30w

Wow. Up to thirty weeks now! I feel like I am on the home stretch. You would think it would get old at some point when I make it just one more week, but it never does. After a year of thinking I would never get pregnant, followed by all those years coming to term with the fact that I would never get pregnant, followed by surgeries and shots and u/s and endless trips into the city to try to get pregnant, most days I still can't believe I am not just pregnant, but so close to possibly giving birth to perfectly healthy twins with all the cards stacked against me.

Doing good. Still no signs of preterm labor which is awesome and crazy at the same time. I spend most of my time conflicted. I am so done with being pregnant and so ready to get these kids out and maybe be able to walk down a flight of stairs and not need a nap afterward, but also want to keep these babies growing in my belly for just a bit longer to make sure they are good and strong when they meet the world. As my dr said yesterday, I have spent most of this pregnancy worrying about whether the babies will survive, and now I am at the point where I am worrying about whether I will survive.

Had a pretty useless appointment yesterday. The dr said she wasn't concerned about the growth of the babies, Baby B in particular. Baby B is still average for growth and because both babies have their own placenta, it isn't like they are fighting over the nutrients in one placenta to see who gets the most. We talked briefly about giving birth. Looks like I am on track currently for a vaginal birth. The only downside to that is that there will be no access to my giant ovary that way to do anything about it at that time, so I'll just keep my fingers crossed that it cooperates after birth and returns to a normal size. Dr said as long as the bigger baby is head down and born first, there is no concern about the position of the smaller baby since the way will have been paved and they can even reach in and grab the smaller baby by the ankles and pull him out if need be. Sounds fun. And hell yes I will be getting an epidural.

After my appt yesterday I headed to the NICU for a tour. As much as I worried and cried about it last appt just thinking of my babies being there, I was almost perfectly fine. Might have teared up once. But I was also feeling pretty confident at that point that the time I spent at the NICU for the tour would be the only time I spend there. Mostly I couldn't get over just how HUGE the place was. It is the only level 3 NICU in the area (that I know of) and the hospital is pretty much known to be "the place" to give birth around the city. There are 48 rooms in the NICU, in addition to a 15 bed open area for babies that are closer to heading home. I didn't really see any babies, just maybe a leg here or there, since the nurse couldn't take me into any of the rooms for privacy reasons. I was good with that. The whole place was just so calm and relaxing that I almost wanted to be there. Almost. In the waiting room outside the unit, there was a big banner that was put together during a recent NICU reunion. There were hand prints with names and ages of kids that were once babies in the NICU there. Also written in the hand prints were the birth weights. It was very reassuring to see that most of the birth weights of the babies that were there, survived, and thrived were lower than the estimated birth weights of my babies currently.

29w, 4d

I'm tired all the time. My back hurts. My hands swell up and go down. My feet are swollen all the time. These babies have given up sleep and have decided to kick me all the time instead to the point of it really hurting. I'm hungry but nothing sounds good. I'm thirsty but tired of drinking. I have to pee every 10 minutes. I pee every 10 minutes but that doesn't stop me from peeing myself multiple times a day. My boobs are huge and stuff keeps coming out of them. I bought some breast pads to keep from leaking all over the place when my milk comes in but wasn't expecting to need them now. I have no idea where I put said breast pads. My pelvis hurts. One of the most painful things I have ever experienced happens each time I try to roll over. Ain't pregnancy grand?

My kids were nice enough to give me a cold this week. Colds suck. Colds really really suck when you are knocked up and can't take anything. I was up about every 20-45 minutes the first night the cold hit me.

DH and I signed up for a breastfeeding class at the local hospital (not the one I will be delivering at). It is a two week thing and our first class was early this week. I've been reading a lot on the subject but mostly took the class so someone else could tell DH about all the benefits of breastfeeding and what he can do to support it. We did have a conversation about the subject that involved me telling him that this was something I really wanted to do and listed several reasons why. I thought he should know all this so when the going gets tough and all I want to do is quit, he can remind me of all the reasons to keep going. I try not to make too much of a spectacle of myself but it ended coming up in the class that I am expecting twins. I had the joy of everyone staring at me while I tried to balance two freaky looking baby dolls on top of my giant belly while the two babies in the belly kicked furiously at the creepy plastic dolls.

