Random ramblings

I'm still here! It's 36 weeks today. There's been several days in the past week in which I was sure I would be meeting out son but luckily he's stayed put. I'm still contracting away - sometimes every 4-5 minutes for several hours on end. In my antepartum testing, my contractions are getting stronger - I now watch the toco monitor to see how high they get. I hit a new high on Tuesday of 80. The antepartum nurse was impressed and she's convinced I won't make it to my scheduled c-section date. I have an OB appointment tomorrow so we should find out how my cervix is holding up to all the contractions.

In other news the pipsqueaks (aka the twins) are still alive. We heard them last night with the doppler and we'll get a chance to see them on Friday at R's nuchal u/s.

Since my last blog a week ago I've written so many blogs in my head but unfortunately that hasn't translated into actually blogging. So instead I thought I would share some of the random thoughts and ongoings of the past week.

• That creepy dad I blogged about came in for an appointment today ( actually I squeezed his daughter in to my already full schedule). He was somewhat better behaved today but he still made some comments. He said my stomach was tight. I always thought tight was a good thing but then he followed it up by asking if I was doing sit ups b/c it's important. Hello, I can't even engage my abdominal muscles to sit up in bed, does he really think I'm doing crunches at night? When I said no, he then asked if I was exercising daily (and not in that wow you look great kind of way but rather the "you don't want to be fat after you give birth kind of way"). I said no and changed the subject.
  
• Pregnancy has taken my wife from having an amazing sense of smell to now having a freakish sense of smell. Seriously she's at blood hound level. I should offer her services up to the local police department.
• Apparently nausea makes one not be able to do anything (even though I managed to work full time while puking 4-5 times per day) and pregnancy has made me lose my sympathy. If R is nauseous she's only able to lay in bed - she can't do school work or house work for that matter and I become totally not nice. I think we're both working on this, well I'm trying to be nicer but it's hard. Gotta love the 1st and 3rd trimester combo.
  
• Straight girls really love baby showers and shopping for babies. I don't think this is a common trait among lesbians. However straight women are genuinely excited about buying baby stuff and watching a pregnant woman open gifts. It's something I never expected. I had a baby shower at work this week. It was arranged by my office staff and they kind of forgot to tell me about it. I found out about it the day before by accident ...oops. My staff and colleagues were super generous which is not something that I'm totally comfortable with. Especially for my MA's to be getting me so many things when I make so much more than they do and I know most of them have large families and some are single moms. However, they all kept saying how much fun they had shopping for the gifts and how much they love to buy baby stuff. Must be a straight girl thing, especially b/c my wife absolutely hates BRU and we're having 3 kids.
  

Making plans

I can't believe it's been a week since I last posted. A lot has gone on. First off I started my half days of work this week. So far it's been great! I'm contracting less than usual so I think it's helping. (Don't get me wrong, I'm still contracting quite a bit but yesterday afternoon was better than most afternoons).

We had our baby shower this past weekend. It was so wonderful to finally be able to celebrate having a baby. We've come full circle on baby showers through our infertility journey - from attending them to being to it being too hard (and being too bitter) to attend to emerging from that dark place and once again being able to go to one to now having one of our very own. It still seems surreal to me that in a months time we'll have a baby of our very own and 2 more on the way.

As for the boy, I had a growth scan last week and he's huge. I know that u/s this late in pregnancy aren't the most accurate but at 34 weeks the boy was already estimated at 7 lbs. He's also got quite the large head (but normal looking brain b/c you know my doctor mind was all sorts of anxious when his head was measuring above the 90%). Hmmm...I wonder if our donor had a big head as a baby as big heads can run in the family - there's a detail they don't give you in the sperm donor package (but I'm getting ready to birth a baby I realize head percentiles should definitely be included). So I'm having some gargantuan baby boy with a huge head. Luckily he's still breech so I may not have to try to squeeze his big ole noggin out of my girly parts. My OB doesn't think that trying to turn him is a good idea for many reasons and I agree with her. So after finding out that he's still breech and then hearing about his size and weight, my OB thought it best to schedule a c/s. While I have always wanted to be pregnant and have had many pregnancy expectations (like pregnancy yoga or having a pedicure which I got last week for the first time ever), I have never had my heart set on delivering vaginally. Sure it would be very cool to birth a baby but if it doesn't happen that way then it doesn't happen that way - for me the fantasy was more about being pregnant and then having a baby but not so much the exit strategy. So now we're figuring out a date so that my mom for when my mom will be able to be here since I know she wants to see my with a big belly if possible. Obviously all the planning in the world could mean very little if the boy decided to take advantage of all of the contractions and break free of the womb a bit early. I'm hoping that he'll stay put for 4 1/2 more weeks - is that too much to ask for?

