Induction tomorrow

Hiya! Not much time to write since I should really try to get some sleep, but just wanted to let you guys know I am being induced in 9 hours since I did develop a liver condition which can be complicated if left alone.

Very excited, I should be a mommy of 2 when I next chat to you!

Lots and lots of love
Rach xxx

Still no babies!

Hello all!
We have internet access at home now, actually we've had it for a couple of days, but I haven't wanted to post because I've been waiting on some blood test results to see if I had a liver condition that could harm the babies, and I was just too stressed out.

But I don't think I do...they told me the results would come today, and I could phone to find them out myself at 2pm, but that a doctor would PROBABLY call me in the morning if there was a serious problem. It's 12.38pm now, and no one has called, so I am being cautiously hopeful. If I do call at 2 and the test was fully negative, I will be cracking open the bubbly!

Oh wait...no I won't : ). But I will eat a big piece of cheese, as since the condition was suspected I have been having to keep fat intake to below 5g a day. Which was hard! Even if it was only 3 days :D.

Well, I am now a week over the average for twin deliveries (36 weeks). I do have painful contractions but have managed to keep the babies in so far by limiting activity.

I am really behind on my 'things to do list' though, because I am in complete denial that the babies are coming! When I think ahead a few days, I can picture them being here...it's just that whenever I wake up I can't imagine them being born TODAY.

I have still only gained 14lb. None at all in the past 6 or 7 weeks. The babies, however, are clocking up a half pound gain each every week, they weigh about 6lb each now. Bump measures 52 inches! They are both head down so going for a natural birth unless things change. Got another scan and OB appointment tomorrow.

Anyway, will keep you posted, lots of love xxx

I am alive!

Exhausted physically and emotionally

Well, the UK Border Agency made an infantile mistake with DH's visa paperwork, and neglected to notice for more than 3 months, hence the delay and now the cancellation of his application. We have made a formal complaint and are going to our MP to try and get some money back and raise awareness of the problems people go through with the Agency...but that doesn't help right now, because my husband has no leave to remain in the UK and has to return to the United States for an indefinite period.

I have to stay here as I am too far along in the pregnancy to fly.

We are now in a race against time to get his settlement visa approved before our babies are born, which will be a maximum of 10 weeks. The specified time to allow for this is 120 days. A lot of cases are settled quicker, but unfortunately because of the mess up by the Border Agency, our situation and finances are a lot different to how they were the first time we applied - meaning our 'open and shut case' is no longer that.

We have now engaged an immigration lawyer to help us, more money down the pan.

We are moving today, though we will be back and forth for another few days for DH to finish up work and me clean the house. It's an absolute disaster, thanks to how complicated and 'bitty' this move is and because I have been unable to do much with the pregnancy lately. I am doing too much today as it is - as evidenced by the fact that I just threw up my breakfast all over the kitchen floor, and then continued vomiting and dry heaving for the next 20 minutes. Which is why I am sitting down for 10 minutes now.

I am absolutely appalled by the mess the movers will find. I am absolutely appalled by the fact we will be moving into our new house with dirty, disorganised stuff.

That's if we even move in. Well, it won't be 'we', it'll be 'me'. We still haven't decided for sure whether to even take the place, it depends what the immigration lawyers say today about our chances of being accepted for the visa. In any case, I have no clue when I am going to see my husband again or if he will be present when our babies are born. His passport will be with the authorities for the entire length of the application process, so he won't even be able to come visit as a tourist...also money wise that would be very hard, this has left us thousands of pounds poorer anyway.

This has been very hard for me as it has also brought up a lot of other painful thoughts. I tend to be a person who goes very much by instinct, it has quite literally never steered me wrong. I sometimes get little thoughts about what I should do, and often they don't seem to make any sense at all. Yet when I go with them, there is always a reason. Before I met my husband, I had the very strong belief that I should not ever marry or have children - that there was something else for me to do in life. When I met him, it is something I really struggled with, I can't explain how powerful the thoughts were and how much guilt was involved. These thoughts still surface from time to time..and this whole thing has really brought them up again, and it terrifies me with my DH going away.