I had a growth u/s on Wednesday. I took DS1 with me who was completely uninterested. Baby A was estimated to be 3lbs 5oz and Baby B was estimated to be 2lbs 12oz. This put Baby A at the 78th percentile and Baby B at the 48th percentile. First of all, I think it is just insane that any child of mine would even be average in size since I am so short and DH doesn't really have height on his side. The tech said that the difference in size between the babies was fine but I am interested to see what my dr has to say at my appointment on Monday. Three weeks ago Baby A was in the 76th percentile so that hasn't really changed much. Baby B was in the 59th percentile three weeks ago. No idea what this will bring but I won't be the least bit surprised if they start getting concerned about IUGR (inter uterine growth restriction) and poor little Baby B's growth being stunted by Baby A taking over all the room. In my completely uneducated mind, this probably means that if this trend continues over the next couple weeks (Baby B dropping on the growth chart), they might decide to take the babies early just to give Baby B some room to grow. I am really not too concerned about this. It will likely be weeks before the growth becomes and issue. Since I am already almost 30 weeks (and the magical number for twin births is 34 weeks) things will probably be fine, maybe just some NICU time for feeders/growers. If it wasn't clear already, I am really not a fan of this being pregnant thing currently (or ever really) so in a way it it nice to see that maybe, possibly, there is an end in the future.

There really hasn't been much mention of my UU with my medical people for the past few months. Of course we are all aware that it could cause issues still, particularly preterm labor, but my twin pregnancy has been pretty much normal up until this point despite the shape of my uterus. The tech that did my last growth scan commented that that both babies are on the right, which is pretty much how they have been. (I have a right UU.) Baby A is head down toward the center of my hips and his feet are in my right rib cage. Baby B is underneath Baby A with his head down on my right hip bone and his feet up toward my sternum more toward my left ribs (he is oblique, so kinda of crisscrossed in my belly). Oddly, my belly looks symmetrical but it is is easy to tell when touching it that the left side is pretty squishy where the right side is filled with baby parts.

A cousin asked me at Thanksgiving dinner about when I thought I would give birth. I said I am hoping the week after Christmas. That way we can get Christmas out of the way and not have to worry about Christmas + premature babies, and we would make it to the magical 34 week point, and we would be able to cash in on our tax refund this year instead of having to wait until next year. As weird as the world is, I am totally expecting to give birth on December 29th, which would be the anniversary of the surgery to remove my rudimentary horn and the pregnancy that was within it.

28w, 2d

28 weeks!!! This is probably the most excited I have been about a pregnancy milestone! I just didn't have it in me to post on the actual day I turned 28 weeks. I am slowly recovering from the ovary issue from last week. I still have trouble laying on my right side which is the size my cystic ovary is on. I was in some serious pain just from my back muscles being fatigued for the past several days. Finally yesterday and today I have been able to spend some time on the couch. Actually feeling pretty good today, well, as good as good gets right now. Back is still sore somewhat but I managed to do two loads of laundry today, cook dinner, and pick up around the house for 15 minutes. Oh, and stalk ebay. I have been doing a lot of stalking ebay lately. In the past couple days I have become the owner of 3 cloth diapers, two breathable crib bumpers, a wet bag for diapers, and a twin nursing pillow. Most excited about the nursing pillow. Those things are expensive! I ended up winning the auction for the one on ebay today saving myself $37 from buying one new.

Guess that's it for now.

27w, 5d

Just a couple notes. While I was at the hospital the other day, it was noted that based on the weight estimates of these babies that was done at my u/s a little over a week ago, they are in the 75th percentile and 59th percentile. It shocked me that they were so different as far as percentage goes when they were only 3oz different, but then I realized that there isn't a huge variation in size of babies at this point so it makes sense.