contractions and hormones

I'm a day away from 34 weeks. I'm still contracting quite often. While the end of the day is the worse, today I was actually contracting 8 minutes apart during my antepartum testing at 8:30am. The antepartum testing nurse was not too happy. Especially when the buzzer went off and I popped up ready to go see patients. She wanted to try to have my OB see me today. Being a stubborn doctor (we really do make the worse patients), I declined, especially since I have an OB appt tomorrow. However by the time I got back to my office in the other part of the hospital, I was in tears. I was having a hormonal pregnancy moment and was so afraid of having a 33 6/7 weeker. I know that the boy would survive and do just fine outside of me at this point. In fact yesterday I saw a set of twins born at 33 6/7 weeks who were 13 days old but still below birth weight and I kept trying to imagine one of them inside of me. I watched their little movements and I could totally correlate them with the movements I'm feeling inside of me.

But I digress, although I know that a 34 weeker would do just fine, I also know that it would likely mean that I would come home from the hospital without him. That he would have to stay in the special care nursery as a "feeder/grower" likely getting some gavage feeds for a few days or even a week or 2 before coming home and I really don't want that. My time at home will be limited as I have to go back to work and I don't want to be home without my baby. So I took a terbutaline pill and worked through my day. I did finally get a hold of my HR lady and had her map out for me how my leave would be affected (and most importantly my pay) if I went out on 50% disability. I think it's totally doable so tomorrow, I think I'm going to have my OB write me out on disability and just work half days until the boy is born. My OB has been suggesting this since my fall and the start of my constant contractions. This way I'm hoping to keep him in me longer. I also want him to hold off until my mom is here. She can't come until the week before his due date because of her chemo schedule so this boy needs to hold off until 39 weeks.

Things around our house have been interesting to say the least. 2 pregnant women is crazy...way too many hormones, especially the 1st trimester and 3rd trimester combo. R is nauseous all day which makes her cranky. I'm big and uncomfortable which also makes me cranky. Add in some contractions every 5 minutes in the evenings and you get an anxious cranky pregnant lady dealing with a nauseous cranky pregnant lady - fun times! Half way through our bickering we catch on to what's going on and we're able to control it (somewhat). I'm not sure how it'll go with me cutting down on work. I'm hoping that I'll mellow out some because I won't be contracting as much and I'll also be able to take afternoon naps. I'll also be able to do a little bit more for R so I won't be so resentful when she's too nauseous to get herself something from the kitchen and asks me to do so when I'm in the middle of a contraction freak out. However I'm afraid that we'll just annoy each other more if we're both home. I guess we'll see.

Besides the 9 week mark for R this past weekend and the 34 week mark for me tomorrow, this week also marked the 7 year anniversary of our first date. Despite all of our new moodiness, I love you bunches R! I love to reminisce on our anniversaries but all I could think about this year is how our lives are going to change. This is our last anniversary as a family of 2 - next year we will likely be a family of 5. That's so wild but I'm so excited for it!

shopping trip

This week has been better with regards to the contractions. I think hearing that my cervix was still closed on Monday and also having another negative FFN really reassured me. I didn't really have to take a terbutaline pill until today. I had some contractions this morning which is rare - I usually don't contract until the afternoon and evening, so I knew I was in for a bad day. I took a half of a pill in the morning which only helped a little. By mid afternoon it had worn off and I was contracting more, so I took a whole pill. For those that don't know terb makes your heart race and makes you jittery. I'm sure my late afternoon patients thought I was manic. I felt like I was rushing everyone and I had pressured speech. My heart was racing and I felt all jittery - it was like I stole a patient's ritalin and used their albuterol all at once. Fun times!

My contractions today were probably the result of overdoing it yesterday. I felt good and hadn't contracted so after work, I decided to go to Tar*get. I figured I needed to get some things for my post delivery days. First off I keep reading reports that a must have item for the post partum days is a squirt bottle. I didn't think that the squirt bottle that we use to keep the cats off the kitchen counter should be used to mist my girl parts. So I bought myself a pink squirt bottle - pink did seem like the appropriate color.

