This Is What Happens When You Are Surprised With Twins – Digging Us Out Of Survival Mode: A Series

Joanna Fowler July 12, 2016 Family, Twins

twinsIt was inevitable. I had to have seen it coming. But I don’t think I was ever prepared for the magnitude of what was about to happen to our lives.

The weeks leading up to finding out we were expecting twins were marked with unusual fatigue and illness which was peaking my suspicion. At the time I was running my mural painting company and business was booming. I had two large scale murals to paint and from the moment “you are having twins” were spoken by the nurse after my seven week ultrasound, I felt sick.twins ultrasound

I pushed through. I would climb up on my ladder, paint for twenty minutes and then climb down, eat a snack and lay on the carpet (the home-owners were away, thank God) and pray I didn’t throw up. Then I would start the process all over again. This went on for days.

Mural

When I would arrive home after a long day of painting I would collapse. Forget the housework, forget cleaning, I needed to rest.

“If I could just make it to the second trimester.” I would often think to myself full of hopeful optimism.

The second trimester came and I felt a little better. My husband Mike, and I had an exciting Vegas trip coming up and I couldn’t wait to get away. As we walked through the doors of Bellagio, I was in awe of the sheer size of our hotel.

As we stood at the counter waiting for our room key, my oversized baby bump was drawing a lot of eyes. Although I was only 17 weeks pregnant, I looked almost full term. I am sure people were thinking that a very pregnant woman in a casino looked a little out of place.pregnant in vegas

After being pointed in the direction to where our room was, we started to make the trek. Now when I say trek, I seriously mean TREK. It was about a ten-minute walk (at least) from the front lobby of the Bellagio to where our room was. That’s when it happened. It felt like someone placed a vice on my belly, and I couldn’t move.

Now, I have heard of Braxton Hicks contractions before, but this was cruel. I quickly sat down in one of the many chairs peppering the long halls in the Bellagio and waited for the searing pain to subside, which, at this point had begun to start shooting down my legs and even through my lady parts.

Las Vegas is a walking city. Here I was unable to walk, or at least walk very far. We made the best of the trip walking short distances, taking cabs and sitting a lot. Mike was very patient and took very good care of me.pregnant in vegas

Upon arriving home, the cleaning, tidying and clutter-clearing continued to wait.

By the third trimester I had completely thrown the towel in. I was living on the couch with a pillow between my knees, barely able to climb the stairs without blacking out. We scraped together what money we could and graciously accepted gifts from family to hire a cleaning company.

We continued to shove, store, and cram the items that needed to be purged, the clothes our kids had grown out of and all of the extra stuff that was slowly becoming noise, occasionally spiking my anxiety.

The day our twins were born, July 24 2014, was the next phase of survival mode. We had now reached the life phase of survival mode. Add on my new business that was gaining steam and I could barely fit any time for me in, especially not time for our house which at this point was screaming “I am busting at the seams.”IMG_1146

To this day, I have felt like I have been keeping a deep, dark secret. Clutter. Most days I have been able to rationalize the noise away, pushing it to the back burner, reminding myself I have bigger fish to fry.IMG_9281

But every once in a while I would gasp, looking around at the mess, the garbage, the stuff, the junk, the crap and feel like I was drowning.

So here I am, weeks away from our twins’ second birthday, and although I know that some days are a sh*t show, I have to admit, we are out of survival mode. It is time to face the mess.

I have made the decision to purge our house. To be ruthless. To make our home a priority.

This is the beginning of a series that I will be continuing… well… on and off until the process is done.

Digging Us Out Of Survival Mode will include my real confessions of mess, of motherhood and survival mode. I will be journaling the purge, my inspiration, some fun home DIY projects and sharing my nesting story both on the blog and on my YouTube channel.

You can follow along by liking Nesting Story on Facebook and subscribing to Nesting Story on YouTube. You can also find me purging our house in real time on Snapchat: nestingstory.

Stay tuned…

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