Half Way!

I am officially half way with this pregnancy. Yes, I know I am only 18 weeks, but the babies will be born at 36 weeks. We had our anatomy scan yesterday and it was quite a long appointment. We were there for three hours! Here is a rundown of how things went:

• First we met with a genetic counselor who took all of our family's history. He explained to us about things they look for on an ultrasound and that twins are at higher risk for defects
• Then, I met with my doctor's nurse. They asked more family history questions and did the usual - weight gain, blood pressure, etc.
• Ultrasound time! This ended up taking quite a long time, but we were able to find the dividing membrane between the two babies. We couldn't see it at 12 weeks because it was so small. I was relieved we found it, as if they are in the same sac, it's even higher risk. So, I am diagnosed with mono/di twins. They are identical (monochorionic, diamniotic) which means they share the same afterbirth and the egg has split into two different sacs
• Baby A is head down with it's feet into my ribs. Hard to believe they are that high already! Baby A had a heart rate of 148 BPM, and was about 9 oz.
• Baby B is breech and has its rump in the other one's face! If you look close at the picture you can see Baby A putting it's hand up to its face, while the butt is pressed against it. Baby B had a heart rate of 154 BPM, and weighed about 11 oz.

Poor Baby A getting a face full of Baby B!

• I also had my first 3d ultrasound (as you can tell) and it was pretty neat! Besides printouts they give you a disk with all your pictures and you bring it with you every time and they keep adding to it. 
• I will no longer be doctoring in town and will solely be doctoring with my Peri. He is requesting ultrasounds every two weeks starting now to watch for twin to twin transfusion syndrome. This only happens in identicals, and it pretty much means that one baby can grow faster than the other. They need to keep an eye on this and make sure the babies are growing at the same rates.
• Since this is a high risk pregnancy, there are greater chances of birth defects and other things that can go wrong. At my next ultrasound they will be doing another growth scan and an echo of the hearts to make sure everything is okay
• As of now, there isn't anything that showing cause for alarm. With that being said, yes, we did find out what we are having. I present to you....our beautiful identical twin......girls!

Macyn has already came up with a couple of names, including "Flower and Football" and even "Cindy Lou Who." She is excited and talks about her sisters pretty often!

Sunday School

Macyn attended her first Sunday School and came home with this piece of paper:

She started pointing at each sticker saying, "This is a twin, and this is a twin, and this is Mommy and this is Daddy and this is Macyn." I didn't really know what to think until I read the instructions:

"Help your child place dot stickers or make paint fingerprints inside the tent for every member of your family"

It seriously melted my heart!

She loved Sunday school and she goes from Children in worship (10:00 - 10:30), straight to Sunday School (10:45 - 11:45). They gave her a bag with her name on it to keep her stuff in, and when she got home she told us all about Sunday school. Its so nice to hear Bible stories through the words of a 3 year old!

17.5 weeks!

12 weeks, 13 weeks, 15 weeks, 16 weeks, 17 weeks

Not much has happened since the last baby update. We did hear both heartbeats right about 14 weeks, and I will have my "big" ultrasound on Monday at maternal fetal medicine with my Perinatologist. I will meet with a genetic counselor first, and then do an ultrasound that they said would last about 90 minutes. I am getting pretty anxious/excited for that appointment, so I am hoping and praying everything goes well. One thing I hate about pregnancy is waiting to hear from your babies at a month at a time. Makes a little more nervous since this is a high risk pregnancy. 

Anyways, here are some basics about how the pregnancy is going:

• I am hungry All. The. Time. To the point of waking up at 3:00 starving so I have to eat something. My stomach growls every 1-2 hours, so I eat. I gained 2 lbs my first trimester and am up about 10 lbs so far since pre pregnancy. So I'm not gaining as much as I feel like I should considering I eat all the time. It sounds crazy, but I am so sick of eating. They say I should gain about 1lb/week in the 2nd trimester - eeps!

