22 weeks

May 26, 2011 in Pregnancy | 13 comments

I missed my last weekly pregnancy update and I’m late this week. There’s not too much going on with my pregnancy right now, I suppose.

A Bad Thing: I went for my first prenatal massage and had to fill out a form. I’ve had a bunch of prenatal massages at this place before and they never made me fill out a form before. Anyway, when they found out that I had had four miscarriages, they said that they need a doctor’s note to give a massage for a high-risk pregnancy. Then they sent me home. I was humiliated and hurt. I actually am having a high-risk pregnancy – because I’m having twins! But my miscarriages are irrelevant now since I used an egg donor. I tried to explain this to them, but they have their little liability form and they’re going to stick to it. But that’s not really the thing that made me so upset. I think I got upset because I felt like they were telling me something they thought I didn’t know. Like, “Oh, didn’t you know that you’re probably going to lose your babies if you have a massage? So sorry, honey. Why don’t you go home and lie in bed?” I don’t know. I can’t say why it was so upsetting, exactly. But getting my doctor to fax a note is going to take at least a week or two and I want that goddamn massage. It just seems so unfair.

A Good Thing: I happened upon a yard sale and bought a bunch of clothes for the baby boy. I’ve never bought boy clothes before. I’m going to have a son! This little thing made it even more real for me.

We’re making progress on all the preparations. We got a couple of bouncy seats free from another mom of twins. It’s fun to be part of this little community of parents of multiples. We’ve gotten rid of almost all of the junk in our house that we’ve been carting around, not using, since we lived in Michigan. I love giving stuff away using Craigslist. I found a guy to remodel our bathrooms, which is the biggest project that MUST get done before the end of August. It looks like I’ll get it done, and that will be quite an accomplishment since these projects usually take me 6-12 months to complete. We have a good plan and a shopping list for everything else. We have a ton of work ahead of us this summer, but I think we can do it.

And we’re pretty sure we have the names picked out. It’s possible we’ll change our minds, but these were the names we picked out before we even knew it would be a boy and a girl. They seem to be sticking, and Sam is now referring to the babies by their names, so maybe there is no going back.

Leo and Zoe it is.

  1. Tori on May 26, 2011 at 10:58 am

    I know you’re a member at Massage Envy (right?), but could you find a private massage place to go to during your pregnancy? I found a place in Atlanta that specialized in prenatal massage (in fact, it was called the Pregnancy Massage Center or something), and they were far, far, far and away better than any Massage Envy massage I’ve had, or any other, really. They also had this entire contraption set up on the table to position you and make you as comfy as possible–not like hugging a stupid body pillow. There has to be a place like that in DC! They may still have the liability issue, but it might be more worth the trouble.

    Love the names!! Do you have middle names? Those were both names I liked (remember, at first we thought we were having a boy) but David vetoed.

  2. Amy on May 26, 2011 at 11:05 am

    Tori, unfortunately, I’ve already paid for about 3 massages from Massage Envy. I was storing them up for this. Maybe I’ll cancel now and find someplace else if I want more than that before I’m done, but I have so much on my plate right now I probably would never find the time. I’ll put it on my todo list and see if I ever get to it! :)

    We probably will add middle names but we haven’t thought about that yet. Sam does have a middle name (Miriam, after Adam’s mother who died a long time ago), although neither Adam nor I do.

  3. Hanah on May 26, 2011 at 11:11 am

    Those are great names! Are you using Leo as the full name, or is it a nickname for something?

  4. Amy on May 26, 2011 at 11:18 am

    We’re actually thinking Leo will be short for Leonidas.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonidas_I

    But I can’t imagine we’d ever call him that and I’m a little wary of “nicknames” after going through it with Sam. I hate when people ask her name and I have to say “Samantha, or Sam, or Sammy.” And she definitely likes Sammy but I prefer Sam, so it’s confusing. Still, if it were Leonidas, we’d never call him that and it would basically just be on his birth certificate. He’d be Leo. This is a name we considered before we knew Sam would be a girl and we’ve always loved.

    Zoe was one of the final three names on our list for Sam, and we’ve never stopped loving it, so that was easy.

