Baby, Baby

First off, I owe a big (and long-overdue) Thank You to Scott for giving me a "Thinking Blogger" Award (though, I think a "Blinking Thogger" award is totally more appropriate!). I hardly feel worthy. I'm just happy to be a part of this group of folks sharing our stories (diabetic and otherwise). One of these days I will (hopefully) set up a Tu Diabetes page and join the 21st century (I kinda thought I'd get some hipster points for starting a blog, but now the bar seems to have been raised).

Now, on to our (ir)regularly scheduled programming... about babies

Maternity Ward Tour

Two weekends ago, we went on a short tour of the maternity ward where we will hopefully be having these twins. It was a nice experience. The highlight was definately when we were walking down the hall of several closed LND (labor and delivery) rooms when we heard a small crowd of people start to cheer. At first I thought someone had scored a touchdown,

Sports Cluelessness

Who thinks there's a football game being played on a Saturday morning in July??

close

but then I heard a baby start crying, and we all realized that a baby was just born on the other side of that door.

Megan cried.

Okay

I welled up a little bit myself.

close

We also found out that if the babies don't make it to 34 weeks, then we won't be able to deliver at that hospital but would have to go to one of the larger university hospitals in the area that have more intensive NICUs.

28 week OB appointment

It's also been a week since we went to our 28 week OB appointment. I was going to post more sonogram images, but the quality of the images we were given are so bad, it's hard to discern much at all.

All in all, we got more (mostly) good news about the twins.

We found out that the babies recently went on a little growth spurt and are now a week ahead in terms of size. They told us that one was 2 lbs. 14 oz. (or 29 weeks and 1 day) and the other was 3 lbs. 5 oz. (or 29 weeks and 6 days gestation). They are also both positioned head down, which is good if we want to have a shot of avoiding a C-section.

In our conversation with one of our OBs, we came to find out that they won't let us go beyond 38 weeks gestation with the twins. Which really kinda pissed me off. Why the hell did they even tell us October 5th was our due date, if they knew full-well that they would never let the pregnancy go beyond September 18th??? We've been pretty confused as to why they wouldn't let a pregnancy go longer than 38 (for twins) or 40 (for singletons) weeks gestation before inducing or scheduling a C-section.

My understanding is that the larger the baby, the healthier the baby, the better he/she will feed after birth (important), and the better he/she will sleep after birth, too (very important). But we recently found some research on how the incidence of stillbirth declines until 38 weeks in multiple pregnancies and then starts to increase (somewhat drastically) beyond 38 weeks.

So, in these new terms, we're somewhere between 5 and 9 weeks off from B-day.

Aside from this (somewhat jarring) new time horizon, the only down side to the whole appointment was that Megan was put on "limited activity."

Hmmmm

I think she might have slipped the doc a $50 before our appointment and I didn't know about it.

close

This means that while the docs will allow her to continue working (especially since she has a desk job and can lay down if necessary in her office), she is no longer allowed to:

• Walk the dog,
• Do the grocery shopping,
• Do the laundry,
• Do the dishes, or
• Do any other house cleaning

We run a pretty even-Steven household, and I've been picking up more of the duties as the pregnancy has been progressing (in addition to busting my ass on a lot of house projects), but this extra work has actually been pretty tough. Basically, Meg's only domestic responsibility (as I like to tell her) is to "keep our buns in your oven!"

Marvelous Multiples

And finally, we went to a birthing class last weekend that was run by an organization called Marvelous Multiples. The class was focused on the birth of twins and triplets and was quite useful. They covered topics like:

• Symptoms of pre-term labor
• Drug interventions to stop or slow pre-term labor
• Tips on how to cope with bed rest
• What to expect in the NICU
• Drugs options in child-birth
• Recovery from C-section
• And strategies for caring for twins in the first weeks after birth
  (hint: get all the help you can!)

It's all starting to feel very real.

It's also nice that a lot of the fear and anxiety I've been experiencing has been subsiding and slowly has been replaced with just pure excitement.

I can't wait to meet my babies and to laugh and sing and dance and play with them!

A Short Wish List

• I want my babies to be healthy
• I want to feel it when my kids come in to wake me up by tickling my feet
• I want to see them grow up to be happy and friendly people
• I want to be strong and support my family
• I don't want this disease to get in the way of ANY of these things
• I don't want to be afraid of this disease stealing these experiences from me