Hello! It’s been a while, I know. A lot has happened and I apologize for not keeping you all informed. As you may remember from my last post (A Blissful Bikini Wax), we moved to Dallas in April but the move was not my BIG news – no, no, no. I was sitting, literally, on something really big for a while…9 months to be exact. If you didn’t just guess — I was pregnant and had a baby. Well, two babies. Yep, I had twins 8 weeks ago! And I am so excited to finally be sharing it on MKIA. I had a boy and girl, their names are Charlotte (left) and William (right) and they are healthy, happy little nuggets.

My path to motherhood, like so many women, was not straightforward. I’m sure some of you are wondering, because I had twins, if I became pregnant naturally. It seems that having twins these days automatically raises the IVF flag. And yes we used IVF to have our children but not for the reasons you might think. Without going into too much detail or boring the hell out of you on my first day back — we used IVF to prevent a child of ours from having a fatal genetic disease.

Because most of you are women and/or people at, or approaching, the age where one would start a family, I think it’s important to briefly discuss this. My husband and I are carriers of a gene that is recessive in us but if a child of ours inherits the pair, he will be affected. We had a 25% chance of this happening in any natural pregnancy so we chose instead to go through a process called PGD (pre-implantation genetic diagnosis), which requires the use of IVF.

If you think you might be a carrier of a genetically inherited disease, or if you just want peace of mind, ask your OBGYN for a genetic screening (a simple blood test). Instead of offering these screenings to women who are trying to get pregnant or are of child-bearing age, normally genetic tests are not to performed until a woman is pregnant and close to the end of her first trimester. Unfortunately for women who want the screening and are carriers, waiting until she is already pregnant can potentially lead to some very difficult decisions.

The good news is that we now have two beautiful, healthy babies and we couldn’t be happier or more grateful. A twin pregnancy is not exactly a joy ride and given the ups and downs we experienced going through IVF, I felt it was best to keep quiet until we knew all was well. Here is a photo of their nursery. I didn’t have a theme, other than I knew I wanted to use jungle animals and stars. I added personal touches with the paintings (a local Dallas artist painted them for us) and I replaced the knobs on a dresser/changing table I bought from The Land of Nod with these gorgeous mosaic ones I found at Anthropologie.

If you want specific info on how I decorated the nursery, send me an email. Otherwise, I’ll be back soon with some great new posts. I’ve missed MKIA so much and if you are still with me thanks!

In case you didn’t already know, Gwyneth Paltrow has a weekly e-newsletter/blog called Goop. A subscriber since January 2009, I have become increasingly appreciative of what she has to offer. Not normally a “fan”, I was reluctant at first to jump on the “I want to be like Gwyneth” bandwagon which is why I assumed the site was created. But I quickly realized that she was providing honest and truly useful insights. The site is completely funded by GP and does not discuss her celebrity beyond giving you access to people and recommendations that normally would be beyond the reach of us “commoners”.

This week’s newsletter discussed a widespread, but little reported, health issue that affects almost everyone – Vitamin D deficiency. Instead of offering her own opinion, she posted an article by Dr. Frank Lipman, a leading doctor of integrative medicine, which explains why the issue exists, the potential health risks and his recommendations for increasing ones’ own levels.

Each week the newsletter covers a topic that falls into one of six, playfully-titled categories: Make, Go, Get, Do, Be, See. The June 3rd edition was Make and Goop gave a great, healthy recipe for a Mexican dinner with Baja-style shrimp tacos, guacamole, black beans, and Pico de Gallo. The recipes are good (and fast) but this post was particularly fun because it included a video demonstration by the star , Food Network-style.

The subjects Goop covers are as diverse as they are interesting. Last Christmas Goop posed a question about who Jesus was and what we can learn from him today with responses from several prominent spiritual leaders, including Deepak Chopra. And then there was the personal wine pairing recommendations from some serious experts – it was comprehensive and extremely instructive.

So we say thank you GP for taking the time to create an interesting and thoughtful site. We’d like to think it takes one to know one.

xoxo Melina