When you are obviously pregnant and are out in public, people cannot resist asking you questions, telling birth stories, and providing unsolicited parenting advice. Most of this I find highly amusing. Here are some of the good ones:

1. Is your baby jumping in your belly when the airplane takes off?
I travel a lot for my job, so I find myself interacting with complete strangers in public quite a bit. This particular person proceeded to tell me about how her baby actually used its legs to JUMP inside her during takeoff because it was quite angry about flying and wanted to jump out. She was dead serious. My response was “wow…that’s incredible.” Because really, it is.

2. Do they actually rent cars to pregnant people?
You know, I never actually checked the terms and conditions of that rental agreement. Hmm.

3. Are you going to the prom pregnant like that?
I think this person was trying to make a joke because I look young. But I’m really not sure. I told him that no, I was probably going to skip it because the dress I wanted to wear is too tight now.

4. Will your twins be the same age?
I patiently answer yes and secretly wonder what exactly these people think twins actually are?

5. You are having girls because you are carrying them in the front of your body.
As opposed to the side of my body?

6. Will you use your nipples to breastfeed?
Um….well, that seems like the best idea I’ve come up with so far. Any other suggestions?

7. Are your twins natural?
No, they are SUPER natural!
Honestly, this question I find more shockingly rude than amusing. I think that because we are having twins, these people are trying to ask whether we’ve undergone fertility treatment. My answer usually is that I’m not comfortable discussing my sex life and the conception details of my children. Then I have to wait it out through the awkward pause that inevitably follows.

8. When is your due date? Today?
I’ve been getting this one lately since my belly is so big. I think these people are really fearful that I’m about to give birth in their store, restaurant, or gas station. It is kind of fun to give them a date several months away.

And, a quick update for those who want it:  the birth is scheduled for 37 weeks, on Aug 6, if it doesn’t happen on its own before that.  We do not know yet whether it will be a regular delivery or cesarean delivery.  We do not know the genders of the twins or whether they are fraternal or identical.  We also do not have names picked out and will be waiting until after the birth to name them.  We might have Kate and Will beat for being shrouded in birth mystery!

Preparing your home for a baby, or in our case, babies, is an interesting process for a first time parent. During our preparation work, I have had flashbacks to my senior chemical engineering design project. A team of four of us spent two semesters researching and designing a chemical plant, calculating the economic feasibility of the plant we designed, and then preparing to pitch the entire thing to a room full of experts with actual industry experience. Following that, we wrote a 300 page report of our work. Throughout all of it, we had no idea what we were actually doing and whether or not it would work.  In this case, the team consists of the two of us, over 8 months, researching products and products and more products, figuring out how to afford them, designing rooms around the products, and then preparing to pitch the entire thing to two infants. The first year of their life will be the 300 page report. Let’s hope we can squeak by with a C!

I thought it would be fun to write a post about some of the products that we are most excited about using when our twins are here in a few weeks. A year from now, I may look back on this post and laugh at how silly I was for thinking those things would EVER be useful. But, here are five of our favorites so far:

Double infant car seat stroller: 

We found this Joovy Twin Roo double infant car seat stroller that is a new product on the market. It has a pretty neat design, in that the infants both face sideways instead of towards the front bar. It also has a low cup holder so that you don’t spill your Irish coffee all over your kiddos.

Double jogging stroller: 

We won’t be able to use this BOB Stroller Strides FItness Duallie for several months, but we are both very excited about it, as it will allow us to continue our outdoorsy lifestyle with the twins and should make a pretty nice cover to hide behind when we have to whizz in the woods.

Sleepers:

These adorable Fisher Price My Little Lamb sleepers can be easily moved throughout the house. The twins can sleep in them anywhere, and they will rock!

Twin nursing pillow:

The My Brest Friend Twins Plus pillow is designed to nurse the little suckers at the same time, which sounds like my kind of feat: challenging, somewhat unbelievable, strangely amusing, and efficient!

Cloth diapers:

Yep, that’s what I said. We are using cloth BumGenius Elemental and BumGenius 4.0 cloth diapers, as well as some used Fuzzibunz that we got from some awesome friends of ours. We are washing the diapers ourselves because I love poop stories and wanted to ensure that we have a large arsenal of them to fling at unsuspecting childless folks (the stories I mean).  At first, we should be managing the cleaning of approximately 180 diapers/week.  Being an engineer, I’m sure that I will feel the need to calculate the exact amount of poop we process.  It might be useful information for an Amazon review of our washing machine or just a helpful nugget to drop into a casual conversation with those random strangers who like to approach me in the grocery store.

All puns intended.