Double Digits!

Entering week 10 of this pregnancy - YAY! This pregnancy could not be moving slower for me but getting closer to the wonderful 2nd trimester!
Baby A is on top and he/she was laying weird so the pic is wacky. The baby was laying upside down kinda like on the placenta, as if using it like a body pillow or something. Baby B was chilling upright and in perfect position for a photo op!

U/s was yesterday and babies both growing and thriving the way they should.
Its amazing all that you can see, they have their lil brains so their heads are no longer empty, they look more like actual babies and less like aliens or blobs now. their interestines are still in the amblilical cord but their lil hearts are beating and beating quickly. They are the size of prunes but much cuter and have graduated and are now called "fetus's" instead of "embryos".

I will be going for another double dose treatment of IVIg next week, however the tech is on vacation (how dare she) so she wont be able to scan me next week. I am hoping that they will let me do the treatment here at my RE's office instead of driving all the way there but who knows what the doc will want. I just hate to take more time off if i dont need to since i have my 1st OB appt next week. Im going to try to talk them into doing an u/s at the OB just so i can see them next week and dont have to wait the whole 2 weeks to see them again but we shall see :-)

I am feeling good all in all but exhausted all the time, esp at night. Im not throwing up but i have headaches all day and I am irritable most of the time. Plus, I have the WORST acne, geesh, its like worse than a 16yr old fry cook for crying out loud! Every day I wake up to another zit and my back and chest are horrible, super ugly. I'm quite sure I am gaining weight since my clothes are all tight and most pants dont button and if they do, they are not staying that way for long. I think I would must rather have the symptoms I have instead of throwing up. That is no fun at all.

Ahhhhhh..... to be more like Brayden

I envy Brayden, for a lot of reasons - He lives in the moment, doesn’t plan ahead and loves life (most times). When he is happy, he is really happy and life is good, on the flip side, when life stinks for him, it really stinks but for the most part he is a happy kid. He has always had the best laugh. When he was a baby he would laugh and laugh all the time (in-between puking) and it was the most contagious laugh - a real belly laugh.
Anyhoo - the reason I bring it up is cuz from the very beginning he has been so into this cycle, the IVF and the pregnancy. He never thought it wouldn’t work, never crossed his mind that something could go wrong with the babies and asks me about them several times a day. He may be more happy about the babies than I am - if that is even possible. He asks me about food that I am eating and if I shouldn’t be eating “more healthy” choices (how adorable, right - ugh, good time to teach him commenting on what a lady eats is not a good idea tho) and just is happy and confident that we will have 2 babies come November. I wish I was more like that. Harmony takes more after me and has my nervous tummy. I would have liked her to be less like me in that way. I know I was like that as a kid but as a teen and young adult I was more like Brayden. Life was good, even when it sucked.

I had another u/s yesterday and everything was fine. Babies are exactly where they need to be in growth and no problems, the mini tear in my uterus has healed so all around good news. I cried all the way to the appt which is an hour away. I don’t even know why. Friday I got a “bad feeling” and tried to not let it bother me, but of course it did. Last week Tues and Wedn I felt so good about everything and I think that after being so comfy with everything, Friday hit me and I figured it would all be taken from me. It is so silly, it really is and logically I know this, however, it doesn’t stop the panic attacks. I don’t think that anyone could truly understand these feelings unless they have gone thru it. I know people can try and I appreciate then allowing me to freak every once and awhile. I am getting better and I hope that it will continue to get better with each good week.
What I can come up with is after everything I don’t feel “worthy” of these babies, it’s a completely different feeling than when I was pregnant with Harmony and Brayden. I felt happy to be pregnant with them, I felt lucky to have them but never didn’t feel “worthy”. I wish I could just figure out who to send the “thank you” card to and then move on, hahahaha. Of course we are worthy of these babies, of course we deserve these babies and I am hoping as time passes I will begin to feel that in my heart and the panic will stop. It isn’t anywhere near as bad as it was so that is good. I just sometimes feel like if I get too comfy with all this it will be taken away. I don’t know why I feel that way but I do. I suppose that is why they are not rational fears.

I lost a pound since the 1st time I saw Dr Kwak-Kim. Yippie, lol. That was many many months ago tho so that cant be where I started from but I will take the 1 pound either way. We wont mention that I have gained 20+ in the last 3 years of this baby making journey....... we will just go with the 1 pound loss. I know I have gained since my clothes dont fit but it was nice to not see a 10 pound gain when I stepped on the scale like I was imagining. My doc doesnt weigh me, they dont care about weight there so I went on the scale just to see while I was there for the double dose of IVIg yesterday. You get kinda bored when you are hooked up to an IV for 3.5 hours!

