My Best Friend's Wedding - 7.25.2014

In the last post I was nervous about my maid of honor speech, so I figured I'd dedicate a post to Jessica's wedding. 

The weekend of July 25th, 2014 was fabulous. We stayed at a big house with Jessica & Neil in South Lake Tahoe. Ate awesome food, drank and hung out. This is the happy couple the night before the wedding. :)

Jessica handled it all like a champ, zero nerves, totally chill and it paid off. Everything went off without a hitch and the few glitches along the way were handled by her new and awesome family. Let's also mention that the weekend of their wedding was during a heat wave in Tahoe and I hate heat. So we were all a bit nervous about the outdoor ceremony on the beach. 

Here are the highlights and some of my favorite pictures from their big day:

Once we mellowed out, getting ready was ok... not the world's greatest make up artist since I had to fix Anali's, mine and Jessica's eyeliners and she sucked with applying fake lashes and totally didn't do our make up like the pictures we showed her. All of our hair looked great however. 

Getting ready: 

Here's the first look, it was a beautiful moment:

We then took some pictures at the house and got onto a big party bus that drove the 4 of us, Jessica, Neil, best man and myself to our horse and carriage which took us to the beach for the ceremony. This is when we all cooled off since there was a good breeze being in that carriage.

Ceremony was awesome... some of US cried because it was awesome and sweet! 

Yay and they got married, here's the KISS:

And another YAY, they're married!!!

Then we took more pictures:

Hubby & I

Dima, Sara, Neil, Jessica, Me, Pavel

There was an amazing breeze right when the ceremony started and no one even broke a sweat. The reception location was perfect. Jessica did a fabulous job on the details: 

We took some more pictures before the actual dinner began, here are my favorites:

Here come the guests of honor:

They dance:

They kiss:

And BAM, I have to give a toast. I didn't rehearse it much and didn't memorize it because I didn't think anyone would be listening since the weddings I have been to previously, by the time the maid of honor speech would come, the guests were drunk, rowdy and busy socializing to each other. I really didn't think anyone would be listening. I didn't realize Jess and Neil would only have myself, the best man and Neil's sister give speeches and would all be in the very beginning while everyone is very alert, looking at you and listening to every word. I got super nervous, I stuttered, lost my place since I was reading off my phone, but here are the pics of me giving my toast and the speech itself! This person is my sister by choice and we grew up together so I had so much to say, but I kept making it shorter and shorter in order not to be too boring. I wrote the speech in the spirit of mine and Jessica's favorite show: "How I Met Your Mother". :)

Hi, I’m Alla and I have known Jessica for almost two decades. Everything in life happens for a reason. Jessica was very popular growing up. So I knew who she was when I approached her in school one day to ask for a beedi, for those of you who don’t know, it’s a little Indian cigarette, but what I didn’t know at the time was that I was meeting someone who’s going to be my friendship soul mate, my forever friend, my sister.
We have been through everything together. We ended up going to college together and were true partners in crime. As Jessica was graduating college, I convinced her to apply at my current job at the time and made sure she was hired. So then we became coworkers, hung out daily and were inseparable. Everything in life happens the way it is supposed to. I’ll break it down for you in the true fashion of one of our favorite shows: had I not gotten a job at InfoIMAGE, had I not helped Jessica get a job there too, and had I not approached her that one day in school, she would have never met Neil. So I’d like to take some responsibility for this wedding!  
But enough about me and on a more serious note, I want to give some credit where credit is due. Neil, for finally putting a ring on that finger and being Jessica’s true soul mate and best friend. And Jessica, for planning such a beautiful wedding while staying so calm throughout the whole process. Neil, you’re now my brother in law and I couldn’t be happier. Thank you for taking such good care of my sister. Jessica, I can go on for days about how much you mean to me. I remember way back when you and I were talking about our future, we had no idea how everything was going to turn out. Throughout all of these years, so many things around us have changed, but the one thing that has remained constant, has been our friendship. I’m so happy for you and wish you a lifetime of happiness as you start your new life together as husband and wife. As time will pass, today will become a distant memory. The one thing you should always remember and never lose is the love you feel for each other today. Congratulations! Love you guys! Cheers!

He sang at the end of his awesome and heartfelt toast, an excerpt from "Coming to America" movie! Awesome!

 Our awesome table:

Sara & Dima:

Anali & Andrew:

They cut the cake: 

All the other wedding festivities were done, I can't capture everything in this blog post that is already ridiculously lengthy. At the end we danced...