• I am still pretty tired and try to go bed before 10:00 every night. I usually eat a bowl of cereal before bed, just so I don't wake up hungry

• Heartburn is terrible

• I no longer fit into my biggest pair of "fat jeans" but I will still rubber band some pants to make them fit longer

• I am patiently waiting to feel the babies kick. I think I feel them sometimes, but its hard to tell because there isn't any consistency.

• I definitely have more aches this time around, and its getting hard to lift things like my 35lb child!

Mostly, I have been trying to eat healthy, taking it easy, and resting! I can't complain and am trying to enjoy this stage before I become ridiculously huge.

On a more serious note, my step-cousin's wife lost their baby at 29 weeks on Saturday and had a stillborn on Monday. She simply went into the ER because she hadn't felt her move and they said she was gone. Prayers for them as they deal with this loss. It scares me that it can happen to someone you know. Prayers for us as well as we go about our high risk pregnancy journey.

Five Christmases

Starting the Saturday before Christmas, we had five of them in four days. Here is how they went:

Saturday: My extended family at the Pizza Ranch. This is the only time of the year we get together, so it was super fun to see my cousins and their kids! It was the first time I have meet two of them, and my cousin and their adorable daughter came all the way back from South Carolina. It was a fun time to watch all the kids play and interact with each other.

Sunday: DH's immediate family - time was spent eating supper, opening presents, and playing with all the new stuff. Macyn received some Minnie Mouse play sets, a little people castle, a Cinderella carriage, and a puzzle.

Monday: Christmas Eve spent with my family. We decided to have a late afternoon/early supper around 3:00 so we could all be home at a good time. I was feeling quite nauseous and got a little sick right  before we left. I decided to at least try and go to Christmas and felt okay the rest of the day and kept all my food down. DH & I got this fun yard game - Big Birdie Golf. I also received some maternity clothes and a flat wallet. Macyn got a play doh set, clothes, Baby Alive, crayons, a Barbie, and a Minnie Mouse. Fortunately, I started feeling better before church so we decided to go. We ended up sitting in the front row so that was quite the experience!

Tuesday: Christmas morning was spent with our family opening presents. We didn't go too overboard this year since we knew the Grandparents would set her up pretty well. She received an easel from Ikea, color wonder pages, fingernail polish set with a nail dryer, some some from bath and body (yes we have a girly girl) and a "baby that takes a bath."

 There is a funny story about this "baby that takes a bath." We decided to go Christmas shopping way back in November and we had all the gifts in the back of our SUV. We went to pick up Macyn and didn't even think to hide the presents in the back. So what does she do? She looks behind the seat and exclaims "A BABY THAT TAKES A BATH!" So I explained to her that we did get her the baby for Christmas, but she has to wait until then to open it. A couple of weeks had passed and I decided to ask her what she wanted for Christmas. This is how it went:
Me: Macyn, what do you want for Christmas?
Macyn: A baby that takes a bath - it's in the car.

DH bought me some touch screen gloves, some handi bac, and a Snoogle - the seriously best pillow ever, whether you are preggers or not! Even Macyn liked it and she proceeded to use it all morning while watching the parade.

I bought DH a new Vikings polo, a grill spatula, movies, and Battleship.

Tuesday Lunch: Lunch time was spent on Josh's extended family. We also had another one of DH's extended family Christmas at night, but we were so Christmas'd out that we decided to pass. We did visit his Grandpa before the meal, so at least we got to see him on Christmas.

Tuesday Night: We decided to head out and drive around a check out the Christmas lights in Maurice. Macyn LOVED it. She made comments of, "That's pretty awesome." "That's really cool" but my favorite one was when she saw a whole bunch of toy soldiers lined up and said, "There's the marching band!"

Unfortunately, in the night Macyn got the stomach flu so she had an extra day at home after Christmas. Fortunately, it wasn't a severe case of the flu, so she was pretty much back to normal after one day at home.

Our Christmas weekend was super busy, but it is always nice visiting and seeing our families.

Sunday Best

Macyn really likes her Christmas dress. It is purple with hearts, so she can wear it all winter and not just Christmas. She also likes her "elf" look (that's what we think she looks like). A classic red & green jumper with a turtle neck and boots!

