Of course this morning, I was the proud owner of a new bumper crop of stretch marks on my belly. I guess on a positive note, they aren’t on my ass. At least if my stomach is stretching I know it is the girls getting bigger.

And my kankles have company. My feet are almost too swollen for any shoes and the swelling has moved up my calves all the way to my knees and thighs. My inner thighs feel bruised when I touch them and I’m afraid there are varicose veins brewing there although I can’t see them yet.

I feel a little better if I walk around a bit. Getting up from the couch after a long sit-down is really difficult and I feel like a muscle-less sumo wrestler. Actually my feet are so swollen, they look like baby feet. I have dimples on my toes. It’s much cuter on babies.
 
This Friday will put us just 2 days short of my original goal of 36 wks. And we are keeping our fingers crossed that the girls will need little to no time in the NICU. If the girls are happy& healthy this will all be more than worth it.

It’s all so unreal at this point and exciting. I can’t wait to meet the girls.

All the Dr.s we’ve talked to seem to agree that taking them out now is for the best. They say 35 wks for twins makes them barely premies. In fact Baby A might come home with us. They both might be able to come home with us. Or they both might have a wk in NICU. Drs say it is better to take them out while  they appear happy and healthy and not stressed. There’s still a chance that Baby B’s cord could detach — although her dopplers appear to be getting more and more normal.I feel like I’ve fought the Drs off for 10 wks and I’m too exhausted to fight for one more week. Plus I trust their opinion.My ankles are huge and the swelling has gone all the way up to my knees. Standing is really hard and I tremble — perhaps because of 10 wks on bedrest. Breathing is difficult. I’ve only gained about 35 lbs but it feels like more. And my stomach measures 4 ft. around. I kid you not. Plus I’ve tipped the scale over 200 lbs. I don’t know how woman do this for 40 wks. The human female body is truly amazing.

The girls have been moving around in my stomach a lot today and I know I’m going to miss that feeling for the rest of my life. The rest of being pregnant rather sucks but feeling them wiggle around in there and respond to my touch is awesome.

Here’s hoping for happy, healthy baby girls.

The dopplers looked normal on both babies today. So B’s blood flow through her cord and brain came up completely normal for the first time in wks. She was at elevated normal — which was just slightly higher than it should be. But today she’s just showing normal.

And their heartbeats on the NST (Non Stress Test) looked great and I showed no contractions.

I’m thrilled that they are doing so well and I’m surviving for the most part. They are both moving tentacle-like limbs across my belly in response. You can see the ripples under my sweater. So sci-fi weird. I love it.

My Dr. wants to schedule a C-section on April 11th. I’ll be at 35 wks that day. She’s planning on doing an amnio that morning on baby A just to make certain her lungs are mature. The thought is that if A’s lungs are mature, B’s definitely will be because babies w/ restricted growth mature faster. If the amnio results are good we do a C-section that day. It is 11 days from now.

I’m not sure if I should fight for an extra week so that I’m at 36 wks instead. I’m tired and my vagina feels like it is going to fall out. So there’s that. And Baby B is still at risk while she’s in me and her risk is less outside at that point because the Dr. can jump in. Plus I think the risk is that her cord could detach.

It’s possible that Baby A could come home with us at 35 wks and even Baby B. Or they might both enjoy a few days in the NICU while my stitches heal. But neither of them should be in there for more than 2 wks — and it should be less. And they both should be breathing on their own.

My Dr. said that 35 wk old twins are barely considered preemies. I can’t wait to see them. I feel panicked over it but we are so ready. I just need more sleep. I wish I could bottle it and store it for later.

Last growth was at 31 wks. Baby A was 3lbs 15 oz and Baby B was at 2 lbs 15 oz. While baby A grew 13 oz in 2 wks, baby B grew her usual 8 oz. While the Dr. were happy that she was growing, it is more normal to show accelerated growth like A. B’s dopplers were just slightly elevated and her heartbeats on the monitors were perfect.

