones have been created by my anaesthetist?

Okay, I'm halfway through. I haven't got any answers, only questions.

Next,the idea of wrongful birth offends me deeply. In a concept I've just discovered, again in The Age comment by Sushi Das, I'm 'morally dumbfounded'.

In his new book, The Happiness Hypothesis, psychologist Jonathon Haidt from the University of Virginia argues morals are tied to religion and politics. He explores the idea of "moral dumbfounding" — when people feel strongly that there is something wrong but cannot explain why. He says morality is driven by two things: moral intuition, based on behaviour driven by emotions that evolved before we had language; and moral judgement, which came when we were able to articulate why something was right or wrong.

Moral dumbfounding, Dr Haidt says, comes when moral judgement fails to come up with a convincing explanation for what moral intuition has decided.

So, I 'just know' that the idea of 'wrongful birth' is wrong. Unless, I suppose, I wanted to prosecute a case myself, against my parents? Should a person be able to decide for themselves their birth was wrongful?I won't follow that particular rabbit hole. Back to the point - I'm trying to get my 'moral judgement' to express itself. I wonder how any parents could subject their children to that. It's like that bad Demi Moore movie that asks 'Would you have sex with a man for a million dollars?' Would you tell your child s/he shouldn't exist for $400,000? Being diagnosed as clinically infertile, I understand I'm biased, and prone to the delusion that a child is a blessing. And if I was carrying a child with a significant disability (and maybe I am, we elected not to have amniocentesis, about which I have occasional anxieties), I would want to know and make a decision about whether or not to keep the foetus.

I feel some pressure to support them simply because they are lesbians. That disapproving of bringing a case like this is tantamount to saying 'lesbians shouldn't be parents.'

On the other hand (there's always an 'other hand' when I'm being honest), if someone had specified a maximum of two embryos, and got three, then I might think they had a case...triplets are hard. So go figure. Maybe I'm just inconsistent.

But I can't imagine ever saying 'I've lost the ability to love'. Not over having a healthy child. Maybe if I was captured and tortured, that might turn me off the human race a bit. But maybe that's a bit of misreporting.

But if you didn't want the second (or third) child, why not give it up for adoption? Not necessarily to a straight family, which is what the rednecks are calling for, but to a nice same-sex couple who don't usually have access to adoption? Maybe to a couple of gay boys who don't even have the option of using IVF clinics? Then I suppose you could just sue for the extra inconvenience of having a multiple pregnancy (how much would each street-chuck be worth, I wonder? and the extra tiredness - I could get compensation for all the extra blog entries I was too exhausted to write, not to mention the hours and hours of well-paid consulting I didn't take on. A few more dollars for the extra stretch marks and saggy boobs and you're done.)

'Giving it up for adoption' seems to be positioned as a right wing response, but I'm not sure why. Maybe because it's about adapting to the society as it is, rather than changing society to meet the needs of the people in question.
Then (I'm going to stop in a moment, I promise) there's the price. I think that's a straight-out case of envy on my part. They can't support two kids on $120,000? My god, how are we going to survive? I'm the primary wage earner and Lovergirl is going to be a student finishing her doctorate for the next two years. If they can get $400,000, why can't I? Hmm...maybe I can...

As a few people at larvateus prodeo commented, from a compensation perspective, how would you ever separate out how much of the chaos and overwhelm is due to having one child, and how much is due to there being two? Some twin parents (admittedly not the majority) have told me that after the hell of the first six weeks, they found two actually easier - better at settling themselves at night, and less demanding of attention as they have each other to interact with.

Finally, I think I'm having a straight out illogical mother-bear response. I confessed to Lovergirl, 'I feel like someone is telling our twins they are unwanted.' Said Lovergirl, sensibly, 'But they're not.' They're not unwanted, and in my case at least, twins are definitely not a devastating accident. I feel like I've won the baby lottery! Although all this bile about lesbian parents has been unleashed by the case, I don't think it's new, and I am optimistic that it's changing. Our babies are going to be noisy, and exhausting, and expensive, and put strains on our relationship that I can't even imagine. I am delighted to be having them, and anxious to meet them, and concerned about the state of the planet we are dumping on them. We've cancelled our tickets to Italy, and I've dropped out of film school, and Mum's in Bali this very moment on a holiday Lovergirl and I had organised for ourselves six months ago, before we got pregnant. If it had been a singleton pregnancy, we still would have gone. Life is never going to be the same again. And that's okay.

Oh for f**'s sake

This mother is suing her IVF doctor for $400,000 because she doesn't want twins.

This makes me really REALLY cross.

And she's a lesbian.

How embarrassing.

(Why doesn't she just give the child away if she doesn't want it?)

After all I've done for you kids...

At the behest of my naturopath, I'm taking fish oil tablets, four a day, for the development of their little brains.

All day long I do tiny little fishy burps.

Nauseating.