32 Weeks!

How far along? 32.5 weeks

Total weight gain: 17lbs down from 19lbs. At least I gained back two lbs from when I was sick. I have to eat much smaller meals now or I throw-up.

Sleep? Not good and I don't anticipate it getting better. I sit up for a good hour because laying down just hurts. I wake-up at least three times a night to pee and I have to get situated all over again. I long for the daylight most mornings because it's one day closer to D-day and although I won't be sleeping much then either, hopefully when I am sleeping, it won't hurt so much.

Best moment of the week?  Feeling  much better! I'm so happy to not feel like I am dying. I read that a pregnant woman in California died of the flu. I'm glad I read that after I was feeling better because it would have totally freaked me out. I really thought I was headed that way. Also, the nursery is getting close to being done. That makes me happy. I've hit the nesting phase now that I feel better (not that I can do much) and I feel pretty overwhelmed with what needs to be done still.

Miss anything?  I miss my un-pregnant body. Oh, I completely underestimated how hard it would to be pregnant with twins. I try not to complain because I am so blessed to be pregnant with these girls but it hurts and I can't do much. I miss playing with Sam (I hope he will forgive his mama for being a total bore). I can't take him anywhere anymore. It takes too much out of me and I contract like crazy.

Movement? Yes. They move all the time. I still can't feel Cora as much even though I know she moves all the time. Elena is head down and will make her exit first and Cora is actually transverse (no wonder it hurts so much). She may stay that way but my doctor says it's not a problem and that as long as Elena stays head down, I can still have a vaginal birth.

Food cravings? Reese's Easter eggs...the big ones or small ones but only the eggs. The Reese's minis or regular size are definitely not the same. I don't always eat them though. Like I said, food is not a friend to me. If I eat too much at a time, I will throw-up. It's all mechanical. I just don't have room and my reflux is pretty bad but controlled with Zantac and Tums.

Anything make you queasy or sick? I pretty much throw-up everyday just because these babies are crowding my stomach and my reflux gets away from me sometimes. Sam has pretty much gotten the wrong idea about what the toilet is for. He goes into the bathroom and lifts the seat and pretends like he throwing-up! And when I do, he tries to push me out of the way to join me. I love him!

Labor signs? If I do too much, I contract. My doctor said it's okay as long as it stops when I rest. I can't even carry a laundry basket without contracting. Sam and I push the laundry baskets up and down the hall. He loves it. Don't let that fool you into thinking my house is even kind of clean. I can manage to do the dishes if I do them fast then I have to sit down. When I go to the grocery store, I have to ride on one of their "jazzy carts". They are life saver! I haven't worked (yes, I'm still working) since it's gotten really bad so we will see what happens with that.

Gender?  My sweet girls. Cora Lynn and Elena Kate.

Symptoms? Reflux, rib pain, not sleeping, usual aches and pains. Oh the joys.

Happy or Moody? Emotional, very emotional. The close it gets to D-day, which is closer than I probably realize, the more I cry. I cry everyday which hasn't been the norm. I am nervous for delivery since I haven't experienced labor before . I'm so excited to meet these girls but it scary knowing that delivering them means the time we have with Cora is limited. I have such mixed emotions about delivery. The closer it gets, the more scared I get we are going to lose Cora. Everyday inside of me is another day she could die and we won't meet her alive. We picked out a plot for her this past weekend which was surreal. I've said it before, no mother should have to be planning a funeral while her child moves inside her. 

Looking forward to...? Finishing the nursery and getting this house in order. I can't wait until everything is in it's place again. We are still trying to organize the basement and shifting baby stuff around i.e. converting Sam's room into more of big boy room. Although, we are keeping him in his crib for now. I'm not ready for him to have that much freedom yet! I'm also looking forward to my parents being here, for good! They will be here next week and I can't wait. They sold their house in California and that has made me more emotional than I would have ever thought. Even thinking about it right now makes me tear up. But, I'm excited they will be so close and hope their transition goes smoothly.

Realization of the week? We are closer than I had thought. At my appointment this week, we talked about induction and it will probably be closer to 37 weeks than 38 which puts us at March 28th-ish. We went back and forth but after all of that, he told us he didn't think I would even make it that far. He said he would be surprised if I went past 36 weeks. That's just a little over three weeks away! Stress. I'm down to weekly appointments and NSTs and scheduled the rest of my appointments until 37 weeks. There were only four. That's how close we are.

Guest post...

I have been asked by a lovely friend to do a guest post on her blog here. I'm honored, especially since I don't feel like I'm a great writer or have any profound or eloquent insight to life. I'm just honest about my feelings and hope that my experiences and feelings can help others in my situation so they may not feel so alone. Everyone has a story to tell and this is mine...

