Fat Bottomed Girls

I have a confession. I’ve had a Queen song running through my head the last few weeks.

More specifically, I can’t stop singing “Fat Bottomed Girls.”

It’s not, anatomically, accurate, given the current VanderKlippe situation. Maybe it should be changed to “Fat Tummied Girls.” Doesn’t have quite the same ring to it, but it does describe what’s going on.

Mo is the proud owner of an expanding girth. She looked down a few days ago, examined her new-found largesse of stomach and declared herself a farmer. More specifically, she said it was like watching a corn field. You can see it grow.

Then she weighed in on the nature of that growth.

“It’s very bizarre fat because it doesn’t jiggle,” she said.

And yes, that’s a direct quote. It was too funny not to write down.

Of course, it’s not fat at all. It’s a bizarrely firm bundle of crazy growth. Our little Vikings have gone from lemon to orange to avocado in size. They are, the websites tell us, primed for a massive growth spurt that will see them double in size over the next few weeks. They’re starting to look less like prawns and more like humans. It’s pretty cool.

But there is no longer hiding the fact that Mo is pregnant. At first, she got away with it at work by sucking in. Now, she’d have to find a way to suck back through her spine to make it disappear. She is undeniably with child. Make that with children.

I find it pretty hilarious. Mo has always been the reason we shouldn’t fear too much about the obesity epidemic. Unlike me, when she plugs in her BMI calculations, they don’t come back with numbers. They just say “awesome.”

And I had always figured that, given her height, if ever she was pregnant, she would take forever to show. I hadn’t counted on twins. Nor, apparently, had the apparel industry. When Mo swung by a maternity store, they told her their stuff would work for women gaining 25 lbs. Women with twins can gain as much as 45 lbs. That’s about a third of Mo’s weight.

In other words, she’s going to turn into a + sign.

It’s actually pretty thrilling. We should feel them moving pretty soon. My biggest worry has been that they won’t grow fast enough. So far, Mo is visual proof that this does not appear to be a concern.

Watching the twins grow has actually been motivating. We’re now moving into preparation mode. We have ordered a stroller (my job -- I now officially appreciate engineers with their own families). We will soon begin shopping around for baby bjorns and cribs and everything else. We’re planning vacations around Target, that retail land of milk and honey where maternity clothes aren’t a precursor to bankruptcy.

And for me, at least, I’ve been singing. Although now that I think about it, maybe I should ditch the Queen. Maybe Sir Mix-A-Lot would be more appropriate -- again, with a revision: “I like big bellies and I cannot lie . . .”

Wall art

So, Mo has selected wall art for the twin's room. I think it's just about perfect. Back in 2007, we got married, and decided to honeymoon in Africa. We made our way to Rwanda, and because we didn't yet have a house or kids, we had money to afford a gorilla tour.

And we got lucky. We found the only surviving gorilla twins researchers know about. Most, apparently, don't make it because they're too hard on the mom. Hope that's not a metaphor -- although given the genetics of our little Vikings, I'm pretty sure the monkey antics might prove to be the perfect metaphor.

Attack of the Y chromosome!

Out of all the many pregnancy scenarios now doing constant sprints through my mind, there is one I did not anticipate.

I didn’t expect to be married to a man.

Don’t get me wrong. Mo really has taken on that pregnancy radiance. She still likes Grey’s Anatomy and Twilight. And she remains as much a treat to the eyes as she’s ever been. She’s a beautiful woman.

But I can’t help noticing the evidence to the contrary. She craves McDonald’s. She keeps talking about ordering Chinese. She buys frozen pizza. She lounges on the couch while I bring food. She has started eating wings. She eats. And she eats. And she eats.

It’s actually kind of hot.

Plus, there’s two little beings dying for food, and everything we’ve read suggests plumping them up as fast as possible, because chances are they’re going to make an early exit. Feeding, then, suddenly takes on this new importance, and it’s kind of fun -- for me, at least -- to think that chewing down another few mouthfuls, or delivering another fruit cup to the couch, is doing good.

I’m glad we’ve gotten to this place, actually. Or, more properly, I’m glad I got here. After a weekend spent in worry among reassuring friends and even more reassuring drinks -- not to mention one seriously good double chocolate cheesecake made by one of those friends -- anxiety is now transforming into excitement.

Yes, the numbers still make me nervous. Chances are far higher that these babies will be premature, that they’ll be underweight, that they’ll have other problems.

But Mo and I have control over exactly none of these things. What we have, instead, is a few months to enjoy the quiet of our home, to get it ready and to wait for a couple of kids I’m pretty sure we’re going to like -- Mo has already taken to calling them “the litter.” We have time, we hope, for a last trip or two. We have time to empty our bank accounts into the crazy implements of childhood -- I’m thinking all-terrain stroller; do they make gas-powered versions? We have time to enjoy each other.

