Welcome to the third trimester

We have now officially hit 28 weeks!  YAY! 

The average (singleton pregnancy) woman gains 11 pounds during this tri and this is when you’ll really ‘pop’ and look pregnant.  Um… Hmmm.  We’ll just have to see what that means in the ‘twin’ case.  I happened across another Dr Luke quote last night about how women with twins that gained 41 pounds by 28 weeks had ‘normal weight’ twins at birth.  Since this was indirect from some random website, I’m not certain if it is really what she says, however it made me laugh a bit.  I had stopped paying attention to her weight gain guidelines as I didn’t want to be depressed because I had passed up even her generous allowances.  Amazing though, how I’m to the pound on that particular one. 

Asher has decided that he has a baby in his belly now.  It will be exiting from his belly button – just as he is certain these boys will be exiting my belly.  I suppose that is good for him as it most certainly won’t be coming out the traditional way in his pregnancy.  He is too cute with how much he likes to see the babies and watch them move.  I haven’t really discussed this with the guys but hopefully our kids will get to see the boys for a bit once they are here.  It is funny that most people ask how the kids will take it when the boys don’t come home with us as if they will be scarred for life. 

See, they all know these boys are going home with P and J and trust me when I say answering the “Where are the babies?” and the “Why didn’t they come home with us?” questions are EXTREMELY better when you can say they just went home with their Daddies and we might be able to visit sometime VS saying there was something wrong with the baby and she died.  No, I couldn’t fix her, no, the doctors couldn’t fix her, she just died.  THAT – well, that sucks to tell your 3 year old.  Especially when you have to tell him over and over and over again.  Scarred for life when they go home with P and J?  I, think, not.

Next, knowing Ash, I think he’d be scarred for life if they DID have to come home with us.  This boy is THE baby of the family and he wears his roll well.  Just yesterday, I was picking them up from daycare and another little boy was standing close to me looking up at me because he was a little confused about me not being his mom to come pick him up.  Asher RAN over and pushed him down while letting him know in no uncertain terms that I was HIS mommy.  Um, that boy was bigger than Asher too, BTW.  (Yes, he had to apologise and all that.)   This part is what makes me giggle a bit when I hear the concern because you know that if the boys were coming home with us the concern would be in the other direction.  “What is the 2 year old gonna do when he is kicked out of his baby roll?” Asked with knowing tones.  Human nature is kinda funny that way.

BTW – I looked up the ingredients in the drink that my clinic uses for the glucose drink test.  Dextrose.  Basically, corn syrup.  Ew.  I asked what they use as an alternative for people that are allergic to corn and they completely hadn’t ever thought of it.  It never even occurred to them that people allergic to corn couldn’t drink that.  My OB was actually a bit startled and has vowed to make certain that everyone that gets it is ASKED first if they are allergic to corn products.  Alas, this non-allergic-to-corn person that I am is just going to have to drink the processed corn poison as the only alternatives they had were drinking Coke or eating jelly beans instead.  Um, not better.  My OB DID say that if I looked up how much honey I would need to get 100 grams of glucose I could do that but I had to break down and admit that in studies they simply couldn’t get anyone to react to the sugars in honey like they do to corn no matter how much they gave to them so it wouldn’t be a very accurate test.  That DOES, however, point out that even taking the test is a bit whacked out for me since I don’t generally consume processed corn sugars and thus who cares if I react to it or not.  That also makes me wonder if perhaps my higher results come from my body not being prepared to make the insulin required to turn corn syrup into fat as quickly as they want to see due to me not having a history of eating it. 

So – 28 weeks.  We are close!  Probably less than 10 weeks away at this point.

Glucose tolerance test, you unfair bitch

After having all day yesterday to go over all this in my head, I have to say, I’m a little annoyed.  I seriously was NOT worried about that test.  I didn’t even think it made sense for me to take it.  Four pregnancies, ALL without getting anywhere near failing that test, ALL while I was significantly more overweight and out of shape than I am right now.  How is this fair?  How is it right that I put in all that work and eat right and fail?  OK, granted, I’m not exactly running 5Ks (or spending much time standing when I could be sitting at all, for that matter), but I still hardly eat ANY processed sugars at all.  In fact, that dumb drink I had to have yesterday was probably a complete shock to my system due to being 100% crap sugar. (I’ve been researching online what that solution is made from and many companies use ‘dextrose’, which in my book is pretty much just high fructose corn syrup.  I’ll have to ask about the specific drink they are having me take at this clinic.) 

