Finally an update! :)

-slaps wrist- Bad blogger. Very, very bad blogger. I promise, I am still alive, and even with good news and lots of new pictures too. I just kept thinking, "I really should update my blog" and then forgetting the next time I had a moment to do it. I finally remembered tonight. :)

We found out on 11/4 (our third anniversary) that we're expecting a boy and a girl! :) I had a feeling that it was a boy and girl since about 12 weeks and even had a guess that it was a boy on the left and a girl on the right and that's exactly what we have. So, we have Jonah Christopher and Temperance Carolyn. :) I was also allowed to go off bedrest at 19w5d as well for a grand total of 7w4d of bedrest. I know I'll probably go back on it again later on, but it's been nice to get out a bit and feel like a normal pregnant woman. :) My husband and I went clothes shopping the other day and picked up a ton of adorable clothes for Jonah and Tempe. They're going to be so freaking cute. :)

Here's some pictures from our anatomy scan at 18w6d. First up, Jonah:

Profile #1 - chewing/sucking on hand

Profile #2 - still sucking on his hand

Jonah's feet, one straight up, the other tucked under

Of course, the scary, straight on shot lol

And now, Temperance...

Profile shot #1

Another profile shot

Her little foot

Her waving, looking straight at us

Finally, their heads next to each other :)

I love this shot of them together. They are Di/Di twins, meaning they have two separate gestational sacs and placentas, but in this picture it looks like they're cuddled up together. :) This is probably my favorite picture of them so far and I just can't wait to meet them!

I'm such a bad blogger.

Seriously, Sept. 20th was my last update? Ugh. It's 3:30am here, so I will update this tomorrow, including the newest ultrasound pictures we have. :)

Bleeding and hospitals

So, we had our NT scan on Friday afternoon from 3:30-4:30pm. I ended up with two different techs trying to get the measurements since while one of the babies was posed perfectly, the other was insistent on staring at my lower back and not moving for anything. :) The measurements came out at .8mm and 1.8mm, which are normal.

During the scan, I was pretty uncomfortable. They were pressing down really hard, shaking my belly several times and just bordering on really painful. I just figured it was an ultrasound, there's nothing that can go wrong from this. I was horribly mistaken.

My husband and I came home, ate dinner, then laid down for a nap since he had just gotten back from Maui that morning and was running on next to no sleep. I woke up around 8:30pm, went to the bathroom and notice light pink spotting. I've never spotted while pregnant. At all. So I call my OB, she tells me not to worry and that it could be anything. Eventually the spotting eases up and goes away.

Around midnight I get up to go to the bathroom one more time before bed and I feel a gush. I freak out, run to the bathroom and there's blood everywhere. My jeans, underwear, toilet, everywhere. I yell at my husband to get stuff ready to go to the ER and he raced over there. We both lost it at the hospital and I was on the edge of a panic attack that I might be losing these babies.

Within 2 hours I had had an ultrasound showing both babies moving around and with good heartbeats (~160) and my bleeding had started to slow down. I had the head of the ER watching me and he told me that it was entirely possible that the ultrasound I had for the NT scan could have irritated something or loosened up something I already had (like my subchorionic hematoma from before). They let me go home with strict orders to take it extremely easy until my appointment with my OB on Tuesday.

I've basically put myself (with my husbands urging) on modified bedrest for the time being. It looks as though the bleeding might be starting to ease up, but I obviously won't know for sure what's going on until Tuesday. We've listened to the babies with our doppler 3 times since getting released and they're moving and have good heartbeats, so for now I'm okay, just worried. I can't wait to see my OB on Tuesday and get some type of answers as to what this is and how I can try and prevent it from happening again or getting worse.

How the hell...

am I already 12 weeks?!

Seriously, there's not much point to this post other than I saw my ticker on a forum post, saw "I am 12 weeks pregnant!" and was like...holy shit.

NT scan on Friday afternoon. We decided not to do it, then the more I read, the more I wanted to just do it since I'll have the Quad Screen anyways in the 2nd trimester. So, one hour of looking at the babies on Friday. :)

First trip to the hospital...

Yup, I spent all of last night (9pm Tuesday until 7am Wednesday) in the hospital. They do not let you leave when you are pregnant unless they rule out every little thing. Holy crap.

Basically, it started with a sneeze. I've been having round ligament pain since about 8 weeks. When I sneeze or cough, I get a sharp little pinch, usually in my pubic bone area, it lasts a couple seconds, then goes away. Well this time it didn't go away. I waited an hour and called my emergency line for my OB. The OB on call called me back and basically said that there's not much he can do over the phone and if I still have pain in another half hour to go to the hospital. Oh, yay.

