Ten Times Crazier

We just got back from the anatomy scan. It was not as exciting as I expected it to be. The tech didn’t pause for very long on views where I could actually make out a baby. I would’ve liked to get a nice full-body view of each of my guys and then just sit and watch them wriggle for a while, but I guess the doctor’s office doesn’t really have time for that. They said both babies look great in every way. Little One is still about a week smaller than Big One, but their size difference still isn’t raising any concerns.

Also, I can stop avoiding the use of gender-specific pronouns. It’s been confirmed that both little guys are sporting boy parts!

Oi, when we first looked in on him, was curled up (still head down in the bottom of my uterus) with his knees right next to his ears. I felt kinda bad for him being all squished like that, but he showed us later in the scan that he could stretch out. The tech said he has really long feet.

Yen hasn’t changed location, either. I thought he must’ve moved with all the commotion I’ve felt going on in his area of the womb lately, but I guess he’s just an active little bugger (which he readily demonstrated during the scan). He is still stretched out on top of and perpendicular to his brother.

Tonight I’ll scan and post in the Ultrasound Gallery some pictures they gave us. There’s already a new 18 week belly pic that we took on Wednesday in the Belly Gallery.

Two little boys. Sounds like trouble to me. I can’t wait!

This morning (at 18 weeks today!) I had my first encounter with the calf cramps while I was trying to wake up, and holy freakin’ crap! For a minute I just lay there in shock sucking air through clenched teeth and grasping at my poor leg.

My sister had told me about this the first time I was pregnant, and I had read about it, but I couldn’t for the life of me remember what I was supposed to do to make the pain stop. Am I supposed to point my toes or flex them up toward my shin? Think, Megan, think! I don’t KNOW! Let’s try pointing them. Hurry! OOOOOWWWWWW! Okay, it’s definitely not pointing. Flex them up and slowly this time… aaaaahhh. I was then able to release my body from its state of rigor, but even now, more than three hours later, I can still feel it when I walk or stretch my calf muscle. I didn’t think this was supposed to start happening so soon.

I’m big enough now that people don’t have any reservations about asking me about my pregnancy. The first stranger to ask me if I was pregnant was a cashier at Target last week. When she asked, I laughed and told her that was a dangerous question, but yes, I am. We then commenced on the conversation I have had with every other person who has posed this question since.

Life is full of the conversations. There’s the meeting-new-people- at-college conversation (Where are you from? What’s your major? What dorm are you in?), the home-from-college-for-summer conversation (What’s your major? How many years do you have left? Are you dating anyone?), the newlywed conversation (How’s married life treating you? Is it hard adjusting to living together? When are you going to have kids?). I guess most of them make sense (although some of the questions are a little prying), but when you are on the receiving end of these questions, it gets pretty monotonous. Jeff and I practically have a script down for the answers to the questions of the friends/relatives-we-haven’t-seen-in-a-while conversation. The pregnant conversation, for me, goes something like this:

her: When are you due? / How far along are you?
me: November. / [however many] months. (I quickly discovered that when you tell most people how many weeks, they get totally confused.)
her: Have you [insert some pregnancy symptom]?
me: Yes, [insert as brief an explanation as possible].
her: My [insert friend or relative who was pregnant at some point] [insert story of terrible pregnancy symptom].
me: Oh. That sounds terrible.
her: Do you know what you’re having? (She obviously means to ask if it’s a boy or a girl.)
me: Twins.
her: [collecting herself for a second because that was not on the list of expected answers] Twins! Wow! / Twins. Yikes!

It branches out to about three or four possible paths from there, but even those converge most of the time. It’s gotten pretty boring, but I guess I don’t mind it too much yet. I’d rather be bored of having the same conversation about my pregnancy over and over than being still not pregnant. And luckily only two people have touched my belly uninvited. If that gets worse, I’m going to have to get this shirt because it really bugs me. Seriously. It’s still my belly even if it is carrying two adorable little parasites.

Anyway. I have the big ultrasound in two days! I am really, really excited. Not only should we get a more certain answer on the sexes, but we will get to see that they are doing alright. I’m really looking forward to that because since I have been following this poor, sweet woman’s story about losing her twins after 19 weeks, I have had a few bouts of anxiety for my little guys. I ate three Lik-m-aid Fun Dips Monday night just to try to get the guys to kick me for some reassurance.

As of now, I am being poked from the inside pretty regularly (thanks, my little guys), and expect to have nothing but great news and awesome video footage(!) to share after the scan on Friday.

