Feeling sick but TGIF!

I've been feeling sick lately, although thank goodness today was much better. Probably because I made a Dr. appointment today to see what was up. That always makes me feel better, of course. I had a terrible headache Monday and Tuesday, and on Tuesday also started having a stomach ache that came and went. It didn't really feel like cramps, so I didn't worry, but after it didn't go away by Thursday morning, I made an appointment with the OB for today. All week I've felt nauseous in the morning as well.

And of course, today I feel fine. Not only has my stomach felt fine, my hip even feels fine. It's ... weird. The appointment went really great. Turtle and Tadpole were super active, and I got a quick glimpse of them on the ultrasound. My cervix was long and closed, and there were no signs of contractions or preterm labor. The doctor suspected that if anything was wrong, it could be a bladder or kidney infection, or possibly something viral. I suspect some sort of digestive distress.

Unfortunately, she was appalled that I am still biking, so I guess I am done with that =( Time to put the bike away for the rest of the spring, now that the weather is getting beautiful. Sigh. Also, swimming is great, but not the serious laps I was considering doing. So I guess I will go to open swim and try to swim some slow, relaxing laps instead of attending a workout. And I guess I will start looking into prenatal yoga and other things specifically for "disabled" women like me.

A few other bits and pieces - I can plan to stop working by the end of May, and possibly sooner (yay for sooner!). My hip pain is normal and I can expect it to get worse (boo). And I haven't gained as much weight as I feared - I am up about 24 pounds from my normal pre-pregnancy weight (about 28 from my actual pre-pregnancy, post-surgery weight). I thought it might be much more than that with the way I've been eating. Time to eat healthier and continue with the appropriate weight gain. Only 17 weeks to go until term (and probably more like 13-14 - yikes!).

I'm having a hard time knowing what to write about. My emotions are all over the place these days, and I'm not always happy and sunny and thrilled about everything. I wrote a long post about that, but I think I'll spare you.

Let's just say that between the knee surgery and the twin pregnancy, my usual activities have been pretty much cut back to nothing and while I was consciously aware of what I was getting myself into, the emotional drag it has turned out to be is much harder than I expected. I am so, so, so happy to be pregnant with twins and would not give it up for anything. Sometimes I wish I could just take a break for a day or a week, though.

My job is sucking. I am already mentally on maternity leave, I've given up on my stupid promotion, and I'm tentatively planning on not coming back. Which means my days feel like long stretches of empty meaninglessness. Considering how much time I spend at work, it's not a very uplifting way to be preparing for the arrival of my little beans.

I was sailing through the pregnancy feeling pretty comfortable and safe, and then things got weird. I stupidly ate a few things I wasn't really supposed to eat, and drank a bit of wine, and then freaked out. I was sure I wasn't feeling the babies move anymore. I woke up in the middle of the night having a mild panic attack. I figured that even though I was still feeling some kicks, I had killed one of the babies. I read stories of people losing their twins to preterm labor, or losing one baby to SIDS. I was sure it would be me. I realized the awesome weight of my responsibilities in carrying these children, and I really wished someone could share it with me. That if something went wrong, it wouldn't have to be all my fault. I feel like I have learned a lesson and will no longer be taking stupid risks with the children I have waited so long and given up so much to have.

I think I'm over it now. I'm about 9 days from viability, even if I am still around 4 months from the end. I'm trying to help my sister plan my baby shower, and I even ordered baby memory books so I can start filling them out before I have no more time.

In the meantime, I'll try to write more, and comment more. 23 weeks on Wednesday. Deep breaths.

20-week ultrasound pics

Today is 21 weeks, and I am celebrating by posting pics from last week's level 2 ultrasound. Life is crazy right now while I deal with pregnancy, poison oak, our new mortgage paperwork, the title company, the contractor for our remodel, our house inspections, finding homeowner's insurance, our taxes, my full-time job, and extra work for my husband's company. Life is nuts right now!

I'm sorry to say this, but the 3D images sort of make me think of Vo.ldem.ort from the Harry Po.t.ter movie. Still, it was really cool to see. Here are my favorites from our pics - enjoy:

Tadpole's beautiful face

Tadpole's legs - knees at the top, feet at the bottom:
Turtle's face - not sure what he's doing. Holding his nose?

