Following is the veritable gold mine of insight unearthed by googling ‘twins’:

• Being pregnant with twins is really, really complicated.
• Parenting twins is really, really difficult.
• Be prepared for sleepless nights.
• Stock up with lots of diapers.
• MARY-KATE & ASHLEY! TRIPLEXXX NEKKID!!!!

Pregnancy? Complicated? You mean my body is in as much peril as THE REST OF MY LIFE? Phew. Thank goodness you told me. Now I’ll really saw logs.

Twins? Difficult? The thought hadn’t crossed my mind. Every second. Of every minute. Of every hour and day since I found out.

Sleepless nights? Oh, really? Is that how it is for OTHER parents of twins? ‘Cuz it won’t be that way for us. See, my twins are going to be drugged and kept in padded, soundproof cubbyholes. Kibble will be dispensed as reward for good behaviour. Meanwhile, I will be on the dance floor boozing it up without a care in the world, chain-smoking and flashing my puddy tat to passerby. That is, when I’m not at the spa.

‘Stock up with lots of diapers’.. because as soon as you give birth, a fleet of Vorgon Constructor ships will unexpectedly arrive and demolish the rest of the planet to make way for a new hyperspace bypass.

Naturally, all these helpful brainwaves are preceded with, “I don’t mean to scare you, but…”. But what? Let me finish that for you: “…but planting giant, festering stress bombs on you — and then vanishing without providing a single useful piece of information — helps to make me feel that I’ve done better than you will. Besides, I get off on reminding you that hell is in your future, and in my distant past. Suckerrr!”

Coincidentally, “I don’t mean to scare you, but…” also precedes the pictures of tweedle-skin and tweedle-bones. I checked.

Sheesh. It’s almost enough to make me crave a little “Aww, shucks, ya’ll be FINE.” Almost.

Or at least a little: “Hey, we're with you. Here’s what worked for us: 1) For the first two months, put a sign on your door that says SLEEPING BABIES + DISHEVELLED MOTHER + EXPLODING ZEPPELIN BOOBS = NO VISITORS. PLEASE LEAVE CASSEROLE ON DOORSTEP, THEN KINDLY BUGGER OFF. THANK YOU! 2) Buy several of This Particular shirt/cape/muumuu/tent for public tandem nursing to escape unwelcome attention from roving National Geographic reporters, fetishists and rabid fundamentalist Christians alike. 3) If you’re worried about X, try asking your doctor about Y and Z. Beyond that, eat. Just eat. 4) No, you won’t need to mark on their foreheads with sharpie pens. You’ll always be able to tell them apart. 5) We didn’t relish in the prospect of twins either — but we love it. Love, love, love it. You’ll get there too.”

Those vets who have given us gems like the above, you know who you are. We bow to you. And to the faceless trolls and pontificators who populate most quasi-supportive websites — I've taken it upon myself to have you kindly bugger off by vowing to never google you again.

It makes me old to say it, he said. But look at us. We were so young. We weren’t who we’d be yet.

And in the snotty, brillo-pad-swallowing fog, it made perfect sense. Justin and I had retreated to bed early, both crippled with playschool-variety colds and sore throats, and sat with a picture found in Shediac of us, twelve years ago.

In it, we are less than a day’s drive out of Halifax, off to find our fortunes after meeting a year before and graduating university. We bought our first car and packed it full, driving west because we’d never gone in that direction before. Wearing matching Bouctouche dinner jackets, thinking we were tongue-in-cheek but really just being gaggingly cute, the two of us.

My resume may as well have been the following, in the middle of a blank piece of paper — Kate ‘God’s Gift’ Robson, B.P.R.

100% vaccuous, but brimming with an institutionally-bred sense of entitlement. It’s the only public relations degree in the country! And it’s mine. Convinced that charm, arrogance and three letters made up for lack of experience. About to be unceremoniously dropped into the software industry blender and then pulverized into a pulpy, quivering mass.

Justin was competent, ready, perfectly suited. But for what? Details, details. Somehow I always knew something waited for him — and it did. On his second day as a ski patroller, a thirteen-year-old boy died in his arms. He came home affected but calm, and that was the beginning of him.

