birthday party invitation

My boy is going to be 1 next month.
One year old.

I have mixed feeling about this for so many reasons. He isn't going to be my baby-baby anymore, he will kind of officially be a toddler.  It's gone too fast, but yet, yay! at the same time. We've all survived the first year, all three of us.
The obvious sadness is that this was meant to be his first birthday as a twin. He came as a set. And now we are celebrating both his survival, while needing to commemorate his sister at the same time.

It's bought up so many feelings for me, and I have found myself having Molly Nights* frequently again. Maybe as I know it's coming. The big first birthday.

We thought of having a low-key thing to celebrate our Sebby while also remembering Molly. I can't explain how hard and weird this is for me.
If I were to just make an invitation saying "come to Sebastian's 1st birthday", I would feel like I am deliberately leaving out or forgetting his sister. I would also feel, again, that I was deliberately trying to not acknowledge her, and so it goes against every instinct within me to leave her out.

I'll feel guilty if I don't remember/mention her, and I'll feel guilty if I do. I just can't win this one.
(It's a good thing I'm starting therapy finally, isn't it?)

I also don't want this to overshadow his first birthday, something that we want to celebrate with joy. So there is such a fine line, and I want to try and balance it, but whatever I write or say doesn't seem to do either twin justice. I feel so alone  no one else I even remotely know has this problem - and I am not sure what truly the right thing to do is. Well, actually, I do know what the right thing to do is, but I have to choose my words and my thoughts so carefully.

We already decided months ago that the two dates we will remember Molly is Christmas and their birthday. At Christmas we put up her stocking with gifts for other children, and at birthdays we release balloons for Molly.

I'm also aware that this day is going to filled with laughter and tears. And will be for the rest of his life.

So. I made Sebastian's party invitations today. And this is what I went for in the end after multiple edits and thinking long and hard about how to include her:

We are just inviting a handful of folks we have met over the last year, all of them with a baby of their own. Our new 'parental' friends. As they know what it is like to reach the first year milestone!

It sounds all very grown up. And it is. For now. For the years to come, no doubt, all sorts of fun things will start to happen - like themes and too many e-numbers, and games and bouncing off the ceiling and blowing out candles.

But for now, the most important thing for me here is balance. I wanted two little birdies on the invitation, and I'll be getting some cupcakes made with their names on them.

What do you think?

*Nights where I end up reading through my old blog posts when I was pregnant with them both; or remembering in detail their birth; wandering what  she would be like and look like now; crying until I can't breathe and I feel totally empty and raw inside; or crying with the Brit and feeling white hot anger at the world and WHY is it that only people who have lost a twin really understand the complexity of our situation and in equal measure, the pain?

my bump journey

How precious Saturday mornings have become.

The working week is over, and I survived. It's 3:34pm and I'm still in my pyjamas, but I intend to remain that way until I go out tonight.

My little boy has decided to refuse all food. He is either teething really badly (likely - he has every, single symptom and hasn't got any teeth yet), or he is traumatised by the fact his life has been turned upside down and to control the situation, has stopped eating. I was warned this might happen. It's heartbreaking.

His little fat leg doughnuts have shrunk considerably, almost to nothing - he is skinny again. It's crazy how quickly this happens to babies. Why can't this happen to me?

It's been 10 months, and it hurts to look at these pictures sometimes, but I finally got round to putting together a collage of my bump when I was pregnant.

The Brit took one of my bump every week, every Monday night. From 9 weeks until I was induced at 36 weeks.
The big milestones for me were:

9 weeks: I felt so sick, I remember struggling not to projectile vom over my fellow tube commuters in the morning. And the tiredness was ridiculous, I felt like I would pass out on the spot every afternoon, so I'd need to get up from my desk and walk around the building - aimlessly - just to stay upright.

12 weeks: You can tell everyone, as the most 'risky' stage of pregnancy is over (not with twins, it turns out.) But the morning sickness and tiredness start to go away and you feel 8 000 times better.

15 weeks: I was starting to show (That or they must've been like "Wow. She's really packed it on, hasn't she?), so I told work. I had to hide it the week before when I was with my colleagues in San Francisco at a conference. Where we usually all booze. That was hard. Pretending to booze is hard work.

19 weeks: I suddenly started to get big. Beeg. You could now tell I wasn't carrying a singleton, or many would've assumed I was onto my third child.

20 weeks: The best scan. They didn't look like shrimps anymore, they had arms and legs and were moving and waving and doing funny things like kick each other. Everything looked healthy and normal. We asked not to know the sexes, although I just knew it was a boy and a girl.

27 weeks: I was sizeable, so we thought we'd better go on a babymoon before I couldn't walk properly/actually enjoy it. I was sore, being kicked everywhere, and generally life was getting pretty uncomfortable. I was guzzling bottles of Gaviscon. We still drove to France and had a few days there. Mainly eating.

30 weeks: This was the last scan where I saw Molly alive. By now they were large enough that I couldn't see their whole bodies anymore, only pieces of who they were - heads, chests, hands. All was still normal and healthy, even though Molly (Twin 2) was the smaller twin.

31 weeks: Commuting was becoming the ultimate ball ache, walking was hard work, I was huffing and puffing and generally, pretty miserable to be honest. Everyone else who was pregnant and at the same timeline as me, had neat, compact little bumps and they all seemed very spritely. My bump was heavy and weighing me down. It was time to leave work.

32 weeks: I spent most days propped up by a fortress of cushions on my bed, not lying fat or they'd surely suffocate me, but not sitting upright either.
Molly, up until this point, was breech. They'd been lying yin and yang for all this time, and so they booked me in to have a c-section at 37 weeks and 5 days, on 4 April.