Michael and I met in 2006 and were married later that year. I honestly never really thought about having children until I met him. I always knew that I wanted children and would get married, wait a couple of years, get pregnant, you know, the usual steps. I met, fell in love, and married Michael and I could not believe how much I wanted to have a baby right away. I wanted to be a mother and really wanted to make Michael a father. We were both still in school and wanted to enjoy the time we had together so we didn't do anything hasty but the urge was there and I couldn't wait until we were "ready".

Fast forward to 2008. After about 18 months of marriage and Michael's graduation, we felt like it was time to start "trying". I assumed, probably like most, that we would get pregnant pretty quickly. The first and second months were disappointing but maybe expected. The subsequent months of negative pregnancy tests and watching other people get pregnant was progressively, excruciatingly painful. Anyone wanting to be pregnant and it's not happening knows this pain. After 10 months, we decided it's time to start poking about to see if everything was okay in the fertility world. After several tests, we found out that no, things were not okay. We needed in vitro fertilization (IVF) to have our children. Other people hear of a diagnosis like this and think, problem solved but it's not that simple or unemotional. It's a devastating diagnosis. IVF is emotional, painful, time consuming and above all, expensive. I don't know many that have an extra $15,000 stuffed in their mattresses. It took us a year to be able to afford our first round of IVF. Trying to relay the emotional roller coaster that is infertility cyberspace than I have so feel free to head into the archives of my blog read about those months and years of heartache and joy.

To sum up 4 long years of infertility, we attempted our first round of IVF. We were so confident it would work, they might as well have just handed us a baby. But yet again, another negative test. Up until recently, that was the worst day of my life. A year of saving a lot of money and anticipating finally becoming pregnant, it didn't work. We didn't know what we were going to do or how we were going to afford to do it again. Fast forward a whole year and we were ready to try again. Different doctor, different plan and we found out we were finally pregnant! That joy lasted a split second because we quickly realized it was not a healthy pregnancy and after 10 weeks of waiting and hoping and praying, I had a D&C. The baby had stopped growing at about 6 weeks. We were devastated once again. How could this happen? Honestly, the miscarriage was not as devastating as the first IVF failure because I was happy to know that I could get pregnant. We had one frozen embryo left from our second cycle and it was something we did as soon as we could to "get it over with". After two failures, you kind of anesthetize yourself to the situation and go through the motions. After 4 years, we found out we were finally pregnant and it seem to be a healthy pregnancy. Nine months later, this little monkey was born...

Sam, around 14 months

My pregnancy was joyful, easy and exciting. I will say, having a child makes the heartache of infertility dull and distant. I will never forget what we went through because that would be a shame but he makes it easier to look back and smile. Although painful, I wouldn't change a thing because we have him, not a child, him. He is truly our ray of sunshine and a true miracle. We have loved every minute of being parents and have been eager to give him a sibling.

I have always wanted my kids to be closer together in age than farther apart. My sister and I are 18 months apart and I love it! So around Sam's first birthday, we geared up to do IVF again, maybe for the last time. We went through the motions again and were excited to find out we were pregnant once again. What a blessing! Nervous and excited we went to our first ultrasound to find out we were not only pregnant but we were doubly blessed with two strong heartbeats...TWINS! What!? 

First trimester jitters out of the way, we went to our 12 weeks ultrasound. Excited we saw two strong heartbeats again but something was a little off on Baby A. The baby had an early marker that could mean nothing to a heart condition to a chromosomal defect. My heart sunk. I believed it was nothing but over the next two weeks of testing, I was preparing myself to have a child with special needs, most likely Down's Syndrome. We opted not to have an amnio but did a DNA blood test instead. After two weeks of waiting and praying and preparing we got the results. Our baby's chromosomes were completely normal and we were having two girls!! What a miracle! What a relief!

We spent the next two months, watching our baby girls grow and just being blissfully overjoyed at the thought of raising twin girls along with our precious boy. Our family is complete. The time had come for our 20 week ultrasound and I was very nervous. I knew they would be scanning the the anatomy very thoroughly and I just wanted them to be healthy. After about a thousand ultrasound scans, it's easy to read the technicians. When everything looks normal, they are all happy to comment on how perfect your baby looks. When things are not, they get very silent. We have had a lot of quiet ultrasounds. There were a few things that didn't look quite normal to me but I couldn't put my finger on it. They doctor quickly came in after the ultrasound and let us know that a few things were abnormal. She said her heart didn't quite look right (something we had been nervous about since week 12), her right foot appeared to club, and she another marker that pointed towards a chromosomal abnormality. Nothing major but we weren't sure what, if anything, we were dealing with. We already had a test that was negative for the most common abnormalities so we were terrified we were dealing with something extremely rare. But I still felt confident that nothing was wrong. Maybe a heart defect but hopefully nothing too serious that couldn't be fixed. We opted to have an amnio at this point. I'm a need-to-know person so I can be prepared for what is to come. Initial results from the amnio take only a couple of days but the series of tests that come back during that time, we had already been tested for in the DNA blood test so we weren't expecting results for a couple of weeks. Three days later, just after Thanksgiving, our doctor called and wanted to talk to us immediately (never a good sign). My heart sunk once again and all I could think was, "please let it be Down's Syndrome". It's funny when things turn a corner, you find yourself wishing for the very thing you feared the most. 