And just like that a fabulous day came to a close! I am so happy for my best friend, it warms my heart to see her happy and in love! I can't wait to see her as a mom, she will be beyond amazing. She's so fabulous with my girls and they love her and will always know her as their auntie. I can't imagine my life without this girl and that's why this blog entry is for you, Jessica. She's on her belated honeymoon right now in Orlando, Florida, this is the picture she posted today:

In closing, I wish you all the best, Jessica! We weren't sisters by birth, but we knew from the start that fate brought us together to be sisters by heart!

Til next time...

Two Years Later... Everything's Changed... I'm a mom...

In a blink of an eye two years flew by. Last entry talked about turning 30 in a few weeks and not being ready to get pregnant just yet. I just read what I wrote two years ago and it really put things into perspective how much has truly changed. My friend Alla already had time to have her second baby, Jayden, in the beginning of this year and her "peanut" Adrianna is turning two in two weeks. Another childhood friend, Helen, joined the parenting world a year ago when she gave birth to a precious baby girl named Mila. My cousin Marina also managed to have two baby boys during this time, Noah will be two later this year and David was born at the end of March. Let's just say the last two years were filled with complete baby mania, well at least in my social and professional network. Every other female coworker ended up announcing her pregnancy, male coworkers announced their wives' pregnancies, my next door neighbor and the list goes on. Our friends Sara (she helped Pavel and I get together) & Dima got married in September of 2012. And just last month in May we attended two more weddings, Tanya married Ernie and Vitaliy married Lily. My sister from another mister Jessica is getting married to Neil in a few weeks on July 25th in Lake Tahoe and I expect her to get knocked up shortly after that. That reminds me that I still need to compose my maid of honor toast. It is always exciting to remain close with your childhood friends and witness their lives develop and unfold through the years. At one of the recent weddings, my friends and I called a table full of people our parents' age "the adult table", then we were like, "If they're at the adult table, what the hell does that make us? Kids?" One thing is clear, we are not kids, nor even 20 something young adults. Priorities have changed and life as we know it has changed completely. I'm turning 32 in two weeks and just can not believe how quickly the years are rolling by. 

Now that I've rambled about others, I can share my crazy story. A few months after turning 30, Pavel and I started talking about trying to get pregnant. We seriously only talked about it, but I kept chickening out of getting off the pill. We kept putting it off and saying, ok after this trip, or after the cruise (which was oh so awesome btw) or after the holidays, oh hell let's wait til next year, let's go to Vegas before - which we did in February of 2013. A month or so later we finally got some "balls" to actually start trying. My OBGYN was recommending to not waste too much time trying and suggested a round of meds that would boost ovulation and dramatically increase my chances of getting knocked up. I obviously did my research first online and saw that these pills have a 10% chance of causing a twin pregnancy. I immediately told her no thanks, we have just started trying and I don't want medical intervention just yet in case there's nothing wrong with me, better yet I definitely don't want even a small chance of a twin pregnancy. Fast forward to June of 2013, I started feeling a bit funny and had a weird gut feeling in the pit of my stomach. I took multiple pregnancy tests which were all negative. On June 10th, I was feeling really weird and crampy at work, I took another pregnancy test when I got home and it was a big minus sign, with a really faint positive going through it. Then I splurged and peed on a digital test, which looked like this:

Yes, it does say "Positive" in that window! Pure panic, it happened really quickly. Next thoughts were "OMG I hope everything will be ok" and then of course paranoia set it. I'm in general very in tune with my body and very sensitive. I felt very strange pains and immediately developed this horrible pain on the left side only. I shared that with my doctor and she sent me to do blood work at the hospital since it was still too early for an ultrasound. Blood work for HCG (pregnancy hormone) was doubling the way it was supposed to, but was very low. My doctor basically told me not to get my hopes up and with the pains I was feeling, it might be an ectopic pregnancy (stuck in the tube). Saying something like that to someone like me, oh boy oh boy, major fear and anxiety of course. I start Googling every symptom and one night actually started feeling everything I was reading about. We went to the ER the next morning, ultrasound showed nothing still. Saw my OB a few days later and the ultrasound showed an empty gestational sack, which was kind of an indication that it ain't happening. Feeling more scared and confused, I had to wait a whole week for another ultrasound test. The next ultrasound showed the same gestational sack, which was not empty! There was a little ball (yolk) in it! I was so relieved! The whole issue was that I was just REALLY early on when I found out I was pregnant and it took some time for everything to develop and show up. 

