Eventful Week

Sorry I've been such a bad blogger, but I've been SOOOO busy. Firstly, I've been helping the Jewish day school in my community with a project, and it's taken up SO much time this week. Secondly, my mom came to visit. So any time I wasn't working for Torah Academy, I was spending time with her. Thirdly, I've spent nearly the last 24 hours in the hospital. Urgh!

So here's what happened. Yesterday morning I had an OB appointment that went perfectly well. My belly measures 46cm (eeps), my blood pressure is great, I'm on antibiotics for another UTI and the babies have super heartbeats. She did another fetal fibronectin test as well as my group B strep test (no speculum). Later on in the day, I noticed that I was spotting! Not a lot and it was brown, but I called the doc to see if she thought it was from my appointment earlier or if it might be something else. She basically told me to get my tush down to labor and delivery. :-) So my mom and I came on over to the hospital. They did a speculum check and low and behold I'm dilated to 1cm! Whoops that's a change from being "tight as a drum" last week. As of last night my cerclage is still holding well and isn't pulling, but they wanted to keep me over night to make sure that 1cm doesn't turn into 2. I'm STILL waiting to be checked, and if it's fine I need to make it home before Shabbos. We also decided to go ahead and get the steroid shots, because now that my cervix is *really* not behaving, we want to be safer than sorry. So far so good! No weird side effects from the first shot.

Now, the reason I haven't been checked yet is because my doctor (actually a med student) came to see me this morning and he just so happened to be someone I went to Brandeis with. lol He's doing med school at Tufts and is doing his OB rotation here. In order to prevent the incredible awkwardness of having him check me, he transferred my care to another doc...but I still haven't seen her yet. She is supposedly going to come in about 10 mins to *finally* check me. I'll give an update then!

UPDATE: Still 1cm and will be going home in time for Shabbos! I just have to wait to get my second steroid shot and then I'm all set.

Honest Scrap

I've been tagged! Both Jenni & Wiseguy tagged me with the "Honest Scrap" award.



The Rules of the Award:

1) Choose a minimum of 7 blogs that you find brilliant in content or design.
2) Show the 7 winners names and links on your blog, and leave a comment informing them that they were prized with "Honest Scrap." Well, there's no prize, but they can keep the nifty icon.
3) List at least 10 honest things about yourself.

Blogs I Pick:

Rebecca @ The Binky Diaries
Lisa @ A Day in the Life of Preachman's Wife
A Few Good Sperm
Sherry @ Sherry's World
Marie @ Where is that Special Water?
Jewels @ Empty Nesting
Murgdan @ Conceive This!

10 Honest Things About Myself:

1) I have no clue how I'm going to handle two babies at once.
2) I am a cat lover.
3) I still keep in touch with my three best friends from college (and see one of them every few weeks).
4) I play nerdy computer games.
5) I enjoy bed rest because it gives me an excuse to be lazy.
6) I had very, very few friends going through school.
7) I'm incredibly short (4'11").
8) I like things that are organic, natural and/or environmentally friendly.
9) I have never smoked a cigarette, taken any illegal drugs or been drunk.
10) I spent the night after my wedding night in the hospital. :-)

Too Much Excitement

Sorry for the lack of updates, but I've been lazy the last few days. :-) On Friday evening I went to bed pretty early (like 9:30pm) and then woke up about 2 hours later. I got up and went to read for a while, and the whole time was having contractions (annoying and a teeny bit painful, but nothing I couldn't handle) about every 5 mins or so. Now I wasn't really worried that I was in labor, but with having frequent contractions, I was nervous that it might be affecting my cervix and therefore my cerclage. So, my hubby and I packed up and went to the hospital at 3AM. We got there, I was put on the monitor and checked. My cervix was closed and my cerclage holding steady, but we were watching the contractions on the monitor (and I had the pleasure of feeling them). They told me to try drinking more (even though I honestly had had a ton to drink the night before) and let me try to get some sleep. Shmuel (sort of) slept on two chairs that he made into a makeshift bed and I (sort of) slept on the bed. At 7AM we both woke up, so they checked my cervix again and it hadn't changed. YAY! My doctor came in and told me I was good to go, but she wanted me to get a steroid shot to help the babies' lungs just in case I went into labor. After much debate, my husband and I decided to forgo the shot because my fetal fibronectins were all negative (which means there's a very low chance of labor in the next 2 weeks) and because the shot really only makes a difference if the babies are born from 2-7 days after the shot is given. With my chances of delivering in the next week being so low, I didn't feel the shot was really necessary. Besides, after talking with the neonatologist from the NICU, it was obvious that if the babies were born at this point respiration is not the biggest issue. Their stay in the NICU would really be for other things, like temperature regulation, putting on weight and figuring out how to eat via mouth. For the first 24-48 hours they might have some trouble breathing, but after that it really shouldn't be an issue. We then went home, had lunch and then pooped out completely. I've had plenty of contractions since, but not with the same frequency. And THAT was my weekend. :-)

