Pregnant During a Pandemic: Second Trimester with Twins

Well, today I am 31 weeks and 4 days pregnant with twins!

I never did count the “and change” days during my other pregnancies, but when there’s two in there and you feel 40 weeks, ready to birth, how you did when you were full-term the other pregnancies before, you do start to add the days too. I will be honest, the gracefulness has officially left the building on this pregnancy. I have been rude, and moody, and down-right nasty to those around me, namely husband, and sadly snappy at my girls. Hormonal overload! I’m not here to sugar coat.

I had wanted one more pregnancy, one more baby, but had I seen in a crystal ball what the future nine months had in store, I would have NEVER….been so careless and probably would have been more cautious. We had that date, husband and I, back in November at The Cruise Room, and I was finally ready, had closure and was ready to move on, we had two healthy girls, I gave my blessing for the vasectomy, but, it only takes one night of passion- apparently. I am thankful to be carrying a baby, TWO, I feel very fortunate in the respect that it all came naturally and in God’s plan and timing, hard to swallow that its never going to be perfect according to our timing.

I sound ungrateful, many women are dying to have a baby, carry a baby, are PAYING to have a baby. Using surrogates, and emptying savings accounts to do IVF to have babies, and here I am blessed with not one, but TWO more and I know how I must sound, horrible. I know. But, “spontaneous” pregnancies as they call them, naturally occurring ones when planning and plotting and charting isn’t really part of the equation also comes with emotions and is fair game for perinatal depression. So it seems. I guess there are no perfect conditions, there is no perfect time to really bring more life into LIFE, on both ends of the procreating spectrum, I have had some moments of joy and excitement, but more often than not this pregnancy has been littered with doom and gloom and every sinful and evil thing in the world keeps crawling in and infesting like sneaky little weeds, right through the happy soil I try to spread over this bump and this pregnancy.

First it was COVID-19, in March, than most recently it was the horrific murder of George Floyd leading into mass protests and a historic Black Lives Matter Movement which caused even more chaos and unease with riots, looting, graffiti, protests and in some cities destruction of property. More anger, more fuel for the fire, more excuses for people to polarize and make villains out of each other, and from what I see making us hate one another instead of, as the movement aims to do, bring people together. Thankfully, the action around the BLM in Denver has been somewhat peaceful. Even when intentions were good, on social media, the nervousness and edginess of people, even people you thought were friends, became palpable. If you didn’t post that infamous black square, assumptions were made, band wagons rolled over you, that you were “part of the problem,” and you were “against” the cause and therefore “for the racism.” This is not a space where I like to get political. I can tell you that conversations, feelings, teachings, prayers, internal spirituality and how we raise our children does not need to be spelled out for strangers on the internet for it to be true and good and God fearing. Squares or not, slogans or not, what we decide to personally share and put out in the world is up to the individual and doesn’t necessarily dissect the entirety of one’s identity. Believe it or not! Only God knows our hearts and our minds and we don’t need to justify that to other human beings, other humans who make errors, hold a sinful nature as we all do, put pants on the same way you do… I shared a dance video I connected with, as I grew up dancing, and I was attacked for putting my “whiteprivilege” in the forefront and not highlighting how my privilege allowed me to take the dance class that had sparked fond memories from dancing at Cleo Parker Robinson. Well, the days of me dancing in African dance class on Saturday mornings were not because of any privileges whatsoever as the class was and is to this day, open to the community, the public, whomever wants to come and be a part of the African dance experience. Drummers, mothers, grandmothers, even babies in diapers toddling around to the beats. Yes, students of the dance school were in the class, but we were in a circle, dancing as one with people from the neighborhood, and if you know anything about Denver, or Cleo Parker Robinson and what she stands for, diversity and inclusion, and where the school is located physically on a map, and the community that it embodies, than you would not have told me to “check myself,” for sharing a video of dance on my personal feed. No, I am not missing the point, never did I miss the point, and it makes me sick the judgement and accusation people are putting on people because of this movement. Thankfully, I am judged by God, and not flesh.

