This time last year...

The past several days, I keep thinking about "this time last year".

This time last year, I had two baby boys inside me.  I was huge and horribly uncomfortable but I didn't care.  I just wanted my babies to stay inside me as long as possible.  Indeed, throughout my entire pregnancy, I kept telling my babies to stay inside me as long as possible and every week, and even every day, I was still pregnant, I was thrilled.

But literally this time last year, I was worried, I wasn't feeling as much movement from Baby A.  I spent the weekend before the boys' arrival in the hospital (not overnight - I literally went in on Saturday, and then again on Sunday).  On Monday, I had an ultrasound.  Baby A had barely grown since my last ultrasound about a month earlier.  The doctor met with me to set up a rigorous plan of observation.  It was all quite scary.  My boys had been so big throughout my pregnancy - in the 75-95 percentiles (as I had proudly informed family) and now my Baby A was in the 5 percentile.  

The rigorous plan to observe the babies never happened.  My water broke around 4:30 am on Tuesday, but I didn't know for sure that it was my water.  I wasn't having contractions (after I had Braxton Hicks most of my second and third trimesters) and just went on with my morning, which included more doctor appointments.  I asked the doctor to check to see if my water had broke, or whether I had lost all control of my bladder at this point in my pregnancy.  He announced it was definitely my water and that the babies would be coming that day.

I was in shock.  I was just barely past 35 weeks pregnant.  I wasn't ready for my pregnancy to be over.  I wasn't ready to give birth.  I couldn't even reach my husband, or my mother.  But it was all happening.  

More surprises awaited me that day.  After I was in set up in Labor and Delivery, Baby A appeared to be in distress on the monitors.  With hardly any explanation, I was whisked away for an Emergency C-Section.  They announced when Baby A was out but we didn't even get an announcement when Baby B was out (which terrified us because we didn't know if something was wrong).  The babies went to the NICU that night and stayed there for many nights after.

There was no happy moment really of holding the babies.  While we did get to hold Baby A - who was actually fine, although very little, we knew Baby B was in trouble.  So we couldn't just be happy.  We didn't even get to hold Baby B until five nights later...  And then there wasn't the traditional happy discharge from the hospital - we left with Baby A nine days after his birth, with Baby B still in serious condition.  Luckily, we were able to leave with Baby B, ten days later, but then it's a little anti-climatic. But, hey, we were bringing home two baby boys - we had so much for which to be thankful.

I suppose no one is ever truly ready for that first baby to make its arrival, but I felt less ready in that I had not hit that point when I wanted the pregnancy to be over.  In fact, every day, I was so happy that I was still pregnant because I desperately wanted to make it as close as possible to my due date.  So when I was suddenly not pregnant, I was sad, as I had not had a chance to say good-bye to having my babies inside me, kicking and moving around, completely dependent on me.

In a few days, I will no longer be able to say "this time last year they were inside me."  It makes me so sad.  Is that strange?  Is it because they came before I was ready?  Is it just totally normal?  Obviously, I am thrilled to have them here and to discover the amazing individuals that they are, but I am sad that their being inside me is on its way to becoming a distant memory.  

I so badly want to go back in time, feel them inside me again, watch a foot move across my tummy, once, twice, three times.  I want to have the chance to say, "now it's okay, you can come whenever now.  We did it!"  And then welcome them with ready, excited, happy arms, and be able to hold them as they take their first breaths, and nuzzle into me.  And then with nothing but joy, hand them to their daddy and see him look at them with nothing but pride.  

I don't know.  Maybe it's not just about not being pregnant and that part of our relationship becoming a distant memory, maybe it's also about being sad that the date of their birth wasn't as we all would have wanted (the timing, the suddenness, the emergency C-section, the NICU).  In other words, I didn't have the good-bye or the hello I had dreamed about my entire life.  And then as sad as I am, I feel like a jerk, a total 100% jerk, because regardless of when or how they came, I still got the two best boys in the whole wide world.  And that makes me the luckiest mom in the world.  It really does...  Meanwhile, I have a few more days to say, "this time last year, they were still inside me."