13th October- Sophie and Emily's "Nearly Birthday"!

Today is my origional due date for Beanie 1 and Beanie 2, AKA Emily and Sophie. In reality though, it is fair to say that I never expected them to arrive anywhere near this date, especially after we found out that there was 2 of them! It is though, the date I had to reel off to health professionals throughout my pregnancy whilst thinking "yeah right, if they come any time after the end of July then that will be a start!"

It is also going to be an other emotional few days. Monday marks a year since Matthew and Oliver died and Tuesday is the very well timed International Baby Loss Awareness day.

I just thought to mark our girls' "Nearly Birthday, that I'd write a short post (before they wake up and want feeding) about a few things that I have noticed since they were born.

Firstly, people are always telling me how tiny they are... Now, Emily and Sophie are a bit petite, currently around the 6lb mark. However, when they were born at 36w, their weight was bang on the 50th percentile and slightly higher than the average weight for twins. Because my boys were so tiny. I think of the girls as being, if not huge, at least normal baby size. Here, to illustrate this point are a hat and nappy belonging to Emily and a hat and nappy belonging to Oliver (both twin 1 just to make it fair!)

It is worth mentioning that this nappy was MASSIVE on Oliver's little bottom!

 

 

Secondly, as we have managed to get out and about with the girls, it has become apparent how much attention twins get. A bit of me feels thrilled, what mother doesn't want tons of random strangers telling her how wonderful her babies are? However another bit of me feels really sad. Matthew and Oliver never got all that attention, they totally missed out on it and they were wonderful too!

On a similar theme someone in a shop said an absolute cracker to me the other day;

"Are they twins?"

Er no.. I just wandered around with a double pram until I found a baby that looked identical to my own and popped them in!!!

To finish on a happy note, On Tuesday we took our little ladies to twins clinic to drop off some cake and thank the staff who looked after all of us throughout my traumatic pregnancy. I was totally taken a back by ho many people from the sonographers and health care assistants to the midwives and consultants, who came over to tell us how happy they were for us all. I was really touched and felt honored to have had such a fab team supporting me and my family. People knock the NHS but I have no complaints at all about our care from the RVI... except possibly the slightly questionable food!!!