I guess that was my only note. We were going to go shopping today for a freezer to store all these extra meals that people are going to bring me (hint, hint) and for breast milk and just because our current freezer is overflowing. Getting myself together to leave the house was more than I could handle. I ended up not feeling so great so no new freezer for us today.

27w, 4d

I decided maybe Thursday that the horrible pain I have been feeling was certainly the cause of that stupid multi cystic ovary of mine. I discovered that most of the time I could avoid the worst of the pain overtaking me if I was able to lay down immediately upon feeling the pain begin to worsen from its normal dull annoying ache into something that puts me down for the count and makes me refrain from screaming only in the hopes that my children won't be completely scarred for life. In theory, this laying down when I feel the pain coming on thing isn't a big deal. Doesn't work out so good when I do have two small kids that sometimes I do have to take care of because no one else is here to do it and I am rather certain one of my children has ADHD and can't be trusted not to be under complete watch at all times.

My mom rather screwed me over in her ability to watch my kids on Friday without much warning. I did have about 2 hours in the morning where both kids were gone and I could feel the pain worsening and just stuck to my bed. I was going to wait until Monday to call my dr if things didn't get better, but I was just plain sick of having to lay in bed because of pain that I would think could be controlled. So I decided to call my dr. Of course by the time I called, the pain was pretty much gone and hasn't returned since. Really all I wanted to know was if there was something that could be done at this point (draining the cysts on the ovary, surgery, high doses of narcotics that my babies could become addicted to, magical spells, etc.) so I could just concentrate on growing babies from here on out. I had a question. I don't think I plan on having any more questions ever again.

Instead of answering my question, my dr office decided I needed to come in. I really am going to attempt to keep this short because the entire day was ridiculously long and filled with incompetent people and I could rant about the day for hours and hours. I drove myself into the city because, as I mentioned before, I was not in pain anymore. I tried to play it up like I was in pain while in the dr office because I wanted people to take me seriously and answer my damn question. Two hours were spent in the dr office and no one answered my question but instead started to freak out that I had torsion of my ovary (it twisted on itself and the blood supply was cut off and it was dying, since the pain I described was pretty much exactly what would be expected of that). So instead of telling me if they could fix my ovary or even cut the damn thing out, they decided to send me up to u/s. Oh, they also thought maybe it could be appendicitis which I knew it wasn't because this is my damn body and I have experienced this pain before and it had nothing to do with my appendix but no one was listening to a word I was saying. Damn drs and their liability fears.

The u/s unit there sucks. It is not uncommon to sit there for 2 hours. I got up there around 5 o'clock and people leaving from their appts were saying that they were scheduled to be seen at 2:00. I considered just going home. Then the lady registering people called someone who signed in after I did and I politely asked if I should have been next and she flipped out on me and told me I was wrong, that I wasn't next and I just need to get out of the way and sit down. So I did. I might have cried a little. It had nothing to do with the lady being a complete bitch to me and accusing me of being wrong when she was, it was just that I felt it was so stupid that I was even there. It didn't help that she told the lady who she took before me that they were about 2 hours behind. Finally I got called and was told that it wouldn't be long of a wait for me since I was an emergency. Apparently when there is an emergency and one of your body parts might be quickly dieing while you sit in a giant medical facility, this means you only have to wait 45 minutes to be seen. Grr... and I was going to try to make this short.

U/S showed both babies were doing just fine, head down, not that I have any idea why they spent so much time checking out the babies when they weren't part of the problem at all. My ovary measured at about 11.5 cm across, which I think at its largest was around 16.5 cm, so this was good. There are lots of cysts, but two really big ones that were almost 5 cm each. Lots of good blood flow in that there ovary too. (I swear I could become a u/s tech with little to no training at this point since I have had so many of the things.) Then a dr came in to take a look. She said she still couldn't rule out the fact that my ovary might be partially twisted and therefore still have blood flow but not be in a good position and getting ready to die. Also, she wasn't going to check out my appendix because they only do ob/gyn type u/s there and I would have to go to radiology for my appendix to be looked at. She called a dr from my practice who was on call in triage of the birthing center and they decided that I should go up to triage immediately. Yay!

