My saddle finally arrived a couple of weeks ago. (Edit:  It arrived back in July – this post has been a long time in writing, for reasons you’ll see in a bit.)

I’ll go into all of its details and story behind ordering it later, but for now the short and sweet of it: it’s a 17 inch Eurolight and it fits my butt like a glove…. Which is a terrible simile now that I think about it, because a glove wouldn’t fit a posterior very well, but you know what I mean.

 

It arrived in the mail and I took it down to the barn the next day, only to discover that the cinch (girth? I can never keep that term straight) didn’t fit.

I really had nobody to blame but me – I could have measured at any point in the 1+ year I ended up waiting on the saddle…. but then again, that would have been the behavior of a responsible adult, and if I were a responsible adult this blog probably wouldn’t even exist.

I indulged in a pity party on Facebook (I wanna ride my saddle but the cinch/girth won’t fiiiiiit) only to have it cut short by amazing people offering to help me out.  I’m firmly convinced that endurance riders are some of the nicest horse people around.  “My horse is in the hospital and I’ll be making a five-hour trip home tomorrow, but I’ll stop in a parking lot on the way home just to meet up with you so I can give you this obscenely expensive girth for free.”

That kind of charity is mind-boggling to me and something I aspire to.

So, naturally, being me… I was a big fat jerk and was 15 minutes late to the meet up. SIGH.

In my defense I did leave in time. I just didn’t account for the extra time it would take me as I stopped four and five times along the way to retch and gag and vomit on the side of the road.

 

 

I think I’ve ended up becoming Facebook friends with most of you guys, but in case I’m not, yeah.  I’m pregnant again. Yes, it was on purpose.  Yes, we’re happy.  No, it wasn’t an accident.  Yes, I know what causes it.

So, now you know where I disappeared to.  I meant to type something up before I fell off the deep end of morning sickness…. but holy crap! One day I was doing okay, and the next day I was absolutely disabled with nausea.  I’m not exaggerating:  I was borderline disabled – any time I moved too fast I gagged.  Do you have any idea how hard it is to take care of a house and chase after kids without moving?

For those of you who have followed this blog, you know that me and puking during pregnancy is no new thing…. but this was ridiculous.  In case you’re curious, at some point during the horribleness I made a mental list of terrible things I’ve put up with, with “1” being the worst, and “5” being “still really crappy, but survivable:

 

1. P.U.P.P.P :  had this with DragonMonkey, and there’s no way to describe how bad it was.  You can block out pain and push it to the back of your mind – you can’t block out itching.  And this wasn’t really itching – it was “itchy” in the same way you can compare a skinned knee and the late stages of labor are both “pain”.
2. Morning Sickness: ‘Nuff said.
3. Rheumatoid Arthritis:  I think the worst part of this is you never know how long each flare up is going to take.  The overall pain is less, but it just NEVER ENDS.
4. Migraines: I’ve only had two, but they were so bad that sound started having a color (and not a pretty one.)
5. Appendicitis: Self-explanatory – it was bad but not TERRIBLE until till it started leaking inside me.

You get the point.  My morning sickness was really, really bad this go-round.  Somewhere around 7 weeks pregnant I gave up toughing it out and tried to call the doctor to get some medicines.   I say “tried” because it took me almost an hour to make the call, because I literally could not stop retching long enough to place the phone call.  Even after I finally made the appointment I couldn’t quit.  I vomited on the way to the doctors, which was less than half a mile from my house.  I checked in to the doctors and then waited outside for them to call me back, where I could gag and puke without witnesses.
My doctor, who is normally “let’s try to take it naturally” took one look at me (when I came back from puking yet again during the middle of the exam) and prescribed me Zofran.

Sweet, sweet, beautiful Zofran!

The downside to Zofran is that, unbeknownst to me, my insurance will only cover so many pills in a single month.  Still, with the magical help of better living through chemicals I was able to keep the vomiting down to a reasonable 2-3 times a day, instead of 20 plus times a day.  The nausea was still there, but the vomiting was a reasonable amount.

Still – I remember laying there on my couch a couple of weeks ago (I think I was 8 weeks along?), thinking that I would never, ever, ever, EVER wish anything bad to happen to my baby…. but if I miscarried, I would be okay with it, because I could finally get a break from the unrelenting nausea.

Of course, the next day the nausea eased somewhat and I was horrified, convinced I’d magically willed my baby into dying.  I was a terrible, horrible, worthless kind of a person who didn’t even deserve to live and HRAAAAUUUUGGGGGHHHH…. the vomiting returned and for once I was actually relieved to be miserably sick.

So, now you know what I’ve been doing since late July, when the morning sickness kicked in:  I’ve been laying on my couch, occasionally stumbling to the bathroom to vomit, occasionally vomiting into towels, into trash cans, in my car, on the side of the road, in grocery store bathroom stalls, into my hands….vomiting so hard I routinely peed my pants like a two-year old resisting toilet training… and then vomiting some more.