Anyway, I am just totally exhausted, not only mentally, but also physically. I am struggling on and not doing too bad a job, but I am so hot and sweaty and tired and I have to stop two or three times just to get up a flight of stairs. The next few days just look like a nightmare, I have to go to lots of appointments tomorrow in 2 different towns with no car, and I just don't know how I am going to manage the walking without being exhausted and having contractions, not to mention looking totally unpresentable for appointments with lawyers/realtors etc because of being so sweaty.

Then after Sunday looks even worse because that is when my DH leaves the country with no indication he can possibly come back again. I will be alone in my new flat with my dirty furniture, my huge belly stopping me getting out much, and my dark thoughts lol.

I will have friends and family around, but the thought of them having to do so much for me that my DH would have been doing in the last days of the pregnancy is mortifying for me. I don't want people to have to ferry me around because I'm not allowed to drive. Let alone what I'm going to do the times I can't get out of bed (seriously) or lift something out of a cabinet. And all the time I'll be having these thoughts of impending disaster and not have anyone to talk to. Ifthe babies are born when DH is not here, there is literally no one I want at the birth. I'm a very private person and I won't be able to relax enough with my mum or a friend there.

Ok, this is by far the most negative post I have ever written. I am managing to stay upbeat in much of my life at the moment, so it is good to have a place to let it out.

Pretty impressed...

We got sick of trying to work out the intricacies of becoming landlords by ourselves. Between energy efficiency reports, electricity certificates, deposit holding schemes etc etc etc, and the horror stories we have heard from people taking tenants on word of mouth, we decided to use an agency to find our tenants.

Anyway...it turns out letting agents are MUCH more friendly when they are trying to secure you as a landlord rather than collect your rent!

It isn't as expensive as I thought, either - half the first month's rent as a tenant finding fee, which includes pretty much everything we don't want to do ourselves.

The tricky bit is afterwards...it would actually only cost us about £70 a month to have it all managed for us. It is sooooo tempting...but then again, that is an extra £800 a year.

I think what we will do is just use them to find the tenants, then try to manage it ourselves long-distance for a few months, and if it doesn't work out, go back to them as managers.

I definitely feel a little better about the whole situation now I have seen them though. The rental value of the house each month is only about £50 less than our hefty mortgage, which we can easily cover.

Phew!

I think I ate OK yesterday...I was busy and didn't really count but it was 3 normalish meals and a couple of snacks, only one of which was one of my friend's Devil Cookies of Temptation (more than 300 calories each!), so should be OK!

maaaaaan

My life is chaos. Or half a step away from it. One week until we move. Just getting through the chores one at a time, and leaving the stuff we can't control to the Big Guy in the Sky :D.

Wonder how it will turn out? Ah well, nothing I can do about it anyway!

R xxx

Middle of day check-in

Hmmm no title in mind

Well, I did not manage to stick to the reduced calories to make up for my day of going over. I was absolutely starving, and starving with twins in your belly is pretty insistent!

I decided to take the going-over day as one of my off days, not ideal but not too bad. Since then, I have been properly back on track.

I've realised that since I went away for the weekend again I have not been eating properly...not enough fruit and veggies. So I had a couple of pieces of fruit last night before bed, and am doing well so far today.

It's getting really hard to eat, to be honest. I still have an upset stomach and it feels like there is not room in there to fit a full meal, especially something healthy. I split my calories into 6 or 7 small meals a day but it doesn't work much better.

I had oatmeal with raisins and pecans in it for breakfast, and it was such a struggle. You know how they always tell you to eat more slowly and focus on what you are eating so you don't overdo it?

Well, for me at the minute, it is just the opposite - I have to not think too hard and just shovel it in, and recover later! This morning, I made the fatal mistake of stopping for two minutes in the middle of the oatmeal to chat to my hubby - and the fullness kicked in!

Ah well, I imagine by the end I will be on those concentrated drinks for sick people!

With twins on the way, I have to eat at least 2600 calories per day. It should be more, because I was overweight before so my basic calorie needs are more than 2000.