Grosgrain has another adorable skirt up for a giveaway. Check it out here: Blushing Buttercream Pettiskirt

Baby Pool Revisited

Here's another big link to my babies' pool just in time for IComLeavWe! Please put your guesses in now, because I'm locking the game on March 1!!! There are some bloggers out there who had pages and pages of guesses, so I'm hoping to have the same.



Make sure to leave guesses for both twins!!! Winner(s) will get some awesome prize (to be thought of at a later date...)

If you've already guessed and would like to change it, feel free. If you're having trouble changing it, email me (or comment to this post) and I can do it for you.

Ultrasound Update

The ultrasound went pretty well this morning. Babies are still cute. :-) My cervix is holding up, although I must've been having a contraction when she first measured because it was REAAAALLY short (like .65cm), and I couldn't see the cerclage knots. But after about a minute it went back up to 1.7cm and you could see the knots just fine. Neither the doctor nor the tech were worried, so I'm not worrying either. :-) I've also graduated! No more cervix checks! I'll still be going in to check the babies' growth, but that's it. Wooooo!!

I did get some decent pictures today, so I'll share them with you.

This is Baby A's profile


Here's a cute 3D of Baby A's face


And another cute 3D of Baby A's face


Here's Baby B's profile


And here's Baby B (and umbilical cord) in 3D


Enjoy!

Numb Belly

I discovered the other day that there are numb patches on my stomach (really just the area surrounding my belly button). I asked the doctor about it today and she says it's normal because my skin is sooooo stretched out. I wonder if I get my whole belly numb if I won't have to feel contractions? :-)

Speaking of contractions, the Braxton-Hicks are really annoying. They're still not painful (on my stomach), but I am feeling pain in my back and bladder. Oh man, every time I have a contraction it feels as if my bladder was 150% full. Now that's pain... Thank goodness it only lasts as long as the contraction and then my bladder goes back to feeling "normal" fullness. :-)

So, the doctor says all of my various symptoms are normal (and many are to be expected). On very good notes, my Braxton-Hicks contractions aren't affecting my cervix at all, my blood pressure is great and there are no warning signs of anything else (i.e. no protein or sugar in urine and my fetal fibronectin tests are all negative). The babies are in the same positions as always--Baby A head down, Baby B transverse. I've decided that they're making a T for Tamakwa. heh (Tamakwa deserves it's own post if you really want me to explain, and no, it's not a Yiddish or Hebrew word and has very little to do with Judaism.) I also only have about a week and a half left of the progesterone and then I'm done! My hubby got all freaked out when I said I was stopping it. He's like "but it's so early!" So I told him that just because I'm done with it, doesn't mean I'll go into labor the next day. Besides, I'll already be about 33 weeks. The only thing the progesterone is doing is helping to keep the cervix closed, but really the cerclage is doing the hard work. If the doctor is going to take out my cerclage at 34 or 35 weeks, I don't think stopping the progesterone a week or two beforehand is going to do any harm. My cervix isn't just going to suddenly open up...although that would be a pretty neat trick and make the whole labor and delivery thing much easier. :-)

Ultrasound tomorrow, and I posted a new belly pic this evening!

Sleeping

Sleeping has become rather difficult. First, I get tired at strange hours. I could stay up till 3am and still toss and turn for hours. But then once I'm asleep, I could go until noon (or later) with bathroom breaks every few hours. Secondly, I can't get comfortable no matter what I do. Left side, right side, back (propped up), nothing works... And changing positions is a whole other story. I don't know how my husband sleeps through that (he might not...) It's like an earthquake! *sigh* And once the babies arrive, I'm going to have no chance to sleep. Oh well.

I've decided that the underside of my belly is totally gross. I can't see it, of course, but it feels like cottage cheese (aka cellulite) gone wrong. It's all bumpy. :-( It might be stretch marks, but either way it's going to be ugly. The rest of my belly is FULL of stretch marks, but I'm pretty sure they'll fade nicely once I get back to normal size. Well, that's the price you pay!:-)