afraid to move

I am trying my hardest to think positive and not think about the bad possibilities that could happen to my babies and I really think I'm doing a pretty good job of it but as I approach the end of my first trimester and into the second trimester, I'm starting to feel hesitant about planning anything or getting anything ready. My mom is going to be decorating and setting up the nursery because I don't want to put all that effort into it only to have something happen. I don't want to see it or know what it looks like until the babies are home with me and if something happens to them, I want the nursery completely taken down and I never want to see it. The thing is, my mom wants me to go ahead and move Corynn into the smaller bedroom next month so that she can get started in the twins rooms.

I'm afraid to go to all the effort of moving Corynn and all her things (again) only to have something bad happen.

We were shopping for double strollers the other day and I got nervous about thinking too far ahead. I am afraid to do any baby prep but with Twins I really feel like I probably should.

Both of the babys' placentas are posterior :-( I was really hoping for anterior because I read that most babies who die from cord accidents had posterior placentas. I think it's because the majority of the time they are laying on the placenta and the cord has to come up around from behind them and with an anterior they are loosely hanging from their placenta. Corynns was anterior and Brynns was posterior.

keep praying

identical vs fraternal

So I had originally assumed that because my babies were in separate sacs with separate placentas (di/di) that they were probably fraternal, but I've recently learned that this is not the case at all.

If the egg splits on day two after fertilization, they can be completely separate but still identical. Most sites will tell you that di di identical twins are very rare but also this is not an accurate statistic because they are underreported. Without an expensive DNA test, they will not record the twins as identical unless they know that they were in the same sac or shared a placenta, so there are actually a lot of di di identicals out there that have not been genetically "proven" identical but it's obvious based on appearance.

I learned that one of my coworkers identical boys were di di. She said she thought they would be fraternal and that's what the docs guessed too but they looked very similar at birth and within a few months she could tell for sure.

Then I also talked to our pediatrician who has di di girls that ended up being identical.

So now I'm curious. I assumed that the Femara I took must've made me ovulate two eggs because it takes your normal chance of having twins from 1.5% to 2-3% (still low), but on my ultrasound they've only been able to see one follicle/ cyst on the left side.

Of course, this does not mean there wasn't another cyst that was just smaller or went away, but it does make me wonder.

I'll be very interested to find out.

9 week ultrasound

They look like human creatures now, not just a blob on a screen. They have a distinct head and body and tiny limbs/ nubs and they were moving and swimming around. It was so great to see such a change in just a week. They look like little teddy grams right now, and that's actually how big they are as well.

Their heart rates were in the 120's this week which made me want to worry a little because last week they were in the 160's but the US tech said they can vary greatly and it's totally normal and still within range.

Last week I drank a TON of water and had a super full bladder when I arrived in hopes of an abdominal US (no such luck). I emptied my bladder before the internal scan but I had drank so much water that my bladder had filled right back up during the scan and I had to pee sooo bad. I'm wondering if this made the heart rates higher because anytime I didn't feel much movement from Corynn, they would have me come in for an NST and if her heart rate wasn't varying much, they would make me drink a bunch of water and then her activity and heart rate would jump up.

This week I intentionally didn't drink water because I knew I'd be getting an internal US again, so maybe the lack of water just made them less excitable?

Or maybe I'm just over thinking the whole thing?! ;-)

everyone loves company

when I returned to work after losing Brynn there were many people who greeted me with a hug and their condolences and it meant sooo much. At the time there were also people that I felt like avoided me, didn't want to speak to me and some I felt just wanted me to get over it and be happy.

Then once I got pregnant with the twins and went from having horrible news to great news, some of the same people who were so great to me during my loss ignored me during my happy time but the people who ignored me when I was sad were greeting me with "congratulations" and "I'm so happy for you", which is also great.

It's been strange to go from such a low to such a high is such a short period of time and during this I realized not only how much "misery loves company", but also happiness loves company too.

The people who won't talk to me NOW are the ones who themselves are not happy about something in their life and when I was down, they knew how to be right there with me, but when I'm up, they want nothing to do with it.

The people who wouldn't talk to me BEFORE are happy and bubbly and life is going great for them so they didn't want to think about sadness.