I was hungry so I went and got a sandwich instead.

Then I went to triage. The registering nurse asked me why I was there and I said I really didn't know. I explained everything to her and she just looked at her form dumbfounded and said, "I have no idea what to even write here." It was about 7:00 when I got changed into a lovely hospital gown and settled into the most uncomfortable "bed" ever created. A nurse came in and worked forever attempting to get fetal heart rate monitors on my babies and ended up really unsuccessful. I waited. I am usually not overly patient but I act patiently when I know there is really nothing I can do but wait. Not last night. After an hour and a half I buzzed the nurse and asked if my dr was going to see me soon. She said she would be there shortly and she actually was. It was a resident and I really liked her. She finally answered my question. They try to avoid draining ovarian cysts just on the off chance that the ovary could be cancerous (which she had absolutely no reason to think mine was) and having the cysts burst and release cancerous material into the rest of my body would be a bad thing. They can do laproscopic surgery but unless it is really needed at this point, they prefer to put that off until after the pregnancy so they aren't dealing with the risk of operating on a pregnant woman. (Personally, I would rather take the risk of surgery now than wait until 3 months after I give birth like she suggested to have surgery to remove the cysts and/or ovary. Can you even imagine? Two young kids plus 3 month old twins and I am recovering from surgery? No thank you.) I think I understood that they they could take a look at the ovary if I have a c-section and maybe do something about it at that point. Then the dr did an exam, one of the most painful exams I have ever had, just to make sure that none of the pain I was experiencing was a result of preterm labor. My cervix is still closed and nothing else indicated that I am in preterm labor. They took some blood. I was told it would be about 30-45 minutes until those results were back.

An hour and a half later I buzzed the nurse again and asked if there was any news on my test results. She said as soon as one of the drs finished with a delivery, they would be in. So, two drs came in shortly after that. Nothing indicated an infection or anything else that might point towards appendicitis or really anything causing the pain other than the ovary. They preferred to keep me overnight but I made it very clear to them that I thought it was ridiculous that I was there in the first place and would not be staying. Unlike earlier in the day when I was trying to make sure they all understood the amount of pain I was in, I said over and over again how I wasn't in pain AT ALL because I was tired of them paying attention to me. The dr said that she couldn't let me go in good conscious until she was able to get a good fetal heart rate reading for 20 minutes. It took about 30 minutes of lots of fiddling around and some sort of handheld u/s device to finally get the monitors on right to pick up the heart rates. I was laying flat on my back, a position that just doesn't work for me, and was instructed not to move. If it meant getting the hell out of there, I was going to make it work. I stared at the monitor reading. A couple times the monitor stopped picking up anything and I started to panic and fiddled with the monitor myself until it picked something up. After 30 minutes I buzzed the nurse. "Any chance I could get out of here yet?" Someone came in and disconnected me. I got my discharge papers. I discovered the protocol for getting out of the hospital after hours. I got home at 1:30am.

I slept in today.

I also managed to smack myself in the head with a chaise lounge today. I'm awesome like that.

26w, 6d

I've been feeling like ass. Complete and total ass. It started the night after the hospital tour. I woke up in the middle of the night with the most awful back pain. It was really bad. I threw my back out twice in my life and that hurt like hell, but at least the shooting killer pain only really showed up when I moved. This was that horrible pain but constant and no position would relieve it. I considered waking up DH when it first happened because I was convinced it had to be labor related. After about an hour it did start to subside. However, I have been dealing with that crap on and off since then. It comes on pretty sudden and I am done. My whole body is unable to function. I get nauseous, weak, and feel like death. The only thing I have found to help is if I get on all fours and put my chest on my yoga ball for about 30 minutes. Then I am back to pretty much normal for several hours. I had plans to visit a friend today that I had to cancel due to this pain. I ended up calling my dr just because I was so paranoid that it was all pre-term labor related and not just simple back pain. The nurse and dr discussed it and decided that it didn't sound labor related, just unfortunate pain from having a huge ovary still, two babies, and uterus that is positioned mainly off to one side.

