Before I got pregnant, I weighed 125 lbs.  By the end of my full-term twin pregnancy, I’d shot up to 184.  The girls were born after 39 weeks of pregnancy at 6 & 6 1/2 lbs respectively – which thankfully kept them out of the NICU (neonatal intensive care unit), but what that left me with was….

Diastasis Recti.

Basically, my abs did a vertical split and now my guts protrude.  Alot.  I look like I’m perpetually pregnant.  My abs are shot and now my back muscles have to do double duty! This leaves me feeling pretty tired and achy all the time, not to mention having to be careful of my protruding guts.

You’d think that this would be treated as a legitimate medical condition and that insurance would cover the outpatient surgery needed to correct it, but you’d be wrong.

The surgery is generally known as a “cosmetic” proceedure for people wanting prettier tummies – a “tummy tuck” – and on your own dime it’s about $25,000.

Exercises can only do so much (and not much at that) to reduce the gap through which your guts protrude, and binders, cinches, corsets and other shapewear or compression garments are also limited in the actual support they provide.

One of the constant dangers is that your guts will herniate, twist and ‘strangulate’, which means you are in deep doo-doo.

Well, guess what happened to me?

Yep, I coughed a little too much during my recent bout of bronchitis and something went SPROING!!

Hurt like frickin’ heck!

After a few days of lotsa pain, I went to see my doctor who told me that my intestines are herniated – oh joy!

And that I need surgery for it.

The good news, however, is that now that I’ve graduated to an ‘actual’ medical condition, most likely the insurance will cover the surgery to repair the hernia and the diastasis.  Hooray!

Good thing my husband’s got some vacay time saved up! He’s the one getting saddled with the kids while I have the surgery and recover from it.

Remember when all you other mommies out there gave birth? It was so traumatic and painful that after it was over, your mind sorta blurred the experience in your memories so you’d be willing to have another child after that one.

That’s what must have happened to me after last year’s Easter Egg Hunt.

Our usually family shuns public egg hunts, as lately there’ve been a plethora of stories in the news of thug parents bullying other children, or encouraging their own offspring to physically overpower other kids just for the sake of a stupid plastic egg and trinket probably worth all of 10 cents!

So we have the home version.  I buy a bag of plastic eggs at the dollar store for $1, and put 1 jellybean in each. (We don’t give a lot of candy to our kids. Yes they get a basket, but it’s modestly sized and with small gifts and minimal candy.) Sometimes I’ll put in a chocolate chip, or a mini-marshmallow, or a slip of paper with a number for a prize.  Anyhoo, the twins are mighty happy with what they get.

The problem is that Every.  Fricken.  Year.  there is ALWAYS at least one or two eggs that we cannot find.

And every year, I swear that next year, assuming we even have a Hunt at all, we will carefully write down the location of every hidden egg.

And we forgot to do that again this year.

So there we were, two kindergartners, me, my husband and my mother looking all over the place for the last egg.  Because wouldn’t you just know it – it was one with a special candy treat in it.  I couldn’t just swap it for another jellybean – this was an organic 100% all-fruit roll-up.  And I didn’t have another one handy.

Finally, after 40 minutes of dedicated searching just for that one egg, we threw in the towel and tried to console the child whose egg it would have been (they’re twins, they’ve got to have the same amount or it’s war.).

Eventually, when my stress-hazed mind cleared a bit, I idly asked my husband if he was SURE that he hadn’t hidden any eggs in the off-limits zone that included the toybox.

I swear I could have cheefully throttled him when he got a guilty-shocked look on his face.  Not a jury in the land would have convicted me.

Sure enough, we found the last egg, the child rejoiced, and the rest of us adults collapsed in exhaustion.

Next time, we are going to write down the locations of every egg we hide.

Next time, we are going to write down the locations of every egg we hide.

Next time, we are going to write down the locations of every egg we hide.

Next time, we are going to write down the locations of every egg we hide.

Next time, we are going to write down the locations of every egg we hide.

Next time, we are going to write down the locations of every egg we hide.

Next time, we are going to write down the locations of every egg we hide.

Next time, we are going to write down the locations of every egg we hide.

Happy Easter! Happy Passover! Happy Spring Equinox!

In a seemingly never-ending series of afflictions, our entire family got hit with a pretty nasty virus, and then bacterial bronchitis.

Actually, having been in the throes of extreme mucosity for the past few weeks, it’s not actually something I feel like writing about, except for having found a new way to get liquid antibiotics down the gullets of my kids:

Mixing about 2-3 teaspoons of maple syrup to a teaspoon of liquid antibiotics seems to be enough to get the kids to drink it.  My previous method of injecting the meds into a juicebox with a plastic syringe (available for free at most drugstore pharmacy counters) didn’t work for one particularly vile-tasting drug. It just made the entire box of juice taste foul.

So after a little experimenting, I stumbled upon the maple syrup method.

Ok, back into hiatus until I’m definitely sure I’m not actually going to cough up a lung or two!

Hey there everyone,

Just wanted to let you know that we’re still here and still breathing!  Still dealing with various issues – both medical and otherwise – that need more time to resolve though.

All the best,

Lara