Things as bad as they seem?

I went to my obstetrician's office for my post operative check-up this week and everything appears to be healing well.  As I left the office the receptionist turned to me and said, "Sara, if you call me in 8 months and tell me that you're pregnant again the only referral that you're getting is to a psychiatrist."  I assured her that she would not hear from me for a long time (or ever again) and held up my brand new birth control prescription as proof.  

Seven weeks ago I had fraternal twins.  A girl and a boy, Molly & Jack.  They are amazing, but often the bane of my existence, particularly at four in the morning.  Reactions prior and post arrival, from us, friends, family and strangers have been mixed.  On the drive into work from the hospital after the first ultrasound, when we found out there were two babies there was a definite tense silence in the air.  My reaction at the hospital to the announcement of, "You're having twins!" was to say "Crap." followed by the question of, "Are you sure?", then "Are you really sure?", followed by, "And you're sure that there aren't three in there?"  My husband's was pure silence, until finally as we pulled into the parking lot at his work,  he said, "I guess the decision between one and two children has been made." Until their birth I routinely had nightmares that the ultrasound technicians had made a mistake and there were really more children hiding behind the twins, I began obsessively watching the show Make Room for Multiples looking for some tips on what not to do.

When I called my dad to tell him I was having twins that afternoon (his mother was a fraternal twin, so really, genetically this was all his fault) I was met with hysterical laughter in thirty second bursts, only punctuated by a gasp for air and the statement of, "I'm sorry, but it's just so funny."

Since then, in utero and after their arrival we've been warned by many about how tough things were going to be and how our lives will be forever changed, and essentially how screwed we were, the most ominous of these predictions came from people who were twins themselves.  A colleague, mother of grown twin boys and friend of mine gave me the best piece of advice I've received so far, she said, "Remember, the more horrifying the experience, the better the story later on."  And here we are - welcome to my blog.

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