Summary of 2014 - the BEST year of my life!

by Bex

So much has happened this year, it's hard to know where to start!  We've been through so many life changes including moving house (450 miles away no less!) and having babies (twins no less!) and a new job for Nik.  There has been a lot of stress involved of course, moving when 6 months pregnant with twins wasn't fun and trying to get the new house sorted in time since we were very aware that most twins come early gave us quite a deadline!  Anyway, here is my 2014 summary, it's pretty much all about the babies!

This is quite different to last year's recap!  This time last year I was feeling pretty low after our year of failed IVF attempts.  I was losing all hope of having a family and the start of 2014 was my lowest point.  What a difference a year makes!  If you could have told me we'd be a happy family of 4 by the end of this year I could have coped so much better with our two years of traumatic treatment failures.  Sadly, life doesn't work like that but looking back over this year has been SO MUCH FUN now we've had our happy IVF ending!

We'll forget about January & February but in March we finally had our successful implantation!  That alone made me so happy, even though I was expecting that stage to fail, we finally felt we'd had our chance at becoming pregnant.

Little did I know that our wee strong embryos were clingers but Kalyan & Priya hung in there making our dreams come true!  We found out just before Mother's Day and I was so excited to share our news on the blog on such an apt day :)

A few days later, in April, we headed off to Thailand (our post-treatment getaway in case of yet more disappointment) just 5 weeks pregnant!  We ended up seeing very little of Thailand due to my horrendous morning sickness kicking in after 3 days in Phuket.

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It ended up being less of an exploration of a fabulous country and more of an R&R getaway as I mostly just wanted to sleep and often had to hide in the hotel room from strong smells and smoking guests!  I lived on baked potatoes and dry cereal until we returned home and I mostly lived on ham sandwiches and potato waffles for the first few weeks!

Such bad nausea and vomiting was a clue to the fact we were expecting twins!!

The first glimpse of our twins at 7 weeks!

We were so excited, our little 2 for 1 bundles!  This year has gone SO fast, I loved documenting my pregnancy and getting excited about my growing bump - even when it wasn't visible to anyone else, I was so proud of my teenie bump as I started to show.

http://olivedragonfly.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/12-weeks.html

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At 18 weeks we bought a house.  After a couple of false starts, we ended up with the perfect place and we finally had a date for our move!

It wasn't long before we got to see the babies again at 20 weeks and found out the amazing news that we were having a boy AND a girl!  It felt like all our good luck had been saved up for so long and we were getting it all at once.  Still are!

After that it was all go as we had scans every 4 weeks and had to get organised for the big move south!  Although I couldn't buy much for the twins due to moving, I still had fun buying a few small bits and pieces and of course, had lots of Pinterest inspiration and started making plans for their room.

Of course I had to get some gorgeous images to record my amazing pregnant body and I absolutely loved all the maternity photo shoots with Louise and Lauren in Glasgow and then Laura just a couple of weeks before the birth down in Sussex!  I also took lots of selfies of course to record the bump at all stages...

We had a great leaving party in Glasgow and celebrated our pregnancy with a fantastic baby shower in Sussex and a last minute babymoon near our new home, all of which gave me some great excuses to get dressed up.

Glammed up for our leaving do

And baby shower

It was a bit of a rush to get our new home sorted in time for the birth but with Mum's help and some fantastic tradesmen, we had it pretty much as we wanted it with just minor things still to do.  I have lots to blog about the house and will eventually get round to it.  I'm so glad to have been able to finally get the nursery done and photographed though, I just love it!  :)

And then the babies were here!

Since then my instagram has become the ultimate baby spam!  I can't stop taking and sharing photos of our gorgeous babes, it makes up for not having time to blog properly.  Being a Mummy is just the most amazing thing, I feel blessed every day.  I can't describe the feeling I get watching them sleep, grow, change and develop their little individual personalities.  Their smiles are so infectious and I don't need to tell you how cute they are, just look...

I haven't had much time to blog about all the things I want to but I am making notes and hope to write more soon, once I get into my own routine without the luxury of having Mum here to help - she goes home on Friday, eek!  I've just been spending any spare time (i.e. when they're asleep) taking/editing photos of babies, sleeping or just catching up on every day stuff.  Christmas has certainly been a bit thrown together this year but we did have a beautiful tree and a few new decorations which I hope to share before Christmas is forgotten entirely for this year!

What a difference a year makes!  Life is just so different now and we couldn't be happier!  I cannot wait for everything this year brings :D