And then there are many people (most) in the middle who have been great throughout and can deal with either emotion.

I totally understand both of these sides, because I've been there. It is soooo hard to be happy for someone when you're not happy and it's soooo hard to talk about such a horrible subject like the death of a baby when you've never felt such sadness and have no idea how to relate and are afraid you'll just say the wrong thing.

Being on the receiving end of this has made me look at myself and think about my own behavior. How do I respond to people when they're happy/sad? It's an interesting observation and makes me want to improve.

We all have happy times and all have sad times and I hope I can be there for people during both because whatever our mood, they each love company.

prgnancy so far

I've actually had less nausea than I did with my other two pregnancies. I've never been a person that gets much morning sickness anyway, I just get the picky food aversions, strong gag reflex and occasional moments of mild nausea, but nothing that sucking on a jolly rancher won't fix. Same deal this time, but less frequent. The doc was surprised by this.

I'm very thirsty for water which is the same as always.

The more noticeable differences this time are hunger and fatigue. I need to eat about every two hours, especially in the morning. I wake up STARVING! I can eat a lot of food and not gain any weight.

And I had never experienced the first trimester fatigue everyone always talked about until now. I still don't think it's as bad as some, but I definitely have less energy than normal. I'm always feeling like I need a nap by about 9am after getting up at 7am. Every day when I'm home with Corynn and she takes her nap, I take one too instead of being productive. The house is a mess, but I don't have the energy to care.

I have to pee once in the middle of the night every night.

I'm already getting very mild hip, back and tailbone aches that come and go.

And I'm loving every minute of it.

it can happen

It's amazing how much my attitude has changed this time around. As I've said in an earlier post, I'm a lot less worried than I thought I would be. I do what I can to protect the babies and I like the reassurance each week that they are alive, but I'm not a total nervous mess.

More than ever I'm aware of how real and possible fetal death is but I think because it has happened to me, the idea of it has less of a punch or is less shocking.

When I used to read on baby center about miscarriages or stillbirths, my heart would race, I would cry and then I'd be super anxious. Now I can read about it and just feel like "yup, it can happen."

I think most of what used to make me cry was the fear of it happening to me. I can remember when I was pregnant with Corynn and I was watching a video on youtube of an 18 week baby because I was 18 weeks pregnant and wanted to visualize how big she was. I was hysterically bawling and immediately turned it off and thought "why did I watch that?".

But now I can watch that and only maybe tear up a little bit, but it's a different kind of sadness. It's a calm sadness I have for that mom. It's true empathy for her and not about me.

Before I had experienced it, the idea was just so shocking and horrifying and I think that's what made me upset. That's also a lot of the emotion I felt when I lost Brynn; shock! I couldn't believe this could happen to me.

Now that I've been through it and I've met and heard from sooooo many people who have experienced something similar, I've learned that it's just another horrible thing that can happen in life. I'm not saying I wouldn't be devastated if it happened again, I'm just saying that I'm not surprised by the idea.

I still hold my breath at every ultrasound and frantically search with my eyes focused on the screen for those flickering heartbeats and if I don't see them right away, I get a little nervous.

I just know that all I can do is pray, think positive and hope for the best.

early belly

I'll be 8 weeks tomorrow and had my second ultrasound today. I could really get used to these weekly looks at my babies! They were measuring right on time with Baby A heart rate of 169 and Baby B heart rate of 167!!

So freaking happy!

What I can't believe is how early my belly is popping out. I was relieved to find out that it was twins last week because I was starting to think I must be either gaining weight or going crazy because my pants were already not fitting which I knew was WAAAYY too early to be needing mat clothes at 7 weeks. When I got to the doctor last week, they put me on the scale before doing the sono and I hadn't gained any weight, so seeing the TWO sacs explained the mystery

;-)

I'm 8 weeks but look more like 13ish I think.

I LOVE that I have a belly already because it just makes the pregnancy so real, but having a belly makes me feel more attached. I feel like I really start to feel attached to my pregnancies at the point that I start showing. I'm a little worried about feeling so attached so early because I'm still in a risky stage for miscarriage yet I feel further along than I am and if something happens, I'm worried I'll be that much more devastated.

