Things Are Different This Time Around

Going through this pregnancy has been a different for me too, at least as far as preparation. When Lily was in the oven (or Heino or Stetsi as she was known at that time), I was reading a decent number of books to try to equip myself for what was about to happen to us. They were all useful and I'm glad I did as much reading as I did, but it's been a lot less this time. Most of it is because we've been through labor and delivery and the first weeks and months and years before, so I find myself wondering less about specific things and more about just how crazy the first few days and weeks are going to be, and even though the twin-specific books talk about that, for some reason I just feel like we know what we'll have to do, it's just going to be tough in that moment.

I was wondering about different things to expect during delivery so I was reading about this one day while riding the U-bahn home from work. Things got a bit graphic with the intricate details of C-sections and between that and sitting backwards riding in the dark under the city, I found myself feeling a bit queasy and decided that reading about medical procedures while in motion was not on the list of things I should do.

Our birthing classes start in a couple of weeks. Unfortunately of the six weeks, I already know that I'll miss two while on business trips. What I don't know is how much I'll get out of the four that I can attend, since they'll be in German. I haven't started any classes or particularly focused effort on learning German since arriving almost six months ago, so I can't really hold a conversation about the weather, much less about the act of giving birth. I picture myself sitting in this class madly typing words into my phone's translation app. Oh well, I'm sure we'll manage one way or another once the twins arrive, whether I have a clue what's going on at the hospital or not. As long as two healthy babies end up in my arms I'll be happy.

Ok, I have to include a picture, so here we are yesterday having fun at Oktoberfest. Since before coming here I had no idea what Oktoberfest would be like, I can now compare it to two Portland things... if you take the fair/midway of the Rose Festival combined with the Beer Fest and multiply both by about ten, that might be close. And part of the 10x of the Beer Fest would be to take the tents and turn them into huge semi-permanent buildings that hold about 5,000 people. So yeah, it's a little crazy but it has something for everyone. Including corn on the cob, which for some reason is not common here. I was waiting for it to hit the grocery store all summer and only in the last couple of weeks did I accept that it was just not going to happen. Anyway, this post has taken a 90 degree turn, so I'll just wrap it up here...