Twin Pregnancy Diary – 17 weeks 2 days

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Last Tuesday was my second ever appointment with the midwife.  I wasn’t too impressed with the new midwife who I first met the last time.  I shouldn’t compare her to my previous one, who was real “old school” and matronly but with a heart of gold.  She had a no nonsense approach yet absolutely, without a doubt did her job thoroughly, cautiously and she knew what she was talking about.  She was over seventy, having worked in midwifery for over fifty years until one day last year, during my pregnancy with Joseph, she fell and banged her head.  She died in a week of a brain haemorrage.  Very sad.

I went along for my 10am appointment.  Young children were missing their routine naps and older ones were having to postpone the days lessons.  My new midwife wasn’t there, with a stand-in taking her place that day. It turned out that my midwife had booked several ladies and not entered them into the diary, plus double booked my appointment with another lady.  Consequently we were nPublish Postot seen until an hour after my original scheduled appointment, by which time the kids had used up all their patience and good behaviour in the hot, stuffy waiting room and were ready to crawl the walls once we finally got to see the midwife.

Regardless, the stand-in midwife, whom I much preferred, did all the checks she was supposed to do. She also finally sorted out my iron tablets so I finally felt like I had been given some kind of ante natal care at last.  Then she told me it would be nine weeks until my next appointment.

Nine weeks?!


This is what they mean by more regular checks for a high risk, multiple pregnancy?  I do see the consultant tomorrow but then that would still leave eight weeks of not seeing anyone.  I was not happy to do that, so I awkwardly told her so.  I do feel bad, you see, like I’m being difficult.  But I know I would have very likely complained and worried constantly for the eight weeks that the babies and I were being left, and you, my loyal couple of army of readers would have had the earache (eyeache?) from it. So it seemed only fair for your own sakes that I stated my unhappiness about it.

“I am not very happy about that.”


And she explained that it was the new guidelines and that yes, it was for high risk, multiple pregnancies. She would, however, be happy to book me in sooner if that was what I wanted.

Um. Yes, please.

Apart from that I’ve felt pretty good this week, considering.  The tiredness still knocks me out at times but I am hoping that the magic iron tablets will do the trick very soon.  I am still shocked at how cumbersome and heavy I feel already though.  I know that I’m carrying double the baby and double the placenta and double the sac and double the weight of everything but I still cannot get over how different this pregnancy feels to all my other (singleton) pregnancies.  There is no question that I do feel heavier and more off balance so much sooner.

There is no way on this earth that my maternity clothes are going to last the distance.  Some of them aren’t even looking optimistic for the next month, so I’m going to have to sort something out on that front unless I’m to start walking around naked.  I am not planning on doing that any time soon though, to your undoubted relief, so sorting out larger clothes it’ll be.

The last few days I have been getting tightenings after periods of activity.  My mornings are always very busy for a few hours. By the end of my morning chores and by the time everyone is ready and settled for lessons or  morning naps, I’m in discomfort.  I know I experienced practice contractions earlier and earlier with my other pregnancies but not for another three months or so yet. I don’t know whether to be concerned or to just accept that this is how it is for twin pregnancies.  Perhaps I should mention it when I visit my consultant tomorrow? I don’t know.

According to the Babycentre app on my phone, at 17 weeks each baby now has their eyes at the front of their heads, their ears in the right places and their cartilage skeletons are beginning to harden.  They each measure about 13cm and weigh about 140g. That explains my heaviness, doesn’t it? (!)

Anyway, like I said, I’ll be off to see the consultant tomorrow.  I’m looking forward to someone being able to give me firm answers.  At the moment I feel like a first time mum all over again, unsure of what will happen and what to expect.  It’s a strange thought to know you’ve been through pregnancy and birth (both normal and c-sections) nine times already but you still don’t know what the expectations for your pregnancy this time around will be.  My main question being, given that I these are my 10th and 11th children and the last three pregnancies ended with c-sections, how does this affect when my c-section (as they will not even consider vbac) will be performed if all goes well?

Answer to be received tomorrow… hopefully.

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