And, of course, we have time to eat.

The first 24 hours

"You're the ones with twins, right?"

Excuse me?

"Oh, sorry. I don't think I was supposed to tell you that."

It wasn't, as far as conversations go, a particularly notable one. It was in the hushed tones of a clinic waiting room -- a husband inquiring with a receptionist about when he might be able to get in to witness his wife's first ultrasound.

And then the bomb drops.

I was pretty sure it must have been a mistake, that someone had mis-typed something into a database. Twins? Impossible. In fact my wife, Mo, had told me as much on several occasions. Not a single twin anywhere in her family tree, she had said. One thing we absolutely didn't have to worry about.

A few minutes later, the ultrasound tech comes to get me. Mo, she says, hasn't heard the news.

News. That must mean it's true. I don't even have time to process it as I follow the tech down the hall.

I walk in to the darkened room. Mo is on her back with a smear of goo on her belly, which is just barely rising up into a baby bump. It's a strange setting to look at your wife this way, but she looks gorgeous. The tech hands me a stool and gets to work with the ultrasound wand. Grainy images pop onto the screen as I scramble to get my iPhone to record video. Here's baby one, she says. And here's baby two.

Mo thinks it's awfully unprofessional for a tech to be putting her on like this. She doesn't believe it. The tech scrubs up and down the belly. The monochromatic video scrolls on the screen. One, then two tiny little bodies.

Mo: "Oh my gosh. You're not joking."

Then the tears start flowing. Mo is crying. I don't understand why because, frankly, I have no idea how big this news is. That realization will come later -- when I start to do the financial math on buying two of everything; when my friends with new babies respond with sympathy rather than excitement and one posts a hilarious one-word "ouch" on my Facebook wall; when it dawns on us that we are now facing a high-risk pregnancy, with a strong possibility of premature labour, low birth weights and an elevated chance of birth defects.

For now, I'm in a little room, which the tech has thankfully vacated for a few minutes, trying to figure out why this has hit Mo so hard. Truth be told, excitement is beginning to well up. Two at once! This means we won't stretch child-rearing over years. This means Mo will be back at work sooner. This means we're unique! Doesn't everyone want to be unique?

Actually, my first thought is: I hope they get along. I hope we have kids that like each other. I hope we have a family where love is a thick blanket.

The rest comes later, after we watch Twin A, the one nearer the birth canal, raise a small hand through the black emptiness of Mo's uterus in an approximation of a wave that invokes an emotional warmth I didn't think I had; after the screams of excitement from shocked parents -- who inform us that we were wrong and, indeed, there are several sets of twins born to relatively distant relatives on both sides of the family -- and after we laugh at how this explains why Mo has been so hungry. We package dinner leftovers into large and small containers. I've always taken the large ones for lunch, until lately. Now I'm left with the tiny bits as she attempts to sate an appetite that has proven insatiable.

We make parent calls from a Tim Hortons, where we go to digest the news. I order a double-double. It seems like the right thing to order with twins. I'm excited. Mo tells her mom she's thrilled. This news could be taken so many ways. I'm so glad she's happy about it.

I beat her home and scramble to make a sign, which I post on the front door before she gets there: "Home of the VK Viking Duo." I've been calling the baby "The Little Viking," a play on the VK in my initials. Now we've got two. I eat a double burger for dinner. I'm sure the edible symbolism will get old, but for now it's fun.

It doesn't take long for the worry to set in. We sit in front of a laptop and start to read about twins. Five times elevated chance of birth defects. Average birth weight that is borderline low -- meaning a lot of twins end up in neo-natal intensive care. We talk about it, figure we can handle anything so long as they're born healthy. But it's worrisome. Things are going to change. I remind myself of passages that call children a gift, and try to convince myself that I have been given an unusually large gift. Sleep comes slowly.

At 2:30 a.m., our cat starts yelling and wakes me up. This used to be the full extent of our domestic annoyances -- a brief opening of the eyes before returning to slumber. Not for long, and not tonight. The moment I awake, the word "twins" comes screaming through my grey matter, jolting me up. No way I'm falling back asleep any time soon. I open a blog by a Vancouver radio DJ who had twins. I read the whole thing. Apparently, eight to ten hours of daily feeding is not unusual for mothers of twins. Nor is 170 diapers a week. A week contains 168 hours. That's some fearsome math. It's the middle of the night, and we are many months from having a baby, but I'm researching cloth diaper services and two-up strollers.

A few hours ago, I was dreading the life changes I knew were coming with having our first baby. Now I'm growing jealous of how easy it must be to have just one.

It's 5 before I finally fall back asleep again.

In the morning, Mo reminds me that the odds are in our favour: she is healthy and this really is cause for celebration. But it's still a lot to digest.

Twins. We're having twins.