So now, here I am with hearing that failing this test, while it doesn’t mean you have GD (85% of the people that fail the 1 hour test still pass the 3 hour test), according to doctor internet, it DOES mean you might still have slight insulin issues.  Plus, ACTUALLY failing the 3 hour test (which I highly doubt I will but I am not ruling it out since I never in a million years would’ve guessed that I’d have failed the 1 hour test) DOES mean you have a higher risk of developing real diabetes eventually.  AHHHH!!  All that work so that I would NOT have to worry about this and here it is staring me in the face.  “Why, hello fat person, did you know you failed the crappy 1 hour glucose test?”  My latest obsession?  Hunting down pictures online of skinny pregnant women that failed the 1 hour test.  I know.  Issues, anyone?

The fallout?  Now I am stuck obsessing over the symptoms of GD.  Excessive thirst?  Hardly.  I barely am able to keep up with all the water I’m supposed to be drinking.  (P and J, don’t read this part) Whenever I have a couple of contractions that are in near the 10-15 minute apart range I force myself to go get more to drink, in fact. Like last night when I was up from 3 to 5.  (You can start reading again.)  Excessive urination?  Um, have I mentioned I was pregnant?  For being pregnant, I would classify this as very much not excessive.  Fatigue?  Ya, that whole being up from 3-5 thing is not uncommon.  I’m carrying around a good 40 extra pounds all the time and working and taking care of my 3 kids PLUS I have an iron count of 9 so while I AM tired, I don’t think it is outside of the norm for all those factors.  The only other thing that I can really think of is the tendency for GD to develop very large babies.  Well, these boys ARE big, but I have a history of having bigger babies (recall my 36 weeker that was 8 pounds 9 ounces) and J told me he was over 9 pounds as a baby if I recall that correctly.  Plus, the babies in GD are bigger because they develop more fat on them because their insulin levels are turning all the extra sugars  that you are passing to them into fat since your insulin levels are not.  These boys are measuring bigger based on bone length and such, not on how much fat they might be building up.

Grrr.  I know.  It will most likely all be totally fine.  It’s just that I don’t want to squeak by.  I want to fly by with numbers so golden that nothing could touch me.  THAT would be fair after working my ass off to be so healthy for this pregnancy.  If only matters in pregnancy and life and health were fair.  If only.  But THAT is a whole different matter entirely.  Speaking of that, I guess I should really just take what we have been granted and run with it because overall, everything has gone extremely well for us.

Zen and the art of not getting your way

Our 28 week appointment was today.  It had some ups and some downs. 

For the ups, the boys are doing extremely well.  A is bigger than B (perfect) by just a little bit – A is over 3 pounds and B is 2 pounds 15 ounces.  (I will update this when I get the note from P and J about the ounces for A as I don’t remember.  Hopefully they do.)  6 pounds of baby people!!  B was ‘breathing’ on the US as we watched and A is now head down.  B was first transverse and then more or less breech but B has issues so we won’t dwell on that at the moment.  Plus, our OB isn’t concerned with how B is presenting at all for a natural delivery.  I get to have weekly NSTs which will be a pain scheduling-wise but I’m glad for how nervous I’ve been trying not to be.  Our appointments also go to every 2 weeks at this point.  I’m measuring at 36(!!!) weeks along right now so YES, I feel huge.  Oh, also, my weight was 206, which is ugly, but actually 5 pounds DOWN from last Monday so clearly that weigh-in was a tad bit skewed.

Another up is that we all got to meet up with the doula I had worked with, Jessie.  I always enjoy meeting with her and it feels great for me to have someone that I feel will ‘get’ me and be looking out for my ‘big picture’ with the natural delivery.  Usually I feel so isolated and ‘me against the world’ with my natural concepts so I like not being alone.  I worry that I might be pushing her on the guys a bit because this pregnancy is falling financially on their shoulders but at this point I have to trust that if they were not big on having Jessie assist, they’d speak up.

Now for the down side.  First, I failed my glucose test.  BOO!!!!  I failed by 13 points out of 140, so that totally sucks too, but the odds are good, at least, that I won’t fail the 3 hour one.  Mostly, I’m disappointed because I view failing the 1 hour test as being somehow unhealthy as diabetes is always linked with being overweight so I feel like I somehow did something bad to fail.  That said, I understand twins are more likely to fail due to two placentas so all I can do is accept it, move forward, and hope for the best in the 3 hour test.  BTW – my instructions for the 3 hour test tell me to not smoke or drink or be physically or emotionally stressed out before the test. 

Next, I got a 9 on my stupid hemoglobin test.  After my 11 at the last appointment, I upped my iron-rich foods consumption, namely red meats, in the hopes that it would help.  Clearly, it didn’t do the job completely.  I really wish that I could just check my iron levels at home because if I could’ve done that all along, I’d have been able to modify and manage my plan of attack accordingly.  As it is, I can just make my adjustments and then wait for the next appointment to see what I get.  With that method, I get the “iron lecture” that I didn’t really enjoy while my OB goes over the importance of iron and WHY I should be getting more.  To his credit, he went out of the way to make sure that it wasn’t a ‘you naughty pregnant woman’ conversation, especially in front of P and J, and I was doing great for the babies but it was MY health that would suffer.  To my credit though, I know all that so I really just needed the test to know how my efforts were working to know how I needed to adjust.

