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!

 

 

 

 

Thirty Weeks

Thirty Weeks. THIRTY WEEKS. OMG I can't believe we have made it so far! 56 days left!

I hope it really does take all 56 days because I want them to be as healthy as possible. Our next appointment is Wednesday before Gabby takes off for New Hampshire, a non-surrogacy friendly state, for a week. She got permission from us to go, since she's not allowed to leave the state in her 3rd trimester, but she had the trip planned since even before we met in January so I felt really bad saying no, even though my OCD overprotective self was saying to her, "No, no, please don't go!" But one of the prerequisites was that she had to get doctor permission before she went, so she'll stop by the hospital on their way out of town, and if for some reason the answer is no, she'll go home with her youngest.

I'm sure it'll be fine, but it's scary, considering she gives birth so quickly and she'll be out of the state. If something goes wrong and she has to give birth there, we won't be considered the parents. Heck, we haven't even had our parentage petition go through yet, so even in MA we wouldn't, technically. Ugh.

The flooring for the nursery is done! And my curtains are 99% done! I wanted to hang them up so our guests could see things for Christmas, but I just pinned the tabs in place and I plan on sewing buttons on the front of each one later.

The baseboards are still down and there's no quarter round yet so it still looks pretty unfinished, but it's the best we're going to do for Christmas. That took a lot of hard work this weekend. The curtains in particular took me way longer than I thought they would.

Nighttime pics, so you can't see the colors as well, but I really love the aqua and yellow together. One step closer!

Tick Tock Tick Tock

A friendly acquaintance of mine...you know those people, more than acquaintance, less than a GOOD friend? :) just gave birth yesterday to a singleton at 31w2d. She was technically due 2 days after our due date of 2/17. It totally shocked me when I opened up FB this morning! Now I keep wondering if my babies will even make it to February! Please please please!

It didn't help that yesterday I finally got the reports from last week's ultrasounds. No one had mentioned to me that one of the babies amniotic levels were at "low normal." The other one just said, "normal." It's baby A too, who's the smaller one of the two (even though they've been almost identical in size till now, yesterday was the first time I noticed a difference). I questioned Gabby while Googling (of course) and she said that the doc had told her, "Low normal is still normal!" and he wasn't worried. Well, he may not be, but of course I am!

I know it could be a matter of it just being the lucky moment that Baby A was drinking amniotic fluid BEFORE peeing it back out, but I just get the feeling it's going to get worse. And even though their sizes were still ok last week, when I typed them into the fetal measurements website that I do each time (Yes, I'm crazy) I noticed a marked change. Obviously they're not decreasing in size, but they definitely are growing more slowly. I recently learned that Gabby's sister had IUGR with her singleton pregnancy, and I really think we're going to run into it here. I don't know that yet, but I just have this feeling.

It seems like yesterday was L's tipping point on this pregnancy. I heard no less than 3 times - "OMG, those babies could come any day!" I love it.

A Little Relief

Today I'm doing a little better. Still a bit nutso but a little calmer. I spend about 2 hours (that I didn't have) talking and crying on the phone to my dad last night. I'm such a crier, about everything. It's such a physical release for me though, I literally feel better after crying. I think my dad now thinks I'm crazy but he's my dad, it's ok. I complained to him about my mom and that helped release some angst about that. I do revert to acting like a teenager with my parents sometimes.

I completed two more sides of one of the curtains yesterday. I'm doing 1/4" seams and then 1/2" seams on top of that for "finished" sides. I have two more to do tonight and then I can start sewing the tabs on top and then that will be done! Whee!!

L pulled up the rest of the carpet/pad in the nursery yesterday. I'm sure all the flooring will be in by Christmas but I wish we could have gotten in the baseboards/quarter-round in by well so people could see a finished, if empty, room. Oh well, there's nothing I can really do about that.

I still haven't gotten the reports from last week's ultrasounds from Gabby yet, so I texted her and she told me she put it in the mail Monday so I should be getting it today. I don't get to go to the ultrasounds and I just get a call from her after the appointments so I wish she would try a little harder to get the reports in the mail right away. The last u/s was on Thursday so Monday is quite awhile afterwards. It makes me feel less connected to everything.

We ordered name blocks for the girls and they came yesterday. We can't change their names now! (ok of course we could but now we've bought something with their names on them.:)

I was looking to make them myself or purchase them from Joann Fabrics and paint them (another thing to do) but after Googling I found about Uncle Goose's blocks. They're handmade in the USA from sustainable wood from Michigan, non toxic and use Child Safe inks. $1.50 a letter. So cute!

Since this isn't a locked blog I don't want to share the names here. But one begins with an M and one begins with an N!

