The Mills Adventure

This past Friday, my friend Amy invited me and the girls to meet her and her babies at The Mills for the day. She has boy/girl twins that are 2 weeks older than mine--Kendall and Alexis. We had the exact same due date, as we went thru IVF together. It was awesome how we met… let me explain… Last summer, our friends Lindsey and John were getting married. While Lindsey and I were talking one day about who would be at the bachelorette party, she told me that John’s cousin (Amy) was getting ready to go thru IVF as well, and she thought maybe we were going to the same doctor. I got to meet Amy at the party, and it turned out that we WERE in fact having all of our procedures done on the same days by the same doctor. We caught up with each other at the wedding, and then continued to keep in touch once the procedures started in late August…as well as throughout our pregnancies.

Anyway… Amy called Friday morning and talked me into getting out of the house with the girls and meeting her. I think I was just worried that I’d ruin her day if the girls were upset the whole time. And also I sort of panicked when thinking about the chaos of simultaneously feeding two in public. Well, she encouraged me that it would be ok and that I could do it…so off we went.

We got there at about noon and the kiddos needed to eat right away. So we set up camp at some comfy chairs that were right in the middle of the mall. We really didn’t have many options. I knew it would be pretty entertaining to see everyone’s reactions when they saw 2 huge twin strollers side by side. You wouldn’t believe the people that stopped what they were doing to turn completely around and stare, or to come over and chat. After a while we really just had to ignore it, or else we’d never finish any conversation with each other. When people did want to come over and talk, the questions were pretty funny. “Whoa, are you guys sisters?” “So you’re friends and you BOTH have twins?” “Did you guys both know you were having twins?” (what does that mean anyway…like Amy knew she was pregnant, and the day she delivered, I realized I was pregnant with some too?) They were completely perplexed by the idea. Not one person really thought that maybe we could have met at a Mothers of Twins club or something. I thought more would flat out ask if they were conceived thru medical help. More people really assumed we were childhood friends who just happened to drop 2 eggs and get knocked up on the same day. They just walked away shocked. It was really funny.

For the most part, everyone was really nice—saying God bless you and telling us how great it was that we could help each other get out of the house. But then there was an older lady named Dee. Amy and I were walking with the strollers up to the hostess desk at Chevy’s, and along comes this woman. She immediately saw us as a huge annoyance and started walking faster, walking around the strollers to cut us off and get in front of us in line. I guess we technically didn’t walk all the way up to the stand, therefore we weren’t exactly waiting quite yet. Ha. The hostess came back and saw Amy and I waiting and said she would be right with us. We both noticed that she didn’t even see Dee standing there. Well she made sure to let them know. The manager came back to get us and she jumped in his face and said, “I’ll take a table for three…and my name is Dee!” (No one gives a crap, Dee). So anyway…we wait a bit longer, while the manager starts to get a little stressed, trying to find somewhere to squeeze our little circus in. It’s funny how you really just get used to the bulkiness, and other people just want to panic A little while later, as we were finishing our meal, these two older women came out of the bathroom and saw the babies. They came over to start talking, and out behind them comes Dee. Haha, great. She is probably thinking in her head, oh #$&@, but instead she plays dumb and starts saying “ohhhh two sets of twins?” as if she didn’t realize she had raced us to the doorway. Amy thought maybe she had too many margaritas.

So, it was a great day! Again, incredibly entertaining—we were there for 51/2 hours and didn’t even realize it! But when you have to do 2 feedings, that kind of makes the day go by pretty quickly. We were both shocked that as big and as family-oriented as The Mills is, there were no nice family bathrooms. The only one they had was really crappy. Literally. There was one door to a tiny toilet, one door to a regular toilet, a door that said it was for nursing and then one little changing area. There was nothing nice about it. They have better bathrooms at a park. There were stains everywhere and it smelled so strongly of poop. It wasn’t even a smell that you eventually get used to after a minute.

I’m so glad Amy talked me into going with her. I felt really great on the way home—like I had accomplished something and got over my fears. Of course some days may not go that smoothly, but I know I can figure it out. I can’t wait to meet up with her again!