I *think* that I’ve got this iron thing worked out though.  See, I simply cannot eat any more red meat than I am.  Weekly?  Yes, Daily?  No.  I also was not big on the supplements but I went from the appointment to the wholefoods co-op to talk to the people there about this.  They got me “Floradix Iron + Herbs” which is a liquid, 100% vegetarian source of iron (and the B vitamins) that is great for pregnant women and for NOT backing up your system.  I’m really excited about finding this BUT, that meant that I needed to get the iron OUT of my prenatals.  They did not have ANY prenatals or even multi-vitamins that didn’t have iron at the co-op so I headed to CVS to see what I could find there.  There was also nothing there that was iron-free except for a woman’s vitamin for seniors that also had ginko which I wasn’t 100% comfortable taking while pregnant even though ginko is probably just fine.  I just don’t like taking herbal supplements when I don’t know specifically that they are OK in pregnancy.  I searched the internet and found GNC had a prenatal with no iron so I headed over there.  It was a lot of work (and kinda pricey too, I might add) but I’ve now got my iron free prenatals, my iron liquid, AND some flax seed oil that was a mercury free – vegetarian safe way to get the extra Omega-3 for the babies.

Lastly, my OB wasn’t as ‘hippie-open’ about my ‘let twin B come whenever he feels like it’ request as I had hoped and anticipated he would be.  OK, FINE, he was making sense at least and discussing medical issues with me and not just blowing my request off so I still respect him – I’m just still thinking there had GOT to be more to it than what he is saying.  Why can I read over and over again about people waiting forever for twin B to come when he talks about 20 minute limits and placental breakdowns and such?  He’s not real big on internal versions so I’m happy about that.  Instead they just work externally to get baby B down and he’s totally fine with doing a breech baby B delivery without internal extraction so it is just the matter of how long do we wait for baby B to be born before doing things such as rupturing membranes and external pressure and such to encourage delivery. 

As an add-on, I will say that the whole operating room delivery is still up in the air.  He has said that they won’t force me to be wheeled down the hall while actively pushing out baby A just to try and make the transition to the OR so at least I feel good about not being yelled at to not push while that is happening.  We’re pretty much still working it over.  I just very strongly do NOT want something that is going to make me afraid and anxious as I know it would take blood supply away from my uterus for me to get really upset and that could very well shut down all labor progress and create the need for interventions that would be otherwise unneeded.  THAT would very much upset me as I don’t want to feel manipulated and attacked from a delivery.

Cripes, sometimes I just think a C-section WOULD be easier, not from a physical standpoint but from an emotional standpoint.  It is hard to always feel like you have to fight loads of tradition and old school red tape to be listened to.

So that was our appointment.  The 3 hour test isn’t for another 2 weeks – unless I just get tired of waiting for it and decide to just walk into the hospital for a spur of the moment test.  (After, you know, fasting for 8 hours spontaneously and taking great pains to avoid drinking or smoking for 3 whole days, not to mention avoiding all kinds of possible stress.  Like, you know, worry over the 3 hour test.)  Anyway, wish me luck on that.

Our friendly neighborhood US tech was as cheery and lovely as ever today, BTW, but she DID give us a picture of baby A kicking baby B in the head.  At least she must have a sense of humor to print that one off for us.

But I neeeeeed my pillow

We left Ash’s little satin pillow at the hotel we went to this weekend.  We had a tubing weekend planned with a little hotel stay which is really just for the kid’s amusement as we don’t live all that far away.  The actual tubing was scrapped as it was, ya know, 400 degrees below zero on Saturday.  Stubborn me though, wouldn’t cancel the trip so we went out anyway.  P and J had driven up as well which I LOVE, but I felt horrid that I basically made them drive an hour away to eat pizza and sit in a hotel room which we could’ve done without the drive.  All the kids loved the swimming pool.  Sunday morning we packed everything up and headed home only to discover at Ash’s naptime that his pillow was not included in the home trip. 

This little pillow was something I got for Gavin when he was old enough for a pillow.  He was never really attached to it and Jessie never really cared for it either.  Ash, however, is a bit pickier about his sleeping conditions.  He now spends a good deal of time before going to sleep calling out to me as pathetically as possible: “Moooommmyyy… Mommy… I neeeeeed my pillow!”  It is so sad.  We have called the hotel and they are mailing the thing back to us (Thankfully it is quite small and can squish even smaller so hopefully it won’t be too expensive.)  Still, it will be a bit before we get it back.  Here’s hoping Ash makes it through.