Even on 2600, I still sometimes feel like I have no glycogen stores left. My legs hurt when I climb the stairs and I get horrible low blood sugar.

When I am breastfeeding, I will have to eat 3000 a day to produce enough milk.

Honestly, if you had told me I would be eating this much beforehand, I would have thought I had died and gone to heaven!

However, I have come to realise my binge eating disorder actually has nothing to do with how much or little I can eat.

The key - the trigger that enables me to use the food to feel less stressed - is the act of going OVER my limit, whatever that limit is. Only by consciously breaking the rules of normality can I switch off and tell myself I can just start afresh and sort life out later.

The wonderful thing this pregnancy has taught me is that, to me, there is no actual intrinsic value in being able to eat a lot of food when I am not bingeing. Yes, sometimes the way our society is set up can make it hard to stick within your limit, because the actual food contains so many calories that a small serving will more than fulfil our needs - going for a curry springs to mind - but there isn't actually any particular pleasure to me in eating more rather than less.

Maybe for a rare 3-course meal, but not in general. Food isn't that fun when you are full and it doesn't feel good sitting in your stomach afterwards. The body, when you focus on it, is set up to feel best on what it really needs.

I always thought life would be better if I could just eat more and still be slim, but it was just the lure of the forbidden.

Hopefully that is a lesson I can keep with me after I stop breastfeeding and am back to 2000 calories ^_^.

Rach xxx

serves me right...

I shouldn't have complained about the pregnancy yesterday!

Ok, the rational part of me knows that has nothing to do with the fact I had to go to L&D last night because I thought I might be going into premature labor.

I was not. They seemed to think I had a stomach bug which was causing lots of contractions. I do have a stomach bug, but I think the contractions were set off by the long car ride I went on at the weekend. The same thing happened last time but a lot less extreme.

I do, sadly, have to take this long car ride (it's only six hours) twice more in the next two weeks...it is kind of unavoidable since I am moving house. I am hoping and hoping the same doesn't happen again.

Anyway, I had eaten on plan all day...then we were leaving the hospital at 9pm and we were starving, neither of us had eaten since lunch. So we decided to pick up a pizza from Pizza Hut because it is right next to the hospital.

I planned what I was going to have to fit into my plan...then when we got there, hubby went in and they did not have the pizza base we wanted. So, for the same price, he got a meal deal which included cheese garlic bread, a pizza and chicken wings. This was fine, I still knew how to fit it into my plan, and from his perspective, I needed to eat a lot, which I did, because I hadn't eaten much and my tummy had been bad.

Then they lost our order, so we ended up not getting our food till nearly 10. By this time, I was starving.

I can just about forgive myself for eating a piece of garlic bread in the car on the way home. It's a half hour ride, it wasn't ideal, but I was ravenous.

However, big mistake no. 1 was having the second slice. And the chicken wing. I didn't need them, it was a gut reaction to sitting there with the food on my lap. In this position again, I am going to put the pizzas in the trunk for the trip home, not sit with them where I can reach them.

So this meant when I got home I only had enough calories left for 1 slice of pizza. This left me feeling a bit deprived (btw pizza slices here of a standard large pizza are much smaller than in the States just to explain that).

If I had seen my 2 slices of bread, my chicken wing and my pizza slice all on one plate, I wouldn't have felt deprived at all. It was the fact I had eaten them separately over time that was the problem.

Anyway, so I ate another slice. Which didn't really put me over my maintenance calories for the day at all.

So then I ATE TWO MORE SLICES. That's half a British Pizza Hut large pizza.

I didn't want them. I didn't enjoy them. It was like a curious hybrid between my old binge eating and how I eat now. I ate them but I didn't use them to block out reality to make myself feel better. After I ate them, I just went about my normal business - unpacking a giant bag of new baby stuff my hubby's work gave us which was awesome.

Then I went to bed feeling so full I could barely move. It wasn't pleasant.

So the only downside is that I now have a large number of extra calories in my inbox! Better than proper emotional bingeing, but also not good for my health.