For my 31st birthday, we were going to Lake Tahoe for the weekend and I wanted to make sure all was ok before we left, so I had another ultrasound on 7/9 when I was 7 weeks along. During this ultrasound, I finally heard the heart beat for the first time and all looked normal. The doctor started looking around to make sure all was okay and then I saw her eyes bulge a bit. I looked at her, then looked at the monitor where I too was seeing something and then I looked at my mom who came to the appointment with me. The OB then says, "You didn't end up doing a round of treatment that I was suggesting, did you?" I replied that of course I didn't, she then asked me if... twins... ran in my family? They did, my grandpa from Mom's side is a b/g twin and this ultrasound was happening on his birthday. Talk about the numbers game. I started crying, I started asking about reducing the embryos, I completely lost it. It took me forever to convince myself to have one and she's showing me TWO gestational sacks on the screen and both of them have stuff in them. She then proceeded to calm me down by saying that this happens really often in the beginning, but one vanishes and we need to confirm on a high def ultrasound anyway before anything. So my ultrasound was scheduled for 7/15, day after we return from Tahoe. Needless to say our little birthday getaway ended up being very strange for me, I couldn't focus on anything other than my upcoming appointment, I was anxious, thinking of all the different scenarios, etc. On 7/15, I was 8 weeks along and this is the ultrasound picture we received:

There were two little beans in each gestational sack who were labeled A & B. They let me know that the babies were measuring 4 days apart which was a pretty large difference for that early of a gestational age. My doctor again just wanted to warn me that until the end of the first trimester, I still can't be sure I'm having twins due to the vanishing twin syndrome especially since baby B is much smaller. And again I was filled with fear. I read soooo much stuff online about what happens when one twin doesn't make it and what if one doesn't make it later on and will mess up the other baby, etc. I'm telling you every crazy scenario you can think of, I read about it. I also read about every crazy thing about twin pregnancies, the risks, the struggles, the bed rest, the heartache, the preterm labor and of course the difficulty caring for two babies at once and raising two kids of the same age. I had two more ultrasounds before my first trimester came to an end... yes I had so many I could make a photo book of the ultrasound pictures alone.

I probably could write a whole book about my pregnancy and the different struggles I've endured, but I'll try to give an overview of how things went after the first trimester. Needless to say, no one vanished anywhere. Baby B consistently measured a bit smaller than Baby A, BUT they were both growing at the same rate, which later on was not a concern to the medical professionals. I had so many appointments, every two weeks and sometimes even more frequent. I was always in discomfort, lots of pressure in my lower stomach, nausea til about 18 weeks. After about 5 minutes of walking or moving around, I would cramp up all over and felt strong stabbing pains. I was really anxious to find out the genders, I knew they were fraternal twins because there were two sacs and two placentas. I always only wanted a girl. I was hoping at least one would be a girl. We got final confirmation of the genders at the second trimester screening appointment on 9/23 - One was girl and second didn't have a wiener either! Two girls! That was one appointment that overjoyed me all over. Mentally I was a mess as well, knowing that I had zero experience with babies, knowing that I've always been pretty selfish with my free time, I just couldn't imagine what my life was going to become with not one but two babies. How would we set up our small two bedroom house? Do we need to buy two of everything? Also anything you can think of, I've worried about it. But at one point, my biggest worry and wish became for my girls to make it to term and to come out healthy. 

When I was 21 weeks along and getting ready for work, my heart rate was up to 200, didn't go to work, it wouldn't drop, went to the ER. They had to reset my heart, I screamed I was pregnant, but they were only concerned with saving me. It was the craziest feeling to feel the life inside of you stop and turn all cold and hot in a matter of seconds. Then the nurses came with an ultrasound machine to check on the babies and they were moving and okay! Phew. I was diagnosed with SVT for which I started seeing a cardiologist who later informed me that my pregnancy triggered something that I was most likely born with, but pumping blood for 3 was really hard on my body and it's a problem I'll probably have to fix later on. I had to begin working from home afterwards because I was on medication and the likelihood of another episode was pretty high since my heart was fluttering very quickly the rest of the pregnancy. 