Remember that one-room apartment in Whitehorse? The fridge used to keep us awake.

It was late October in the Yukon, four feet of snow on the ground, and everything fell through. We went to the library, chose the fattest newspaper off the shelf and decided to cut our losses in favour of that city: Vancouver. The following decade was a blur of growth disguised as both turmoil and fun… skiing and mountains and mentors and kayaks and currents and an impossible learning curve and that feeling of satisfaction that settles over you when you’ve made a place Yours.

Are we boring? he whispers in the darkness. I thought he'd been asleep. The occupants of my belly tossed and turned, and I was wrapped up in the fruitless pursuit of a comfortable position.

We’re just busy, I reply, after a long think.

I’d hug you, but then I’d get all hot, he says.

Uh-huh, I smile though he can’t see, full of affection and agreement. And then we sleep.

Are you boring, compared to the giggling, self-timer-picture-taking, freedom-filled days of your past? Does knowing it haunt you? Or are you content to coast on the fumes of your hipness?

She winked. “Gorgeous!” she said. “Gorgeous babies. You’ll be just fine. You’ll be sick of us, but you’ll all be great.”

We met our obstetrician today, informative and thorough but full of smiling warmth. The kind of woman I trust already—not only because she’s competent, but because she’ll make the twins’ birthday full of joy no matter what we need to accomplish it.

I’ll be in for ultrasounds every two weeks, watching ‘A’ and ‘B’ like hawks to make sure they learn to share. They’re a rare form of twins, identical and sharing a single placenta. One buffet, at which it’s possible for one to out-muscle the other. So we measure and prod, peek in on them to track their growth, in awe.

(The above view shows them curled up, backs to us. Baby A is closest to the exit door, on top, head to the right. Baby B is next in line, head to the left. Below are full-body profiles of each, with Baby B in the left-hand picture and Baby A in the right.)

It’s incredible. A curled up spine looks like a stripped fish skeleton, for a flash. Then the head comes into view, and a perfect profile. A nose, a mouth sucking and swallowing, a hand brushing the face. Fingers, how tiny they must be.. magnified thanks to a large, high resolution screen. But perfectly complete, the very same hand that will reach out and grip onto the world someday, tug at my earrings and yank on my hair.

In the case of Evan, it's the very hand that yanks Daddy’s boxer shorts down around his knees during morning cuddles. “Off! Off!” he orders, and we laugh in confusion. “OFF!” he demands, and so Daddy obeys. He plops down at the end of the bed and one leg after the other, puts daddy’s boxers on himself. Tucked into the back of his diaper and brushing his ankles, he wears them all morning with great pride.

I look at Evan’s ultrasound, remembering how uncertain I was. I am not a mother. How can I be a mother? But here he is, hopping around the living room wearing his Big Boy Boxers, cheeks stuffed like a squirrel with blueberry waffles. Life without him is unimaginable. We’re so deeply in love, and would never wish a single moment away (uhhh… almost).

The same feeling will come, and we’ll say, Can you remember how scared we were? That’s only because we didn’t know them yet.

New ritual: morning cuddles. Justin weaves through piles of laundry in the early morning darkness, retrieves The Boy with his inevitably icy feet, tousled and disoriented but already rattling a stream of greetings and tall tales.

We strip him to the flesh and tuck him between us under what must seem to him like mountains of toasty, downy fluff, and we chat, and we giggle, and Justin and I steal warm, squishy handfuls of groggy Boy. We hide together from the day until the light breaks through the curtain.

This morning from deep under the sheets he chimed, “Mama! A BUS!” (That’s my cue, you see.) “Evan, do you see a bus?” He pauses. “No,” he says authoritatively, like I’m nuts. Of course there’s no bus, silly mama! I was just *imagining* a bus. Silly mama.

Peppering the multiple-pregnancy funk (on which I am determined to launch a full-scale offensive) are moments of concentrated amazement—he gives me kisses when I ask for it, demands horsie rides on daddy’s back (“AGAIN! AGAIN!”). Our chatting is intentional now, two-sided. “Evan, are you a good boy?” I ask. “Yeeeah!” he replies. We hug like monkeys, limbs all atangle. I can't help but murmur, "Mmm hmm, mmm hmm" at the deliciousness. Now, he joins me. We cling to each other and hum our love.