BUT I'm trying not to think about the what ifs and just focus on how fortunate and happy I am right now and just keep praying for my babies.

I'm gonna get so huge!

TWINS!

Monday night I had some bleeding after doing some moderate activity and it FREAKED me out. It went away within five minutes and was never bright red, but I was crying and scared and didn't sleep much that night. I was scheduled for an US and appt today (wednesday) but Tuesday morning I called my doc to ask if we could bump up my appt one day so I could get some reassurance. My doc and her nurse are great and they got me the first available time that afternoon.

I had initially pondered the possibility of twins because of my quadrupling HCG, but the numbers quickly slowed down to a normal pace and I convinced myself it was more than likely just one baby because I didn't have any twin feelings/mothers intuition, but I did keep the possibility in the back of my mind.

As soon as the US tech turned the machine on, I could see two dark sacs, but I didn't say anything at first and neither did the tech. The top sac on the screen immediately showed a visible fetal pole with a flickering heart beat. She measured the baby and heart beat which was 151. WONDERFUL! Then she was just kind of moving around not saying anything and I finally asked "so what's that other dark sac?" and she said "well that's what I'm trying to figure out. It appears to be another gestational sac but I don't see a baby in that one. I see this little blob/bump which I think might have been the baby but there's no heartbeat so I don't think this one made it." BUMMER. And she went on to justify her thinking saying that the shape of the sac looked a little more "irregular and not as perfectly round as the other one so this probably just wasn't viable". She continued on saying "I'm going to go ahead and measure the sac and call this a "twin pregnancy" because it was at one point but I don't think there's a second baby."

At this point I had such a mix of emotions because I was ELATED that I had one healthy baby which is all I expected or could ask for but then once I saw the two sacs I was excited and then sad that I had lost one. It was weird.

As she was moving to get a measurement, a small flicker flashed on the screen for just a second and I said "wait I think I saw something" and she said "you know I think you're right I did too". She proceeded to really dig with her wand (ugh ) to get a better look and TADA, there was baby B!!!!! Hiding in a far back corner of it's sac with a heartbeat just flickering away! The baby measured right on time with it's twin and had a heartbeat of 128! SOOOO HAPPY!

We were surprised a little but not totally shocked because it's always a possibility with fertility meds.

She continued to try to get better pictures of B but had a heck of a time. She said B is at the top right and back of my uterus and we were doing an internal soon so it was near impossible to get a good look. Baby A is further down and on my left side and we think in the front. She tried hard to get pictures of both of them for us but baby B was practically invisible compared to A. It was very painful to try and get a good look at B at all.

Then the tech continued to try and dig further to look for a third, but thank goodness, it's just the twins!

They are pretty sure they're fraternal because they are in separate sacs with a very thick wall between them. They are "Di Di" twins meaning they each have their own sac and placenta which is PERFECT because sharing either of those things causes risk. Fraternal twins are safer, so I was happy about that. I don't need any more risk to make me worry.

After the US I was a little worried about baby B because she had mentioned an "irregular sac" and it had a lower heartbeat than Baby A, but the doc assured me that everything looked great and as long as the heart rate is over 100 at this point, the baby is healthy. I already knew this because Corynn's heart rate at this exact same gestation was 130, but it just seemed that A's was so much higher and I was comparing them but the doc said "they are two completely different babies, so they're going to have different heart rates, but they're both within range."

And she said the sac was fine. I wonder if the tech was just trying to compile evidence to back up her theory of it not being viable but really it has no significance? When I look at the two sacs, neither one looks "regular" to me.

Baby A was also much closer to the wand and maybe was stimulated by the movement/sound so it had a higher HB? Who knows.

She said they are both nicely attached and measuring perfectly so no need to worry and that my cervix was closed and there was no bleeding so my previous bleeding from monday night was nothing to worry about.

She joked that A is a girl and B is a boy. We shall see :-)

I get weekly US's to look at heartbeats and growth which will be awesome!

I can't believe I'm having twins. I feel so fortunate and happy. It's amazing and wonderful and exciting!!!

I have so much to think about. My biggest fears are less space making umbilical cord accidents more likely (eek) and preterm labor.

I'm just going to keep praying and hope for the best.