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.