BTW – just to brag a bit – while swimming Ash got out of the pool a few times to have us bring him to the bathroom.  I cannot believe how easy he was to potty train.  Basically, it was less than 24 hours of potty training for this boy to go from totally not interested to totally a success.  Two years ago we did that same trip with Jessie as a 2 year old that had been potty trained at the exact same time as Ash.  We had her in pull-ups for the trip just in case there were accidents.  To her credit, there were not, but the point is that Ash is just further along than even she was at the same age.  He even told us he had to go before we had gotten home from the hotel but he was good waiting until we got home.  For that matter, he barely even tells anyone that he has to go anymore, he just runs off to the room and takes care of things himself.  This isn’t ideal as he has not picked up on the concept of TP conservation just yet.  I think his goal is to go through an entire roll each time he goes.  Oh, also, he gets VERY VERY mad at anyone that tries to help him wipe after a poo.  This is a problem because he just can’t do it himself and I end up feeling like the worlds worst parent as I pin the boy over my knee to clean him up amidst much protest.  Fun!  But that wasn’t the note I intended for this – YAY!  Asher is the amazing potty training wonder!!!

The 7 month itch

No, we’re not 7 months along, but it still works because we are in the 7th month.  I know that because my friend Jeanette had her baby on our CD1 and since her little cutie is now 6 months old (and thus, in his 7th month) so are these boys.

Itch refers to, well, I know it doesn’t help that it is winter and all that but being pregnant always makes everything from my ankles to my shoulders itchy.  Since my ankles have been swelling a bit more recently (which I can tell from the lovely sock lines I get now) I am sure that hasn’t been helping. 

It is curious to only be 27 weeks along and to not so much look like that.  I’ve had people say to me “Any day now, huh??” and I have to reply back, “No, no, not so much any day, actually.”  I have a suspicion that the “You’re STILL here?” question is going to start very early with this pregnancy.  Both because I look huge AND because no one expects me to hit 40 weeks.

Speaking of hitting 40 weeks, as much as I don’t really WANT to, I suspect that is quite possible.  You never know though.  I was having probably at least one contraction per hour yesterday but it never got more than annoying and I went through a long time of that with Ash’s pregnancy as well.  Today has been pretty quiet on the muscle contraction front so that is good.  P told me to tell my uterus to stop doing that but I think perhaps he overestimates my powers of influence in that particular area.  For the record, if I DID have that kind of control, I would not have 3 full fledged pitocin assisted inductions under my belt.

Anyway, I had to post to say HAPPY 27 WEEKS to P and J!

Holy crap!

That choice comment is what came out of my mouth when I got weighed in at the clinic on Monday.  Why was I weighed in at the clinic?  Not because I had an appointment.  No, it was because of two things. 

1) I will never ever ever again be in a position of saying to myself “If I had just gone in to check on it, maybe things would be different.”

and

2) Apparently I don’t yet know the normal ebb and flow of twin movements.

I could’ve sworn to you on Monday afternoon that these two had gone into a coma.  The handfull of pathetic little kicks that I got were all in ONE exact spot and, ya know, being twins you’d at least hope for two spots.  Anyway, preferring to look like the crazy nut-job with living twin babies over the stoic pillar that doesn’t annoy medical staff for trivial things… until she ends up with dead babies, I drove over to my clinic asking all non-challantly for a little heartbeat check on the babes.  Just, ya know, a quicky.  They totally do that, right?

Um, no.  They don’t.  They sign you up for a full blown appointment with “not-my-doctor” because my doctor wasn’t there that day.  They have you sit in the waiting room for 20 minute chunks of time while moving you between the NST room, the US room, and the patient viewing room.  (Sorry, P, I’m sure it has a different name.  I just prefer to think of any clinic as a zoo and patient viewing room has always stuck in my head.)  They opted to do an US to check heartbeat because the NST would’ve been hard to locate 26 weeker hearts.  I’m not sure why they needed the full blown US machine when I just wanted the heart rate, but at least it gave me a chance to visit with the anti-patient-relations expert otherwise known as the US tech. 

Knowing full well (because I had just told her) that I had lost a baby after a period of decreased fetal movement and that I was purely interested in confirming normal heart rates in these two (as quickly as possible due to pending pregnant woman heart attack out of fear), she wasted no time at all in staring at her US machine for 5 full minutes until she remembered she had to refresh something to get my appointment to show up.  (This would be annoying for ANYONE in IT, regardless of life and death fear over fetuses, BTW.) THEN she proceeds to find baby A and make pictures with “BREECH” written all over it and spend 8.5 years cataloging my cervix.  (An area she seemed to be fascinated with last time, now that I think about it.)  I pipe up, um, heart rates, please?  And she reluctantly heads over to baby A and takes a 1 second snapshot of his heart and declares it to be 130.  She then wanders around the placentas for awhile and I casually mention that I’m having another appointment in just 1 week when she can mosey all over my uterus to her hearts content at that time but now I’d really like to see baby B’s heart rate.  I swear US techs should be required to take some psych classes or something because the damage they can do when they ignorantly mess with your head is unbelievable.  She did managed to find B’s heart rate and again, a 1 second picture put his heart at about 150.