Tomorrow we have another growth Ultrasound and I’m keeping my fingers crossed we are close to 5 lbs and 4 lbs although that’s ambitious, especially for B.

I asked my Dr how long she would let my pregnancy go on last wk. and said she wanted to talk to the perinatologists again about my case after our growth tomorrow. She said she may want to do a c-section as early as wk 34. Good lord, that’s next wk. But on Monday their heartbeats looked so good she seemed a little more relaxed about it. I asked if I could buy them another wk by going back in to the hospital and letting them monitor to their heart’s content and she said that might be a way to go. So there is still a possibility I’ll get to my originally planned 36 wks.

At 36  wks we might be able to skip NICU and bring them home. Of course that’s a blessing and a curse because we wouldn’t have the team of nurses helping us out and the babies will still be tiny and I’m sure it will be terrifying to care for them at first.

But how sweet to nurse them here and show them their new lives. I can’t wait to meet them. And I think with a c-section we still get 3 days in the hospital for recovery. That will be enough for me and maybe enough for them.

I can feel baby A moving really frequently especially at night. I love when my sweater ripples like there is something live under my shirt. It is my favorite part of being pregnant. Baby B is getting more active by the day and sometimes she out does A by sticking body parts way out there and making my stomach distorted.

I’m still taking Nifedipine 3x a day to stop contractions and it is working. My cervix seems to be holding at 2 inches. New this week are stretch marks. Just a few red marks but they are there. I’m going to throw vanity to the wind and just take it as a positive sign that girls are growing.

Oh, and we’ve discovered protein powder and I’ve been adding it my chocolate milk in the morning and ice cream at night. So maybe that’s helped grow them too. Other than that, I still have little appetite except when it come to whip cream and ice cream although I am forcing myelf to eat healthy.

And I am a new kind of tired. Just getting to the Dr.s is exhausting and I’m sleeping more.

Although it’s most likely back to the hospital for me tomorrow. Last Tuesday’s 2 wk growth Ultrasound showed that Baby A grew 11 ounces and Baby B grew 8 oz. To me that sounds awesome.  At one point Dr.s were worried she was going to stop growing. But somehow her weight went back down to less than the first percentile. Which sounds terrible.

At 29 wks baby A was 3lbs 2 oz and baby B showed 2 lbs 7 oz. 11 oz difference.

Everything else appeared normal, dopplers, heart rates,  but my Dr wanted me in the hospital. Still she took my results to a group of perinatologists and asked what they would do. They said I could be ok at home but I should have another round of steroid shots just in case things went South with Baby B and they had to deliver. We were supposed to show up at Swedish for a shot and some monitoring on Thursday.

Showed up at 10am thinking it was going to be just a few hours at the hospital. Shot, heart rate monitoring maybe an Ultrasound to check fluids and dopplers. The RN said something about not having a large room for me this time and we smiled and said that’s fine, we are just here for a few hours. And they looked at us like we were crazy.

After a few more nurses came in and explained that steroids are two shots that need to be given 24 hrs apart so were at the very least supposed to be in for overnight. Then it would be up to the DR.s to see if they wanted to release me. What the heck?

Luckily for me, my husband decided to throw a bit of a fit about not being told we were checking back in to the hospital. I thought it might be a ruse when they told us to go to Swedish but No reaI was sort of joking. No joke. It was a sneaky way to get e back in there. It was really nice that he had the fit so I didn’t have to.

They wanted us to wait till they got a hold of the Dr. on call but we wound up leaving our cell phone number and taking off before we were officially checked in. No reason for us o sit there all day while she was doing c-sections. The Dr called and said we could go to triage at 3pm for the shot and monitoring and be out patient. We’d just have to come back the following day for the 2nd shot. So much better.

A word on steroid shots: I love them. While I am slightly concerned about the 2 nd round and the effects on the babies, they completely clear up my carpel tunnel and make me feel like I can lift a car. Sure I lose a few hours of sleep in the middle of the night being wired but I feel spry afterwards and it has been a while since I felt spry.