I made and posted a couple new pages.  They’re over there in the sidebar.  One is a gallery of my favorite ultrasound pics, and the other shows the progression of my belly growth at bi-weekly intervals (the last one was taken a week ago).

In other news, we bought cribs.  Cribs.  Beds wherein our little guys will sleep.  (It was difficult for me to type “will” just now instead of “might” or “should one day.”  I still can’t feel like it is really going to happen.  I still feel myself emotionally bracing against inevitable tragedy.)

You see, this weekend we got a package in the mail from some friends in San Francisco (whose wedding we will miss this fall because it is too close to when the guys are supposed to arrive… it makes me sad).  It was two of the most adorable onesies ever, and the inaugural gift for the guys.  I almost cried (I can blame that on the hormones, right?).  Those two onesies are now the only baby things in our whole house (well, that is unless you count the quilt that I started making around the time we started TTC, but seeing as how I started it over three years ago, I don’t know if I believe that it will ever get done, so I am not counting it).  This got me to thinking.  Other people think it’s soon enough to start getting things for the babies; why don’t I?

Then I did the math on how long it will be until we hit 36 weeks (it would be awesome if we could keep them in there longer than that, but odds are that we won’t).  It’s only four and a half months away.  We may even have less than that since the fact that I am running on one kidney puts me at higher risk for complications like preeclampsia; I may end up on bed rest or even in the hospital.  Even if everything goes just the way I hope, I will probably be too big and uncomfortable to get much done during the last month, anyway.  Plus, I have an hour or two less every day than I used to since I’m sleeping more.

So we have four and a half months or less to prepare for what will probably be the most significant change of our lives.  That realization made me a little panicky.  There is a lot of research and shopping to be done.  I have to clean out the future nursery (it is not messy, but there’s a lot of stuff in there (the closet has been our catchall since we moved in)), and I have to get rid of the bed (we could’ve kept it in there if we were having one baby, but it will not fit with two cribs).  I’m thinking we’ve got a garage sale’s worth of stuff to move out, but I can’t even begin to think about that.  The house needs a good once-over. (I don’t mean a sissy cleaning.  I’m talking the in-depth kind of cleaning that includes carpet steaming and an entire Saturday cleaning one bathroom (which hopefully won’t take longer since I’ll be using vinegar instead of m@gic bubbles).)  I also want to do all the finishing touches to the renovations we’ve been working on for the last three years.  Oh, yeah.  I’d also like to finish that quilt I started three years ago and make two more (much, much simpler ones) for their cribs with matching window treatments.

To assuage my panic (even if just a little), Jeff sat down with me and we researched and shopped and picked out the cribs we wanted and then we bought them.  Hooray!  One thing down, five kajillion to go.

I’m totally screwed.

My appointments with Dr. Wendy never seem to proceed the same way twice. Sometimes they send us to an exam room and then to the ultrasound room afterwards, sometimes we go directly to the ultrasound room, and last time (two weeks ago) we went to an exam room and then nothing, no ultrasound. It was the first pregnancy appointment we’ve had where we didn’t get an ultrasound (I think we’ve had more in a trimester than most women get over an entire pregnancy). We just got a fundal height measurement and boring ol’ doppler. I mean, it was great to hear the little guys’ hearts beating, but that is nothing compared to seeing them wiggling around. It was very disappointing.

At yesterday’s appointment, I really had my hopes up. I figured since we didn’t have an ultrasound last time that surely we would this time. I was a little let down when they put Jeff and me in an exam room rather than sending us directly to the ultrasound room, but I still had hope. Then Dr. Wendy came in with the little doppler box (the only other time she’d done that was last time when we got no ultrasound), and my heart sank. Man. No seeing the babies for me.

So we listened to heartbeats (both were around 150-155 bpm) and she checked my fundal height (the top of my uterus is right at bellybutton level — that’s the 18-19 week mark for single babies) and as she was wiping the gel off my tummy Dr. Wendy said, “Sorry we’re going to get you all gooey again. Let’s go have a look at those babies.” Did she mean what I thought she meant? I had been certain that there was going to be no ultrasound, but she had the nurse take us right over to the ultrasound room, and I was cheering in my head the whole way.

Oi is curled up down in the bottom of my uterus and is upside down. Yen is stretched out sideways across the top. Yen is still about a week smaller than Oi. We saw both of them squirming around, and it was awesome as usual. Their placentas are attached on opposite sides of my uterus. Dr. Wendy says that is good because it makes it more likely that the babies will share my blood supply equally.