I then also figured I needed some pads. Who the hell wears pads? I mean I guess I wore them once - as in my first period. I'm sure my mom bought them for me then. I hated them from day 1. I tried using a tampon on my second period and I finally figured it out by my third. Yeah, I know wore pads after my miscarriages but those were bought during a moment of grief and I really have no recollection of buying those. So based on the reports I've been reading on the message boards, I'm going to be having some major hemorrhaging. Thus I figured I needed a box of something called "super". Do I want wings? Those seem like a good thing to have if I'm hemorrhaging. Why are there so many brands - who the hell buys these things except for pregnant women. I must have stood in that isle for what seemed like hours. Several women came by and seemed to know exactly what they wanted. So I ended up grabbing a box of supers and a box of regulars - hopefully that'll do the trick. Any suggestions?

As for the twins - they are now called the pipsqueaks and they are still both alive. R had another u/s today. It's so cool to see how much they grow at this stage. They now have little limb buds and they were moving all around. Both had really strong heartbeats (our RE doesn't give us numbers) but one seemed faster than the other. I'm really hoping that old wives tale of girls having the faster heartbeat is true and we have boy/girl twins in there. That would give "the boy" a brother so he's not the only boy in the house and that would give us our much wanted daughter (not that the boys aren't wanted). If it's girl/girl twins then the poor boy would have 2 moms and 2 sisters - that's way too much estrogen. We've now been released from the RE's office - after over 3 years of seeing RE's, it was bitter sweet to end our relationship with the clinic.

A pathetic weekend

We had quite the pathetic weekend, spending about 44 of the 48 hours of the weekend in bed. I continue to have frequent contractions and decided to put myself on bed rest for the weekend. Meanwhile R woke up to spotting on Saturday morning. While we know it's normal to spot, especially with multiples, it still freaks R out and thus she too put herself on bed rest. On Sunday, we did manage to get out of the house as we were going a bit stir crazy. We picked up our glider and ottoman for the nursery (the same glider that we'll have to take out of the nursery when it's time to make room for 2 more cribs). The joys of 2 pregnant women, neither one of us can lift. So for now the glider is in the garage still in the box. We'll have to figure out a way to get it in the house - we managed to slide it out of the car and we did push it around some in the garage but no lifting. Then it was back to bed.

As for me, these contractions are driving me nuts. I was really enjoying my pregnancy. I have always wanted to be pregnant and now with R being pregnant with twins, I'm pretty sure this will be my only pregnancy. We all know I hated the first trimester but finally in the second trimester, pregnancy began to live up to my pregnancy expectations. I was loving my big belly and enjoying things like pregnancy yoga. Now every time that I stand up I contract. I have all this energy and there's so much I want to do but I'm afraid to do anything. Other than work, I pretty much am on bed rest. I wanted to be one of those women who works until the day the deliver, now I'm considering going out on disability. Besides the possible financial burden of me going out on disability, I would go crazy being home all day and I would drive R crazy. I think I would obsess over every contractions if I was at home, whereas when I'm at work, I know that I probably don't even feel half the contractions because I'm so busy. I just want these contractions to stop so that I can go back to loving pregnancy. I want to resume pre-natal yoga. I want to clean the house. I want to take care of R who has been a nice shade of green lately. I want this boy to be born around his due date and am petrified that he'll be born early.

I did go see my OB today. I should have had her check my cervix on Friday for piece of mind through the weekend. Instead I had multiple dreams about contracting, to the point that when I would wake up, I had no idea if I actually had contracted or just dreamt about it. So I went in to see her - agg, I feel like such a high maintenance patient. I'm sure she hates to see me coming or to open her e-mail b/c inevitably there's something from me. However she's great and always fits me in. Today she did another FFN which was again negative. She also checked my cervix which is still "very tightly closed" and still thick and high. She's also perplexed as to why I'm contracting so much, so she decided to take a look at my placenta to make sure that it looked ok (especially since this all started after my fall). Placenta looks great! So I basically was reassured that even though I'm having tons of braxton hicks contractions, everything continues to look good. In other good news, I'm still only 20 lbs above my pre-pregnancy weight (granted I did start this pregnancy about 10 lbs over my ideal weight). I've been eating tons lately so I was sure I would be up a lot more this time.