It was not Down's (Trisomy 21). It was Trisomy 18 or Edward's Syndrome. Our initial blood test was wrong. The test is supposed to be 99% accurate. All I knew was that this diagnosis was labeled "incompatible with life". That's a pretty harsh label for such a precious baby. Our world crumbled. After four years of infertility, a miscarriage, failed IVF cycles, we were told we would most likely have to bury our daughter. How could this happen? Were we not exempt from things like this happening to us? That is what I really thought. I thought we had gotten past the hard part. We had endured our trial. This was not happening.  

Anger, crying, screaming, and questioning ensued. Even now I look back to the severe meltdown I had in the shower and it brings me to tears. I literally thought I was going to punch a hole in the wall. I wanted to punch a hole in the wall. We spent the next month letting things sink in, researching, trying to accept our daughter's fate. It's still, to this day, hard accept because she is doing so well. She is a tiny, little fighter. She does not show many of the typical anomalies that Trisomy 18 babies show. Just a mild club foot and delayed growth. Her heart is perfectly normal and she is a mover. We have been told she can pass away at anytime but if she lives until birth, we should expect her to pass away within a day to a week.

We don't know what to expect but here I am, 31 weeks pregnant with twin girls, trying to enjoy every moment and make memories with her while her heart still beats. I grieve many things daily. I grieve for her sister that they will never get to share that bond of a twin on earth. I grieve for her brother, who is still too young to understand what is happening (which I find a blessing in disguise). I grieve for her loving father, who will not get snuggle his two daughters together in his big, loving arms. She is still very much with us and we are doing well but we haven't had to say goodbye yet. We haven't done the hard part. We are making arrangements and preparing for the many scenarios that might take place. It's an odd feeling. No mother should ever have to think of funeral arrangements while her child moves within her. I used to think, "why us?" but then...why not us? I am not stronger or braver than any other mother so I would be able to "handle" this better. I do not have a better understanding of why these things happen. I've simply been chosen to be this special little girl's mother and I have been honored to carry her for as long as God will let me. I have a knowledge of our mortal purpose here on earth and she will fulfill hers more quickly than mine or yours.

31 Weeks!

How far along? 31.2 weeks

Total weight gain: 15lbs down from 19lbs. I will get an official measurement at my appointment next week. I'm pretty sure I've lost 3-4lbs in the last two weeks being sick. I couldn't eat much and then about a week into it, I couldn't keep anything down. Horrible.

Sleep? Sleep is something that I think I may have to say goodbye to for a long while. I just started feeling better a few days ago and I have been sleeping better since then but I have so many aches and pains at night. I pulled muscles in my ribs from coughing and it really hurts to lay on either side right now. My hips are very sore at night as well so sick or healthy, I don't think I will be sleeping well from here on out.

Best moment of the week?  The morning I woke up feeling slightly better! Michael was so excited to see my increase of energy that he wanted to do a bunch of fun stuff but I'm definitely not 100%. He is still overestimating how well I feel. I'm attempting to go back to work tonight for the first time in over 2 weeks even though I feel like I could use one more day. But I really am so grateful to finally be feeling better. I have never been so sick for so long.

Miss anything?  Not coughing! The cough has been the worst part of this flu. I have a feeling I will be coughing for long time to come and my ribs are still so sore from it. I also miss food. For the last two weeks I have been selecting my food based on how easily it would come back up. Lots of soups and soft foods. I'm glad I have started getting my sense of taste back. It makes eating a lot more enjoyable.

Movement? Yes. Despite thinking that this flu is killing them (I know it's not), they haven't really slowed down. I think Cora has flipped a couple of times and I'm curious to see if she still breech. Last time I checked her heartbeat, she was.

Food cravings? Just craving to be able to taste and that is finally coming back. Still don't have a huge appetite and I'm trying to be careful of food making me feel sick or triggering my reflux. When I got my sense of taste back, I really wanted sparkling apple cider so I ran out and got some. Just that trip to the store took everything out of me.

Anything make you queasy or sick? Just being sick has made me queasy and sick. I haven't thrown up in 2 days so that is a win for everyone. Sam has gotten used to me throwing up now. He didn't like to see me throw up at first but now he always comes in the bathroom and scoots me to the side so he can spit in the toilet too. What a weirdo. I love him.

