I am over half way done with this pregnancy!! Can you believe it? I hardly can.

I finally have a baby bump! I’m still shockingly small in comparison to most women at this point, let alone the fact I’m having twins. That happens when you can’t keep anything down and are constantly sick; overall I lost 18lbs and while I have stopped losing weight and have put on a little more,  I still haven’t managed to get to my pre-pregnancy weight. But I’m finally growing! It’s funny because I really didn’t have a pregnancy belly two weeks ago…just a belly that made you wonder if I hit the cheesecake too hard 😉  But about a week and a half ago it burst out of nowhere, so much so that my coworkers were commenting on its sudden appearance. We haven’t been doing formal week-by-week pictures so this is the best bump picture I have so far. Happy Halloween, btw!

Jason saw this shirt online and couldn’t resist getting it. I’m a Jedi incubator, no big deal. I stopped by to see my nephews in this shirt and they immediately asked if the babies were going to come out early and cut themselves out with light sabers (which they were all for because they think March is way too far away) and how one of the baby’s was evil because it had a red light saber. Pretty entertaining.

Morning sickness is still a thing. But it has at least subsided to mostly happening in the actual morning verses all day. So that’s something. However, in some ways it’s been harder to deal with. I’ve had to miss a lot of work due to how sick I’ve been which makes me feel guilty for not being there for my coworkers and bringing in less money then I could be, making things a little tight for us. Between the physical  stress, the emotional strain, and hormones I was having some rough days. One day in particular I had a pity party with some understanding coworkers and bawled to them for a little while. I guess Heavenly Father could tell I needed a pick me up because the next day I felt my first real, undeniable baby kick. It was magical! I’d been feeling them move for a while but everything was just flurries, nothing I could pin point as a definite kick. Between having a baby bump and feeling them move I felt like I had more than just constant vomiting proving to myself that I’m pregnant and that life is really growing within me. And that is making an enormous difference in my ability to handle the physical trial.

We also recently had our anatomy scans and got to spend a couple of hours looking at our babies! Oh how I love seeing them! Now let us introduce our daughters to you.

Livi is our wiggly baby, the one who is always moving at every ultrasound. She likes to steal the show and have the attention on her during picture time. We are so excited to finally be able to use the name that we picked out nearly six years ago. We chose her name simply because we adore it. The name Olivia has gotten extremely popular over the last few years and we thought about choosing something else, but Livi has been the name of our hypothetical daughter for so long that it felt wrong to not use. She’s our Livi and that’s that.

Ella is our more docile baby, at least so far. She is always snuggled up into a little blob during ultrasounds. We think Livi may be beating Ella into submissiveness when it comes to getting attention, but it also feels like Ella is just shrugging and letting her sister do her thang, while she’s comfortable chilling on her own. Ella and Ruby are both family names for Jase and I have always loved the name Ella from one of my favorite childhood books.  It’s a great fit and we are excited to have our Ella Bella pay a small tribute to two beautiful women from Jason’s family. 

Both babies are growing right on schedule. They both weigh 1lb and are roughly the size of a banana squash. However, there are some concerns with little Ella. At this stage we don’t know much. It could be nothing, it could be more serious. She hasn’t been cooperating well enough at our ultrasounds to let the doctors get a good look at what they need to. So for now, we won’t get into it and will air on the side of optimism that it’s nothing. We’ll keep you posted if that changes.

The next few months are going to be amazing. Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, our anniversary, and then our sweet little daughters will be here! We can’t wait.