Then she asked us if we want to know the sexes. I think I blurted out “Yes!” before she even finished the question. As I’ve said before, I really don’t care what sexes they are; I do really want to know, though. I am just so excited to meet them that every little bit of info I can get about them is like steak to a hungry dog. You want me to roll over and bark for it? No problem. Anyway, it’s still pretty early to tell, and Dr. Wendy told us not to go out and start buying gender-specific things yet, but she is fairly certain that Oi is a boy. Yen, however, was not very cooperative. Dr. Wendy says she thinks she saw boy parts but is a lot less certain about Yen. So Jeff, my mom, and I may very well have been right in feeling like we’ve got two boys in there. I’ll post the pictures soon (ultrasounds and belly).

Our next appointment is with Dr. Dave, the perinatologist, on June 20th. That one will be for a detailed anatomy scan of which we will get video footage! We should also get a more certain answer about the sexes of the little guys then.

I can’t wait!

Thank you, everyone for the comments in response to my question about eating. I have already used many of your suggestions, and my weight is on the upswing (I weighed three pounds more yesterday than I did a week ago (although my hair was wet when I weighed myself last night))! It was especially awesome to be reassured that my babies are good at being parasites. I don’t mind giving up my nutrients if it means they are getting them.

Although (at 15 weeks today!) the nausea has not left me yet (dangit), something marvelous has begun to happen. Jeff and I were at our favorite restaurant (a Chinese place that’s about as authentic as you could hope to get in the middle of Texas) a little over a week ago, and I was sitting there eating my sesame chicken and shrimp with lobster sauce when suddenly it occurred to me, I am enjoying my food!!! My heart began to soar! (Okay, maybe I am overstating that a little bit, but I had been force feeding myself for, like, two months, and it was very exciting.) I grabbed Jeff’s arm almost reflexively. I guess I scared him a little because he suddenly looked very concerned and asked if I was okay. “I’m enjoying my food.” He breathed a little sigh of relief, rolled his eyes at me, and told me he was glad and that I’d better eat up because I have weight to gain. Since then, I have had increasingly more time enjoying what I eat and less time force feeding myself, I need Zofran less and less (although I have gotten overconfident a few times and ended up puking in inconvenient places), and I am starting to have energy again.

I have to admit, for a while there it seemed like I was going to be sick forever (or a least for the rest of my pregnancy). I read all about how nausea goes away for most women around the start of the second trimester, but as the second trimester arrived and I felt no relief, I was certain I was going to be one of the unlucky few with whom the nausea just sticks (I already have an innate hyper-tendency towards nausea (when I was on the BCP, I threw up for a couple days every time I started a new cycle of pills)). Now I am hopeful that there might just be a few months of this pregnancy that are not miserable, and that makes me so happy.

We just got back yesterday from a trip to Chicago. Jeff spent the days in talks at a conference, and I spent them hanging out in our beautiful hotel room sleeping and watching TV. It was wonderful. Well, I didn’t laze away the entire trip. I went out a couple of days walking around downtown looking for maternity stores (most of my shirts are barely reaching the top of my pants these days) that I later came to find no longer existed (at least I got some exercise and ice cream out of those excursions).

When Jeff wasn’t in conference talks (at lunchtime and in the evenings), we wandered around the beautiful parks along Michigan Avenue (How the heck did they make that giant bean?) and ate lots of good food (The food of our city has proved very disappointing to us. I started to write parenthetically about it, and it started getting irrationally long (it upsets me), so I will just leave it at it is disappointing.), and even made time one afternoon to rent a car and drive out to the suburbs to visit some friends of mine (I lived in the NW suburbs of Chicago during my high school years).

It was really great for me and the little guys to have such a relaxing vacation. Between the rest, the availability of delicious food (Just to be clear, Jeff usually makes me dinner at home, and it is always delicious, but I hate deciding what it’s going to be. It’s nice sometimes to just have a menu.), and the easing up of my nausea, I have managed to get my weight back up to what it was before the nausea hit (well, just a pound or two shy). Right now, pregnancy is pretty good. (Although I am starting to get anxious for another ultrasound. It has been almost three weeks since my last one! (Yes, I know I am ultrasound spoiled.) I think Dr. Wendy will give me a fix at my appointment on Monday since I just got the doppler last time.)

Happy National Senior Health and Fitness Day, everybody!

Today is my first day of the second trimester! And I am still nervous. I am beginning to suspect that the anxiety is just not going to go away. Dangit. Luckily I have been getting reassurances regularly in the form of seeing my little guys wiggling on an ultrasound screen at an average of once a week since our first u/s at 7.5 weeks.