Insert Scream Here

Not much to say...just moving along waiting and waiting and waiting. To be absolutely honest, the Ambien isn't even helping that much. The first night was awesome, since then I'm not even sleeping fully through the night with it. I talked to one of my closest friends who happens to be a social worker and she said I should go ask for a very low level anxiety med for the next few months until the babies are here. Also that I'm insane for trying to do so much before they come.

I think it's just that I want everything to be perfect before they are here. I want the nursery to be awesome, the house to be spotless, the dog to behave, the money to pay Gabby her maternity leave to magically appear. It's really crazy how much I'm trying to make just right.

I'm trying to make curtains for the room right now. I gave up on making the crib quilts, instead I've "outsourced" - actually got someone on Etsy to make them for me (I hope she does a good job). We have to finish the flooring and the baseboards and the quarter round and caulk and hang up pictures and sand and prime and paint the cribs and buy the unfinished dresser and prime and paint that as well, possibly a bookcase and shelves as well, and all the stuff that was in the nursery closet is now out in a pile and making me feel like a hoarder (how the hell did we fit so much stuff in that closet?).

And yes, like I said, this is how crazy I am and how my brain is working these days, one run on sentence...on and on with everything I have to do.

I've bought presents for 18 people now. And not easy Amazon gift cards or whatever. My family and L's family are batshit crazy about gifts and I just don't get it. We are all past 30 years old - why does everyone need to get a present? Why can't we do Secret Santa or something else? How am I the ONLY one who doesn't care about presents? I tried to complain to my mother for the umpteenth time (of course inlaws I can't do that with) and she went on and on about how we all need to have stuff to open on Christmas Day.

No we don't. We're not kids. I swear my mom is such a child sometimes. So on top of everything else I've been shopping like a madwoman spending money I don't really need to spend on people who need NOTHING because otherwise I will get bitched at.

And she's driving me nuts. She and my aunt were going to do my shower - months ago she said this. None of my friends stepped in because she wanted to do it. But I guess my aunt isn't doing much (I love her but she doesn't have a lot of money and I think she is really depressed over it and I wish she wouldn't worry and just help out with the work part of it) so my mom keeps calling me and basically having me do everything for the shower. I can't do that on top of everything else. And apparently my mother thinks I have nothing else do to with my time because every time I tell her I have so much to do she asks me what the hell I do all day? Oh, nothing besides working full time, and cleaning the house, laundry, working on nursery stuff, my Etsy shop, and two blogs. She would tell me to just stop doing everything else. Ok. Sure.

So I asked her if I could give her my friend's number (that she knows very well, we grew up together) because said friend (the afore-mentioned social worker) LOVES party planning, and my mom said, "I guess. So why didn't she offer to do the shower then?" Making me feel absolutely shitty like I FORCED her to plan my shower when it was my mother who was so excited months and months ago she was calling me every two minutes to pick invites.

So I called my friend and asked her if she could help my mom out and she was like "OMG yes. I've wanted to do it but I didn't want to step on toes, etc." Thank God it's a load off my mind. My mom was sending me pictures of things for centerpieces, asking me what games we should do, to buy this for the shower and that and ...Jeez, i just don't need that right now.

And of course, we're hosting Christmas for 11 people next week. And the house is in shambles because of the nursery stuff, we need to cook a ton, and I work Christmas Eve (L is off thank goodness), and we need to drive to my BFF's house 45 minutes away (1 way) this weekend to pick up 6 folding chairs and a table. We have one dining room table that holds 4. That's it.

And I really wish we could drive out to see Gabby before the babies are born but I don't think it's going to happen. I will never have felt my children move in utero :( There's just no time...and it's something I really wanted to experience.

And what else? My dog is acting up and I'm getting stressed thinking how I'm going to manage her and 2 BABIES in our condo which just seems smaller by the day (probably because of the aforementioned we have SO MUCH CRAP!!!)

And work is stressful too. My work BFF left a month ago and they decided to give me all her work and then some so I am now doing the job of 2.5 people. Of course no promotion.

Didn't I start this by saying I didn't have much to say? And this is why I need medication.

I am so looking forward to maternity leave.

How Things Can Be So Good Yet I Still Feel Stuck

What I'm going to write is probably going to make some of you want to smack me. I'm going to sound like a brat. I know it. And I apologize in advance.

I went back to the RE after my latest PCOS b/w just to ask if there was anything else we could test for that could explain my difficulties getting pregnant/staying pregnant.

We've dropped my insurance (I'll go on L's in the new year) because we only kept it for the infertility benefits and we need to save as much $ as possible since I'll be out of work 6 months next year and we won't have my paycheck at all.  So while I have the insurance these last two weeks, I just thought I'd make a futile, last ditch stab at it.

