Author Archives: Sara

Tomorrow begins my second trimester.  HOLLA!  I’m still sort of in awe that I’ve been pregnant for such a short period of time, because it seems like it has been forever already.  I am enjoying it though, as best as I can since it is for certain my very last.

I’ve really noticed feeling better over the last week or so, save for my bout with food poisoning over the weekend.  Now is the time to start putting on some weight, as much as I am struggling with the fact that I need to put on more than the standard amount, and that I need to do it fairly quickly before they run out of room to grow.  I put on something like 60 pounds when I was pregnant with Eddie, and lost maybe 40 of it.  Then, with Cait, I gained maybe 15 total pounds and I lost 40 before she was a year old, getting back to sort of normal.  I don’t remember how much I gained with Hannah, but I lost almost none of it and managed to gain weight in the postpartum period with her.  I’ve maintained my current weight, fluctuating by 5 or 10 pounds here or there for the last 2 years.

Anyway, what I’m saying in my rambling is that I know that in order to have healthy and non-tiny twins, I need to gain more weight than is normally recommended by someone in my current state of being quite overweight. But I struggle between knowing this and actually doing it because of what I have been told my entire adult life AND in my 3 previous pregnancies–don’t put on weight! You are large! It is not necessary! Except for this time it is. So yeah, hard.

I’ve discovered some particularly odd aversions over the last week or so as well.  Things I cannot tolerate? Bacon, Nutella, and anything containing HFCS.  I can taste it! It leaves a horrible aftertaste! It SUUUUCKS. Especially since Ed brought home the rainbow sherbet I wanted and all it is, is a huge bucket of HFCS.  Woe.

Something that is different this time around as well, is that I have no solid and constant cravings.  I remember my previous pregnancy cravings SO! Vivdly! (Eddie-Twinkies and root beer, Cait: Strawberries and Cream Frappuccinos WITH a shot of vanilla powder, Hannah: All of the Onions) and right now…I have nothing.  I’ve had hankerings, but no actual cravings.  It’s weird.

In any case, 13 weeks over! 2nd trimester ahoy! We’ve made it!!

I should probably start taking some regular belly shots.

I did get that whole due date thing cleared up, and we are going by my LMP, not the initial sizing of the babies (BABIES!), and so, the official due date is March 27, making me 12 weeks 6 days as of today.

Last week man…after the bleeding escapade, I was kind of a wreck.  And then on Thursday, as I was pulling in to the parking lot of the doctor’s office my phone rang.  My doctor had been called on on an emergency, I would need to reschedule my appointment, and could I possibly come in on SEPTEMBER 25?(!!) I stayed polite, and said that no, I would not come in on the 25th, and she would need to find something for me much sooner.  She dug, and found me an squeeze in appointment for Monday.

I was parked at this point, so I called Ed, who was on his way, and ended up getting myself all fired up, because how are they going to ask me to wait through the entire weekend after what I had been through earlier in the week? So I ended up storming the OB office and losing my mind altogether.

I was calm with the nurse at first. I realize that you cannot make a doctor appear here in the office, especially when she is delivering babies, but there has to be a better option than Monday.  I cannot go the weekend wondering if everything is still ok.  I need this appointment.  This is when the nurse got huffy, and turned to her co-worker and said “It’s always when you think it’s going to be an easy day, that it turns in to a problem day.” Then she offered to call their other office and see if they could see me sooner than Monday.  You know, the office that staffs 2 doctors and an NP.

So she called, kept referring to me as a new patient (Me in the background: this is my 2nd visit, I am 12 weeks, I am NOT a new patient), and the nurse there was checking with the doctor, and was going to give her a call back.  Nurse went on with her business, making more calls to cancel appointments.  When the next patient also gave her hell, she turned to her co-worker and said “Man, all of these pregnant women are giving me such a hard time today.  It’s not like it’s my fault the doctor got called out.” Then she turns to me and says “This is the thing you have to be prepared for when you’re dealing with an OB.”

At this point, I told her that I wasn’t going to stand around while she badmouthed every patient in the practice, and told her to have the other office call me directly; I did not want to hear from her.  And I hightailed it out of there.