She tells me she thinks I might be able to just go but she wasn’t sure so I should sit in the waiting room and I’m sitting there forever as everyone else leaves.  FINALLY I do get called back to discuss the US results.  Now, I’ll admit, I’m hugely conflicted here.  What I WANT to do is say YES, the US was great, I’m totally reassured and all is well.  Thank you, goodbye.   And get on my way.  What I ALSO want to do is be honest.  When they ask me if the babies are moving more now I kick myself but am also honest because I don’t want to have spent all this time to still be worried.  I tell her no, they aren’t moving more.  In fact, even in the US we could SEE they weren’t moving hardly at all and there was no way I got anywhere near 7 kicks between the two of them in the 45 minutes between the US and our discussion about said US.  I also said that 1 second clips of heart rates don’t show distress because, well, they don’t and plus, I was on a roll.  Between the babies and myself I ended up committing myself to another 45 minutes of NST where they hooked me up to two monitors and we worked very hard to find and consistently track two 26 week babies. 

In the end, the nursing staff declared the boys to be well advanced for their age and wonderfully reactive.  Oh, and the nurse that was setting up the NST said that she heard I was ‘placing’ the babies.  Um, placing them where?  On a shelf somewhere?  She corrected herself as I started saying I was a gestational carrier and she was gushing about how great she thought that was.  I wasn’t sure how to take it really because of the whole “placing” comment at first.  Then when the other nurses came in because either they were bored or I was the only patient still in the building as they were trying to shut the clinic down, she introduced me to them as “she is placing these babies.”  Seriously.  Does she not KNOW the difference? 

Yes, all ended well.  I even have some US pics to share with the guys which show exceedingly chubby cheeks which I think is odd for a 26 week baby.  That would explain the “Holy Crap” that exploded from me upon standing on the scale that day though.  Let’s just say that if I come out of this whole thing having not gained back to my original pre-weightloss starting point, I’ll be happy.  And surprised.    I keep trying to say YA, but you weighed that much WITHOUT being pregnant with twins, dumb ass.  Then I think about how my rings and my watch fit still.  My feet are starting to swell a bit, but not too much.  Plus, it’s actually getting harder to eat because I get full very fast and in addition to being full, I get heart burn from hell (aka HBFH) just by thinking about eating something so MAYBE, just maybe, everyone that said it does slow down eventually will be right.  I still think these boys are closer to 3 pounds than 2 right now.  And thankfully?  They’ve been nice and squirmy today.

peeing standing up

So, this weekend the kids and I all went out to the park across the street to the ice rink.  Gavin has new skates and he can’t get them on and off on his own so that means we all get to drag our butts, um, I mean, skip off to a family outing to the park.

Watching a hugely pregnant lady help two little ones into their full winter gear so that we can actually get outside in the snow is funny.  Watching a hugely pregnant lady try to fit into winter gear herself is also quite amusing, assuming, of course, that you are not the lady in question.  We finally get everyone ready and Asher is in the little pull-sled thing so I can get him out to the rink without carrying him.  (Jessie did very well walking in the deep snow without complaint – I’m very proud of her.)  Yes, it is across the street but it is on the opposite side of the block across the street so it was a trek getting everyone out there.  I was beat and very happy to sit on the bench by the rink once we got there.

Gavin is being completely adorable (not the most common thing, for a 9 year old) by asking the little ones if they’d like a ride around the rink.  Then he holds the pull sled as they take turns sitting in it and he runs them around the rink.  A grand time is had by all until Asher informs me that he has to go to the bathroom.  Shoot.  I cannot leave Jessie at the park with Gavin and I’m in no mood to bring them all back and then come BACK again.  We hadn’t been there long so I didn’t want to make everyone go in anyway.  Well, I decide Ash is a boy and really, what better time than 2 to start teaching the art of writing your name in the snow?  Plus, we’d get to work on his letters, right?  I bring him over by a tree and undo his winter gear just enough to let him do his thing but every time I tried to show him how to aim AWAY from his clothing he’d collapse in a fit of giggles.  It simply wasn’t happening.  Well, we were committed at this point so we just undid the winter gear more and I held him in a more sitting position but I guess the performance pressure was too much for him.  Or the cold.  Either way, nothing happened.  I just dressed him all back up and we were there for quite a while before we headed back home.

I guess he’ll just have to grow a bit more before we attempt to figure out aim.

