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.