When Dr. Lovely Lovely arrived he took one look at me from the other end of my feet, came around to my head and told me, “You’re enormous. I’m sending you down to X-ray for an ultrasound. I want to know what’s in there.”

Well, that certainly helped me in the self-confidence department. If he didn’t know what was in there, we were all in for some tough explaining.

Mia Farrow from Rosemary’s Baby
Now, in 1976 ultrasound was a new procedure that doctors only used when they suspected something odd. I certainly qualified. Mia Farrow in Rosemary’s Baby was cute as a button compared with me at seven months.

On the monitor the first swipe across my jellied abdomen showed two heads. Then two little beating hearts. Four legs. Four arms. This explained a lot. Why my stomach was a study in constant motion. Why my weight was climbing at a daily average of one point three pounds. Why I now had to sleep on nine pillows carefully arranged to support various distended and extended parts of my body.

I sat in front of the doctor and cried for quite awhile. I must say he was very kind. And kept repeating, “lovely, lovely.”

On the way home I stopped at a country store and bought two cigars for the father to be. He is not a smoker. I just didn’t know how else to tell him. I think I was embarrassed.

When I handed him the two cigars, he gave me a crazy look like: “What are you doing? You know I don’t ….” Disbelief washed across his face. Followed immediately by confusion.

He sat down. He could not speak.

We sat there staring at each other. Numb from absorbing this one-two punch from life.

Lamaze class was interesting. I could not stretch, breathe, move or contract any muscles anywhere. Except for the all important sphincters, which we were told would play a major role down the road. Once on the floor with all the other breathing he-he-heing couples, I couldn’t get up.

Soon my legs started swelling and the doctor told me to get in bed and stay there until the due date. He said studies showed that women carrying multiples were likely to deliver early but that those confined to bed for the duration had a much higher chance of going to term. Oh goodie. Now I could just lie in bed all day and watch myself grow. He told me not even to get up to go to the bathroom. He said to use a bedpan.
A bedpan? I couldn’t even get off a couch by myself. How did he expect me to perform this acrobatic feat? Install a crane in my bedroom?

To get to my bathroom I had to pass a full length mirror. It got so difficult to look at what used to be my body that I hung a sheet over the mirror.

One day, when I had sneaked off to the kitchen for some refrigerated Ragu, the cat saw me standing by the sink and leapt onto the top of my belly, obviously mistaking it for a piece of freestanding furniture. She used my hip as a clawhold, leaving behind a five inch gouge.

As the months ground by, I finally arrived at due date minus three weeks. And I was beginning to develop a rash. On my belly. At first it was a small blotchy pink area just above the belly button. A word here about what happens to a woman’s belly button in the later stages of pregnancy. At least what happened to mine. It was no longer an inny. But it was not an outy either. It was a big eye. Like the kind you see on an elephant. A big roundish oval that seemed to be looking out from my belly. And it kept growing right along with the rest of that protruding mass.

By due date minus three days the rash had turned red and the blotches became deep lines of raised bumps. The redness graduated to crimson and I am sure to this day it was because of all that Ragu. Then it began to tingle. The tingling became an excruciating want-to-tear-your-flesh-off gnawing itching. Off I went to the doctor’s office. He sent me to the dermatology floor. This was the good part of being at a large university clinic. Whatever you needed was but an elevator ride away.

A word about what my belly looked like at this point. Between months five and nine I had gone from a 24-inch waist to exactly double that. I would guess that over 85 percent of the weight I had gained was in that monster ball.