Back at home I was anxious to relax a bit to feel for the babies to move again.  I get so nervous these days about them moving enough.  Since I can’t ever really tell who is doing what anymore, I have to hope that the kicks and movements are representative of both of them.  I’d much rather KNOW that A and B are both moving around.  I’m glad we have an appointment coming up where we’ll get to hear those heartbeats and know they are OK and I’m also glad there won’t be any more 4 week stretches between appointments.  We may well be to a point they would be born alive and all that, but I know well that there is never, at any point, a danger-free time.  For that matter, even after they are born there isn’t but I’m going to focus on my own particular neurotic issues. 

I think part of my stress comes from this birth story I read.  I’ve been looking up birth stories from twins that are about as far along as I am.  It has been interesting to see how, as I get further along, there are more and more happy endings.  Well, I stumbled over this one story where the woman actually went full term after some preterm labour around 26 weeks.  The thing was, it had a twist ending.  It was just a regular old birth story for twins and there was NO indication at all that this would happen but at the very very end, twin B had died before birth and was thus, stillborn.  This totally creeped me out.  I try hard to avoid reading things like that because I know how it works on my brain.  I feel for the other stillbirth stories, really I do.  When I’m not pregnant I’m all over sending my sympathies or whatever.  I just cannot handle it while pregnant.  I was actually really mad at that person for not mentioning ahead of time that it was a stillbirth story.  All I do now, day and night, is feel for baby movement to make sure they are both OK.  Hopefully, that will subside soon as I know how awful the worry I was in with Jessie’s pregnancy was and I have no desire to get to that state again. 

So, this morning as I was getting dressed I put on yet another pair of maternity pants that I cannot actually wear anymore.  DANG.  This time they were ‘under the belly’ pants that had to be VERY under the belly to fit but because the shirt that I’m wearing didn’t make it down quite long enough, there was danger of belly exposure that I wasn’t willing to take.  I am now down to 3 pairs of pants that are both comfortable and will cover me, 2 of which came from Michelle!  (OMG thank you Michelle!)  I’d like to take a moment to BEG of the world in general for someone to start a line of MULTIPLES maternity clothing that will actually fit through the whole pregnancy.  My fear at this point is that because the pants that I HAVE that don’t fit are already XL, I might actually have to start looking in the plus sizes again and mentally, that would be a huge defeat for me.  Plus, I don’t really want to have to buy more stuff because at this point I’ll only be in it for ~12 weeks or so.  Maybe I’ll just look at it this way – those babies are getting really big and healthy, right??!!

4 pounds of baby

Before I get into my blog, I’d like to share the last 20 minutes of my life with you:

I’m at work (sorry, work, for blogging from here.  You should know though, that you are lucky I’m blogging this and not, you know, running crazy through the halls.) I am helping an engineer set up this new area in the software that we use so that he can get some new labels printed out.  Our labels print from this OTHER software that monitors a folder for a text file and uses the text file to create a label.  That text file gets PUT in the folder from the original program that this engineer is using.  The engineer just has to set up the program so that it sends the file to the correct place.  I’d like to note that this engineer is our EXPERT on this software and has been working with it for 6+ years.  I gave him the name of the folder that has been set up and just asked him to rig up his side of things to send out a text file so I can know what I’m working with.

I get an e-mail from him that he has sent through the label and I should see the text file.  There is nothing there.  I recheck that he has the folder name exactly the same and he resends.  Nothing.  He restarts his computer thinking it needs to reset before it will work and still nothing.  By now, I’m tired of e-mails and totally frustrated why this is not working.  How can we have such a disconnect of the text file NOT going where it should be going???

I decide to head over to his desk to see what is happening.  He uses the program to print the label and gets a HUGE error message stating:  “The following fields are REQUIRED and no label will be printed until they are filled out:”  (A list of fields of course, followed.)  He clicks through it and asks me to check the folder again.  Me, the IT person, is no longer capable of talking because my head has just turned inside out.  I recovered (minor surgery) and suggested that the error message that was just there said that it would not, in fact, send out a file until those fields were filled out.  He said that they didn’t need to be because this product didn’t use those fields.  I replied that our software wasn’t nearly so knowledgeable or flexible and if it is set with required fields, they will still be required even if they are bogus for the product in question.  I suggested filling out the fields in question with “NA” or “none” and trying again to see if the error message went away.  I also mentioned , as per the message, that NOTHING will be sent as long as the error is still there.

He is going to work on it some more and get back to me.  For those of you that missed it, I just wasted 20 minutes troubleshooting why a file wasn’t being sent to a certain folder location when the engineer was getting a very descriptive error message stating not only that no text file would be sent but WHY, and clicking through it each time.  Without telling me. 

OK, back to your normal blog.

YAY, 26 weeks!!!  Step 1 beyond simple viability, the babies now have a much better shot at life beyond birth.  Not that they are going anywhere but I’ll still celebrate if it’s all the same to you.  I should be holding about 4 pounds worth of baby by now, although I’m pretty sure it is more than that.