Friday was the 2nd shot and they managed to do an US. Baby B’s blood flow showed up as slightly elevated on that US and for the 1st time, we signed out for the weekend against Dr’s orders. It’s a scary thing to do.  But we agreed to be back on Monday.

Here’s how I felt justified taking off. Her heartbeats are perfect and they kept me on a monitor for 2 hours. She grew more than a third of her weight in 2 wks. In fact on Babycenter.com she’s only 1 oz smaller than an average single baby at 29 wks. (Drs just hate it when you start quoting things off the internet but information is information.)

So we gambled a little on this weekend thinking we’ll be checking in for the rest of my pregnancy on Monday. I’m still not showing any signs of preterm labor so I’m hoping the girls can stay in there for another 6 wks.

Saturday was near 60 degrees and sunny in Seattle and smelled like spring. It was a glorious day to be not in the hospital. I got to sit out in the sun, play with my cat, and we even went out to dinner. Dropped off at the door and picked up by my husband. He’s still nervous about letting me walk around.

The thought of 6 wks of no sleep on a horrible bed with food that gives me heartburn and hand soap that makes me break out in a contact rash might not be possible.  I might be begging the DRs to take them out just to get out of there. Of course if we deliver earlier then 36, they will have to be in the NICU and we’ll have to be back and forth everyday trying to feed them. That sounds like less fun then just be stuck in a room like a hardened criminal.

Yes, I realize I’m a spoiled brat. Most people have to fight to get admitted to the hospital. And Swedish is a very good facility with great Drs and lovely RNs. But being trapped in a room no bigger than my bedroom for 6 wks when I feel fine is horrible. Plus I’m a little nervous they’ll want to take the girls out before it is necessary. Once you start questing Drs advice, it is a slippery slope and you begin to question everything.

Like what if they see dollar signs on my head? Our 1^st stay at the hospital was billed at $13,000 for 3 nights and 4 days. Just a room and some food and RN putting heartbeat monitors on my 3 x a day. Maybe an Ultrasound and a few 10 minute Dr. consults. Thank god I have insurance! For that price I’d rather be at the Cipriani in Venice or at least eating lobster or specially cooked organic food.

If we hadn’t asked repeatedly, we would have been in there since wk 25. Because of lawsuits the Drs need to cover their asses and that effects their decisions in a huge way. I fully believe the girls are fine. They are kicking me in the ribs as I write this.

But still tomorrow I’m going in with my bags and computers packed. And I’ll behave and try to be nice.  I can choose to trust the DRs or choose to lose my mind. And when they say things like you might be risking fetal death by leaving, there really is no choice.

The amniotic fluids were both up to normal and the dopplers (blood flow through the umbilical cords) were mostly normal as well.  B’s was slightly elevated but trending better. Double go girls. So I got sprung from the hospital and allowed to come home. Yay! Good babies!

At the same time as my Ultrasound, work was throwing me a baby shower lunch where they dressed up in pink and got us a bunch of incredible gifts. Maybe those good vibes helped.

Made it through another Dr visit on Thursday and got to stay home all weekend which meant I got to go to my baby shower at my friends house down the street on Sunday. Even though my husband drove me the 5 houses down, it was awesome to see people and be out of my cage. We decorated onsies w/ puffy paint and iron ons so it was a blast.

The only bummer in all of this was the night before we left the hospital, I got diagnosed with gestational diabetes. Oh yes. Not being able to walk around for two wks, bulking up on calories in order to grow the little one, and just being pregnant with twins may have had something to do with it. Not to mention the steroid shot. I failed the 1 hr blood test and then the next morning (which was the day after Valentine’s Day) I failed all 3 blood sugar levels. My numbers were all over 200 which my Dr. said ‘was terrible’. So no more milkshakes for me. I almost ripped the RN’s face off when she told me the news and handed me my new hospital food menu with all things edible removed. She said something about trying to make the hospital stay ‘fun’ in the same breath and I only refrained from beating her senseless because my husband was in the room and I didn’t want him to see me have a complete and total melt down. Word to the wise: wear padding and a face mask when you tell a pregnant girl she can’t have ice cream.