The other office called me soon after, apologized and insisted that I come in right away.  They would see me as soon as I got there. They apologized for the idiot I had to deal with. Other than it being a 30 minute drive, this was fine with me.  When I got there, everyone in the office was apologizing for the way the other girl had behaved.  She doesn’t usually work for them, I guess. I had a long talk with the NP. I heard 2 healthy heartbeats.  It all worked out.

I continued to spot through the weekend, so that was fun.

Yesterday was our 12 week scan, the one where they look for syndromes and trisomy and all that jazz.  I’ve never had that scan before, and I didn’t really care about the results.  I just wanted to see the babies.  The results were normal, Ed got to hear the heartbeats, and we got a couple pictures of each of them.  Teeny baby faces will never cease to creep me out, but the shot of baby A’s face reminds me of a goblin. The images don’t scan very well, so you’ll have to take my word for it. It was awesome though to see them so animated, Baby A using its feet to bounce off of Baby B’s sac.  Baby B being ornery and flipping all over the place to make it very hard for the tech to get a good photo. Both seeming legitimately pissed at being pressed on and prodded.

The best part was seeing my old OB, the one who delivered Eddie and Cait, who is now the head of perinatal services at our hospital, and talking with her about the bleeding, and twins in general, and having her say with certainty that she sees no internal reason for my bleeding.  It is probably a blood vessel or clot on the cervix, and I should really just relax a little about it.  Be vigilant, you know, if it becomes heavy again, but she truly feels like it’s nothing.  She also confirmed that we have 2 sacs, and 2 placentas making this a much lower risk twin pregnancy. It doesn’t mean for certain that the babies are fraternal because there could have been a very early split for this configuration. We go back on 10/30 for the anatomy scan, and will hopefully be able to determine sex at that time.  6 weeks! I don’t know how I will make it that long!

So anyway, it’s been quite the eventful week 12.  I’m looking forward to finishing up this week, starting my 2nd trimester, and getting more leggings in the mail.

How I made it through 3 other pregnancies without leggings, I will never know.

We had a bit of a scare yesterday.  There was blood, and lots of it.  It actually started on Sunday, but honestly, I thought that I irritated something with..you know, activity with Ed on Saturday night.  It stopped and I thought all was well, until I got up with Hannah yesterday morning to quite a sight.

I went back and forth over whether or not to call the doctor at the ungodly hour of 5:30am or wait it out until the office was open.  I was panicked though, and did call and the (very annoyed sounding) doctor called me back around 6 and told me to go to the emergency room.  “Don’t eat anything, just in case you will need surgery.”, she told me.  Very reassuring.

We dragged the poor kids out of bed and to the hospital with us, and Ed’s brother and fiance met us there to keep an eye on them. I had blood work, a sonogram and an internal exam, and everything was normal–we had 2 heart beats, closed sacs and a closed cervix.  By this time, I wasn’t actively bleeding anymore. Everything was chalked up to a fluke.  Could have been a blood vessel that broke, could have been anything really.  They had no idea.  So I was sent home with instructions to take it easy for a few days, no lifting the kids, no work in general, just basically bed rest.  So I stayed in bed and on the couch for the rest of the day, and today I am down in my office, but am doing my best to just sit here, and not go upstairs and do the dishes and clean up the kitchen (I swear, I take one day off and the house has EXPLODED), and take care of the 5 loads of laundry we have.

We are cautiously ok, I think.

It was really cool to see the babies again.  Where they seemed so far away from each other on my initial sonogram, they are one right next to the other now, head to head, just hanging out snug as bugs.  We didn’t get to keep a picture, ER and all (plus, their machine was hoopty and OLD) but now I am really looking forward to my high resolution scan next week.

As if to reassure me, I started feeling some of that fizzy bubbling yesterday, my first indication that they are moving around in there.  It was slight, but unmistakeable.

I still don’t know whether to consider myself as 12 weeks or 11 weeks along.  The hospital seemed hellbent on going by my LMP rather than the sizing date we were given.  When people ask when I am due, I just say “Sometime in March.”