I have had two ultrasounds since the last time I posted — one with Dr. Wendy at 11w2d and one with Dr. Dave (my perinatologist) at 12w2d. Both went great, and both times we got to see the little guys squirming all over the place (Dr. Wendy said they looked like they were dancing). At the 12w2d ultrasound, it looked like Yen was crawling around in there, and it took a while for the tech to get the heartbeat because Yen wouldn’t hold still. Yen is still measuring about a week smaller than Oi, but neither Dr. Wendy nor Dr. Dave is concerned about it because both little guys are growing at a normal rate. At 12w2d Oi measured 12w4d and had a heartbeat of 156 bpm, and Yen measured 11w3d and had a heartbeat of 168 bpm.

I was talking to my sister Kendra about the fact that Yen has consistently measured a week smaller than Oi since our first ultrasound which means they were probably conceived a few days apart. She said it is pretty funny that we had been trying for so long to get pregnant and then did it twice in one week. I hadn’t thought of it that way, but it is pretty awesome, isn’t it?

My mom and another sister, Emmeline, both thought I said I had an appointment with my paleontologist when I told them about my appointment with Dr. Dave. Mom asked if I was going to have baby dinosaurs. Ah, Mother, it’s such a sophisticated sense of humor you have.

Our next date with the perinatologist is set for June 20th and is to be an anatomy scan which means we should find out then (if not sooner) what the sexes are. I couldn’t possibly care less what they are, but multiple intuitions say they are boys. Whenever I talk about them and slip out a gender-specific pronoun, it’s always a masculine one (i.e. he, him, his). Jeff thinks the little guys are both boys, and my mom and I have both had dreams that they are boys. We should find out whether or not we are all wrong in five weeks and two days! Oh, yeah. Kendra thinks that Oi is agirl, and Yen is a boy, but she’s basing that on observed data like heartbeat and activity.

As far as how I’m doing, I still feel yucky. I can go without any Zofran for a couple days at a time with no puking, but I still feel nauseated pretty much all the time, and I am still gagging down almost everything I eat. I puked twice yesterday (once right next to the sidewalk on the way to my car after work), but that was the first puking since over a month ago (I knew I was going to puke, but I wanted to not throw up so badly that I thought I could will it away and didn’t take Zofran when I should’ve.) I have apparently been whining up a storm about it. Jeff told a good friend the other day that I complain about being pregnant all the time. He wasn’t being mean or complaining, just stating fact, but he is the one that asks me how I’m doing all the time, and the fact is that I feel like crap and have for about two months now. That pretty much puts me in prime whining territory, I’d say — sick long enough to wear down my resolve to appreciate all my pregnancy symptoms but not long enough to resign myself to this crappiness.

P.S. - I have a question. Because of my basically constant queasiness, I am having trouble eating and, therefore, keeping on weight (I currently weigh less than I did pre-pregnancy).  I want to be able to give my little guys the calories and the nutrients they need, but most of the foods I’ve been eating have mostly just one or the other.  Anyone have suggestions for foods high in calories and nutritive value that might be non-offensive to a sick tummy?

I never did hear from my nurse yesterday, so when I still hadn’t heard from her by eleven this morning, I called the office and pushed the option for physician calling/emergency and talked to a nurse (not my doctor’s nurse) directly rather than leaving a message for my doctor’s nurse.  She talked to my doctor and I got a call back from my doctor’s nurse just minutes later.  She’s  always been so good about calling me back the same day (like her message says she will), so I thought for sure she was out or something, but she wasn’t.  The most important time I needed her to call me back, she didn’t, and I had to chase her down.  I am not too happy about that.  I think I should say something to Dr. Wendy about it, but I’m a little wary to.  Dr. Wendy had a different nurse the last time I was pregnant, and I witnessed her get a little upset about something the nurse did (she went to lunch when she was supposed to, but they were running behind that day, and Dr. Wendy wasn’t ready for her to go to lunch yet), and after that there was a new nurse.  I would hate to get her fired or something.

Anyway.  When I did talk to her, she set me up with an appointment on Friday afternoon and told me that until then I am to be on limited activity, so I will be hanging out on the couch for the rest of the week.  Woohoo.

Let me start by saying that as of around eight last night, both of the little guys’ hearts were beating and they were wiggling around.  I am not actively bleeding, my cervix is closed, and the cramping has not returned.

