HERE'S THE LATEST....

Well here is K at 32 weeks. We went to the ultrasound doctor on Friday. The doppler pressure, fluid levels, cervix, and growth of the girls looks good. We did learn a few interesting facts: K will for sure be having a C-section because the girls are in an "interlocking" position....as K is not certain that there is room for one to come out at a time, clearly two of them locked together is just not going to happen!! So basically both of their heads are in the middle of the belly looking at each other. Brooke's head is higher and her body is curving around below Audrey. (She is breech and when she kicks I am pretty sure that her foot is going to come flying out!) Audrey is the lower head, but her body is curving up so her feet and bottom are crushing into K's ribs (this is K's description not the docs) Basically if you picture a yin-yang position that is what the girls are doing.

Fact number 2: The girls are growing so well!! They measure various body parts and then do some extrapolating to figure out how much they are weighing. Brooke is estimated to be 4 lbs 9 oz and Audrey is estimated to be 4 lbs 2 oz!! We are so excited that they are both over 4 lbs!! The doctor said that there is about a +/ - 10% margin of error, but that still looks good to us!

Picture Caption: This is K doing her best Mark Mangino impression. If you did not see any of the University of Kansas football game this past weekend, you will just have to trust me that this is pretty dead-on. He was wearing a very similar outfit this past weekend on the sidelines!

THE TIME NARROWS...

K had another OB appointment today. It was pretty uneventful...no pelvic exam...yeah!! K did get a flu shot, so tomorrow the left arm will be quite sore! K also had blood drawn just to check her H and H levels to see if she is getting anemic. K is always tired, but apparently that is common but just checking to make sure all in the normal range.

K goes back in 2 weeks. Also in 2 weeks she will begin having a fetal nonstress test (NST) every week at the hospital (in the same little testing place she went for contractions). This is frequently done with insulin dependent diabetics. The test just monitors their heartbeats and any uterine activity (aka contractions). They want to see the girls move and see their heartbeats correspondingly increase to that movement. This shows that they are getting enough oxygen and the placentas are working correctly.

So the delivery time has an ending date: December 3rd. K is on the schedule for a C-section on that day...this assumes that all stays normal (no labor or dilating) and that all the NST results show the girls are reactive. So the countdown begins...

PICTURES OF K

OK so I usually post these off to the side, but I have tried this about a million times today and apparently there is something crazy going on and I am just unable to do it. So here is my belly!! Apparently my belly is so large now that most shirts I have do not actually meet the pants...which seems odd considering these are maternity clothes and they know your belly will be getting bigger!! (Notice in the first one how the front of the shirt is up quite high). As a result I have had to start switching over to bottoms that have a higher belly...note middle picture. Though really I would prefer for all of them to be low like the last...which is actually how I wear most of them especially when not out in public. Oh, this is me at 30 1/2 weeks...just 4 - 6 more weeks. I read today that at week 31 the babies should go through a growth spurt. So stay tuned for the next pic!

HEALTH CHECK-UP

So this post will be kind of long as K attempts to totally update on all health related stuff that has been going on. So if you love details, continue reading. If not, here is summary: K is doing fine and A&B are growing well.

• Contractions: well it turns out that K has been having periodic contractions for a couple of months now. She thought it was just the babies balling up. In retrospect it does seem odd that they would always do it at exactly the same time and that they would stay that way for exactly the same amount of time. (as our OB said " well they were balling up, but that was because the uterus was contracting in on them"). The frequency of these had greatly increased and so we went to the hospital for some monitoring (they have a whole little clinic for monitoring labor and delivery people). Turns out these were happening about every 5 minutes and this is more than the Docs like to see. So got some shots there to reduce the contractions which was effective. Since K responded well, she was sent home with some oral medication (which is actually med for asthma!) and instructions to rest (so no more work), drink lots of water (can't even explain to you how much water they want K to drink), go to the bathroom frequently (as if that was even an option), and take the meds. The difference has been AMAZING!! K is only having around 10 a day and can now feel the babies moving so much more (and these are actually them moving!).

• OB: Had an appointment on Wednesday. K is still going to keep taking meds to keep the contractions away. K goes back to see him in 2 weeks. The plan is to keep resting, drinking water, and taking meds. They want to keep the contractions away at least until 32 weeks (currently 29 weeks), so I will keep on the med until then. After that, they may ween K off them. (guess they don't want to block them forever, and the lungs are supposedly pretty well developed by then in twins.) And then the longest they are going to let K carry them is 36 1/2 to 37 weeks. So we are narrowing down the arrival time--pretty much the month of November up through Thanksgiving...weeks 32 - 37!!

• ULTRASOUND: everything looks good here too! again K is unable to recognize pretty much anything-- But they are moving well and developing well. In a confusing turn of events, Brooke who we've been calling Baby B (on my left) is now actually Baby A because she is lower. So it is confusing when the doctor is talking about Baby A and he means Brooke and I think Audrey...but we got it all straight (I think!) So I will refer to them by name to ease confusion. Brooke is on the left side and is head-up. She is still the bigger girl and is estimated to weigh 3 lbs 4 oz which is in the 68th percentile for singleton babies. Audrey is on the right side and has moved up a bit (thus the rib pain) and is ready to go with her head down. She is estimated to weigh 2 lbs and 13 oz which is in the 48th percentile for singletons. So they are both growing well (hard to believe that there is 6 lbs of baby in K!!) We go back for one more ultrasound (around 32 weeks) and the Dr. will make his recommendation for type of birth. If nothing changes it will be a C section.

Belly Pics

Originally I put all of my belly shots on the side of the blog. Well, since I want to keep this documentation I have created a post that lists these shots by date. It is crazy to see how HUGE I got. A few of the last pictures also appear in later posts, but I wanted them all here for side by side comparison.

May 28, 2007

June 3, 2007

June 21, 2007


July 8, 2007

July 24, 2007

August 11, 2007

August 28, 2007

September 12, 2007

October 1, 2007

October 14, 2007

October 27, 2007

November 8, 2007

RANDOM THOUGHTS AND PICS

Here is D demo-ing his skills pushing our snap-n-go double stroller. K is trying to figure out how she is going to attach this to the grocery cart so she can buy food and take the kids out. You can also see K sitting in our giant chair which we are so excited about. Certainly the girls will calm down and fall right to sleep after being rocked in this chair. We did get (some) furniture delivered...the crib seen in the pic and a combo changing table piece. We are still missing one crib, but the girls will share to start with anyway....that one crib will seem huge compared to K's belly anyway. Please note the absolutely adorable mobile...teddy bears in ballarina skirts...what could be cuter?
We had a shower this past weekend. We absolutely loved everything about it...it was perfect (at least in our opinion, and really that is all that really matters anyway!) Here we are with the delicious cake with the slightly freaky babies on top. Note: K is being a good patient because she has her giant cup of water with her....currently instructed to drink at least 8 of those a day!!Here we are opening some presents. Everything that we got was just too cute for words! We are much more ready for their arrival as we now have clothes and toys for them. Nice how K is literally barefoot and pregnant in the picture below!