Women in the so-called, problem-riddled "first world" get pregnant, and most of us immediately run screaming to the internet like our panties are on fire in search of answers to queries like "what's that weird feeling I get when I don't eat, and what can I do about it?" (it's hunger...eat something) or "help! I'm six weeks pregnant and I can't feel my baby moving!" (that's normal; savor the peace). Especially when something gets funky, the internet seems like a safe - nay, desirable - place to roam about in search of wisdom and comfort. For some women, it really does seem to do the trick. I won't lie, I am often jealous of people who actually get something out of message boards and leaving comments on blogs. How nice is that?
When I first found out that I was pregnant, way back in the spring of 2011, I did as my upbringing and environment had trained me to do. Before even telling my husband that he was going to be a father, I spent most of a day online (granted, I was supposed to be teaching seventh grade at the time, but that's another story entirely) researching early pregnancy symptoms, exploring two dozen webpages with virtually interchangeable graphics of seven-week-old fetuses, and almost instantaneously getting fed up with message boards on which everyone uses confusing acronyms that made reading potentially thoughtful comments an act of disappointing futility. I did tell my husband, R, later that day (in the form of a cake - also a good story, also for later), and as we hugged in the kitchen basking in the relative shock of the situation, I whispered sweetly in his ear: "don't bother going online; I already read everything there is to read, and none of it's good." Somehow, he believed me, and didn't bother.
My first pregnancy and first baby, H, were both arguably riddled with complications, given how wonderfully everything turned out. Here it is in such a small nutshell as to be annoying:
1. I had morning sickness, and it sucked.
2. At 19 weeks, we learned that our son (yay, a boy!) had a pile of congenital heart defects. After a hellish weekend waiting to see a cardiologist the next Monday, we learned that he would likely be fine after three stages of open-heart surgery concluding roughly when he was three years old.
3. I had a metric crap-ton of ultrasounds, both otherwise a fairly normal, healthy pregnancy.
4. Hudson was born with zero medical interventions, healthier than anyone expected.
5. He had his first surgery, crashed twice, recovered, got a staph infection, recovered, then ended up in complete heart failure at not quite two months of age.
6. We were transferred to Children's Hospital Boston where he was listed for a heart transplant, waited exactly one month for the right heart to show up, and he recovered and was released from the hospital in record time.
7. Now H is just over two, and awesome.
R and I joked through the whole ordeal that we'd end up with our second pregnancy being healthy, normal, and completely okay...except that there would be two of them. Apparently we joked too loudly too close to some snarky gremlin or minor deity. Here's my second pregnancy to date in a similarly tedious nutshell:
1. I had even worse morning sickness, and it sucked even more than before. I also cried a lot before I even knew I was pregnant, and could smell EVERYTHING.
2. At 13 weeks, we learned that my already getting kind of huge and feeling as sick as I did was because we had (as I gently termed it) a "double-occupancy situation."
3. My glorious midwife practice had to break up with me - again - because they don't manage twin pregnancies. It was really sad, but I already knew the more "mainstream" practice from being pregnant with Hudson, so I resigned myself to things just not going as planned...again.
4. At 20 weeks, a previous ultrasound tech's suspicion was confirmed. Two girls.
5. At not quite 24 weeks, I stood next to a coworker who was due in about three weeks, and we were the same size.
3. I had a metric crap-ton of ultrasounds, both otherwise a fairly normal, healthy pregnancy.
4. Hudson was born with zero medical interventions, healthier than anyone expected.
5. He had his first surgery, crashed twice, recovered, got a staph infection, recovered, then ended up in complete heart failure at not quite two months of age.
6. We were transferred to Children's Hospital Boston where he was listed for a heart transplant, waited exactly one month for the right heart to show up, and he recovered and was released from the hospital in record time.
7. Now H is just over two, and awesome.
R and I joked through the whole ordeal that we'd end up with our second pregnancy being healthy, normal, and completely okay...except that there would be two of them. Apparently we joked too loudly too close to some snarky gremlin or minor deity. Here's my second pregnancy to date in a similarly tedious nutshell:
1. I had even worse morning sickness, and it sucked even more than before. I also cried a lot before I even knew I was pregnant, and could smell EVERYTHING.
2. At 13 weeks, we learned that my already getting kind of huge and feeling as sick as I did was because we had (as I gently termed it) a "double-occupancy situation."
3. My glorious midwife practice had to break up with me - again - because they don't manage twin pregnancies. It was really sad, but I already knew the more "mainstream" practice from being pregnant with Hudson, so I resigned myself to things just not going as planned...again.
4. At 20 weeks, a previous ultrasound tech's suspicion was confirmed. Two girls.
5. At not quite 24 weeks, I stood next to a coworker who was due in about three weeks, and we were the same size.
6. At 35 weeks, one girl is breech, the other is transverse, both are growing beautifully, and while I feel like I am the size of two whales, my doctors have me drinking milkshakes to catch up on weight gain. We're doing everything we can to get them head-down to avoid a c-section.
So, what's my beef with the internet? It turns out that when one is pregnant with twins, the internet is about as terrible a place to be as it is for anyone pregnant with a child with known heart defects. Everything sounds like a medical disaster waiting to happen, and every website preaches their position or advice to be 100% accurate and medically approved. This is not so. Major websites (I shan't name their terrible names here, but you know what I mean) have tiny little sections devoted to multiple births, most of which give so little actual information as to be more threatening than helpful. Personal blogs are sometimes great, but few are truly informative, and many are so riddled with scary stories as to be even less helpful in the long run than the shamefully outdated books in my local library.
So, what's my beef with the internet? It turns out that when one is pregnant with twins, the internet is about as terrible a place to be as it is for anyone pregnant with a child with known heart defects. Everything sounds like a medical disaster waiting to happen, and every website preaches their position or advice to be 100% accurate and medically approved. This is not so. Major websites (I shan't name their terrible names here, but you know what I mean) have tiny little sections devoted to multiple births, most of which give so little actual information as to be more threatening than helpful. Personal blogs are sometimes great, but few are truly informative, and many are so riddled with scary stories as to be even less helpful in the long run than the shamefully outdated books in my local library.
I know I can't fix the internet, or the creepily cultish obsession women seem to have with reading about nightmarish things that twin pregnancies and births can do to them, but I'm going to start to try. I might get gory from time to time, but I promise I'll try to keep it as productive as possible.
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