That being said, I just about had a nervous breakdown yesterday when I went to the bathroom and discovered I was bleeding bright red blood.  I started crying and hyperventilating.  Luckily Jeff was there to calm me down and talk some sense into me (I think he was able to stay calm because he wasn’t the one with uterine cramps increasing in intensity).  He held me and kept telling me everything was going to be okay until I was breathing normally again and then brought me my phone so I could call my mom.

I am not really a mama’s girl or anything — she does most of the talking when she calls me every week — but when I am in a crisis, I really trust her instincts and experience.  She told me I should go to the hospital.  This is what I wanted to do, but I didn’t know if I was just overreacting.  When I miscarried my last pregnancy the ER people just kept telling me that if I was miscarrying there was nothing they could do, and then I waited in the waiting room forever and miscarried before they even called me back.  The whole experience made me feel like it was pointless to have gone to the ER.  So with my mom backing up what I’d already wanted to do, we went to the hospital.  If this kind of crap has to happen, why can’t it happen during normal office hours?

Anyway.  This visit was much different than the last.  The guy at the desk was really nice and seemed to actually care about what was happening to me.  They got me in right away, and I didn’t have to wait terribly long between visitors to my room (registrar, nurse to IV me, etc.).  The doctor came in and did a pelvic exam.  He said my OS was closed and that there was no active bleeding but that I had a few cervical erosions, which are not abnormal and could be the source of the bleeding.  By that time, the cramping had subsided, too, so I was significantly more calm.  It’s a good thing, too, because after that we had to wait well over an hour (with a catheter in so they could fill up my bladder — bleh!) for an ultrasound.

The ultrasound showed that the little guys’ hearts were still beating away and the tech even held the wand on them for a while until they wiggled around so we could see it.  It was the most wonderful thing I have ever seen, and I felt like my heart exhaled when I saw that they were still okay.  She said she saw a little bit of fluid that could be blood, and she showed it to me, but I don’t have any clue about most of what I’m looking at on an ultrasound, so I’m just waiting to see what my doctor says about it.

The ER doc told me I should stay home from work today and limit my activity, so I am hanging out on the couch in my robe.  Jeff’s staying home from work today to take care of me.  He made me pancakes and bacon for breakfast.  I would be a mess without him especially after I passed a little more fresh blood after we got home from the hospital last night.  He told me it was probably from being poked at with the ultrasonic dildo, and he is probably right.

As of today, there is no cramping, and all traces of blood are old blood.  I am feeling much calmer but still a little bit scared because I don’t know exactly what happened or if it is still happening.  I’m getting anxious because I left a message with Dr. Wendy’s nurse almost six hours ago, and she hasn’t called me back yet.  I’m going to go call her back.

P.S.- Don’t think it escapes me that I circumvented the longer-than-two-week wait between ultrasounds.  I am so thankful for that little bit of satisfaction I got out of this whole ordeal.

(third post of the day (making up for time lost to all the sleeping))

I am sitting on my window seat. The window is open, and there is a thunder storm approaching. The wind coming in from outside is wonderful.

I have a bunch of pictures to share. Three of them are of my little guys, and two are of me.

Here’s one of the little guys together:

The best one Dr. Wendy could get of Yen:

Oi’s upside down glamour shot:

And my growing belly:

What the heck. I’ll throw in one of Jeff, so he’s not left out:

(second post of the day)

I just got a call from my doctor’s office saying that they have to reschedule the appointment I was supposed to have on May 5th, and the soonest they have available is on the 9th. The 9th?!

I know I am being spoiled by having ultrasounds every two weeks, but I had my expectations set. There is a countdown to my next appointment that starts in my subconscious the moment I leave the doctor’s office. This morning that countdown told me, Only ten days until you get to see your babies again. That’s just over one work week away! And now I’ve been reset to two weeks?! The last four days of waiting have been for naught?!?!

I asked her if there was any way I could get in closer to my original appointment if there were cancellations or anything. She said sure and that they would call me if an appointment opened up, but I get the feeling that she just said that to appease me and has no intention of making any such efforts.

Everything is thrown off now. We are going out of town on Memorial Day weekend, and the appointment after this next one was supposed to fall neatly at the beginning of the week before we leave. Now two weeks from my next appointment will be right in the middle of when we will be gone. You’d better believe I’m still having my appointment before we go and not after. They can kiss my wide, pregnant butt if they try to tell me I can’t get in less than two weeks after my last appointment. This mess is their fault, after all.

I think that my exasperation is probably partially driven by hormones, but I am, nonetheless, pissed off.