When Your Body Thinks It's 10 Weeks Ahead

Today marks 30 weeks!  My brain hasn't caught on, but my body knows what's up.  The swelling has returned, although it's not nearly as bad as it was in Mississippi.  Considering my belly was measuring 40 weeks at my appointment yesterday, my doctor wasn't that surprised that I'm having some swelling.  Unfortunately, at my appointment with the perinatologist last week, my blood pressure was high, and although they rechecked it after my ultrasound and found it to be normal that time, my OB has basically put me on pre eclampsia watch.  She isn't majorly concerned, since my blood pressure has been great every other time, and there's no protein in my urine, but I did some blood tests to have kind of a baseline so that if I have another high reading, we can redo the blood tests and see if I'm developing an issue.  Better to be cautious, I suppose.

Some interesting new developments are that I will soon not fit behind the wheel of our Maxima, my brain is getting so bad that I heard the Keurig finish my drink and I opened the dishwasher as if I would find it in there, and it took me almost 10 minutes to put on tennis shoes today.  Strangers now feel comfortable commenting on "the baby".  I guess it's good that I look pregnant and not like I just ate a village and walk with a natural waddle.

At our growth scan last week, baby boy (who I've started referring to as "Chunk") was measuring about 2lbs and 15oz.  Little girl (who has a first name that we aren't planning to share until we've decided on a boy's name as well) was measuring about 2lb 8oz.  They were both head down and facing my back, and they were not cooperative, so we got no pictures of their faces or profiles.  Also, my OB warned me that because Chunk is weighing about 15% more than Little Lady and would be the second one out in a vaginal birth, there is a higher risk of him going into distress in a vaginal delivery if that weight trend continues.  Honestly, I was planning on having a c section anyway due to my desire to just get the babies out safely and quickly and because only certain doctors in the practice are comfortable trying to turn him if he turns once he has a whole uterus to himself (which twins often do).   My OB is very pro vaginal delivery, and continues to give me the option of trying that way, but my gut says to go with the C section and try to keep things as chaos free as possible.  I honestly don't care one bit how they get here.  Just that they do and that I don't do anything that would put additional stress on them during delivery.  So, anyone thinking about lecturing me about the benefits of vaginal delivery, please save it.  I have plenty of hard choices ahead of me, and I've made this one and am comfortable with it.  

I've been very slowly getting the nursery organized the last few weeks, and I hope to have it decorated and organized in the next week or two.  I'll share pictures once I've got it all put together.  I want to also put some of the things together (like the Momaroo and mobiles) and turn them on from time to time so the dogs can get used to the noises and lights and things.  I'm getting a little nervous about how they're going to adjust.  Hopefully they will one way or another.   They've managed to adjust to moving all the time, so maybe two additional humans in the house won't bother them too much.  

 I haven't done this in a while, so here goes! 

30 weeks:

Symptoms - hip and back pain, swelling in hands and feet, sooo much sleeping, lots of dreams (and all of them totally weird)

Cravings- Juice, Nutella hot chocolate 

Food aversions - None (other than stuff I never like). 

Fun fact - Much to my surprise, my skin loves the second and third trimesters.   Can it please stay this way forever?  

27 Week Update

Good news!  The downstairs reconstruction is all finished, and the nursery is painted!  FINALLY!  Even better than that is that the babies had their fetal echocardiograms, and everything looks normal.  What a relief!  They were not exactly cooperative for the first attempt, and the doctor wasn't able to see everything she wanted to, so they had me come back 2 weeks later to try again, and this time, they got what they needed to determine that everything looks ok.  We had been a tiny bit concerned about their weight differences at the anatomy scan, and at the first attempt at the fetal echo, they were both growing as they should.  One was 1lb8oz and the other was 1lb11oz.   I was so focused on the growth, I didn't pay attention to who weighs what.   We'll see at the growth scan in another week and a half.  Pretty much everything is going well with this pregnancy right now except that these babies are greedy and sucking up more vitamins than I can keep up with, which we're trying to remedy with extra pills and B12 injections.  I was a little bummed to be back to injecting myself, as there is a little part of me that associates injections with the "wishing and waiting" period I was in for so long, but it really is no big deal in the grand scheme of things, and I'll happily do what needs to be done so that I have plenty of vitamins for these babies to steal.

Here are some pictures from the fetal echo.

Baby Girl

Baby Boy

A creepy face shot of our little boy, but he's waving :)

I can't believe that I'm only a week away from the third trimester.  I know I've said it a million times, but it's so hard to believe.  It's hard to believe I'm pregnant.  It's hard to believe we've made it this far.  It's hard to believe these are OUR babies.  It just seems like a dream sometimes.  It's not all sunshine and rainbows, and the constant back and hip pain remind me that it's really and truly happening, but it's hard to even connect that discomfort with the cause, because it just doesn't seem real.  I think it's still a crazy concept to Matt, too.  Yesterday, the painters were here, and Matt and I were standing in the kitchen talking about the upcoming hospital tour and how I'm going to kill him if he doesn't suggest some boy names or stop vetoing mine, and he just started laughing and said, "What are we going to do with two babies?"  Every once in a while, it sinks in for one of us, and we both kind of freak out that we don't know what we're doing and have a good laugh about how crazy this whole thing seems.  Honestly, though, no one really knows if they are going to "get it" or not.   I've seen plenty of people who think they know exactly what they're doing end up totally lost and others who don't have a nurturing bone in their bodies end up being totally on top of this parenting thing.  We have plenty of practice with cleaning up drool and wiping butts and wrinkles and noses, thanks to Stig and Orion, so I think we'll have that part covered.  All I know is the chaos and the sleeplessness and the adjustments will all be better than the years of infertility and miscarriages.  That's not to say it won't be hard.  The difference is this kind of hard comes with a reward.  The reward all those tears and shots and dr.'s visits and heart wrenching moments were all for.  I hope I never forget how lucky we are.   I hope every painful moment of the 4 years it took us to get to this point will serve as a reminder of how much we have to be grateful for and that we won't take it for granted.