The next day I got my diabetes blood testing kit. Wouldn’t you know it, the amount of blood you need is a tiny pin prick for your home tester and the amount the hospital needs to test you is an artery’s worth. They have to use their test strips  while you’re in there for consistency’s sake or something. (More likely they have a contract with the supplier.) The RNs coming in to my room 4 times a day demanding blood is another reason we were so blissed out to go home. Good babies for getting me out of there.

The diabetes is a whole other post but needless to say my husband has become obsessed with me hitting my numbers. He’s often the one making my meals me so he feels responsible. I’m hitting them most of the time but I can’t eat much and all the fun of eating whatever I want is over. Still I can’t believe at 7 months I’ve just gained about 20 lbs. 19 of them have to be in my stomach. (And my neck seems to be missing.)

After a few days of being at home, I feel truly blessed. The twins are super cute right now. They both stick out their butts and I can cup them with my hands and pet them till they go back in. Sometimes they kick so hard my shirt moves. And when I’m trying to sleep they both write with their fingers or toes so it feel like I’m sleeping on a mouse. And if I tap on my stomach, they tap back. Now I know that means they have the cognitive reflexes of little geniuses but they do, really. It’s the best feeling in the world to have them in there.

Even though my husband said I looked like walrus last night trying to reach over and turn off our bed lamp I’m so glad I’m getting to experience this. (And I’d be mad at him if it wasn’t the absolute truth and pretty funny.)

We made it through one Dr. visit while at home on Monday. They did an ultra sound and found that twin a (the big healthy girl’s) amniotic fluid levels were dropping. But since it was on A, not B, they let us stay home. 

Then on the Dr visit on Thursday her fluid levels were up 1.4 to 8.4. Not great but going in the right direction and not dropping lower. My husband and I thought we were in the clear to go home again. 

The my obgyn noticed that twin B dopplers were restricted, worse than before. And she was pushing more fluid to her brain – something they do when they are stressed. She also re-read the parinatologist’s notes and realized that he had recommended I go back in the hospital if either twin’s fluids drop  or there were any neg changes in the dopplers. 2 strikes as she put it. So back in the clinker I went on Thursday night. That was yesterday. 

Once again, it is a nice room.  But dear god it sucks to be in the hospital — especially when you don’t feel sick. (For the record, I am very happy I don’t feel sick.) And it seems to be the general consensus around here that I’m not getting back out till I deliver. And that delivery will be sooner than later. 

I am in firm denial about delivering and plan not to have anything to do with it until I am at the very least 32 wks. That’s 5 wks from now. But there is nothing like a modern pregnancy to remind you that you are not in control. If this team of good Drs here at Swedish says it is time to cut I can ask a lot of questions and try to talk them out of it, but I can’t hold back the knife. Not in good conscience anyways. Because they are all well-trained — and I am not. 

My husband and I have come to some realizations this past week. 

1. Velamentous cords (umbilical cords that insert into the side of placenta rather than the center) are rare and a big problem. Everything has to work twice as hard to get blood, oxygen, nourishment to the fetus.2. Discordant growth over a week is a big issue especially since that gap is now widening to more like 2 wks.3. Restricted doppler, or blood flow to a placenta — also not good.

We thought the US went splendidly so it was a complete shock. It seems that while twin A is in the 71% of growth (large for a twin) twin B slipped into the 1% of growth. Anything under 5% would have most likely landed me in jail. 

Of course twin B has been smaller but now they believe it is because her placenta is thicker than it should be. And her umbilical cord is going into the side of the placenta rather than right into the middle.