Got a doppler last night and of course I couldnt figure it out or find the babies HB's but i know they are there since i had just seen each of them on the u/s just hours before. Its prob too early right now and I didnt even freak out - can you believe that? Craziness I tell ya! I will be watching the video tonight and hopefully I will be able to find them. I did find 2 HB's but they were very low, like in the 80's and at the doc both of them were in high 180's. One was 182 and one 185 so what I was finding couldnt have been the babies.
Once I do find those HB's tho watch out cuz I will be trying to figure out a way to strap that sucker on my body so I can hear them all day/night! Im sure you all wouldnt be surprised if I did figure out how to do that :-)

Another week down.....

Up until 12 weeks I will have an ultrasound every week - yay! I went in last Thursday but they didn't have room for me on Thursday or Friday so i got to go in early - yesterday. I didn't mind at all :-)
Its crazy how much the babies grow in just 5 days. They are looking less blob-like and more alien-like now. Pretty fun!
Both babies are measuring exactly 8 weeks and their heartbeats are exactly the same at 169. Crazy, they are competitive already. Deff gotta be Matt and my babies! The tech thought that was funny cuz most times they measure a lil off and HB's are not the same like that. Cute lil buggers.
I'm feeling a lil queasy all day but what is worse are the constant headaches and "shaky feeling". I'm eating so its not that making me shaky, not quite sure what that is all about but part of pregnancy i assume.
During the u/s they found a tear and a bleed. They were not surprised at all since i am on lovenox this happens a lot. The good news is that it is small and my body already started to clot it and take care of it. I am not allowed to take the blood thinner (lovenox) injections at all for the next few days and when I start back up again I can only take 60mg/day instead of the 100mg/day that I was taking. I am also on more light duty. Not that anyone really let me do anything b4 this u/s but now i have to be even more careful. I talked the doc into letting me go to work only cuz I sit at a desk all day. Promised her I would take the elevator and wouldn't bend/lift at work then go home and put my feet up. They didn't seem overly alarmed by the bleed so I'm gonna take from them and not be overly alarmed. Life will be slow for a bit but it does have to go on. Things to do - yanno.
She told me not to shop, which i thought was a funny thing to bring up, but she said the extra walking, bending, trying things on, etc can stress the uterus and make the tear bigger which is not what they want. Im so exhausted that shopping is not on my list of things to do anyway so Im alright with that for now!
The babies each have so much already! They are forming ears now or at least the holes for the ears and they each have a placenta and cord already. Its so neat to see it all so early. This pic is 3D so it looks weird but you can see that they have huge heads and lil arm and leg buds from the pic. Baby A is on the left and is in a better position to be able to see all that stuff. Looks like a lil gummy bear right now.

Another round of Happy Tears

We had another u/s yesterday and got to see both babies thriving and those lovely flickering heartbeats. We got to see the whole in their heads where the brain will go, each of their spines and lil arm and leg buds for each of them. Absolutely amazing! I had a few tears, tears of joy this time but nothing like that time. At least I was able to keep my composure somewhat this time, lol.
Its crazy how much you can see at this point, I mean they aren’t any bigger than a blueberry.
She gave us a 3d pic which really looks like a blob for each of them but they are gorgeous nonetheless.
I asked for a due date and I need to make an appt with my OB. They don’t actually give “twin due dates” which I thought was weird but what do I know. They said my due date is Nov 22, 2010 but that they would be happy if I made it to the end of October. Lil pumpkins we shall have. Or lil turkeys if they feel like hanging out there longer. Either is fine by me.

My natural killer cells are not good news tho. They don’t want to give up the fight. Stupid things, just give up and be gone. You never want to hear your doc say “we just don’t see numbers that high here” or “we have a handful of patients that we have seen this on”, etc. Esp when she is using air quotes when she says “handful” ugh.
They should be under 12%, mine are 46%. Almost half - not cool. I did another double dose of the IVIg and they have me on the steroids still but she says that I have to wean eventually cuz its not safe to stay on them much longer and deff not past the 20 week mark. Then she started on about all the crap that can and will happen - toxemia, pre-eclampsia, bone density issues and then the best part was when she started talking about how once the babies are big enuf to fight off the Nkcells then they will attack my liver and such. Very nice. Its not like this is new to them so I’m not afraid she doesn’t know but she said she cant give me a permanent answer on how many more weeks of IVIg or steroids or medication I will be on cuz it’s a balance of everything and everyones body is different. Oy!
Isnt it funny how I am not afraid of what will happen to MY body but if something is said about the babies health I freak and over-react? Its gotta be a mom thing. I dunno but its strange.

Symptoms?