He farted at dinner tonight, grinned and exclaimed, “P-U!”

Heaven.

Sixty thousand: the approximate number of extra calories per day I’m expected to down from here on in, bringing a whole new meaning to ‘stepping up to the plate’. And zero: the approximate number of pants that still fit, buttons and flies popped open all the way at a measly eleven weeks. I’m not even out of the first trimester and am already too round for the realm of zippers.

But the weight that dogs me these days is not the literal and the inevitable. It’s the kind that presses on my chest, making it hard to breathe.

Evan runs laps, unearths every breakable trinket, squeals with delight as the toilet paper unrolls in streams to the floor. For three hours straight he stomps and hops, lunges for the stairs, upstairs downstairs upstairs downstairs, thrusts dog toys into his mouth, yells TOOT! TOOT! as he discovers yet another door to slam, poops. Twice. He is good, but he is two. And he'll only get more determined from here.

I can’t sit down for more than a minute. I can’t eat. I can’t stand it. I am so tired. I've hardly said a word to anyone. My stomach aches. I trail after him, spotting and restraining and hand-holding and nagging, my lunch cold and untouched as everyone else sits with coffee and dessert.

It occurs to me then as my gut churns, how will this work?

This, plus two babies. It can’t be done. I can’t do it. How is it possible? Justin can’t stay at home forever. Even if he does, we need another set of hands at night. When will either of us sleep? And what about Evan? The numbers don’t balance. Someone will always be left out, and I’ll never get to eat or shower or be seen in public ever again. But I’m bound to be such a basketcase, my absence will count as a commendable community service.

Finally he unravels, late for his nap. I beg to leave for the sake of his sleep, hoping he’ll conk out in the car. As I say goodbye they all sit in the living room, looking up at me with smiles on their faces.

Imagine this time next year! they chortle, making conversation. You and him and two six-month-olds! Yuk yuk yuk.

As they wait for my response, marvelling, the walls shrink in on me as it wells up in my throat. I don’t want to cry in front of them. I don’t know if I’ve ever done that, lost it in front of this many people. But I will, if I open my mouth. I can only smile and nod and choke back the torrent.

But that’s not enough.

Gee, you’ll be soooo busy! Won’t it be great! Think of it! and they wait again, searching my face.

Actually I’d rather not think of it, thanks… is all I can manage. They chuckle and seem content with that answer, but I’m sure a couple of them saw my eyes glass up.

I’ve been crying in spurts ever since I got home, head filled with visions of a day like today plus two. Plus breastfeeding and sleep deprivation and double-poops and double-diapers and double crying and poor Evan, who will probably run headlong into a herd of stampeding rhinos (in slow motion, while I watch) as I’m trapped under a pair of wailing babies.

Justin is priceless. But still, it’s got to be me. Come summer I'll have to figure it out, get back on my feet, let him get back to work and financially compensate for my lack of maternity leave. All with my wits in safekeeping for eventual reinstatement.

I feel so alone with the weight of it, especially now.. so exhausted, so emotional, so uncertain and so raw.

November 27, 2006

Visited our doctor today, the mother-and-baby whisperer, sweet and intuitive and refreshingly sensible. She’s taken care of us since after Evan's birth, but not for his pregnancy and delivery. "So how did it go?" she asked, filling out the newly-pregnant forms and bloodwork orders. "Tell me about your first labour."

"Uhh, well …" (where to begin?) "I had back labour."

Her jaw dropped. "Really? Oh my, that’s tough," she said. She was looking at me, listening to me. Not scribbling or nodding indiscriminately. Just listening.

"…and an induction and the epidural and the episiotomy and the forceps and the stuff that makes you puke and the third-degree tears and the operating room and the strapped-down and the I.V. and the catheter and the internal monitor and the fetal distress and the fifteen-masked-faces-between-my-legs."

