So this Friday is my birthday and Chris is getting me a $570.90 present.  Normally I would not put the number out there, it is actually a little tasteless, but then one remembers that it is a surgery and it makes a little more sense. 

Yes, I am going into surgery this week.  Not a really big deal other than it is a frustrating price.  And, ok, it is not what Chris is getting me for my b-day.  It just seems like I have taken more than my fair share of the monetary pie this year already.  They are just going to put a stitch or two in my cervix to ensure babies don't start falling out early again. 

They even offered to just numb me waist down and go for it, but please people, really?  You think I want to be awake while you are messing with needles and things less than centimeters from where my kids are swimming?  I'd be sitting there the whole time thinking 'crazy people better not impale my kid.'   And sure, I am going to be thinking that before hand, but I don't want to actually be in a position to kick the doctor in the face should I think she isn't being careful enough.

That, and being asleep right now is absolutely delightful.  Sometimes I think that there will come a day when they give women the option to go into a coma for nine months, out of mercy.   Granted, it is fun to complain, but really, this pregnancy hasn't been all that bad.  My mother in law is actually coming out this week to watch my kids so I can take it easy a few days after the surgery - just to be sure that everything is stable before going back to mommy world.  I am really grateful.  I am really lucky that there are so many people willing to help just now.

Even so, I know this whole thing has been hard on Chris.  Somehow he seems to do everything big and stressful at once.  Not on purpose, of course, but it seems to work out that way.  He changed his job in January, we found out that we were pregnant with twins in January, February rumors had it that there were going to be layoffs again at work.  A few weeks ago, there was an announcement  that there would be shifting and changing in the HP organizations.  Meanwhile he is trying not to panic his fattening wife so he only really mentions potential pending layoffs just before the announcement (btw no employer would be moronic enough to layoff Chris.  No, seriously). 

Then his wife starts getting really sick and all onions (the whole veggie food group for Chris) is struck from our home diet.  Then garlic is put on time out... I mean, layoffs are scary, but robbing a man of his onions?  That is where most draw the line.  Anyway, it has been a lot.  I have been getting worse and so more at home is falling on him.  My heart bleeds for the man.  I worry about him a lot.  He is trying to re-establish himself in a new department playing a different function, and comes home exhausted.  Then he gets to eat whatever tasteless, garlic-less, onion-less goop I slop in front of him (have you ever tried to cut onions completely out of your diet?  Everything has onions or garlic in it.  Go ahead, find something not tasteless that doesn't have one or both of those ingredients.).  Then he jockeys the kids through the end of dinner as I run off to the bathroom to puke up everything anyway.  He sits there, telling crying Parker that it's ok and agreeing with Lyra as she says 'mommy's sick,' proud that she knows what is going on.  If I am still in there when kids finish dinner they come running in, Lyra to pat my back and tell me I am sick, Parker to panic all over again, Chris has to jokey them away before they make a mess trying to give me toilet paper or flush the toilet in my face.  Honestly.  This happens so often, you would think that it would get old to them.  Anyway, Then we put kids to bed and he gets to entertain himself while his charming company-of-a-wife counts the minutes before we go to bed or is barfing over the toilet again, in which case, he takes Lyra's place: rubbing my back in a worried sort of way as I break down. 

I can say thank you all I want, but it will never compensate for the amount of stress, exhaustion, heart ache and loneness he is doubtlessly going through now and will go through later.  I know that half the time he is afraid to even get excited over the pending twins, just for fear that something will happen to them, in spite of everything.