So, 30 minutes later, still in pain (a 6-7 out of 10) we went to the hospital. They got me back pretty quick (I guess high risk, twins, clotting disorder are the magic words) and then we sat. We sat a while. I held it together through a girl next to me puking her guts out and an alcoholic on the other side that had drank a fifth of whiskey. Fun times.

Their main concern was making sure the babies were okay, then trying to find the cause of my pain. I had seen the babies last week but they still looked like blobs mostly, especially since the ultrasound machine at my OB's is really old and they did it on my belly. After doing exams on me and taking blood, they got me up to ultrasound to do a full scan.

I made my husband come with me into the room hoping that he would be able to see the babies since he hadn't gone to my first appointment with my OB. He chucked twice during the ultrasound and when I looked at him he smiled and nodded his head that they were okay. :) At the end of the ultrasound the tech turned the screen so I could see it and showed us both babies. Holy crap they're getting so big! They have arms! And legs! And profiles! It was absolutely incredible how much they look like babies now instead of little blobs. My husband told me that one of them was twirling around and the other apparently got a little started at the ultrasound and spazzed with it's arms and legs flinging out. lol

After the ultrasound my pain started easing a little but they still had a surgeon come down to check me out. They wanted to rule out appendicitis so they wouldn't send me home just to have me come back. They ended up sending me home after letting me eat (almost 12 hours after I last ate).

The one thing they found that kinda sucks is a subchorionic hematoma. It's incredibly small and they couldn't even really measure it, but my OB wanted me to come in in 2 days anyways. The ER doctor told me to take it easy and my OB has mentioned bedrest before in general. I'm hoping that they'll just want me to be cautious and that this will resolve on it's own. I was really hoping to make it to at least 22-25 weeks before bedrest.

1st OB appointment & new due date!

My first OB appointment was this morning and wow was it a ton of information. My OB reviewed all of my files from my RE (her and the nurse kept saying how much I had been tested and how the information was insane), examined me and then sent me down the hall for an ultrasound and bloodwork.

The ultrasound was on the belly this time instead of internal, which was really strange. The detail just isn't there with belly ultrasounds at this point compared to internals, so I'm not going to post the pictures. The babies are much closer together than we saw with the internal ultrasounds though, which was kinda cool to see. Both heartbeats looked good and they're measuring 9w3d and 9w2d. Which leads me to...

My due date changed. I am no longer due 3/28, I am now due on April Fool's Day, April 1st. lol She took what I had been measuring with the RE and the measurements today and changed my due date since she's more inclined to go by how the babies are measuring instead of ER and ET dates from IVF.

My MFM appointment is on Thursday and my next OB appointment isn't for 3 weeks, on the 22nd. It seems like so far away. I guess we'll be trying to find them with the doppler in the mean time. :)

9w5d - Released to OB, sorta...

Friday was supposed to be my last RE appointment. In the morning I did the bloodwork and then we had our ultrasound. Our little ones are doing so wonderful! They're growing and their little hearts are perfect!

Here's baby A, who was all curled up. My husband swears that he saw this one snuggle up more while my RE was taking the picture, but my RE didn't point it out, so he can't be sure. Baby A's heartbeat was up to 183bpm, which my RE labeled as perfect for 9-10 weeks. :)

Here is baby B. :) I didn't expect to really see them moving this soon but right after my RE took the picture and got their heartrate (181, yay!) he went back to pointing out the head, body, arm and leg buds and that little one shook it's butt at us! It was the cutest thing. Then it wiggled it's butt again and then shook it's head back and forth like it was dancing! I absolutely can't wait to see them again now!

The only sorta bad thing that came up was that my RE called me in the afternoon and told me that he had just finished dictating a letter to my OB and MFM but that he wanted me to come back in on Monday to have my blood redrawn. Apparently, my hCG (beta) dropped from 50k+ to 41-42k between 8w5d and 9w5d. He wasn't really concerned since the babies are both doing so well and it's normal for your hCG level to peak then decrease throughout the rest of your pregnancy. He said normally that doesn't start happening until 9-10 weeks, but I might have just started a little early.

Right when I hit 9 weeks, my morning sickness that had been all day, every day calmed down to just 3-4 times a day. I started getting massive headaches and being even more exhausted than normal as well. Of course, I Googled and found several stories of this same thing happening and these women going on to have babies, so I'm not too concerned. I'm just hoping tomorrow brings good news, just as I'm hoping Tuesday (first OB appt) and Thursday (first MFM appt) bring good news too. :)