Just  quick preface – I started this post on November 3, 2008.  I added to it last on July 6, 2009.  I have decided I need to publish it and then work through the rest of the journey as time allows.  Reasoning is two fold:  (1)it will make the post shorter than if I do the entire journey in one post and (2)I want to start getting drafts off the draft list and onto my site.

Evidently, my body was made for bearing children – at least at that point in my life.  I carried the twins full term, delivering them on the morning of January 24, 1987.  I cursed every day at my doctor, every day after Christmas.  I only wanted to wait until Christmas.  My next door neighbor was due the beginning of January.  We had a huge snowstorm.  I went out and shoveled – anything to get those babies to deliver.  I was tipping the scales at 212 or thereabouts.  I am maybe 5’5″ (1.65m) so was not very comfortable doing anything with that much weight on my body.

Lo and behold, the shoveling did not help.  I started going to my OB/GYN every couple of days.  I swear I saw more of him than I did my family – between appointment time and waiting room time.  He was thinking about setting an appointment for a c-section.  I wanted to wait.  Instead, I went back to the hospital for another ultrasound.  This may seem like fun to those of you out there but here I was with what I would soon find out was over 13 pounds of baby pushing on my bladder.  Getting it full enough for the ultrasound was not easy.  Worse was when I drank too much water prior to the ultrasound.  I would get in there and be handed a cup with a line on it – fill it this much.  I was ready to burst!  And cuss at the radiologist.

I didn’t feel perfect on January 23rd.  We went to get my grandmother as she was going to stay with the little one while we were at the hospital.  Early the morning of January 24, off we went to Lourdes.  I didn’t have any really bad contractions so didn’t really realize how far along I was until I was in a birthing room.

I vividly recall an argument in the hallway.  The nurse was on the phone with my OB/GYN, who happened to be in surgery with another patient.  He wanted me sent to radiology.  She was sure that I would give birth downstairs if I went to radiology.  The compromise, something that was common in 1987 but is probably not allowed nowadays, was to bring a portable xray machine into the birthing room.  One of the twins was still breech and that meant a c-section, the first of three but I didn’t find that out for years.

I have a whole roll of color pictures from the twins’ births, yet I missed the entire thing.  The anesthesiologist put me under a local and I was out.  When I awoke in recovery, the nurse proceeded to answer my question about the weight and sex of the babies with what I was sure was someone else’s birth.  I had had a boy who weighed 7 pounds and 15 ounces – a normal birth weight for any singleton – and a girl who weighed 5 pounds and 11 ounces – a large weight for a twin in 1987.  The pregnancy, thanks to a lot of bedrest and disability, had gone 38 and 1/2 weeks.

Getting into any kind of fitness routine or healthy eating was near impossible with three kids under 2 1/2.  To top that off, I went back to work when the twins were eight weeks old.  I had been working prior to their birth and my disability leave in September.  Due to the disability starting at 26 weeks and my carrying the twins almost full term, I had to go back as soon as possible or lose my position.

I also started traveling for work so my focus was on finding a good nanny as I couldn’t possible get three kids up and get themselves, their father and myself ready for work in the morning.  We went through some nannies and I started to watch what I was eating.  I didn’t want to stay this weight forever.  The twins were nursing but I had to have my wisdom teeth out.  That was the perfect time, in my mind, to let the milk dry up as I was already supplementing with formula due to Andrew’s size and Elise’s lack thereof.  The twins were six months old and I was suddenly neither pregnant nor nursing.

I started an eating plan that the receptionist at work was using.  It was a knock-off of a diet center plan.  It involved eating specific foods and taking lots of supplements.  I am not sure this was the best way but it was working I was shedding pounds but not as fast as I would like.  In retrospect, the pounds were coming off because all I was doing was dieting.  I was not managing to get a whole lot of exercise into my life, just eating a set diet.

I was getting down in weight, but was still 40 pounds more than I weighed at the start of my first pregnancy when I found out the wonderful news.  I was pregnant again.  I was due to have baby number 4 just 16 months after the twins were born.  I still needed to get fit and find some exercise to put in my life but it was going to take a back seat to feeding a healthy baby.