All this pain did have me pretty convinced that this pregnancy might not last too much longer. Part of me isn't too upset about that. I am not a fan of being pregnant. September was actually pretty good. I felt pretty good. I wasn't worried every second of losing these babies. I certainly wasn't in this much pain. But, other than September, every other part of being pregnant has sucked. I hung out with my friend Google for a bit tonight. The original object was to convince myself that if I don't last too much longer, these little babies will be okay. Instead I came across pictures and information about premature babies that convinced me that I can put up with this pain and annoyance and sickness and hatred of being pregnant longer because it will all be worth it to have bigger, stronger, healthier babies.

26w, 4d

Busy with baby stuff the past two days. Yesterday I had an appointment with MFM. It was the most worthless appointment I have ever had. I'm up 4lbs in the past two weeks, putting me at +25lbs total. Finally getting to a good weight for twin babies. My blood pressure was good. My aim at peeing in a cup sucked. The doctor (someone I hadn't seen before) asked if I had any questions. I asked a couple things. She seemed highly unconcerned. There was basically no exam. There was no wheeling in of the u/s machine to check heartbeats. Instead she just checked with the doppler, saying that at this point the babies are big enough that is should be easy to find both. Baby A clocked in at 135 bpm, which is the lowest it has ever been. Baby B clocked in at 148 bpm, which is the highest it has been since the babies were just little specs. This is the first time the heartrates weren't within 2-3 beats of each other. She measured my belly, pretty much just for shits and giggles (although she used some other phrase and didn't say "shits and giggles"). I am measuring 29 weeks. She said that from here on out I will start growing a lot faster than a mom with a singleton.

I asked if it would be possible for me to get a tour sometime of the NICU at the hospital. Then I suddenly realized, I might not be able to handle it. I teared up just asking the question. Then again I had tears in my eyes while the lady that does the scheduling was making phone calls to figure things out. Just the thought of seeing all those teeny tiny babies hooked up to machines and knowing that there is a big chance that my two teeny tiny babies have a huge chance of being in there. I cried the whole way home. Like, I want to see. I want to be familiar with the place so I can just be in shock of MY kids being in there and not be in shock of the whole NICU. I just don't know if I can bring myself to go through with the tour. As of now, it is scheduled for the Monday after Thanksgiving when I will be at the hospital anyway for my next appointment, unless something big is going on in the NICU and they aren't able to fit me. I am feeling better today about the visit. It is just that I know how fortunate I am in life. I have made some really really bad decisions and have had some really crappy things happen to me, but at the same time, things still seem to have turned out great. I've been lucky more times than I can count. We've gone through the adoption process twice and each time it was hell, yet still nearly flawless as far as adoptions go. I got screwed over in life with this UU, but here I am pregnant with twins at 26 weeks and I haven't experienced half the problems that other women with UUs have experienced or half the problems other moms expecting twins have experienced. I just keep waiting for my luck to run out, to be that mom with tiny little twins in the NICU, holding my breath every day that they will just make it to the next day.

Today DH and I took the tour of the maternity area of the hospital. One of the first places we were shown was where the NICU was located. I stood there just outside the doors of all those tiny, sick babies, and I was okay with it. There were a lot of things on the tour that weren't all that helpful. I already knew where triage was. Been there. Done that. Already knew all about how to register when you come in to be sent to triage. We got to check out a labor/delivery/recovery room. Not sure how helpful that was since we were also told that twin mommas deliver in the OR even if they are having a vaginal birth. Plus half of the stuff the guide told us I just kept thinking, yeah it all sounds great if you give birth to ONE HEALTHY baby, but who the hell knows how it will all go down if I am in there with preemie twins. I feel like I am nice and prepared for a normal pregnancy and birth, but those are things I will never get to experience.