This may be a bit inappropriate, but...

...I want to ask my therapist out on a play date.

Okay. She's about my age, she has a little boy only six weeks older than Sirs Guy and Miles and she's SO cool! I think I like her like her...

Actually, I really like her as a therapist, too. She's smart, Ph.D. in Psychology, she challenges me, she's funny. My last appointment when I was feeling so overwhelmed with everything, I thought I would go in there and cry, but we ended up laughing our asses off the whole time about kids, life as a new parent, etc. It was exactly what I needed and she said it didn't even feel like therapy...

Do you think she feels the same way about me? I mean, do you think she might want to have our kids meet at some point? I find myself looking at the picture of her little boy on her desk and thinking about how nice it would be for the three boys to play together and Dr. M and I can slug back a pitcher of margaritas.

The kids are still too young to really play together, so I figure I have time before I actually have to pop the question. But I just know that at some point I'm going to have to ask her if she wants things to go further. Will I need to get another therapist? Would it be inappropriate to see each other socially? I keep thinking about whether her husband and TD would get along...

Sigh.

I have such a crush...

A quick article bleg

Thanks for the encouragement, guys! I'm feeling tons better now that I've recovered a bit!

Quick question - can anyone tell me the title/author of that article about mothers using medieval romances to teach their daughters? I know there is one (it seems like it was in an essay collection) and I can't remember or find it for the life of me!

Feeling so overwhelmed

Yep. That's me.

It's taken me a while to admit that, but it's true. Having twins is hard. They both start crying at the same time. Each feeding takes 45 minutes if you're doing it yourself. I don't know what they want from me. I can't pick them up at the same time b/c I'm not strong enough and they're gaining tons of weight. When I do try to pick one up to calm him down I usually get kicked in my gut somewhere around my incision and it hurts like hell.

I've had 3 surgeries in two months all of which required varying kinds of anesthetic, from general to local to in-between. My post-partum anxiety and anemia threw me for such a loop and just as that was subsiding, the gall bladder thing happened. I haven't felt healthy in so long.

The boys - Sir Guy in particular - have been so fussy lately - they're awake much more now during the day and they. just. cry. Sometimes no amount of holding, changing location, distraction will make them stop. They're still too young to really play and be entertained and it's just so hard with two of them. They sleep really well at night (with intermittent feedings), but the days and especailly evenings are a chore.

No one needs to worry about me - I have all the support we can afford and rely on from friends and I'm seeing all the proper peeps. But even with all that, I still feel overwhelmed. I just want to stop being sore and exhausted all the time.

I know lots of you don't have kids - I just wanted to vent a little. Thanks.

How galling...still here...

Sorry I've been so out of bloggy touch - the boys have been growing well (in fact, 2 months old today) and I've been doing great - helping Medieval Mom try to find a house, etc.

And then...

WHAM!!

Last Sunday afternoon, bad pain in upper right quadrant of belly. Trip to doc's office on Monday yielded a CAT-scan and a potential enlarged gall bladder. Trip to general surgeon's office on Tuesday confirmed suspicion. The fact that I was still in continuous pain and taking the percocets that I had (thankfully) never taken after my c-section meant that I needed to have the thing out soon for fear of infection. Thursday morning, have a "lap-chole" (where they go into your belly-button and take something out) to remove offending gall bladder (which apparently has a jawbreaker-sized gallstone in it). It was pretty bad and it's a good thing it came out. Doc decides to keep me overnight so he can give me IV antibiotics and so that a gastroenterologist can take a look at an x-ray of my bile duct that might have a stone in it. GI-doc decides the next morning that my liver enzymes are a little elevated, which warrants doing an endoscopy to check for another stone creeping around in there. Low and behold, they find one, take it out with their endoscopy tool and then tell me I'm "too perky" to stay in the hospital another night, so they send me home yesterday afternoon.

So, now, I'm without any kind of gall issues remaining (I hope) and I'm just healing from what was ultimately a routine couple of procedures - it's just that they SNUCK THE HELL UP ON ME!!!!!! I'm telling myself that I don't need to begin weaning myself off of the Vicodin completely just yet - that I'm not a wimp if I still take it! Or if I still have pain...

Speaking of which, I'm going to go have a vicodin now...

A question about bloglines

Okay, so what are people doing about the demise of bloglines? It's closing on Nov. 1? How do I move all my blogs over to another reader?

Help.

Who am I?

I've been giving a lot of thought lately to how I feel about being a mother - I've started seeing a new therapist (I'm nothing if not proactive about stressful periods in my life) and it's been good to talk about it a bit with her. It still hasn't hit me quite yet that I am a mother - I mean, it's hit me in one sense, an immediate sense. There are 2 little babies who rely on me (and my support team) for their basic needs. But I still don't always connect them with the fact that they were inside me. I know I love them (in the sense that I would throw myself in front of a bus for them), but it's not always a conscious feeling.

I think I'm staring right into the face of the myth of all-encompassing, positive motherhood. Just like those Rockwellian Christmas myths, I thought that I would feel more connected to them than I often do. That I would feel the urge to weep with joy and unending love every time I look at them. That it would be one big skin-to-skin love-fest bonding ceremony. But I often see them as just needing from me. Now, granted, I'm feeling better after the anemia and hormonally-induced craziness has begun to calm down and I have more to offer them. But my feelings about them are still very complicated and evolving. Sometimes I have to remind myself that my life has changed so dramatically - they will be with me for so long. How do I feel about this? What does this mean to me?

People say that your life will never be the same - but what will it be? These are the big questions. Different? Yes. Good? Yes. Better than it would have been without them? I think so - in the final tally, I know I'll never truly regret having children (however much I might regret it in certain moments). But I expected to feel more...stable about them than I do. I think I might be falling in love with them. Like I did with TD. The first time I met TD, the next day I remember saying to a friend of mine, "I just really like that guy." And it grew from there to the point to where I love him with all my heart.

Could it be the same with children? Could it be that I love them in one basic, primal way, but I'm also in the process of falling in love with them in another, subtler, more cerebral/emotional way?

I've been thinking this is the case. And I've been thinking that that's okay.

Where is Medieval Woman??

Still here! Anxiety is all but gone (thanks to meds and time) - Guy and Miles are one month old today - they are getting fussier, but I've heard this peaks around 4-6 weeks and then dissipates at 8-10 weeks once their circadian rhythms get more set. Otherwise, they're gaining weight like champs and being cute little grubs.

I am feeling tons better with the anemia - the numbers are on the rise and in a couple of weeks I'll have another hemoglobin check. Medieval Mom is here until Saturday, so that's been a big help (she takes the 3am feeding! What have I done to deserve such grace?)

I've started to think about work in the middle of the midnight feeding, when all is quiet on the western front. How will I approach this new article project? What do I need to begin researching first? These are just little synapses firing late at night, but hopefully in a week or so I'll be able to handle some sustained attention to the issue.