I’m still doing pretty good overall.  I noticed two contractions last night while I was reading before falling asleep.  Those, while still not often, are becoming more noticeable and frequent which just goes to show how little time there is left.  Hey, it could be only 11 more weeks from now!  People say “That seems so close!” and then look at me funny and say they don’t think I would agree.  No, really, I do agree.  Ask me again in about 5 more weeks though.  Oh, also last night, I woke up around 2 with the WORST cramp in my leg ever.  It was not my calf muscle, it was this weird side muscle that was really hard to single out and stretch.  I eventually had to get out of bed and just walk on my leg to get it to calm down.

The boys have been decidedly naughty for the last two visits with their Daddies.  They just won’t move and perform the way they should.  I think they are just calmed by us talking so much but still – I’d like them to show off a bit more.  Hopefully they behave better once they are born.

That’s all I can think of right now.  Have a good weekend, blog-land.

big search hit day…

“Belly shot porn”  Maybe I’m naive, but I honestly didn’t see that one coming.  But hey, there was only ONE search hit under those words so how bad could it be?  Hopefully, very very hopefully, whomever it was became extraordinarily disappointed with my site.

Another search hit I got was along the lines of  “still bring baby home after stillbirth”.  My page with Anily does bring in some search hits on that and for those people I hope that my story can help some.  I know for me I felt like the biggest freak in the whole world for having something so “unheard of” happen to my family.  Learning it wasn’t so very unheard of helped a lot with that.  Although… that sucks too… it SHOULD be more unheard of.  Anyway, I reread my page because I didn’t remember if I wrote anything about bringing baby home after a stillbirth or not.

In truth, we DID bring Anily home eventually.  We talked to the funeral home and asked if we could host part of her funeral at our house and they said yes.  We drove in, picked up Anily in her casket, and brought her home.  It was incredibly healing and I’m glad we had the chance.  Gavin got to see her and know that she was really really dead.  I got to carry her around her home and show her the family that loves her so much.  We got to hold her one more time.  I got to find out that they had taken OFF the cloth diaper that I had picked from the collection I had hand made for her and put on a disposable one – AND I got to replace that cloth diaper for her burial.  No never ever biodegrading pampers was going to be sitting in her casket with her for all of time.  We got pictures of her in her own home and I have memories of where she was here.

No, that never made up for leaving the hospital empty handed.  I will never forgive the person that forced me to put the flowers on the cart and wheel them out next to me instead of letting me carry them.  It did help to make her feel more a part of our family.  I enjoyed the extra, and very private, time to really say goodbye and to decide what would be buried with her from us.  It was a chance for me to be her mom and to do something important for her.

I’m trying to think of a good transition from that and I don’t really have one.  I just felt it was important to say that I DID actually bring her home as I hope anyone who has to go through that would know that is an option.

I spoke to the doula that I worked with for my last two deliveries.  She was SOOOO excited about helping out at a twin, gestational carrier, two father birth.  I knew she would be… I mean.. by nature I think all doulas are required to be hippie chicks that would be thrilled by something like that.  Still, I’m glad that she’s very into it.  She DID mention that the hospital I’m planning on delivering at (because it is my only choice with the OB I’m using and I’m pretty attached to him) does require twin deliveries to be in the OR.  THAT is something I’m going to have to start working on my OB regarding.  I don’t know how anyone could be relaxed enough in the OR for labor and I REALLY don’t think they want to try to wheel me down the hall to the OR from a regular room at pushing time.  This part I know because I have a tendency to go from 5 cm to Hey, look, there’s a baby in the room in about 3 seconds flat and I fully admit that there is no way EVER that I would be able to hold back on pushing if there’s a baby headbutting his way out.  They try to move me and what they will get is a baby born in the hallway.

It was good to talk to her though and it totally reminds me of how much I love having a doula – someone who is like-minded to me and my birth ideals – there to coach, guide, and stick up for me.  I really hope she and the guys get along!

Why I am a horrible mother

I just kicked my sick fever running sore throat son out of my bed.  He was snoring.  I love my children, I really really do, but I also love being able to sleep without constant snoring in my ears.  I sleep VERY lightly so everything wakes me up.  When I was a kid I had hamsters.  One night one of the hamsters had gotten out of his cage and met up with our cat.  Turns out, they didn’t hit it off very well and that hamster squeeled with all his hamster might.  I woke up and saved him.  (Well, he actually died shortly after, probably from pure fright because he wasn’t actually damaged from our cat carrying him around in her mouth.)  Anyway, the point is, a freaking hamster can wake me up – a 9 year old with clogged sinuses snoring like a truffle pig at a mushroom convention means mom gets NO sleep.  To my credit, I told him he could sleep on the couch just outside my room and I’d check on him regularly.

