My, oh my... the 2015 is almost here

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Well, I didn't come back over the weekend. So much for keeping the promise... The days are still kind of a blur here. But time goes on. It's (almost) hard to believe that the babies will be 7 weeks old on Friday. Time is sure flying by... Minus those days that creep along like months...

The last few weeks have definitely been a roller coaster. To quickly sum it up, we had to deal with my milk drying up, the flu, the stomach bug, the rotavirus (baby girl) that made us switch to the most expensive formula out there, physical therapy for my husband for the pinched nerve in his back (that's been dragging for months already but we finally started seeing some improvement) and the freezing weather. Add to it two newborn babies who don't sleep day or night and yeah, life is fun...:)

I do think, we are slowly getting into some sort of routine but it will be a while before we can all breathe a little easier. Still, it shouldn't stop us (or at least, me) from trying to get my life to a somewhat organized stage. Hence, back to becoming a goal-oriented girl again.

You might remember that last year I opted not to make any goals. 2013 and the beginning of 2014 were VERY rough for us. In fact, exactly a year ago we found out that we were 6 weeks pregnant only to lose the baby just a week later. Then I lost my Grandma. Many things had happened last and this year, both heart-breaking and exciting. I have to say, I'm kind of ready to slow down to a more predictable lifestyle. I know it's not exactly in my hands but some things are. So this year I'm going back to creating and trying to achieve a few goals in 2015 even if some of them might seem lofty :)

But since this post is getting a little long, I'll share them with you tomorrow. A sneak peak - the top of the list is surviving the first year with twins :) Oh, wish me luck!!

Happy New Year, everyone!

I hope we all have an amazing year ahead of us!

So many big and expensive changes...

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First, I want to thank you all for your kind responses on my post yesterday. As some of you guessed here and on Facebook, we are expecting twins. And it was really unexpected!

To answer some questions, twins do run in my family. Kind of. My amazing great-grandma gave birth to 16 children, out of them 3 sets of twins. Unfortunately, 4 children died in infancy (including one in each twin set). But the other 12 survived and thrived. Her husband left her soon after the last child was born, so she raised them all on her own. My Grandpa knew how to milk a cow by the time he was 4. She was one heroic woman...

I digress...  So, technically, "twins" were supposed to be in my Mom's generation but the gene skipped all of the kids that came from those original 12. And made a surprise appearance in our ultrasound :) Many of you know that we were trying to get pregnant for a while, for almost two years to be exact. During this period, I discovered that I have hypothyroidism.  It definitely could be the reason why we had problems with fertility. I did not go through any infertility treatment, mainly, because we didn't have the money for it. We decided to leave it all in God's hands. Then, after my devastating miscarriage in January, I started getting desperate. And then somebody told me that it's already great that I could at least GET pregnant, after so many unsuccessful months. There was truth to that. And then came the big surprise :)

Somebody asked me today how long I've known. Honestly, we found out more than two months ago. I already knew for a week or so that I was pregnant but I started bleeding Sunday night and thought I was going through another miscarriage. The bleeding stopped the next day and when we went to the doctor that week we were shocked to find out that, not only everything was OK, but there were two little buns baking in there!

I'm not going to lie, I have a healthy (I hope!) mixture of excitement and feeling absolutely terrified right now. There is a long road ahead of us... Twin pregnancy is not an easy one. I honestly feel like I am discovering the whole pregnancy thing all over again... So many words I didn't even know before - HCG levels, progesterone, mono-mono etc. etc. Our little munchkins are fraternal which makes them a little less high-risk but there is still plenty to be aware of and try to prepare for. Right now my only two prayers are for them to be healthy and for me to make it as far as I can...

There are going to be many changes in our future, that's for sure. Obviously, we won't be able to reach our goal of saving $10000 this year. In fact, we will, probably, deplete our savings quite a bit to cover all kinds of medical bills. But we know our out-of-pocket maximum and we try to prepare the best we can. We are not going to stop saving until we need to start spending... I actually try to pick extra work to bring in more right now....

Also our 1800 sq. foot house suddenly became much smaller... Doubling the amount of kids in the same square footage is no joking matter :) I still think we are lucky to have 4 bedrooms here. We will  keep the room downstairs for my parents (if we ever finish it...Seriously, it's getting ridiculous!). I just cannot bear the idea of my Mom sleeping on the couch somewhere... They will have their own space when they come to visit again. We'll move the boys together in July as we always planned. But the other bedroom is pretty small. It was perfect for one but a little tight for two. We will have to sell all of our furniture there, including the gigantic crib and buy everything much smaller. We will wait with that for a few more weeks but we already started shopping around a bit and pricing everything we might need. It seems like we will mostly have to start from the beginning. Now everything will be in twos :) I'm not too concerned about clothes. Even if we end up having two girls, they will live in mostly blue stuff. We'll just buy a few pink outfits for major outings :) But we will need cribs, car seats, a stroller eventually and many other big, small, and expensive things...

So there will be many adjustments to our regular and long-term budget in the next few months. I don't know what the future holds for us but we will do what we can do and rely on God to help us with the rest... So far I'm just enjoying seeing my belly grow and get rounder and rounder :) And yes, I already look like I'm 5 months along but apparently you measure about 5-6 weeks further with twins. Sounds about right...

Coming back...

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One of the hardest things about coming back is to know what to write in that very first sentence... Somebody told me the other day that I'm a very strong woman. I chuckled... Because I'm so not. In the past few days I went through a rollercoster of emotions - from feeling depressed and bitter to becoming lighter and better, from fear to hope and faith, from failing to the depth of darkness to learning and discovering life again, from feeling lonely to feeling so loved...

Thank you all for your kind words, wishes and cyber hugs. I want you to know that I'm feeling much better, physically and otherwise (yes Kim, I'm OK, I promise :)... I can't say it never happened. I think, I got another small hole in my heart, and my oldest son's Birthday (and also my due date) will always be a little bitter-sweet. But I'm ready for new beginnings and I know that life goes on and God is by my side!

I wanted to update our January challenge (I slipped a little but I'm still working on it!) and other things I've been busy with but, I think I will leave it for the next few days. Right now I'm just happy to be back 'cause I missed you all! :)

How have you been???

My heart is bleeding today...

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You probably remember when in July I told you about my hypothyroidism problems. One of the reasons why we knew something was wrong is because we tried to get pregnant again for a while. In fact, by the end of 2013 it's been exactly 18 months since we started trying. I went literally through a hundred tests because my hormones were all over the place and I would get symptoms that weren't it. But last week I had a positive test... It was one of those chepo kinds that you can buy in Walmart for 88c and that I always have a bunch on hand. But it was definitely positive. In fact, I tried with three more tests over a span of few days and they were all positive. I also bought a clear blue one that shows the weeks on it, and it confirmed that I was pregnant again.

We were so excited but I knew something didn't feel right. I can't even explain what was wrong but it didn't feel like my two previous pregnancies. I tried to brush it off as fear because of my sister's miscarriage or my unstable hormones due to hypothyroidism. But yesterday morning I felt really strongly that I needed to do another test. And it turned out to be negative...One more an hour later... Negative again. By evening I started bleeding and today I miscarried...

I feel like my heart is bleeding right now... I don't know why but when it all started, a song "Bleeding love" by Leona Lewis popped into my head. Not the whole song but the chorus where she sings "Keep, keep bleeding love..." I guess, it's because that's exactly how I feel right now... like I'm bleeding love...

I will take a break from blogging for a few days.... Until I scrape myself off the floor again...I'm kind of an emotional wreck right now...Those darn hormones...But I love you all, and I'll be back. Just not sure when yet...But I will!