There is apparent evil, a spiritual war at play, something bigger and stronger than any one of us. We can spread acts of kindness and good, fight for equality and rights and justice, but at the end of the day, when God created man, and gave us a free will to do what is right or wrong, and left us with a guide on what those morals are it is inescapable to eradicate hate completely, to be unblemished, tarnished with sin. Until you understand this as a Believer, many things in this chaotic world we live will be incomprehensible.. It is up to individuals to make those choices. It is hard when we see the hurt in this world, full of people not making the right choices for the greater good, for God, but unfortunately we live in a world of sin.

I want to get off that soap box, because I am sure that this has ruffled feathers enough already. This is me pregnant with twins at 31 weeks. Brutally honest and opinionated I suppose. But the photos below, the photos are of me back at a sweet, MOBILE, 25 weeks, back in April, when COVID was the only thing on peoples’ minds. I am glad we shot maternity photos downtown, a place I love and miss. I am a city girl and if my husband would agree to it, I would sell our suburban home in a heart beat and trade it for an apartment in NYC. I think it was important to take a drive downtown during this time to see what was happening, how things were/are. Many transients and homeless, tents lined the streets around RiNo area. There were very few pedestrians out and about. Businesses were boarded up, definitely a different scene than we are used to and comfortable with. But its good to get uncomfortable sometimes. Speaking now of your physical space, and also your mental. Sometimes standing up for what you believe in and how you think and operate, what you feel and know to be true in your own heart, even though its against popular belief, that is very uncomfortable. As Christians we are taught this. And that things will become increasingly uncomfortable for us. But I have faith in God, my Lord and Savior, that he is the only one who can heal and soothe and the only one I follow and trust. That’s how I can get through this pregnancy during a pandemic and even tougher times I have had personally in my life. He is the only way. Also a firm believer in that God only gives you what you can handle, and so I trust he has faith in me to have these two babies. As scared and nervous as I am…through Him all things are possible.

I had husband behind the lens this day, and the girls happily played music and danced in the car safely locked with proper window roll down ventilation right beside us as we would drive to a location, pop out for a few minutes and snap a few photos. Not a glamorous maternity shoot by any means, very different than my first when I had a professional photographer, and the next time when my sister was behind the camera. But things ARE different. Life continues to seed itself and grow, even in the darkest of times. There was a commercial on television that I always paused for during these last few weeks. It was of the voice of an elderly woman who was born during the Great Depression… there have been challenging times in history, even tougher than today, and I am hopeful that this just means they will be two very tough, resilient, strong leaders in the future.

I always have a checklist of places around town I want to photograph “before they are gone.” Denver has changed immensely, too much for my liking as a native. I can usually call it when a good ole building is on its last breath. One summer date last year husband and I rode scooters downtown and we stopped for a beer at a bar. I had driven past that spot many times in my life, on 18th street, called Shelby’s. It was there even throughout my childhood I think. I’d see it driving downtown to the theater for dance shows, or I remember its pink neon glowing in the dark when mom and I drove dad to work downtown when the Post Office was where Union Station is today. Shelby’s. And guess what, I am so glad we stopped and had our hops there that day last summer because the bartender said it was the last week in operation and it that the building was being torn down within the next couple of weeks. So, the location of this maternity shoot was led based on these great spots I pass that i want to remember before they’re gone, sort of a moment in time, just like these short few months holding babies inside.

Wardrobe this round of maternity photos was easy too, as I continued on with my theme of wearing a vintage nightie, this one was thrifted earlier this spring actually. I had worn vintage nighties in the maternity photos for my other pregnancies as well, so its nice to use that as something cohesive to tie them all together in a way, even though the emotions and times are all so incredibly unique and diverse. There is nothing like your FIRST pregnancy. If this is your first pregnancy, savor it, cater to it, drink it in.