She gaped. "It was alright," I rushed to add. "It was only scary for the last hour or so." I’m strangely protective of it, still. I’m not sure why. I’ve fully recovered. I have a healthy child. It was Fine.

"It won’t be that way," she replied. "No matter what happens, and no matter what you and the baby need, it won’t be that way. I’ll make sure of it."

Sometimes, you don’t realize how starving you are until a heaping plate is put in front of you.

December 1, 2006

Every day brings the most unbearable hangover ever recorded in the history of mankind. The only thing that keeps me going is contemplating increasingly accurate ways to describe the misery.

I never leave the house without a barfing contingency plan: I could duck behind that bush <one block later> …or that dumpster <one block later> …or that garage <continue as per nauseum>. I wake up from a three-hour nap wanting a three-hour nap. I’m STARVING! I’m going to pass out any second if I don’t… ugh… food. Blecch. Never mind.

December 8, 2006

Oh god. Oh god.

The doctor just called with the results of my bloodwork. Red flag: they don’t call with normal results. "Your hormones are great," she said. "Too great, actually. You’re either a couple of weeks farther along than we thought, or…"

Wait. Stop right there. Please, let me enjoy just one more minute of obliviousness. But then she said it:

"…there may be more than one baby."

Know how all the world’s clocks follow Greenwich? Greenwich follows me. I can't be as far off as a week or two. Which leaves us to consider one heck of a gnarlier rabbithole than we’d anticipated.

T-t-t-twins.

I’m beyond flabbergasted. Three is above our capacity. Three is parental outnumberment. The Plan was two – neat, manageable, even. I’m not serene, nor energetic, nor wealthy enough to have three kids: especially two newborns. At the SAME TIME.

Summer 2007 would bring the second Halifax Explosion. Which would be followed by a tidal wave and the blizzard of the century. The hospital would empty in waves of screaming masses a la The Blob. Or better put: The Blobs.

Within a couple of weeks, the end to speculation will come by way of an ultrasound. Until then, I stew.

December 9, 2006

It creeps into my head, panic: we would have to buy a MINIVAN.

December 10, 2006

I am haunted by repercussions. I am terrified.

If it turns out to be anything else other than twins, I’ll have to start going to church.

Later tonight. Just got off the phone with the ever-sensible Daphne, my voice of reason. She has enough common sense for the both of us. "Pshaw," she said. "Ever wonder why the rhythm method doesn’t work? You can get pregnant any time of the month. They’ll just have to adjust your due date. Don’t worry! My cousin’s friend had the exact same thing happen…"

A glimmer of hope, to which I am grasping with the desperation of a soon-to-be drowning woman.

December 20, 2006

God doesn’t give you what you can’t handle.
God doesn’t give you what you can’t handle.
God doesn’t give you what you can’t handle.

<repeat until believed>

The radiologist had hardly touched the ultrasound wand to my skin before casually saying, “Yep—there’s one. There’s two. Probably identical, from how they’re set up.” And there they were. Tiny, grey-static pears dwarfed (for now) by the expanse of their shared home. Curled up in chosen corners, linked to nourishment by pulsing cords but not yet discernable as human. Two hummingbird hearts, flashing frantic but steady.

She leaves the room for several minutes. I stare at the ceiling, fixate on the dots of the drop-panels, the bulbs behind the plastic, the broken curtain track. Work up enough nerve to turn to the monitor, a capture of the last frame, of the two of them frozen from just a moment before. Panic and awe. Mostly panic. I wait for that inner sense of this is how it’s supposed to go, and it’s going to be alright, but it doesn’t come. I’m still waiting.

Getting used to the idea of living with two babies: that’s one thing. First, I have to get used to the idea of being pregnant with two babies.

They’ll have to roll me around in an industrial-strength wheelbarrow. They’ll have to drape my enormous girth in a shower curtain with a drawstring. They’ll have to put a flashing sign on my rear end that says WIDE LOAD! KEEP 200 FEET BACK. A loud beep will alert everyone within the immediate vicinity that I’m backing up.

We’ve been on the phone now, the evening after the ultrasound, for about four hours straight trying to sound excited to family all atwitter. My mouth is dry and my head is pounding.

