Ah, memories. Picture it, summertime in Michigan, nine years ago…
A little over nine years ago, I found out I was pregnant. And pretty early in the game, I realized something was amiss. First of all, I was violently ill 24/7. Second of all, I was in maternity clothes about seven seconds after I peed on a stick.
But the most obvious sign was in conversations with other pregnant women. You know when you’re pregnant and you run into other pregnant women and you both kind of grin at each other and chat for a second? As it was my first pregnancy, I had no idea what I was supposed to look like, but I’d see another woman who approximated my size and ask her when she was due.
Me: “How far along are you?”
Pregnant woman with adorable little bump: “Seven months now. How about you?”
Me: “Um… three months. Yep, 13 weeks.”
Pregnant woman with adorable little bump: **crickets**
That conversation happened three times.
Then, JUST before the ultrasound that confirmed twins, I was standing in line at the grocery store buying Ben and Jerry’s and Goldfish Crackers tofu-dogs and raw broccoli when the woman in line behind me tapped me on the shoulder.
“Excuse me, are you pregnant?”
I looked at her. It was pretty obvious I was pregnant. I was overweight at the time, but I had a giant bump and if it wasn’t from pregnancy there was probably something seriously wrong with me.
“Well, I just had to tell you that you’re HUGE.”
Me: **crickets**
Even I, never at a loss for words, was dumb-struck.
I have seen a lot of pregnant women with large bellies at the end of their pregnancies and during labor. I used to be a doula, and I was an apprentice midwife briefly. But pregnancy with twins is just a different look. The belly is not just big, it’s more like… filling. It stretches in every direction and seems like it is about to take over the world and eat everything in its path, like The Blob. Check out these bellies from the Natural Birth of Twins and Triplets video — especially the woman pregnant with triplets at the end!
Filed under: attachment parenting, birth Tagged: | multiples, natural birth, pregnancy, pregnant with twins, twins
