Last week at my 6 week post-partum checkup, the doctor cleared me to get back to normal (Although I had started attending my dance class again a few days earlier). Cervix apparently looks great and incision is healing as it should. I won't lie though, I've been pretty much back to normal for a while now. I was driving after a week, walking around just fine. While the first day or so was tiring, I have just as much energy as I did before at dance class and, in fact, just did an intense special 2 hour hip hop workshop over the weekend. I do wear my belly bandit during class, as it keeps everything tucked in and my scar isn't bouncing around. I'll probably continue wearing it for a while for class just to be on the safe side, but surprisingly there's been absolutely no pain and I haven't had to restrict myself with any movements. Everyone has been saying they are amazed I'm able to jump back in, but to be honest it doesn't seem that big of a deal to me. I think because I was dancing every day up until I went to the hospital. I'm just used to pushing myself with pretty much everything in life. Doing everything to it's fullest extent. Probably isn't necessarily always the best thing, but it's definitely worked in my favor over the years.
I also got the green light to have sex again. That was one thing I played by the rules just because I didn't want to do any damage down there. I had read in a lot of different sources that it was common to not have much of a sex drive during post-partum, but that certainly wasn't the case for me! I was just as horny as ever. Perhaps it was because I knew I couldn't and I don't like being told I can't do something (hence having twins naturally when I was told I could never get pregnant) so it just made me want it more. Plus I missed being intimate with my hubby. We just shared the most memorable life-changing week of our lives so I felt closer than ever to him and wanted nothing more to to be as physically close to him as possible. Especially since it's always so good! It did hurt a little the first time, almost made me feel like a virgin again (cue the Madonna song). But then again I only pushed a 2 lb 11 oz baby out, not a ten pounder. I'm sure that makes a difference!
So now we're back in the saddle we had to decide on what type of birth control we'd be on. Before I had the twins, G and I had made up our minds that he would get a vasectomy and that was that. We had always only wanted two kids, so being lucky enough to have a boy and a girl we'd be done in one shot with an instant family. We were 100% certain he'd get the ol' snip snip and call it a day. But ever since they were born for some reason we are hesitant to get it done just yet. It started with my husband... he's had twinkling babies in his eyes since becoming a daddy. I think for him he is feeling enamored with the miracle of life and the magic of creating it with me. Which I totally get, in a way I feel the same. So we've been going back and forth about it. Loving the amazing feeling of creating life together... but it not being financially feasible to have another. Not wanting to close the door in case we change our minds down the road... but thinking having one more after the twins would be like a 5th wheel. Plus I'm 35 so I'd be at least 37 if we had another and would I really want to be pregnant chasing around two toddlers?! Then there's the factor of me not knowing if I can even actually get pregnant again as my body may very well go back to its I premature ovarian failure state. And if not, if I was somehow able to get pregnant again because of the type of c-section I had I would have to have another and man do I not want to go through that again. But then we think, well what if something terrible happened and we lost one of the twins? If G had the vasectomy we'd always be wondering what if I HAD been able to get pregnant again and we threw away our chance. There's just so many what ifs. And we've only started thinking this way since we had the babies. So I think for now we've decided to just wait a bit and reassess how we feel at a later time. The last thing I want is for us to do this with a heavy heart and be endlessly questioning our decision.
Which brings us back to the birth control dilemma. I had decided last week that I should just go back on birth control (because I do NOT want to use condoms like we're awkward teenagers, I feel like that is so impersonal and they suck when it comes to feeling). But when I went to pick up my pills I suddenly started thinking about how being on the pill messed up my hormones and was most likely the culprit behind my ovarian failure in the first place. I just think I'd be doing myself a disservice not giving it a chance to even see if my body will actually go back to working properly.
So I picked up some VCFs (vaginal contraceptive film) and have been using that, but I just found out it's only about 85% effective. We looked into potentially using FemCap (which covers the cervix) but for women who have already given birth 25 out of 100 will get pregnant on it. Ummm yeah that's crazy!
The whole ordeal is stressing me out and making me paranoid when we do get it on. Primarily because we beat the odds in getting pregnant the first time (a one in ten million chance and then we got pregnant with twins three months later) so saying there's a 15% chance we could get pregnant seems like taking candy from a baby comparatively speaking.
Meanwhile the hubs and are still going back and forth on the vasectomy thing and I think ultimately where we stand is that realistically it's not feasible to have a third child financially, it would be rough physically and not even sure it's possible. But yet for some reason we're still gun shy to pull the trigger...
So basically we're at a stalemate for the time being. I guess we'll just have to play it by ear....
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