on changing perspectives

It's amazing how, in a handful of months, your perspective can utterly change. I was thinking today about "where" I was a year ago. At this point last year, Scott had just been able to move up from Madisonville. I was working feverishly on collecting data for my dissertation, and utterly terrified that I would never get done. A few short months after that, I conquered the thing, and five years of stressful anticipation and anxiety somehow disappeared without fanfare.

And then came the dangerous idea to think about having kids.

And then came the positive pregnancy test.

And then came the fateful day with two weird blobs on the ultrasound screen. Two weird blobs with strong heartbeats and the capacity to knock all the wind out of me.

Everything changed SO fast. And everything has changed so much SINCE then. I could count out weeks and months a dozen different ways to show it, but it would probably get pretty tiresome to everybody but myself. All I know is, I am having twins in a very short time, and it doesn't sound strange at all.

(Now, don't get confused and take that to mean I feel prepared for this. I absolutely don't. Just... not surprised anymore.)

Another weird thing that has changed is my opinion of my own body, right down to my "gorgeous" cervix. I guess I've always had fairly normal levels of self-unsatisfied-ness. Too tall. Too big-boned. Too "fluffy". But it's been amazing how that perspective has changed too. I can watch numbers on the scale go up and feel nothing more than a detached, scientific interest in how appropriate they are. My ankles are quickly disappearing as they mesh with my swollen feet, but as long as I can wear comfortable shoes, I find the phenomenon little more than curious. But the weirdest thing is a sense of pride for this bigger-than-average body that I've always been a little uncomfortable in. No doubt if I had been some skinny waiflike little thing, a twin pregnancy would be a lot harder to deal with right now. But even at this point my body treats two extra people as a minor inconvenience. I'm not hugely uncomfortable, hungry, nauseous, faint, or anything else. My blood sugar and iron are consistently good. And apparently my larger frame is better for hiding babies, because I don't appear to be looking uncomfortably huge yet--unlike some pictures of other twin mamas I've seen.

Anyway, speaking of the body and the belly, here are a couple more pictures for you non-facebookers...

28 weeks:

30 weeks (today):