However, she suddenly decided to turn, and in the bath one night, I saw and felt it. It was like something out of Alien.
They estimated that this was the week Molly stopped growing. So when she was born, she was the size of a 32 week baby.

34 weeks: It was sometime between now and 35 weeks that she gave up the fight and died. I didn't notice that she wasn't kicking, as she was always a graceful little thing. She didn't kick the hell out of me directly in my ribs like Sebastian did (he was a boy from day 1. No question about it), she kind of fluttered. She would flutter, it felt like butterflies.

35 weeks: I went in for my final scan, and they confirmed that she had no heartbeat.
I stayed in hospital for a week to have Sebastian monitored.

36 weeks: I was induced. I was in labour for 18 hours, right up until the point where Sebastian got stuck and so I had an emergency c-section.

This was my twin journey.

baby nursery, the itch and life in the uk test

Think of the itchiest itch you've ever had. Then times that by a thousand.

This week has been absolute never ending misery. I cannot begin to describe it. Just when I thought I had a reign on my various infections - wielding creams, home remedies, anything, that could help an itch so insatiable I thought at one stage I might just throw myself off a balcony - it would return.

I haven't slept for about 6 nights now. The nights are the worst. For some reason It (the thing, the cruel thing that overtakes my crack, basically) strikes at night the most. Which means I do not sleep at all.

One night I finally managed to stop squirming at 4:30am. After trying to retire at 11pm.

I have to sit upright like I'm on a plane as this slightly makes the itch less itchy.

I've cried, scratched, meditated, had vinegar baths, consulted the deepest recesses of the Internet, been to the chemist a few times and now gone back to the doctor today. He told me I don't actually have piles and the thrush has been cured. What this is is a full on fungal infection that now descends down my legs and into my sensitive crevasses. Lovely. 

I have a new cream. Maybe this one will give me a few hours just to sleep? This is MADNESS. 

The Fall

On Saturday morning after another sleepless night and the clenching of butt cheeks when I walk, I revved myself up to shuffle off to the chemist to beg for more creams or anything they'd give me.

Maybe its because I am waddling/shuffling, maybe it is lack of sleep, but I took a horrible fall.

When you're pregnant you're prone to falling anyway, as your centre of gravity changes and your joints loosen. I tripped over a bit of pavement on our road and went flying. I wiped out after flying through the air, crashing down on my kneecaps and hands, and my bump. My bump hit the tarmac, and I was splayed out with bags of fucking fungal creams and a smashed mobile phone all around me. What a sight that must've been.

I couldn't get up, was winded and was bleeding, and the panic of my bump hitting the pavement put me into immediate frenzy, and I couldn't get up. I don't remember much, just that I was crying, no weeping loudly, and looking up to anyone who could help. Luckily two ladies saw me and helped me get up and escort me home. 

Once back, the Brit attended to my bruised knees and palms of my hands, which are fairly mangled from the glass on my phone. 

That moment was literally the worst I have felt. The only good thing was that I forgot about the itch for at least an hour. The bump was OK. The babies were both moving and there was no cramping or blood. Thank God.

In fact, I found out today that one of my babies have turned around from the breech position to face head down. I wonder if the lurch of the fall did that. Either way, when it did turn it looked like something out of Alien. I was in the bath a few hours later, and my stomach was convoluting and rippling like crazy - it made for some mesmerising viewing. I was just happy they were moving.

The nursery

While it's been a really shoddy week, (did my French neighbour make a voodoo doll of me? In the most desperate of times I have convinced myself this is so), I've been largely housebound. Going out in public has been few and far between - as obviously publicly scratching one's nethers isn't something I want to be seen doing.

So I finally set to work on the nursery. And it's almost done. Just waiting on some woodland theme mobiles for above the cot (they'll share a cot for a few months first) otherwise the animal theme seems to work I think? 

I've had to be very creative with space. It's a tiny room. So making the most of storage and other bits is essential.

I got the prints off Etsy and ordered pre-mounted frames on eBay. I figured animals were cute and neutral for boys and girls.

I got the bunting from Etsy as well, which I cut up to go on two walls.

I put hooks behind the door to hold things like their laundry bags and other things that could be hung.

I got some white baskets off Amazon for the book shelf which I am keeping all their muslins, toys, blankets, bibs and other bits in.

Their clothes are hanging in the cupboard of the nappy changer and on the freestanding rail. Their clothes are so cute so having them outside is quite cool really.

Then these are their Moses baskets. What they'll most likely sleep in their first weeks home, and probably in our room. 

What do you think?

The test

Amongst the fungal fury, I actually somehow through the grace of all that's good and true, manage to study for and pass my Life In The UK Test.

I drove to Hammersmith to do it, and the sense of sheer achievement when I got it - in a week of debilitating afflictions, I can't tell you. Something I don't need to worry about ever again. Jesus I am relieved.

Finally, I have a due date.

Sort of! I saw my obstetrician today ( who also turns out to have been Kate Middleton's obstetrician. This man helped to deliver England's future king. And he will be delivering my twins!)

How's that for tremendously exciting?

Anyway, anyway, we are booked in for a c section on ....4 April. I'll be 37 weeks and 5 days. That's another 3.5 weeks. If I can make that date, amazing. But given everyone was staring at me when I walked through the common with the Brit on Sunday, I am literally, mahoosive. I've just suddenly popped. 

People openly stared, then turned to their partner or friend and you could see them saying, 'Look at the size of that...'

Yes people. All this AND and a fungal infection. Now move along before I squash you.

We thought April Fool's Day would be a fun and apt birthday, ('It's actually triplets. They found another one, it didn't show up on any of the scans.') and would've been fun, but it was fully booked.

Soon we will meet our babies.....we can't help wondering what they will look like.