At first I told myself it wasn't as bad as previous binges of a whole pizza. But then I remembered the bread, so I don't think that's really fair.

Partly I am blaming the sugar I ate earlier in the day. Although it seemed to right itself during the first months of pregnancy, I know I am back to a state where my appetite increases if I eat sugar before about 9pm - and I had some chocolate at lunch yesterday. So no sugar for me today.

On the whole, I don't think it was too bad a day. That might sound crazy to some people, but they would not know how I was when I was fully in the grip of binge eating disorder. Many of the things I ate and the thought patterns I had were very, very 'normal' compared to that.

Anyway...if I cut back a little today, which I actually did naturally because at breakfast time I was still too full from the night before, I can make it on max maintenance calories for today and yesterday if I balance them out. Which would be absolutely amazing, and is my goal for the day.

I would rather do that than use up one of my 'free days', because I only have to cut back about 500 calories today - and believe me, with my pregnancy calorie budget, that isn't hard at all. I never used to be able to do that, but now I naturally do find if I eat more one day, I am less hungry the next. It's all progress.

I will let you know how it goes! It would be such a huge achievement for me.

Have a good day all, Rach xxx

Just got up...

...and it is 11.38.

Anyone see the irony here?...(or maybe it isn't irony. My husband is so picky about when that word is used that I never know if I should be saying something else instead).

Anyway, irony...

I lie awake for most of the night because I have to get up early and get loads of stuff done, and I am too worried to get to sleep.

So by the morning I am so knackered I just decide to sod it and go back to bed.

Hmm.

There is also that pregnancy hip pain thing stopping me sleeping. Why does no one warn you about it?

Seriously. Why does no one come to you and say 'Hup. Might wanna think twice about leaving that pill packet in the cupboard. You will get pregnant, AND THEN YOU WILL SPEND THE NEXT NINE MONTHS FEELING LIKE A TRUCK RAN OVER YOU.'

It would be helpful. Especially as I suspect the feeling won't go away any time soon after these little nippers are born.

Anyway, another on-plan day yesterday. I'm not saying perfectly on plan, because it probably wasn't, and anyway I am not aiming for perfection. If some cheese sneaked it's way in as a calorie replacement for my banana, so what? I'll make sure I get the babs some extra fruit today.

Freezer Surprise was, in fact, very surprising - when I went to make my list, I discovered my attempts slowly to dial down the amount in the freezer and cupboards over the last weeks had actually been successful!

That has never happened before!

So we got to go to the shop after all - it was that or starve.

We got some healthy but really yummy stuff, I am amazed how little it cost when I wasn't really trying hard (suddenly realising you need to go to Asda at 7pm on a weekday doesn't inspire meticulous planning).

I think all the effort we have been putting in to reducing our spending over the last few weeks must have started very slowly becoming a habit.

Good job!

DH bought a family bag of Minstrels (kind of like huge chocolate M&Ms with Dove chocolate) for £1, and then proceeded to sit on the couch and scoff the lot while I looked on jealously. Greedy sod ^_^.

We were not sure whether to be amused or horrified at their new calorie count policy.

On the front of the packet, it says  '211 calories' and underneath 'A portion = 42g standard bag'.

The trouble is, this bears no relation to the bag it is printed on. 42g is the little, 1 person size bag of Minstrels - this bag weighs 170g! That bit is only printed, sideways, on the back of the bag though.

Clearly intended to mislead - but only someone who has no clue about weights and measures.

If you just glanced at it, though...and you were really thick...I don't know, it seemed tricksy whatever.

Anyway, if my DH is anything to go by, anyone who eats the whole bag feels so sick they won't do it again.

I can't believe I used to eat 2 of those suckers in one night when I had binge eating disorder!

Aim for today:

right number of calories (it's shamefully high, bless those babies!)
alternate squash with water so I don't poison them with sweeteners : S - 4 litres (yep, thats 128oz)
7 pieces fruit and veg
do what I am told and sit down, rather than cleaning until I get contractions like yesterday

Have a good day everybody, lots of love R xxx