For everyone else, it’s a fabulous spectacle. But for us… we’re so overwhelmed with logistics that we can’t see straight.

December 27, 2006

Shock has not yet worn off. But despite new angles of worry striking us almost daily, flashes of faith and pride have begun to kick holes in the murk.

• The radiologist said they’re each two centimeters long, an ‘excellent growth’ so far. Two centimeters long. Use your thumb and your pointer: try that on for size. They terrify me but I already feel fiercely for them, urging them to pull what they need from me to grow, to be strong.
• My job is to get them as big as I possibly can, keep them in the cooker for as long as we can all stand it. Every ounce they gain makes them better able to cope and thrive upon arrival. A sister-in-law and seasoned twin-mother advises: if you wake up at 2 AM and you’re hungry, don’t make yourself a chicken sandwich. Make three. I am to be the queen bee, the all-you-can-eat umbilical buffet, goriously* swollen with the work of gestation (*a random mistype left out the ‘L’ but then the new word fits, don’t you think?)
• They’ll teach us how to be parents of them. Evan did.
• I’m now flooded with gratitude for my partner in all this, for Justin. If there’s anyone I could manage it with, it’s him. Steady and quirky and unfailingly reliable, my buoy. I have him: we can do anything.*

* Limited-time sentiment valid for either the next fifteen minutes or until the next violent mood swing, whichever comes first.

January 1, 2007

Much of the time, I’m packed solid with hormones and a sense of impending doom. Here’s what NOT to say when you see me knuckling my temples, slumped over with my head between my legs or staring slack-jawed into space with a hand down my pants:

• At least it’s not quintuplets!
• Your grandmother did it, and she didn't have pampers. Compared to her, what are you worried about?
• My grandmother did it, and she had nine other kids and lived in the Yukon and didn’t have running water and had to fight off hungry polar bears with triplets strapped to her back. Compared to her, what are you worried about?
• It’s going to be <fantastic/amazing/incredible>. You’ll be <great/alright/fine> (at which point the declarer is absolved: There. I said what I’m supposed to say. Thank god it’s not me).

Just give me space, sweet space. Silence. No pep talks. I need to process this on my own. Words are unlikely to help—unless they’re here you go! as you hand me a voucher for six months of weekly cleaning services starting July 2007.

If I need a bucket, I’ll ask. Or a shoulder, or advice. But in the meantime, just let me feel like shit. Leave me to bask in my overwhelm. Don’t worry: I’m sure Everything Will Be Fine. But until I truly buy it, I haven’t got the energy to pretend.

September 5, 2006

Justin and I had just finished a luxuriously unhurried and delicious supper, soon to hop on our bikes for the Matt Mays and El Torpedo show at the legendary Shore Club in Hubbards. Evan was being hosted overnight by his Grammy and Grampa, a treat so intoxicating that night-off libations were almost redundant.

It felt dangerous… contemplating the timing of child #2 while drinking my third beer, feet up, child #1 in absentia. Full of the contented, everything-is-possible fuzziness that can only result from a lack of responsibility plus booze.

Justin: “What the hell, ya know? Why not?”
Kate: “Yeah!” <slurp>
Justin: “It’s not like there’ll ever be a right time anyway, right?”
Kate: “Right!” <gulp>
Justin: “We can’t afford it right now, but we’ll never be able to.”
Kate: “Totally!” <slurp>
Justin: “We loved it with Evan, didn't we?”
Kate: “Yeah!” <slurp>
Justin: “Everyone else manages, right?”
Kate: “Right!” <gulp>
Justin: “I’d love to see you big again. Wouldn’t you?”
Kate: “Totally!” <gulp>

And the matter was settled. The next morning, coincidentally day one of a new cycle, the familiar packet of pills went unopened. The only thing that stood between our life as it is now (relatively manageable) and life down the double-offspring rabbithole (in which we’d each need to grow an extra set of arms—and win the lottery—in order to cope).

I didn’t take one that morning. Nor the next. Today is day three: No Turning Back day.