Sledding

We received some fresh snow, and on Friday night on the way home from daycare,Macyn asked if she could go sledding. (we got her a sled for Christmas but were planning on giving it to her early). Here is how our conversation went:
Macyn: I want to throw snowballs at Dad
Me: Not tonight, it's already dark out
Macyn: I want to go sledding
Me: You don't have a sled
Macyn: Yes I do
Me: No you dont..
Macyn: Yes I do, my pink one!
Me: You don't have a pink one
Macyn: Yes I do - its in the garage. I will show you when we get home.

Seriously. Nothing gets past her! She was still just as excited to get her sled on Saturday and head outside to try it out. We have a good enough slope in our front yard that we have a decent "hill" for her to go down on.

A Timeline of... Twins!

I have been off of this blogging thing for about a month now, but I will be trying to be better to keeping this updated as much as possible! For those who don't already know, we are expecting a couple of new little ones in early spring. Here is a little bit of what has gone on since I have gotten a BFP (big fat positive), and what I have been doing instead of blogging)

3 Weeks (September 23-ish)
I took a pregnancy test 1 week before a missed cycle and it came back positive! I was pretty surprised I had a positive reading already. It said on the package that 60% of pregnancies can be detected that early.

5 Weeks
Did you know in our family picture there are actually 5 people?

6 Weeks 
Macyn's birthday party! Really wanted her to wear a "big sister" shirt, but I thought it would be too early to announce. I have always been a firm believe of keeping my mouth shut until you know everything is going smoothly - aka hearing a heartbeat.

7 1/2 Weeks
Thursday night Vikings football game in the cities! We made a long weekend out of it and hit up some shopping. I also came down with some pretty bad bronchitis the previous week that ended up lingering for 8-9 weeks. Awful! Needless to say I ended up sleeping in the car instead of shopping for part of the trip. Between walking around, bronchitis, and being pregnant, I was extremely exhausted.

9 Weeks
First doctor's appointment. I knew it was pretty early to hear a heartbeat, but I was really hoping we would so we could at least tell our parents and possibly others that we were expecting. It was around here it was getting a little more difficult to hide my belly. I attributed it to just showing sooner with your 2nd than your first!

So we went to the doctor, and could not find a heartbeat. My Dr. then brought in the portable ultrasound machine to see if there was indeed a baby in there and/or hear the heartbeat. We received this precious little picture of our baby:

We still couldn't hear a heartbeat, but my Dr. claimed she could see it's little "flaps" aka. arms and legs moving. The baby was measuring 1 week ahead in size, and so was I. Now, take note - there is only ONE visible baby!

A couple days after our initial appointment we told our parents, but explained we were waiting to tell others until we heard a heartbeat with the doppler.

11 Weeks
Another prenatal appointment, mostly to listen for a heartbeat. And guess what?! We heard it (one heartbeat that is)! This was the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, so we told all our family the following day about our news.
I would be getting an ultrasound within the next couple of weeks because I was measuring 1-2 weeks larger at the time and she wanted to make sure the dates were right. I didn't think much of this because Macyn would always measure between 1-3 weeks ahead.

12 Weeks 1 day
Time for our "dating" ultrasound. Everything looks really normal until the moment the ultrasound tech uttered the words, "Do twins run in your family?" My heart sunk into my stomach and I was like, "why?" And she said, "well, you are definitely having twins and they look like they are identical."

Holy cows. Seriously? And sure enough, they started measuring Baby A:
Length: 7.23 cm = 13w 3d
Heartbeat: 155 bpm

And here is Baby B:
Length: 7.42 cm = 13w 4d
Heartbeat: 169 bpm

And here are their two heads together....I actually had to go in for a second scan the same day because the radiologist wanted to take a look and make sure they are identical. As of now they are still going with that, but it could change whenever I have my next ultrasound. Identical twins are higher risk than regular twins, so it means more doctors appointments and more ultrasounds. 

 

So after only seeing 1 baby, hearing 1 heartbeat, there are two! We were shocked but she shock has worn off and has turned into excitement. I will be 15 weeks tomorrow, so I will try to update a little more :)