It sounds so bratty. I know we'll (hopefully) have two babies next year and I'm STILL trying to figure it out so that maybe I could get pregnant one day. I would be thrilled with 1 baby and getting two is just a dream. So why can't I just STFU and forget about anything else?

Well, if it makes anyone feel better, I waited 40 minutes past my appointment time for a 10 minute appointment with the RE who basically said, "No, nothing else to do. Stop bothering me."

Ok, he didn't say it like that, but it was 10 minutes long and he did say there was nothing else. He also said with my heart, maybe I shouldn't be getting pregnant. Which pissed me off to no end because dude, you're not a cardiologist. I informed him my cardiologist said it was ok for me to get pregnant, which shut him up. But basically I hated him.

I don't know why it should surprise me, people have been telling me my whole life I can't do stuff because of my heart, and it seems as I get older, I'm getting more and more annoyed by it. Maybe it's because I am realizing how much I'm not like other people. Not having my own babies has made me feel like so much more of an outsider than not being able to run a race like everyone else ever did when I was kid.  Maybe it's the same thing as when you're little, you think you can grow up and be anything, even the President of the United States, and when you grow up, you realize what a lie that was.  I realize now my heart DOES keep me from things I never thought it could or would when I was little.

I've been sleeping so crappy for the last month and feeling so down in the dumps it's led to all sorts of crazy things, like my testing for PCOS and glucose intolerance and seeing the RE in the spur of the moment. After 3 hours of sleep last night, I had it. I went to see my PCP to beg for something to help me sleep. I've been trying Benadryl, and Tylenol PM (when I have a headache) and it's just not working all that well.

The nurse tech I saw before the PA asked me if I was depressed and I told her. I'm not depressed. How can I be depressed? I'm anxious as hell because so much is going on, but not depressed. Good things are happening for the first time in years! When the PA came in I talked to her and she made me feel not as crazy. She said I didn't need an anti-anxiety pill and gave me a small prescription for Ambien. She said I just need to get back on a good schedule and she believes everything will work itself out for me. And she said something I totally agreed with - I've been go go going for so long, so many doctors, working for so long towards babies and now things are starting to come together and it's making me anxious. I don't know how that makes sense but it does. Why things working well for once should make me anxious, I don't know, but it's true. It's almost like I don't know what to do with all that effort I used to be making.

I actually do decently well on low sleep, I haven't gotten more than 4 hours a night in months. But it's catching up to me, making me over emotional, over anxious, and in a few months (hopefully) I'll be getting no sleep! So I need to do so now.

Hoping tonight I could get a full 8 hours.

Christmas Presents

Thanks everyone for your exercise/tracking suggestions! I downloaded My Fitness Pal as suggested on my phone to keep track. I need to eat 1200 calories a day in order to lose 2lbs a week. Oh good Lord. I tracked everything I ate yesterday, which was a pretty typical day (except that I had stopped at Dunkin Donuts for a small hot chocolate which I don't normally do) and my calories came to 1485 for the day. So 285 over. But lets say I'm normally eating around 1500 calories a day. Seriously...1500 calories a day has led to me gaining 60lbs in the last 5 years???? I hate my body.

As for exercise...yeah, Jillian Michaels scares me :) I went shopping after work and was walking around so fast I was sweating - so I'll count that as something better than nothing (according to MyFitness Pal, that burned approx 245 calories, so only 40 over for the day). I will have to get my head right before attempting Jillian.

L and I sent Gabby and her family the Christmas presents on Saturday and they got them yesterday. I got the cutest text from her with a picture of the mug I sent her sitting in her keurig machine with a spoon in it:

Opened this tonight, I love love love it! Made my day! It is washed and ready for coffee in the morning. (Husband) also got a package but like the adult he is, he put the presents under the tree. He was kind not to mention the fact that I ripped open my package immediately, no thoughts about putting it under the tree! Haha. But glad I don't have to wait to open it, I love it! Thank you for thinking of us!

Not only that, she posted the pic to her FB and "came out" about being a surrogate there, finally! She did not tag me (thank goodness, as I haven't said publically on FB that we have a surrogate, only that we're expecting (though people who've FB messaged me I've told in private) .

But it was still so sweet. She wrote on FB:

LOVE my new mug, such an awesome gift from great parents, now hurry up February, these baby girls want to meet their rockin' parents! So happy and proud to be a part of this!

She got nice kudos from her friends, and their responses ranged from, "Wow!" to "You are so awesome!" etc. Which she is so that was really nice!

And then she sent me a 28 week bump pic :)

Oh yeah, any doubts that she looked "small for twins" last week are totally gone now! She looks great!