What’s weird is that while twin A was about 2 lbs, twin B was just under a 1.5 lbs which seems normal for what was 25 wks. So I’m a little perplexed. Plus she seems so happy in there when we see her on the US. She just doesn’t stressed at all.  And I am neurotic to the core so it’s even weirder that I haven’t been freaking out during any of this.

So I spent tuesday night – Friday evening at Swedish in a nice private room w/ my feet up and meals delivered. I would have blogged sooner but I was too busy. Bed rest at the hospital is exhausting.

I did get some steroid shots to help the babies in case they need to be delivered early. But I have no signs of labor and my cervix is fine. So they hooked me up to fetal heart rate monitors twice a day to see if there were any signs of distress. And there weren’t. Both heart rates as always were around 144 and mine was around 90.

They pin these circles on your stomoch over the babies hearts and you hear them loud and clear in the room plus they’re printed out on graph paper. They also pin another circle to detect any contractions. Finding A’s heart rates was pretty easy for the RNs. But B’s was trickier. She’s smaller and able to move around a little more.

And when they finally got both hearts on the monitor, the babies would kick them off.  You could actually watch their rabbit kicks erupt. The poor RNs would have to chase them around. But it looked like the girls were having a great game of it.

The monitors are made for older fetuses so not that effective for reports. And it didn’t take long for my techie husband to figure out that he could plug the hand-help doppler into his Mac and get a more accurate consistent report using a program called Audacity he downloaded on the internet. In fact he can hook in two dopplers for simultaneous monitoring.

The RNs I guess accidently left the hand-held doppler in our room. We thought every rm had one but found out later that they were looking for it while my husband was applying the goo to my stomach and listening to the heartbeats on his Mac. The nursing staff must love having geeks at the hospital:)

The thought for having me on bed rest is that all my nutrients /energy will go to growing twin B. Since they were just monitoring me 2 x a days we started pitching that we do bed rest at home.

They finally said yes contingent on another US Friday morning.  But then they discovered that the blood flow through the umbilical cord was not great so they were pushing for us to stay put.

Life at the hospital was fine. The room was big with even a little water view between the buildings. The staff was great. But I don’t feel sick –at all. So it seemed like overkill. Plus a girl needs to go outside. We don’t even keep our cat inside.

So the perinatologist said we should stay and we still thought about leaving at least for the weekend but were upset. He had found what he thought was another red flag. And ultimately they want to keep me in there in case there are signs of fetal stress and they have to deliver.

But then 45 min later  he came back in and said he looked at the stills from the US again, not just the report, and he thought it looked better then originally thought — and that we could go home. Total roller coaster and all in all a very exciting day. So we are home on deb rest and have an app. on Monday to get monitoring done as an outpatient. 

And my poor husband is playing nurse.  But he’s so happy to have me home, he’s fine with it. And now that I’ve been incarcerated I know how serious they want me to take the bed rest thing.

Hopefully on Monday and all next wk they will only see positive things and let me stay here. Also I can work from home which is a god send because it will save me from utter boredom, total insanity, and well, we need the money for these monkeys.

On Feb 16th they will do another weight/ growth evaluation and hopefully twin B will be moving on up.  Lord knows with my husband feeding me, I’m certainly going to be fatter.

Plus I outgrow whatever I’m wearing every week so it is hard to imagine the girth I will put on in 12 wks. I’m the maternity version of the incredible Hulk. Although being bed-ridden is what I set out to avoid, it’s a little ironic that it now sounds like absolute heaven. Where do I sign up for that? I surrender. I  had no idea I could be such a wimp.

After a few nights of near decapitation, my poor husband has taken to sleeping in our new guest bedroom downstairs. The foldout couch works like a charm and I’m able to fall back asleep after multiple bathroom breaks without the flash of the TV or his siren of snoring.  But I miss him and he doesn’t know it because I am grumpy as hell most of the time.