It started to feel like I was living in super gross version of a Dr. Seuss book.  Would you, could you, in the rain?  HRAAAAUUUGGH.  In a house?  HRAAUUUUGGGH.  With a mouse?  HRAUUUUUUUGH.

Oh, I’ve also been going through 2-3 spit towels a day.  In case you’re curious what a spit-towel is, it’s exactly what it sounds like: a towel I spit into.  For some stupid reason my body decided it would be really fun to make 4x the amount of spit it needed.  It was even grosser than it sounded – my mouth was literally filling up with spit (to the point my cheeks would start ballooning if I held it in) every single minute of every single hour of the day.  I could only swallow so much spit, so I had to start carrying around a spit towel – in public I downgraded it to spit napkins.

Pregnancy and me:  it’s seriously the sexiest thing ever.

Right around the time my Zofran ran out and I discovered my insurance was unwilling to refill it, we were all hit with the stomach flu.

In case you were curious, the difference between the stomach flu and morning sickness is that with the stomach flu you have to worry about it coming out both ends, so to speak.

Sexy.  SOOOOOO, SOOOOOO very sexy.

I survived, but barely.

Three days after the stomach flu hit our house…..it was like a switch flipped inside me and I began to feel better.  I was still nauseous, but it was just normal waves of sickness, and there were 1/2 hour to hour-long stretches where I actually felt almost normal.

I know that doesn’t sound like much, but it felt like heaven to me.  Ever day since then has been a little bit better – right now I’m only getting sick at night, and I feel almost completely normal during the day.  I’m almost 13 weeks along and I feel good!  Hooray!

Which is why today came as such a complete surprise.

After going way past my due date with both Squid and DragonMonkey my OB decided it would be in our best interest to get a dating scan – an ultrasound where we made sure the baby’s due date was correct.  I didn’t mind at all.  Who doesn’t like to take a peek at the kid in their belly?  Besides, without it I would be stuck waiting to see the baby until we got our big scan done at around 20 weeks along.

I convinced The Bean to come along – if it sounds like he’s not particularly enthused about ultrasounds, it’s because he’s not.  Oh, he’s joined me for every “big scan”, but for some reason he can’t make heads or tails of ultrasound images.  I could probably show him a printed-off picture of a staticky tv screen and tell him it was a profile pic of the baby, and he’d likely smile and nod and tell me it looks great.  I have no idea why it’s so hard for him to see things in an ultrasound, but it is.

In an effort to help him figure the pictures out I convinced him to check out the early scan – with the baby not-so-squished inside me, it’s easier to see body parts, and legs, and arms as the kid wiggles and swims about.

We had to drive to Portland’s OHSU clinic and use their fancy ultrasound machine, as the one in little town isn’t that sensitive, but since The Bean works in downtown Portland, that worked out for the best.  We checked in and were shown back to a little room, where I lay down on a table and the ultrasound tech squirted the goo on my belly.  She  put the wand down and…..

And all of a sudden the room got really, really quiet.

I could see the baby very clearly.  I could also see…..

I glanced at the ultrasound technician, who was sitting very, very still in her chair.

The Bean leaned forward.  “Is that….”

“Yup,” the ultrasound technician replied.

I looked back at the screen, and swallowed heavily before asking, “Are there….”

“Yup,” she replied again.

The room got quiet for a moment – and for a second, I was just overwhelmed with this vague, almost queasy surreal sensation.  It was like… like if I didn’t say the words, it wouldn’t actually be real.  But it was real, wasn’t it? I could see it clearly on the monitor in front of me.

I bit the bullet and said the actual word, just to be certain.  “Twins.  You’re saying there’s two of them.  I’m having twins.”

“Yup!  Twins!”

Upon hearing that proclamation I clapped my hands twice, demurely, and said, “Quite nice, quite nice,” and the ultrasound then proceeded in a normal, classy fashion.

I absolutely did not alternate between tears and hysterical laughter and saying inappropriate things that rhymed with “Holy THIT. THIT, two of them.  Twins.  THIT. Twins.”

The Bean didn’t begin sweating, and his hands didn’t go cold.

I didn’t burst into tears later on in the day when someone asked me if I was expecting.

I also didn’t spend the rest of the day in a daze, occasionally saying “holy crap” out loud from time to time.

And if you believe that, I’ve got some Arizona seafront property to sell you.

I mean, don’t get me wrong – twins are a great thing.  They’re fun.  They’re cute.  It’s just… twins fall into that category of “weird stuff that exists but happens to someone else.”

I guess I just forgot that for all of you, I am someone else.

 

 

Twins, guys.

I’m having TWINS.