34 weeks!

I am grateful for each morning that I wake up still pregnant.  I feel really miserable, and am more than ready to be finished with this pregnancy, but I want so badly to get these babies to a point where they are healthy and able to come home with us after they are born.  My hope is to make it to at least 35 weeks, but 36 would be even better.  I honestly hadn't ever really thought about the ramifications of having the twins remain at the hospital in the NICU after I come home until this past week.  If it's God's Will, then so be it, but if there is anything I can do to ensure that they cook longer, then I will do it.

I am just flooded with emotions right now.  I have forgotten what it feels like to actually feel good, and look forward regaining my ability to function.  At the same time I know that once the babies are here, life will never be the same.  As uncomfortable as I am, I know that carrying the babies in utero is significantly easier logistically than carrying them in my arms.  As is feeding them via umbilical cord versus nursing them.  Nursing both Emmy and Hannah was excruciatingly painful for the first six or so weeks, and thinking about nursing the two is really frightening to me.  But, I am committed.  My girls have been so healthy and I want the same for James and Julia.  The good news, is that as an experienced mama, I know that it gets better with time and practice, it's just the getting there part that makes me really anxious.  With Hannah, the cramping I experienced as my insides shrunk down to size, left me doubled over in tears for the first couple of weeks post partum.  I needed the strongest pain meds Dr. Anderson had prescribed me in order to be somewhat comfortable.  Everything that I have read indicates that it gets worse with each subsequent pregnancy.  Knowing this, and that I will have much further to "shrink" makes me nervous, too.  I know it will still be quite some time until I truly feel like myself again, even after I deliver these peanuts.  I have such empathy for those who are chronically ill after this pregnancy.

I had a doctor's appointment today, and no cervical progress has been made.  Thankfully, I'm still at 2cm and 50%.  I am measuring 42 weeks and Julia remains head down, while James is side-lying.  He managed to lodge his head in the right side of my rib cage with his tush in the left side.  This new position explains all the discomfort I've had in my ribs as of late!  The unfortunate news is that Dr. Anderson said that if James stays in this position when I go into labor, he would insist on a c-section.  It is far to risky to attempt to deliver him any other way.  He also informed me that, so long as he's in town he will do everything he can to deliver the babies, but on the off chance one of his colleagues should need to, they likely would do a c-section unless both babies were head-down, given their discomfort and inexperience with delivering breech babies.  I am grateful to have had the heads up, so that I can be mentally prepared, but I am prayerful that James is just working his way around.  We'll see how it goes...