We’ve had 3 out of 5 3-hour long classes at Swedish of Preparing for Multiples now and each class has sufficiently freaked the hell out of my husband and me. Last class they brought in a panel of woman that had survived childbirth and we bombarded them with questions. One went into labor at 22 wks (past it) another at 26. We saw movies of tiny babies with breathing tubes in the NICU and we’ve seen films with Caesarian and vaginal births.

My poor husband finally ‘got’ how precarious our situation is and then ‘got’ the possible financial cost of all this. He hasn’t been as subjected to the onslaught of horror stories as much as I have. Needless to say, I’m clenching my vagina tight trying to hold these girls in for as long as possible.  As great as the Swedish NICU is rumored to be, we want nothing to do with it if at all possible.

The thought of going to the gym is just silly. My heart rate gets elevated when I have to go pee. I’m happy to take short walks around my block but even that is often traded for a nap or a sit-down. What’s really strange is that I think I’ve only gained about 20lbs, not even.  Last Dr. visit it was more like 12 lbs although I’ve been eating croissants for breakfast this week after our teacher told us to get more calories. So the weight isn’t what’s causing my utter fatigue.  I think it might be those 2 extra hearts pumping.  I took a slow release iron pill this morning to see if that helped and I’ll probably continue to take them along with swigs of Floredex.

People keep telling us to go out now while we still can. I can’t go to the mall because I wind up doing a tour of their bathrooms and mall bathrooms can be rather far apart. Diner is a marathon let alone diner and a movie. All I want to eat is ice cream. Anything else is just something I have to do in order to get the ice cream. However, my husband is distinctly eating for two these days. It’s sweet but he has to stop. I love him so much right now I’m weepy over it – but then who knows how I’ll feel in half a minute. Only thing for sure is it will be totally different and most likely more than a little out of whack.

We sold our lovely brown couch in the den and tomorrow night we pick up our new fold down couch for the new guest room.  I am very excited about an additional bed downstairs. I bought sheets for it already and tonight I’m going to wash them so I can keep it as a bed all made up and ready for the moment the snoring wakes me. Then I can come downstairs and continue sleeping. Very exciting. I’ve been dying for the old guest bed that was in what is now the nursery.

The only hurdle left is my husband’s electronic bits and pieces kept in old cream cheese containers and his parts of robots that I still need him to clean before I feel comfortable sleeping that room.  I used to have our old bedroom as my room/guest room and he has always had the den/computer room for his ‘toys’. It will be very difficult to get him to relegate that stuff to the garage and basement or just put away in a dresser. He sees computer chips, wires, and cables as beautiful and I see them as garbage that collects dust. Landfill. They make me itch all over. I’m not sure how I wound up married to a computer geek. But he is cute. When he is not sleeping.

I’m being harsh on him. It’s the lack of sleep, the swollen kankles and inability to feel my fingertips all day long that is making me grumpier than usual. Carpal tunnel is the worst and the wrist guards really do not help.

I have it in my head that I can turn the den into a pretty bedroom overnight but the truth is, even if he were to clean off the top of the dresser and the floor (which he won’t without a huge fight) he’ll just junk it up in a week again. God, I wish we could afford a maid. People have told me repeatedly that I need to stop doing housework especially in the 3rd trimester but there’s no one else to do it. And of course a maid wouldn’t have any luck organizing his hobby either. I have one more week to clean.

Our home-made alarm system is up and running. He still needs to set up all the surveillance cameras and the DVR computer to monitor them. We now have a new flat screen monitor in the kitchen so we can view all the cameras, or ITunes, or recipes on the internet. It just mirrors the computer in the den and has a cable through the wall. Would I prefer that he had saved the money he spent on these things for hospital bills, child care, or a car we can fit a double stroller in?  Hell yes. But he has been obsessed with setting it up. And to his credit, he made the siren really pretty soft — in fact you can barely hear it from outside. The 1st day I turned it on, our cat set off the motion detectors. I expected her to be freaking out and rushed home to save her. But she was practically sleeping through it.  Just another way cats are different then dogs I guess.