I also knew I wanted a vintage vibe, sort of mimicking the eery vibes of the world I suppose, subconsciously. I took note of this mod building situated downtown off Broadway, another oldie but a goodie, Dire’s Locksmith. No, I am not advertising them in any way- but this building! This MOOD! I loved how that series turned out. We were headed towards that building, when we found ourselves at a light by El Chapultepec Jazz bar, a DENVER GEM!!! I had husband pull over immediately and snapped some photos here as well. I LOVE jazz, and have heard jazz in this very spot, although it has been a very long time ago now. I hope and pray El Chapultepec make sit through these tough times, because i’d love to go back and hear some music there again.

We bopped around RiNo a bit with the murals and street art, but by this point we were losing the girls, and had got a lot of great photos and had fun. This part was quite depressing and sad, but worth documenting and sharing, the bit around RiNo. The road signs are a perfect telling of what was happing in late April 2020. “Wash your hands.” “Stay 6 ft. Apart.” “Stay Home.” Cold. Empty. Distant. Reminders of the loneliness and quietness. We can all try to put a silver lining on this time, and say, “Oh, wow we had so much family time together…” “We really learned a lot about one another and got even closer…” Pish, posh… humans need interactions with other humans- outside of their nuclear family. People need people and experiences to learn, to escape the mundane and just ENJOY the life we are living in…Humans have created concepts and ideas around communal relationships and shared experiences because that IS WHAT BEING HUMAN IS. We are different than other animals. We are rational, thinking, feeling, loving, beings who need to fulfill all of our five senses. That means restaurants, or house parties, amusement parks, gardens, swimming pools, all the things we have conjured up to pleasure us. I refuse to use the term, normal with anything happening around me. I refuse to see this or explain this as “the new normal” to my children- BECAUSE IT IS NOT. Always a skeptic, I have to question what the motivation is, the BIG picture, what is it that the world is blind to at this moment. I can only be comforted in prayer, truthfully. We are not meant to be caged in and kept captive in our homes. I am not buying the whole, “Save lives, safer at home.” Okay, now this seems to be getting political, AGAIN… how can it not?! This pregnancy has been presented with SO much!

I guess the pregnancy itself, the gestation bit, has been going along swimmingly considering ALL of the turmoil and drama happening just layers of epidermis away from these ever growing babies. They are oblivious to it all. THIS is what keeps me up at night. The worry. The stress. The what-in-the-hell-is-happening-in-the-world…. And why in the BRIC-BRAC did I willingly want to bring more life into this chaos?! Positive friends will say, “because they can make a difference,” which is a nice thing to cling onto.

I have not packed a hospital bag. I NEED to pack something. I am getting extremely uncomfortable. I have babies stuffed in me from my chin down to my cervex at this point. I need to hold onto the head of my mattress to hoist this 200 pound body over at night and I alternate from a right hip that gets sore with a sciatica pain in my buttocks, to my left side. Both seem to cause extreme heartburn equally. I have managed to avoid any Elephantiasis -like swelling, SO FAR, but fear that is only weeks or days away. I eat small portions, only because that’s all I can take- who knows where my stomach is pigeon holed at the moment. The smaller portions don’t seem to make much of a difference to the scale as I approach the 200 mark.

I still have not grown attached to these babies in utero. Perhaps that is how you felt when you were pregnant, and can relate. I am sure all of this outside noise and stress have filtered in and created a barrier to bonding that I did not have during my other two pregnancies. For now, for today, focusing on resting and self preservation, spirituality for strength with so many things going on emotionally, and then letting the body just do its thing in growing these humans. And if it all gets to be too much, a lavender epsom salt bath and cold pudding seem to lift my spirits.

BUT, on a MUCH NEEDED positive note, the nursery is about 95% complete and pretty much has been since pretty early on, save for a throw blankie for me while I nurse in the rocker, and possibly a poof for my feet. I am also itching to organize their closet better, just STUCK and need the right pieces to get motivated- you know? Any affordable DIY ideas or organizational ideas on nursery closets, or twin nurseries in specific are welcome in the comments! We have this 12 foot long closet that had double sliding doors that we removed, and we have an IKEA cube shelf unit under the garment bar, but everything just looks SO CROWDED and MESSY, not sure what to do, or does it even matter?!

An interesting time to be with child. An unforgettable one.

…Glo