Labor signs? No. My doctor has had to reassure me that babies are very resilient and this flu is affecting me more than it's affecting them. I had to go to L&D and get fluids and supportive care and the babies looked great. They almost admitted me but I opted to stick it out at home and come back for more fluids if needed.

Gender?  My sweet girls. Cora Lynn and Elena Kate.

Symptoms? Reflux, rib pain, not sleeping, usual aches and pains. Oh the joys.

Happy or Moody? Moody. Having the flu for 2 weeks will do that to you. I had two legitimate melt downs about being sick. Sobs because of feeling like I will never be healthy again.

Looking forward to...? Finishing the nursery. It's cleaned out and almost done being painted. We still need to paint the crib and get a dresser and chair so we have a ways to go. People keep telling me not to worry about it getting done because babies don't really need their own space. True, but I'm not really wanting to worry about anything like that after they are born. I just want to focus on what is happening and snuggle my babies. Plus, their clothes and diapers are currently in bags and boxes on the floor. Not ideal.

Realization of the week? We are super close. 6-7 weeks left. Sounds like an eternity to a largely pregnant woman but it's not really that far. I'm hoping it's that long still. We are so not ready for them to come anytime soon. We have too much to do still.

Hopefully I will get around to taking a picture. My wardrobe has been pajama bottoms and over sized shirts and my hair needs some serious attention. Not really excited to get in front of a camera.

29 Weeks...

How far along? 29.4 weeks

Total weight gain: 19lbs. Not too bad. I thought it would be more but I really don't eat nearly as much as I should but I'm not worried since they are monitored so closely and gaining weight appropriately.

Sleep? Sleep? What is that? I would probably be sleeping a little better if we weren't deathly ill in this house. Between Sam and I, no one is sleeping.

Best moment of the week?  My baby shower! My friend, Joy, and my sisters put together a beautiful, girly shower for our girls. There was a head band making station and beautiful memory books people could write in. I was not as emotional as I thought I would be but it definitely was surreal. I don't think it has sunk in that I'm having two girls. I've been in boy mode for so long and I haven't bought anything yet so opening all the girly clothes was a trip for me. It did make me a little sad knowing Cora may not get to enjoy all the beautiful, pink things she got but they are hers and I like knowing that even though they are just "things", they belong to her.

Miss anything?  Being healthy. Oh, I thought I was miserable before being sick. This is horrible. I'm currently fighting the flu and Sam is too. I've been praying for Michael to stay healthy and so far, so good. So much for flu shots.

Movement? Yes. Wiggly little girls. Seriously, they never stop. Last appointment they were both head down and now Cora is breech again. The little monkey had better flip again.

Food cravings? I wish I could eat anything at all. I have ZERO appetite right now being sick. I force myself to choke something down even though I can't taste it.

Anything make you queasy or sick? Nope. I'm lucky this illness is all respiratory and nothing to do with GI. That would be truly unbearable.

Labor signs? No. Although, I've had to have my doctor reassure me that my water can't break or my uterus rupture from coughing. I really think I pulled a muscle in my belly from coughing.

Gender?  My sweet girls. Cora Lynn and Elena Kate.

Symptoms? The usual aches and pains. I'm never completely comfortable. I always said that if I was ever fortunate to get pregnant, I would NEVER complain. Well, I complain...a lot. I feel bad when I do but it is so hard on the body to carry two babies. I can't breathe well, my body aches, and I don't sleep well. I think I finally have my heartburn under control. I started taking Zantac and that has really helped. A couple of facts about my body...my belly button has popped out. It never did pop out with Sam's pregnancy but it definitely has with this one. I also found my first stretch mark (ever) this week. I was pretty traumatized. It's a doozy. I never got any with Sam and assumed that I never would. At 29 weeks and a bit more to grow, I'm terrified for what's to come.

Happy or Moody? Moody mostly. It's just the sickness. I can't wait to feel better. Happy my girls are still with us and happy that we have another week under our belt.

Looking forward to...?  Being in the thirties. I feel like we have been in the twenties forever!  

Realization of the week? We are in the single digits on the countdown! Only 8-9 weeks left! The plan is to get me to 38 weeks and then we will be meeting these girls! I will be induced on 4/4/14 if I don't go on my own by then. Things are looking great for a vaginal delivery. It appears Elena (baby B) is going to make her entrance first which is favorable since she is bigger and will be able to fully dilate me. They were both head down at my last appointment which they said was unlikely to change at this point but I went back this week because of this flu and Cora had flipped again. She is small so I'm not surprised. Hopefully she will flip again soon and stay put.

29 weeks