Misery & Company

You know the old saying, "Misery loves company". I can't think of any other time that's been truer than now while I'm pregnant. I had my "3 hour Glucola Test" today. That's the test where they starve you for 12 hours, poke you in the arm for blood, make you drink this gross flat orange crush sugar yuck stuff and follow it up by taking more blood every hour for 3 hours. Today there was one other lady taking the same test as me. Three hours is a long time to sit uncomfortably in a doctor's waiting room without being miserable. Naturally the other lady and I gravitated towards each other and struck up conversation. At first it was the basic getting to know you stuff. The "Wow, twins" said to me and "Wow, 4 girls.... 2 and 1/2 in diapers(one is potty training with pull-ups), one in high school!" said to her. Next step is the story exchange which inevitably boils down to the joys/misery comparison. While this lady and I are in the room together for nearly 3 hours, it's a waiting room with 5 or so other pregnant women rotating in and out of the waiting room as their appointments are called. Today, I found out none of us like the Glucola orange sugar yuck. Everyone hates the old torture style ultrasound which requires a full bladder (apparently the new machines require an empty bladder but this office only has the older model). I think there are enough pregnant women out there that we might actually be able to get the signatures to ban the older machines, but we're generally too tired to get off the couch more than what is required. It seems that in our small pool of pregnant women, we either had persistent heartburn/acid reflux -or- morning sickness. One conclusion we all agreed on is that all of this is entirely worth it. I thought that it was interesting how women on their 2nd, 3rd and more pregnancy seemed to compare each pregnancy more than they compared each child, as if they love them all equally well now, but in the womb, kid number 2 damn near killed me, etc. The lady having the 3 hour test as well and waiting like me is the younger sibling of ident twin girls. I guess everyone thought they were triplets. The lady sitting across from us has 6 children, all pretty close in age. The middle two are frat twin boys who are now 11. She didn't speak the best english (Cajun maybe?), but she understood it well. I showed her the title of a sub- chapter in "The Art Of Parenting Twins" (The Unique Joys And Challenges Of Raising Twins And Other Multiples) called "Adjusting to Twinshock - Training For The Multiple Olympics", to which she laughed richly for about a minute or two trapped in the glorious memory of getting through the first 3 months with twins. People like her and others I've met make me feel so much better about all of this. Not that I think it's going to be easy, but that I too, shall come through this and still be smiling and laughing in the end. In my scenario, the good news is that I only have to deal with the twins and myself, the bad news is that, so far, I only have myself and the twins. Everyone has different circumstances and yet, most all survive.

I asked my friend Sue what I should do if both babies are crying and I can't do anything to calm them down. Her response? "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em."
Yes, sometimes, misery does in fact, love company.