Hit and Miss Christmas

Well Christmas didn't turn out exactly as planned, but was nice anyway. Our numbers dropped to about half when on Christmas Eve, we found out that my brother and SIL (25 weeks pregnant) were in the hospital because she was sick. They spent all day there and it made me nervous, because my brother is a nurse anesthetist and works in hospitals all the time and not the type to go to the ER unless he was very worried.

But it turns out she was just very sick with a stomach bug and needed fluids. And she had a UTI too. Ugh, sounds miserable. So she stayed home for Christmas and her parents and sister decided to stay home as well. My brother made the trek up to us and my parents came up as planned though, so there were only 5 of us in the end. Still it was nice, because it was just the family and not the same pressure with people you don't know as well. We made a ton of good food and will have leftovers the rest of the week! We talked about baby names and we spilled the news to my parents and bro (and my mom LIKES the names, oh my goodness!) and bro spilled his too! It actually would have been our son's name (if we'd had a boy) - so we now know we have similar tastes in names :) I'm so excited.

We gave my brother and SIL a gift from their registry (a bassinet) and my parents gave me this for Christmas. I love it. I'm wearing it right now, even though nearly no one at works knows I'm expecting and probably would be like, "Uh, what?" if they were to see it.

 

 

Gabby is presently on her way to NH after an MFM appointment this morning. The babies are getting a bit more varied in size from each other now. Baby M (previously baby A) is only 2lb14oz (6th percentile) and her femurs are only measuring 28.9 weeks (so basically just under 29 weeks). Baby N (previously baby B) is 3lbs5oz (34th percentile) and her femurs are measuring 29.9 weeks (just under 30 weeks, which isn't too far off from where we are). The difference between 34th percentile and 6th percentile is only 7oz. which doesn't sound so bad, but I guess since the weights are still so small at this point that's why it's such a huge difference. They checked Baby M very carefully, including doing a doppler of her placenta/cord and everything was A-OK, they see no reason for her smallness that they can tell, other than genetically. Her amniotic fluid is still measuring low-normal though. Baby N's amniotic fluid is totally normal.

 

Gabby reassurred me by telling me about her two daughters (both singletons). The older one was 18 oz. more at birth than the younger one, so she says, if they had been in the womb together at the same time she's sure they would have shown a marked difference between them. As ours (L's and mine) are fraternal twins, they're really just normal siblings sharing a womb, and two siblings can be very difference. Even today, when you look at Gabby's daughters, her youngest one (besides being younger) is just smaller overall than the older one.

 

And as I've said previously, my aunts and grandmother (all on my dad's side) are all under 5 feet tall. My mom is 5'2" and my grandmother on my mom's side was 5'3". I'm the tallest female in the family at almost (but not quite!) 5'6". And then there's L's side of the family to take into account as well (not many females in the family so I don't know! But his mother is shorter than I am). So if you end up with one baby the size of my aunt and one baby my size, there's your difference. They came from two different eggs, two different sperm, even if they're both related to us there can be a difference.

 

Even with my own siblings - both my parents are Puerto Rican, so me and my siblings are also 100% Puerto Rican. But we all look very different. I am the oldest, and the lightest skin, my brother a little darker, and my sister, the youngest, the darkest overall. My father is your stereotypical Puerto Rican, rather short, dark skin, black hair, and then you have me, about his height, white skin, blonde (ha, well used to be, now dirty blonde/light brown) hair. I'd be worried if I didn't look exactly like my mother and have other features from my father :)

 

So, I'm just hoping everything will be ok, and am so glad they did the doppler of the placenta, because that makes me feel a lot better. However, they did tell Gabby today that if the baby gets below 5th percentile, she'll be going on bedrest. Luckily, she should be taking it really easy on vacation in NH so I'm hoping that'll be pushed off. I do think she'll be on bedrest before the end of the pregnancy, but the few weeks it's for, the better for us, as we have to pay her salary when she's on bedrest.

 

I do think she's been pushing herself too hard, and it's hard because I don't have control of it. At least she stopped going to the gym, but with 3 kids and christmas and working full time, in the third trimester with twins - I'm sure she's run herself ragged. Luckily she's got this week and her load at work will be lighter when she's back. Her husband is trying to convince her to go part time until the babies are born (even that will be less to pay for so I'm all for it) but she says her job isn't really that hard and it'll stress her out MORE being at home. I can see that.

 

She's going to start going every week now till birth, which means more updates for me - whee!! Now that we're almost to January, it's finally feeling like it's getting close!! He does think she'll go full term (full term being 38 weeks for us) her cervix is looking great, the babies are not in the birth canal yet - oh yea, they're been trouble makers - both are breech and it's looking like they won't be switching from that position, so c-section for us! so that's good.

 

Her rash is driving her nuts and they finally told her she needs to go on oral prednisone. She's hesitant for a number of reasons, one being for the babies (I really appreciate that) but it looks like it'll be ok since there's such a small number of weeks left now. She's going to try to make it one more week without it. We'll see!

 

And now I'm wondering if it's possible I could have picked up the bug from my brother (who was not sick) in the time he was over yesterday. I've already thrown up twice today, can't seem to keep anything down. Gah!