On 11/21 when I was 27 weeks along and the babies were both in a breach position, I started feeling extreme pressure in my lower stomach from all of their kicking (They were extremely active fetuses - yay and OUCH!) so I made an emergency appointment with my doctor. I was hospitalized that day because I was having mild contractions as well as a short cervix from the pressure. I got steroid shots in the event of early delivery to help their lungs mature faster. I was put on complete bed rest with permission to use the bathroom and attend weekly appointments. I remember them saying just try to make it to at least 32 weeks, one day at a time. I had to stop working. I was devastated. I thank God for my parents and my husband who took the best care of me in every way. My dog corky also kept me company and was on bed rest along with me. :) I'm a good time waster and a total TV/computer junkie so realistically being in bed with TV, phone and laptop wasn't that horrible to me. I watched a ton of shows on Netflix. I ordered everything I could think of for babies and their room from Amazon and things we were missing still after the two baby showers we had (personal and work). I bought everything and Pavel put everything together and organized. I'm so grateful to Alla and Helen who both set us up with enough Newborn and 0-3 months clothes to dress a little army. Of course we also bought cute matching twin outfits, because when they're little I think it's cute when they're matchy matchy like real twinkies. Everyone who visited had to hang out on my bed with me, while I uncomfortably moved from side to side. I really was always in pain. My stomach was always very narrow and the babies were really little and compressed in there, so I felt every one of their movements very vividly. I even saw their little butts under my chest when they turned head down again. Sometimes the babies would move and press on a nerve, so the ligament plus nerve pain was indescribable, cold sweat, shivers, and uncontrollable crying. Anyway, overall of course it sucked. I got completely out of shape and weak laying in bed for so long. Every appointment was a nightmare for me to go down all of my stairs, car rides, wheelchairs, you name it. It's a blur now, but it's not. My initial C section was scheduled for 1/28 which would be 37 weeks. Somehow week 32 came and I was way more relieved, but also aware that NICU time would still be required and long term issues would persist in most cases. Week 34 came and even week 36. Week 37 came too:

The girls were measuring pretty small and baby B had a marginal cord on top of everything else. Meaning for her safety, a C section was required and I'm so thankful this little fighter kept getting the nutrients she needed to keep growing. My friend had a baby at 39 weeks and still had to endure two weeks of NICU. I decided to put my own pain and discomfort aside and if I freaking made it to 36 weeks, I can wait past 37 weeks to deliver. I wanted to avoid NICU at all costs. I rescheduled my C section to 2/3/2014 - 37w6d. I lasted, I actually made it. We all made it. I hated the process of the C section, it is freaking scary. No matter what they say, it is a major abdominal surgery and a lot of people don't realize it going into it, I know I didn't. I asked for lot of pain meds to help me get through. I remember hearing baby is out and I saw the blond white covered baby and heard her crying. I was so happy she was crying, meaning she was breathing, she was ok! Second baby came out crying as well and at that point I fell asleep. I knew they were ok. I was miserable after the surgery, but whatever, who cares about that now when the babies are here. So screw every discomfort and this horrible pregnancy. 

Alyssa was 5.5 lbs and Paula was almost 5 pounds. They were around 17.5 inches in length. They were freaking tiny. Skin and bones. Scary to touch even. Of course it was overwhelming and completely insane in the hospital. Here I am post bed rest, post C section and having to try to breastfeed two babies, let's just say thank God for formula! Alyssa had to be in the NICU for a few hours the first day because of really low blood sugar, they had to feed and observe. That was the biggest concern, the blood sugar and making sure they were getting enough to eat. We were all ok and cleared to go home on 2/7. 

To say that it was challenging to come home and get into the groove of things with them is an understatement. It was excruciatingly difficult on all of us. My mom helped so much and I owe her my life. She is my rock and my best friend, I love her so much. Pavel thankfully took two months off and he stepped up to the plate like a real man, better yet, real dad! Thank you my family for helping me get back on my feet and being patient with me while my body was physically and mentally screwed up, let's just put it that way. I will definitely write more at a later time about how things have been and are with caring for our twincesses, this is already way too long for just one blog entry.

So this is how things have changed in the last two years. Like I said in my first post, it is only when you stop and reflect on all of the changes that you truly see what's happened. Writing this all out today and seeing how much has happened with everyone we know and ourselves really put things into perspective for me. We are parents of two little daughters. We love them so very much. They're turning 5 months on 7/3 and I have to go back to work in a month. I'll be so devastated to leave my girls and only see them in the evening when they're cranky and ready for bed. I know everything will be ok and work out. For now I'm enjoying every day and every moment with them, no matter how difficult some moments are. I really thank the stars and moons up above for picking me to be one the few people who get to have twins. 

That's all for today, I hope to not go two more years until my next post. 

Cheers to all of the changes! :)