Week 20 - Adorable Lil Brothers

We had an appointment today to check cervical length and vitals on both the babies and myself.  Everything looks great all around.  Heart rates were 158 (A) and 156 (B).  The weight I didn't gain a few weeks ago caught up to me - gah!  I'm blaming it on the chaos of the last couple of weeks and grad party food. BP and urine good and cervical length was excellent at over 4.5cm!!  According to the anatomy scan measurements both babes are right around 12 oz. - the equivalent of 3 sticks of butter each - or as my husband pointed out, a can of beer.  The twins in the BabyCenter image above are "stacked" where as these lil guys as of right now are side-by-side, A on my left and B on my right. Although this has been their preferred "layout" since the beginning, they do move around a lot and continue to flip flop from breech to vertex and back again.  As of right now they are both head down, the preferred position for a vaginal delivery.  That's several months away though so not getting my hopes up.  They will continue their acrobatics for awhile - that is until they run out of space in there!

Here are a couple of 3D images from last weeks anatomy scan.  One question I/we get often, especially now that we know they are both boys, is if they are fraternal or identical twins.  These two are indeed fraternal, they have separate amniotic sacs and placentas which is the best case scenario and elimiates our risk of twin-to-twin transfusion - a serious medical condition where one twin receives more nouristment than then other causing significant malnutrition in the other twin.  However, as I look over these pics I see several similarities in the boys apparence - just look at their cute lil matching noses!  I think these two brothers, although not identical, will definetly look like brothers.

Baby A

Baby B

Exciting Reveal

K&S and I made our way to MFM today for the anatomy scan accompanied by my husband Jason, both grandmas and a grandpa-to-be.  The short version is that everything looked wonderful.  Both Baby A and Baby B are growing right on schedule and measuring just days ahead.  All major organs are perfect and they were busy and active throughout the entire appointment.  After being scanned by the u/s tech Dr. Yang, one of the periontologist who will be overseeing my care due to this being multiples,  came in to take a look for himself and again gave the thumbs up that they were both looking wonderful.  The only thing of mention was that they typically like to see the umbilical cord insertion on the placenta to be centered and in our case - and forgive me because I can't recall which baby he was referencing or if it was on both - it is off to the side.  It's not a concern at the time but just something to monitor.

Of course everyone has been anxiously awaiting gender news and today we got a peek.  Ironically after having four girls myself, apparently I carry the opposite gender as a surro because K&S are expecting ...

TWIN BOYS!!!

That's right, it's two lil guys for my wonderful IPs.

Along with this news I'm also revealing a new look for the blog.  Thank you so much Cara for the new design!!

Week 19 - Belly Pic

We are likely beyond the halfway point and I'm still feeling pretty darn good and complaints are minimal.  I know this won't last forever though so I'm trying to enjoy the "glowing" phase of pregnancy.  I have anxiously been awaiting summer temps and they finally came today - Yay!.   Although I welcome the weather now, I'm sure come August when I am VERY pregnant I will be cursing it.

Friday this week we have an appointment with MFM (maternal fetal medicine) for the growth/anatomy scan.  I'm looking forward to seeing K&S and meeting K's parents too. :)  I'll leave you with a belly pic and I'll share details of our appointment later in the week. 

19 weeks with K&S's Twins

What I'm Craving

I came to the realization last night that my recent "cravings" for oranges have nothing to do with me actually wanting to eat oranges.  Each time I peel one what my body really wants is a cold tall Blue Moon.  It's gonna be a long summer! We shall be reunited this fall but, until then ... oranges will have to do.

 *sigh*

Week 17/18 - Navel Oranges

It's easy for me to make this comparison because my fridge is stocked with this fresh and juicy treat daily! As much as I love fruit, oranges have never been my go-to choice but lately I can't get enough!  I sometimes go through 3-4 oranges in a sitting.

Things are going great.  I'm feeling really good and can't complain and thank goodness because last week was super busy for me.  The spring  semester is coming to an end and I'm wrapping up my two classes so I had a project to finish up, observations to complete and finals to study for.  Tomorrow is my final day and if all goes well I should have an A in both classes. Anyway, in pregnancy news ...

We had a quick appointment today and since K&S were out just a lil over a week ago and will be out again end of next week I went to this one by myself.  The stats are; Baby A heart rate of 150 and breech, Baby B heart rate of 160 and head down.  No additional measurements on the babies were taken today since we have our BIG anatomy scan u/s soon where they will look over everything in detail.  We did do a cervical length check and that measured 4.5cm - perfect.  All my other stats were good too.  BP was 110/62 - great, urine - good, weight gain - less than a pound ... Woohoo!  I also had the AFP bloodwork drawn today, a test to rule out spina bifida.  Since we already did the NT scan it's not necessary to screen for Down's with this set of bloodwork since our results showed minimal risk.  This test comes with some hesitation since false positives aren't unheard of but, we'll try not worry about it and pray are no issues.  

Carrying twins hasn't been any different from my singleton pregnancies yet however, the appointment schedule is a tad overwhelming.  I was a little surprised to find out today I was missing two appointments on my calendar and had to set them up yet.  The number of visits is insane I tell ya.  This month alone we had a routine OB check and cervical length u/s on May 2nd, another May 14th, MFM on the 25th for the anatomy scan and another OB/cervical length check on the 31st.  That's once a week already and this pace isn't letting up any time soon - in fact it'll get more intense as time goes on and we add in the weekly NSTs!  

That's all for now.  I'll get a belly pic in soon and then our next appointment update will be at the end of the month and hopefully we will have some gender news to share. :)  Stay tuned. 

Week 16

We had a great appointment earlier this week.  Both babies were active and moving all about with heart rates of 150 (A) and 156 (B).  My youngest, five year old Isabelle, joined us and seeing the babies on u/s was a neat experience for her - being the "baby" of the family she'd never been to one before.   At this visit we also did the first of several cervical length checks - the OB wants to ensure that it stays long and closed and keeps babies where they need to be.  The ideal measurement is 3-4cm range and we are looking very good with a cervical length of 5.08cm.  Yay!  Everything else looks good too, BP was fine, urine ok.  I was doing great with very little weight gain but it's creeping up on me now ...

I had to take an early glucose tolerance screen, our OB does it twice with multiples patients.  They called me with the results and all was well.  I wasn't nervous about this one but the next one I have reservations about seeing as I failed the one hour in my last two pregnancies and had take the 3 hour - which thankfully I passed both times.  I'm praying I can avoid a repeat of that this time around, we shall see.

These lil ones are making their presence known.  My belly is filing out and K&S were excited to see the nice round bump that's emerging.  I started feeling ever so slight movements a couple of weeks back but now they are undeniable and all throughout the day.  I'm feeling great - no complaints. I'm enjoying it while I can because I know eventually I will have to slow down and I won't be so comfortable.  I've already planned out the majority of our summer with the mindset if we don't get it in by mid July, it's probably not happening!!

Baby A and Baby B say hello!!