    When we kind of accidentally put them together, we realized how great they are for twins. We love how both names have three letters and both have the O and the E, but they do not rhyme or start with the same letter. Similar, but different. And they both go well with Mossoff. Or, as well as anything can go with Mossoff.

  5. Aki on May 26, 2011 at 12:14 pm

    Hi Amy! I love your name choices! It’s funny, my mom’s ballroom dance teacher (he’s amazing and was on So You Think You Can Dance) is a Leonidas. My mom calls him Leon-ie… (it’s her accent- She calls Emily Em-EE-Re) Everyone I know calls him Lenny. But it’s a great name.
    I’m so excited for you! And I love the updates!

  6. Estelle on May 26, 2011 at 1:54 pm

    Hi Amy! How can I do other but approve of Leo (since my son has that name — and Zoe is lovely too). Our experience with “official” and “nicknames” is not great. We call my daughter Tessa, but her “official” name is Theresa, and that is a hassle from here to Singapore. You have to use the “official” name for passports, schools, insurance cards, sports registration cards, airline mileage programs (which have to match the passport) etc. My motivation was to give her a name she could play with and change if she felt like it (Tessie, Terri, Reesa, Theresa, whatever), but she has not appreciated or used this option. Perhaps it’s less of an issue when the name/nickname are more clearly related (as in Sam/antha), and the child does not mind listening for/responding to the ‘official’ name in ‘official’ situations.

  7. Amy on May 26, 2011 at 2:50 pm

    Aki, say hi to your mom for me. :)

    Estelle, yes, we know a few Leos. Was yours inspired by Leo from We the Living? We like that connection and it factored into our love of the name, but Leonidas had more impact on us as inspiration. Is your Leo simply Leo or is it short for anything? Tessa is another of my favorite names, but I agree, it’s full of nickname headaches. We also considered Tasha. It wouldn’t have been short for Natasha – we simply would have gone with Tasha. I think Tasha Mossoff sounds nice and Russian. Also, Tasha would have fit into our grand scheme of naming all girls after strong sci-fi women. Samantha Carter from Stargate SG-1, and Zoe Alleyne from Firefly. (And Tasha Yar from Star Trek TNG if we had gone that way.) Yes, SERIOUSLY!

    Does anyone know a sci-fi Leo?

  8. Estelle on May 26, 2011 at 6:25 pm

    Amy: Robert and I both loved the name Leo, and it only occurred to us later that there was a Leo in WTL, so he was not named for that. Leo is not short for anything (although there are Leopolds on my dad’s side, and he called Leo “Polleke” when Leo was a baby). All in all Leo’s had an easy name time.

    I *love* Zoe in Firefly, that is a great character to be named for!!!

  9. mtnrunner2 on May 26, 2011 at 10:13 pm

    Amy – I’m glad things are going well. A massage? Must be a pretty high-impact massage… :( I’m thinking the solution to your massage dilemma is… TORT REFORM!

    Only slightly kidding.

    Although it’s not nearly as important as pregnancy, the same issue impacts outdoor life in Colorado because so many property owners are scared to death that somebody will fall on a tree branch in the woods and sue the owner of the property for not picking up all the tree branches or whatever. Ridiculous. Not to mention the fact that such bad legal policy reduces goodwill among people.

  10. Grandee on May 27, 2011 at 10:06 am

    Let’s see… there is Mommy, Daddy, Sammy and Grandee. Then there is Leo. But wait… There is Leo and Grando!!

  11. Amy on May 27, 2011 at 10:20 am

    Mom, that’s funny!

    You forgot Zoe, but I know you meant to include her with the other “ees.” We do have a lot of “ees” don’t we?

  12. Brianna on May 28, 2011 at 2:45 pm

    Well that answers that question. I was wondering whether you were going to pronounce it with just one syllable or two.

    Two girls names I’ve always liked were Kira and Tara. Tara for the star goddess, and Kira for Kira from WtL. Also because I think those are both pretty names.

    I also think Dagny is a pretty name, but to me it doesn’t go with any last name but Taggart, so I doubt I’d ever use it.