The Tower: Family

Girls' Time

After talking with the others I decided I'd wait a little while before meeting my mother. In the end, I felt like I needed to be sure what she was doing was genuine or not before I agreed to see her. It wasn't like I didn't have other things that were more important to think about. I had the ultrasound coming up to check for abnormalities and where we could find out the sex of the baby. I had had this feeling that because three of us were pregnant, and because we already had two kids that there wouldn't be enough excitement to share. Often with second children people aren't quite as hyped as the first one, partially because they're busy with the first one, partially because all those baby things you need to buy you already have, and partially because the other people in your life don't share your excitement. With that on top of the fact, there were three people pregnant and I was the least pregnant, I thought by the time I hit all the milestones everyone would have been a little burnt out.

To my surprise, that was not the case. I don't know if it was just that there were ten of us and we were all excited about the new family members that we fed off each other to keep that going, if the others were trying to make it up to me from last time, or if the fact that when I was pregnant with the twins so many of them weren't around and I had nothing to compare it against, but everyone was buzzing. They'd go from happily feeling Natasha or Wanda's stomach for kids, to saying how they wished they could feel kicks from the baby I was carrying too. They'd talk about potential baby names for the three girls and then start speculating what sex the baby I was carrying was so they could name it too.

It felt good. I loved how buzzed everyone was. I loved how special they made not just me feel but Wanda and Natasha too. I couldn't wait to meet the four new members of our family and I was buzzed to find out what I was having.

Wanda, Natasha, and I all now had crazy cravings too. Wanda was craving a lot of food she made with her mother. She was vegetarian now, so she was adapting recipes that included bell peppers stuffed with pork to be vegetarian. She was also making desserts from puff pastry and quark cheese. Interestingly, her usual aversion to hot food had gone completely and she was enjoying all these things warm and fresh out of the oven. Natasha's were completely different. She was craving high fat and high salt, which delighted Clint. Pizza. Burgers. French fries. Natasha was ordering them all hours of the day and night. Her cravings annoyed her. She was careful to try and balance them with salad or at least something less processed and she hated that she didn't have the willpower to ignore them completely. For me, I was craving sugar and things that were high in iron. I was drenching spinach in honey mustard dressing and eating every dessert that was offered.

The men were all very keen to take care of us too. If we had a craving they were rushing to the kitchen or ordering in takeout to cover it. It wasn't just food we were craving. Our sex drives were out of control and with the kids at school we were spending a lot of days dragging people off to bed with us. Interestingly our sex cravings were all different too. Wanda was completely off penetration of any kind but if you went down on her she came so hard and so quickly it would make your head spin. Natasha really, really liked being spooned. Which was another thing that annoyed her, because she normally liked being so dominant and in control. That didn't annoy her nearly as much as she started getting weepy when she climaxed. And for me? Well, I was really into anal. I had no idea where it had come from, but I could climax from anal alone.

The day before my ultrasound, Wanda, Natasha, and I were spending some rare time where it was just the three of us. We'd dropped the kids off at kindergarten, come home via a nail salon where we'd gotten mani-pedis, and then come home to have a very mismatched lunch that catered to our different cravings.

"Please stop thinking about sex, Elise. It is very distracting," Wanda said in a tone that was half scolding and half playful.

"Don't worry, Wanda," I teased. "I'll take care of you."