So yes, that makes the third child out of three to run a fever since the new year.  What are the odds that I won’t be coming down with this?  Well, I’m hoping for that hand full of aces and maybe I’ll get lucky.  Gavin is out of school though and I’ll be working from home to stay with him in the morning.  This brings up a question for me.  He will be 10 this summer.  Do 10 year olds still go to daycare in the summer?  Is he mature?  No, not really.  I mean, he doesn’t care at all if he gets his homework done and he leaves the milk on the counter from breakfast and he whacks his siblings on the head any time he walks by just because.  I wouldn’t call that mature.  He IS independent though.  He begs to be left home alone and he really is terribly self sufficient.  I think that he would be safe if he were home alone.  My concern is for when he is not home alone.  Summer means neighborhood kids also out of school and I suspect he’d have friends in and out of the house and he’d be all over the neighborhood.  There is where I see the trouble coming.  Legally, I don’t know if MN has any rules.  Maryland states 8 years old as the cutoff for any home alone time.  Another state, though I forget which, ‘suggests’ no younger than 14.  There’s a big difference there.  Either way, ‘daycare’ seems a bit odd.  It makes me wish someone would open something special just for the 10-13 age range just for summer care.  Maybe I’ll get lucky and his school will offer summer school for him – although I doubt HE’d see that as ‘lucky’.

I have a question for you Microsoft Vista experts out there.  We have just installed (on purpose.. yes really) Vista onto Gavin’s computer.  The reason was 100% because of the parental controls Vista gives you.  It allows us to set the times that the computer will and will not run for any given user so that Gavin can log into his computer and play all on his own but it will still not let him log in at 3AM.  This is good because we HAD to put a password on his computer to keep him off of it at night but that left us annoyed beyond belief because EVERY time he wanted to play we had to go log him in.  Generally, this meant Gavin was in our room at 6:30 AM on the weekend asking to have us log him in so he could quietly play without waking anyone up.  The Vista change has been wonderful and there is peace in our house again.  In fact, it is even set up to kick him off for meal times so if he happens to be playing  just before lunch or dinner he will come downstairs all on his own.

The trouble comes in with one game in particular.  It is an online game and to run it means running a launcher that checks your files against the online files to see if you need an update.  Clearly, Vista wants you to be an admin to do this type of thing.  We can SAY ‘run as admin’ and type in our password, but it doesn’t want to stick permanently.  It makes us put in the password every time.  This is annoying because, well, I think I covered that in the last paragraph.  Is there a way that we can permanently say “run as admin” so it doesn’t prompt for the password each time?  I read something about going to the game properties that I’m going to try but the website sounded suspiciously like you had to be an admin in order for this to work.

On the pregnancy topic, we’re now about 25 and 1/2 weeks along.  I’m pretty confident now that no matter what we’d make it to the 26 week time frame which seems pretty important ‘preemie’-wise.  Honestly, I want to go to 41 weeks JUST because I’m still mad at the US tech for telling me the clinic NEVER lets twins go overdue and really, I’m stubborn like that.  If I do make it to 41 weeks she can take all the credit for telling me I wouldn’t be ‘allowed’ to do that. 

Speaking of the twin birth, I am getting a tad bit more nervous about it.  I have some things I’d really like to ask my OB just to learn his stance.  I’m pretty sure he said that I would NOT be required to have an epidural, which makes me hugely happy.  I don’t recall anything about giving birth in a birthing room vs the OR so I’ll have to re-ask that.  I’m actually hoping to attempt that whole squatting thing and the prospect of climbing up on an operating table to do that sounds a bit unlikely so that will be asked.  The other big question would be on twin B.  If I’m not having a Csection, that means Twin A was vertex so we can assume that.  Twin B, however, could be hanging out horizontal up under my ribs by then for all we know.  (I’m not certain he isn’t, in fact, doing that right this very moment.)  Most OBs, from what I’ve heard, don’t like twin B to be born significantly later than Twin A and thus they go in after B.  As much as the idea of having my uterus invaded with rubber gloves hunting for baby feet appeals to me (especially considering the no epidural plan), I’d much rather just use an external monitor to make sure B’s heart rate is stable and, just, wait.  From what I understand, ‘natural’ timing for twin B can be several hours and in that time twin B can move all on his own to a better position for birth.  Hopefully I’ll remember to go over these things.  My next appointment is Tuesday, Jan 27th.  I’ll be able to ask then.  Assuming my brain hasn’t gone off to lollipop land after the glucose test drink.

I’m off to sleep now though.  After I pee.  And check on my son.  And do it all again in another 3 hours.  At least these two are cooperating.  One can sit on my bladder while the other jams up my rib cage and gives me heartburn from hell.  I just wanna tell them that NOW is not the time to complain about space issues.  If they don’t like it now, it’s about to get a WHOLE lot cozier.  At my next appointment I’ll be a few days away from 28 weeks.  That should put them at about 3 pounds each, right?