I’m at the point of not being able to wear my favorite sweats anymore; a very sad thing. But I’ve maintained not being sick for nearly a week, and can even drink coffee again without wanting to die (in moderation, I promise). issues yesterday aside, I’ve been feeling pretty good.

I’m looking forward to my appointment on Thursday, and again, the sonogram on Monday.

And OH! Yesterday, Eddie kindly pointed out that I was getting more of those “pale squiggly lines” on my belly! A good sign that the babies are growing! OMG.

If I had to guess, I would say that I spend about 50% of my time worrying.  Worrying that something will happen to one or both of the babies, that one or both of them will have medical issues, about c-sections and weight gain, about how bringing 2 more babies in to this family might somehow screw the other kids up.  You name it, and I have worried about it, and it’s not something that I can turn off.  I’ve been fairly nonchalant about pregnancy in the past, but this time? This time I have anxiety and stress.

A lot of it, I think, stems from having to wait for what seems like a long time in between my appointments.  By the time I see my OB next week, it will have been 5 weeks since my initial appointment, and 4 weeks since we got the big twin news.  I need to be able to hear heartbeats, is what I’m saying.  Not that I have any reason to feel like there is a problem.  My belly is growing, I was ridiculously sick up until a few days ago, and I must wear a bra 24/7 because my boobs are so sore, and weigh about 75lbs each.  I just need assurance, I guess, in the form of 2 thundering heartbeats.

But yeah, the last few days, food has finally tasted good again.  Although I’ve had a few minor nausea spells, I’ve felt pretty well most of the time.  Aside from exhaustion, I’d say I feel good, even.

My blood test results came back last week, and I panicked when seeing that my hCG levels were over 356k, well above the normal range listed within the results.  This was until I realized that “normal” is equivalent to singleton pregnancy, and OH YEAH! There’s 2 babies in there.

On Saturday, I dug out and washed my maternity clothes.  We were fairly certain we were done having babies, so I didn’t save much, but I have 2 pairs of jeans, a skirt, a dress and several tees.  Although the jeans fit just fine, they are not as comfortable as I remembered. It must be the way I am carrying the twins, because that “under the belly” band that I have been so fond of? Was not my friend.  It actually sort of hurt.  It’s good that I lost weight a while back, because my regular jeans are actually still ok.  Snug, but not uncomfortably so, unless I wear them for hours on end.  I think the rubber band trick will let me wear them for a bit longer too.  I did buy quite a few things at Old Navy online last week too.  Fall sweaters and tunics.  A pair of leggings.  And, ok, I bought the babies their first gift.  This will work for boys or girls, I think.  I am in LOVE!

(Sadly the hat was not available)

I have had strong feelings that both babies are boys for a while though, but Hannah insists that it is one of each.  She told me I was pregnant before I was.  She told me there were 2 babies.  I might believe her.  (Her knowing things is something I want to talk about another time, as an aside.) We’ll see though. We are in the beginning stages of discussing names though which is always fun. I’ve liked Henry for a while, and Ed was so so on it.  My mother telling me that she hated it, it was too old fashioned and that it was too “english-y” has totally clenched the fact that if there is a boy, he will be Henry. Ed has shot down both of my girl suggestions so far, Georgia (a southern stripper, he says) and Jane/Janie (“Like Janie’s got a gun?? NO.”) but, I have between 25 and30 more weeks to wear him down, so we will see.  Saying no to Georgia hurt though. I felt the same way I felt when I heard “Hannah” and knew it was our baby’s name. I could picture Henry and Georgia. It may be my Hill to Die on name.  For the record, he likes Olivia and Abby. (I love Olivia, but if you pair O as a first initial with our last name…well..I just can’t get past what it does.)

Anyway, generally speaking, things are good.  Better than good even, if I could just relax.  10 weeks is a good place to be. I have no real food aversions (though the amount of hummus I ate early on has maybe ruined that for me) and no big cravings yet.  Ok, I’ve eaten Arby’s more times than I’d like to admit.

Yes. Things are good. I’ll end this post with a photo of my 10 week belly.  Granted, there is a bit of belly fat involved here, but there is no doubt I have growing babies. BABIES (Yes, Ed and I sleep in the old nursery. We have not removed the old borders. Someday.)