Calm before the storm

Tomorrow our little girls turn 1. This time last year I was frantically rushing all over the place getting acupuncture and buying premature clothes in anticipation of their arrival by induction the following day. My abiding memory of the day is sitting outside a cafe with my-sister-in law, soaking up the sun, feeling a sense of excitement, calm (as in before the storm) and probably slight dread about going into labour although I have carefully blotted from my memory the bulk of the grisly details. In fact just the other day someone asked me what it was like giving birth to twins. "Yeah, not too bad" was my reply. Upon reflection and remembering the reality of the labour I realised the more accurate response would have been "Yeah, ghastly".
Amazing how nature purposely removes the hideous pain from the memory and in its place leaves a sprinkling of tinkerbell style fairy dust and magical wonder.

On a similar note I can quite clearly remember the thought running through my mind as Twin2 arrived into the world amid a flurry of profanity (me) and shouted words of encouragement (my husband and midwife) which wasn't "are my babies ok?" or "can i see them?" or even "are they girls" but a much more telling"thank fuck I'm not pregnant anymore". The last year has been, well, I won't bore you with the description of the dark days. Suffice to say I'm not really a 'baby' kind of gal, I like my company to be able to walk unaided and have some control of speech (unless of course it's 2am at which point I don't have either tool in my armoury).

Baking their cakes (oh alright then buying the sponge from the supermarket) and decorating them into number '1's will be a glorious, happy way to spend the next couple of hours.