Thursday, January 31, 2008

life in hospital

In one week (one week!) from about now, we're scheduled to meet our two littlest girls! I drew a calendar on the whiteboard on my hospital room wall, and I drew another on a piece of paper, and my daughter is crossing the days off at home. It feels like Advent all over again.

I've finished since I've been here: three cross-stitch projects, two baby blankets, two pairs of baby booties; and I've almost done embroidering two baby hats. The nurses all say how talented I am, but I just remind them that I am a woman with A LOT OF TIME on my hands. And they all say that it's just as well, as I won't have much time after the twins get here.

I'm sure they're right.

By the way, my recommendation for you, if you even find yourself in the hospital for awhile, is to equip yourself with lots of handiwork, and lots of good audiobooks. I haven't found anything that passes the time faster than listening to the Chronicles of Narnia (read by excellent actors like Derek Jacobi, Patrick Stewart and Jeremy Northam) and hunching over some needlework. It's the sort of thing you can dive into and find yourself hours later in the day the next time you look up. As time in a hospital room can drag, this is a great gift. Plus, eve if it's not the work you want to be doing, it is work, and work is something I think it would be hard to live very long without.

Well, my lunch tray has come, and thought I'm not terribly hungry (because the babies are taking up all the room an empty stomach normally takes up!) I'm going to go eat now. Studies have shown that twins have much better birth weights when their pregnant moms make sure to eat enough (healthy) calories, and by the girls' last ultrasound weight estimate, it seems to be working. I'm not going to stop this last week; I want to get these girls up to five pounds each by the time they're born next week! Or, at least, I want to do everything in my power to get them as close as possible. And may God in his mercy do the rest.

peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

1 comment:

Amber said...

Oh how wonderfully exciting! I pray that your two little girls will be safe and healthy at their birth in just that short time. And congratulations on all your handiwork, that sounds lovely. I'm sure you'll enjoy looking at it all in the months to come as you try to imagine just what it was like to have that much time to just sit and do things like that. :-)