Our plan is to simply 1) stop taking birth control and 2) stop thinking. The moment I start thinking is the moment I race out to the all-night drugstore for a bulletproof chastity belt. The lack of money, the lack of time, the entrenchment, the Help! I'm trapped under a baby and I can't get up...

There are good things, to be sure: first smiles and chubb and the bewitching scent of a brand new head. But when it's your second—and when the first spins like a top through the world—you gnash teeth and lie awake and think twice. And constantly. Should we? Now? Later? How about now? Or perhaps later...?

Down the rabbithole we go.

September 9, 2006

I see little corduroy dresses, and pigtails, and striped tights. My heart skips. Don’t hope for a girl. It’s too much of a gamble, and you tempt the fates to wish for anything other than what you get.

We’re a two-fer family. This time, gender means something—I’ve always wanted one of each. No matter what I tell myself about health and destiny, that’s the truth.

Not that we’re trying. We’re not.

On another note, Justin’s sharp-as-a-tack mother was in our bathroom today, the bottle of folic acid pills left next to the sink.

She knows.

Not that we’re trying. We’re not.

November 3, 2006

Some days I feel optimistic—Okay. I’m ready. On days like that I may mention it to Justin, see how he’s feeling about it.

Yesterday it went like this:

Kate: “Okay. I’m ready.”
Justin: “Were you were alone when you figured this?”
Kate: “Yeah, I guess.”
Justin: “Evan was at playschool, right?”
Kate: “Uhh.. yeah.”
Justin: “Ah-ha."

November 8, 2006

This month is the first we’ve been careless. And at every random stomach lurch or flutter, I startle like a horror movie scream queen wandering a darkened basement.

November 9, 2006

Like Pavlov’s dog who salivated at the prospect of food, I am having pre-emptive hormonal swings at the prospect that I MIGHT BE PREGNANT.

I am possessed by the Raging Bitch version of me in a parallel universe. She’s out of control. The Normal Me is cowering in the corner, watching her, jaw-dropped. I hissed at Evan twice (he didn’t deserve it). I drop-kicked the cat (she did). The towel drops into the wet tub: I cuss. A bowl slips in the sink, almost breaking: I cuss. The toast burns again: I cuss. I fear for Evan’s first sentence, what with all the local colour he’s soaking up.

Today was a playdate with my sister-in-law and her two kids, who are sweet, but there are TWO OF THEM. I can’t do that I can’t do that I can’t do that OH MY GOD I MIGHT BE PREGNANT.

After that, an eyes-glazed-over conversation with a friend and colleague in Vancouver, a dad who welcomed his second child into the world a week ago. I can’t do that I can’t do that I can’t do that OH MY GOD I MIGHT BE PREGNANT.

Grrr. Boooo! Hisssss.

November 18, 2006

Woe betide the man who mocks my pain.

During the first go-around, I was the olympic gold medalist of pregnancy. Power yoga, martha-grade crafts projects, heavy furniture moving, epic feasts. I was a single-handed epidemic of energy. Bad skin and a belly stripe—that was the sum of all symptoms, aside from finish-line waddling. It was a nine-month non-event.

But now? Get the f**k out of my way—especially if you’re standing between me and the toilet. Roll your eyes at me after a meal, when I can hardly stand up straight for the god-forsaken cramping. I double-dare you.

I’m exhausted. I fantasize about the fetal position. I want to be left alone. I can’t breathe. I whine. I snap. I drop-kick the cat.

I’m still not bought into the concept, but damn my bloat—I’d better be pregnant. If not, I’m officially the most paranoid, most hypochondriac dipshit in the entire world.

Two more days and we’ll have the answer.

On a side note, Justin really knows how to soothe a woman of delicate mental stability. This morning during an exceptionally claustrophobic moment at the Brewery Market he looked at me, screwed up his face and said, Is that paint in your hair, or a new patch of grey?

November 20, 2006

Two lines! Two lines.

Holy crap.

Two lines.

As fate would have it, I am not the world’s biggest hypochondriac dipshit. I am pregnant. Barely pregnant, technically speaking. More like a whiff of pregnant. But if it sticks, we’ll have baby number two sometime in the first week of August 2007.

TO BE CONTINUED…