I have been thinking about this not having “symptoms” (the symptoms I feel I should have) thing a lot and since I was able to go thru 2 pregnancies and not have this fear of m/c it makes me think about it more.
When I was pregnant with Harmony and Brayden I never had a fear of losing them so i was fortunate enuf to be able to go thru those pregnancies differently. I saw a positive pregnancy test and so then I was having a baby, no questions. This is a bit different for obvious reasons. I have a new appreciation for how this all works, kinda missing the young lady I was before but also glad that I can be so appreciative for something that is truly a miracle.
I don’t feel “good” or “normal” so I guess these are my symptoms for now. I mean, if I had not gone thru all this fertility stuff and treatments, m/c’s etc I would prob be complaining so much more about how crappy I feel. But I always feel so crummy during IVF I figure that I haven’t really felt “normal” for quite some time so maybe im just used to this feeling. I have headaches most of the time, bloated like I am 4 months along and sometimes upset tummy and dizzy so I suppose that is what it is for now.
I’d like to consider myself lucky since I am not huggin the toilet several times a day and have to remind myself that I never once threw up with either of the pregnancies that made it to term. However, with twins I was assuming it would be awful, plus the fact that I am no spring chicken would also make it worse. Oh well, it is what it is and I cant make myself sick so I will try to enjoy the small amount of symptoms I have here.
Its not that I want to throw up or be crazy sick, I mean honestly, who likes to throw up and feel like shit for weeks/months? It would just make me feel like it was real, like it was really gonna happen and work for us this time. Maybe I am being rewarded for all the other hell by not having awful sickness? Maybe its cuz of all the vitamins and meds I am on, my body is fine and healthy for once? I don’t know but I sure want to know. I want an answer that I know I wont even have. As long as everything is ok then I should just count my blessings - which are not throwing up several times a day and two healthy heartbeats from last weeks ultrasound. I will try to fixate on those right now.

TWO BABIES AND BOTH HAVE HEARTBEATS!!!

OMG, I cant remember a more exciting day - I felt like my heart was going to just fall right out of my body as I was waiting for her to say that all was ok. I don’t remember walking into the u/s room, or getting undressed but I do remember shaking while I was waiting. She saw the heartbeat #1 and then #2 b4 I did and I thought that was gonna be hard cuz I was looking and looking very hard!
I think the last time I felt that type of excitement or rush was when the kids were actually born. It was amazing. I shook the rest of the time I was there and when I got up to stand I thought my knees may buckle. It was a strange feeling. I don’t know what I was expecting, but I was in total shock.
Both babies have great HB right now, 120 and 124 which is fast, but very normal for a baby at this point. Baby B’s gestational sac is smaller than it should be but nobody seems to be really concerned about that since it is growing. I guess what they don’t want is for the baby to grow and not the sac cuz they baby would run out of room. We are so hoping that both babies continue to fight, grow and progress the way they should.
I cried, and cried a lot, at the ultrasound which is totally not like me. I never cried at the u/s that went badly. Its not that I don’t cry, I just don’t cry in front of people. The shower is my “break-down and lose it place” however I just couldn’t control it. The tears came and they didn’t let up the whole time. I even apologized to the u/s tech cuz I couldn’t believe I was letting go in front of her. Not a typically Chelsea response but that’s ok.

After all the excitement died down, I was exhausted. More exhausted than I think I have ever been. My body and brain could not do anything. I think I used up every ounce of energy before the u/s and then afterwards just being shaky and happy.
I started to think about how lucky we are right now and how happy I am right at this moment but then wondering why we got so “lucky” which is weird since for the last 3 years I have been saying how we deserve this. Its weird, once you are given something you then wonder if you are deserving. Its hard to explain.

Anyway, we can breathe for now, I will have an u/s every week to measure babies growth and make sure all is well. I had my blood drawn yesterday to see about the natural killer cells and to see if I need a treatment next week or if I can push it to every 2-3 weeks. It will all depend on what the blood-work says.

Im super bloated and my pants are really uncomfy so I try to wear stretch or the bellaband thingy which is very nice, obviously invented by a lady who was sick of not being able to wear regular clothes while preggo or post. Im not hungry but I can eat if that makes sense. I am just not interested in eating but don’t really have any aversions that would keep me from eating. I sure hope that I end up being one of those “lucky” ones who doesn’t end up with horrible morning sickness but only time will tell. I read that most twin preggos are sicker than dogs by now so I’m just hoping that isnt a bad sign. I don’t feel great, I have headaches pretty much all day and feel dizzy and a lil sick to my tummy from time to time but nothing crazy. I never threw up with either of the pregnancies with the kids, just felt crappy for a few months so maybe thats just how my body is. I did, however, GAIN over 80 pounds with each pregnancy - ouch!