Turtle doing yoga - that's his leg up in front of his face. Not sure why he couldn't just take a normal picture. I'm seeing a lot of interesting family photos in our future.
Turtle's arm. I love how clearly you can see his elbow and fingers.

Busy bee

I cannot believe how fast last week went by. Time is speeding up, and I am getting so far behind in just about everything.

First point - the results of last week's bike ride

I think my last post was ... last Monday? We had a busy weekend, signing the counteroffer from the sellers of our (hopefully) future house, and going on a 20-mile bike ride. Yeah, that bike ride, it was LOVELY! I don't think I really mentioned it (it actually was very beautiful), or how badly I had to pee pretty much the whole time. Or how I got off my bike after 15 miles and ran behind some bushes to pee. Or how on Tuesday I started breaking out with ... POISON OAK.

OMG, my friends, I don't know if you've ever had poison oak. I have. I have had it many times, and I always have it really badly, sometimes requiring steroids to get it under control and help my body fight back. After one particularly serious bout, I wasn't sure that the skin on my legs was going to grow back normally, and I thought I'd be left with hideous scars. And I'm talking about the skin on about 3/4 of my legs, not dainty little patches. I always end up having to wash everything I touch, including sometimes my hiking boots, the steering wheel in my car, and anything else I can think of.

This time I'm a bit luckier - I have several huge spots of oozing, weeping mess (the biggest one about 6 inches in diameter, I guess?) - on both hips, my left quad, two on the side of my right thigh, my right shin, and my right ankle. I'm miserable. I spend my days rubbing on various anti-itch remedies, and bandaging up my legs so I don't make a mess of my clothing (with little success - hello, laundry!). Luckily, after a few nights, I am able to sleep again. I'm hoping this clears up by the end of the week. And I will never again assume that I won't get poison oak from road biking. I'm clearly talented enough to pick it up anywhere.

Second point - my level 2 ultrasound!

Perhaps this should have been the first point, but poison oak has taken over my life and overshadowed just about everything else.

The ultrasound went really well - the babies looked fantastic, except for one thing. I don't know if I should worry. They both had cysts on their brains. Should I worry? The doctor came and spoke with us and said it was relatively common, and that they would expect them to disappear by around 24 weeks, or else sometime during the third trimester, and we should follow up to check on them. And that was it. I'm trying not to worry too much, but any advice or experience would be much appreciated in the comments.

Otherwise, it was great. They are beautiful. First, they confirmed for us that Baby A (Tadpole) is a girl and Baby B (Turtle) is a boy. They had also switched sides, I guess, but Tadpole was still the "lower" twin and Turtle was the "upper twin". We think we have names picked out, but I'm not sure if we've finalized them yet. The ultrasound tech also completely surprised us by switching to 3D in the middle and showing us their faces! We got some great pics, which I'll have to post later this week.

Third point - life in general

Everything else right now is gravy. The house we're buying is looking great, the inspections went well, but it needs a new roof. Which is actually a good thing, because the current roof is hideous and we were going to replace it anyway, and now the sellers have to pay for it (it is a not-quite-flat tar and gravel roof). My architect sister is busy drawing up floor plans and making virtual 3D models for us to make our renovation decisions, and we'll meet with a contractor hopefully quite soon. I'm not sure we'll be able to pull this off before the babies are born, but I am hoping that maybe we can manage somehow.

My husband is also sick, again. He never gets sick, so I was shocked to come home from my book club meeting yesterday and discover him on the couch with a fever, for the second time this season. I am a little worried about him, and also hope that I don't get it too - I really don't need a fever while pregnant (and while having poison oak).

I'm keeping in shape by biking and using the rowing machine at the gym - I'm hoping to keep it up as long as possible.


So that's my life - there's so much more going on, but I don't want to write a novel.

PLEASE - if you have anything to add about brain cysts seen in ultrasounds, I would love to hear about it! Thanks!!!

Hope all's well for all of you.

We bought a house!!!!!!

I can't believe it! Our first house! It's on a beautiful lot in a great location, it just needs a lot of work to bring it up to date since the last updates seem to have been made in 1970 (and the original stuff is from the fifties).

And now I'm COMPLETELY overwhelmed with how much work there is going to be. We only have 15 days left for inspections, and we want to start drawing up our remodeling plans to see what we should try to do before we move in and what can wait until later. In the meantime, I need to start packing some stuff, just to get it ready to go. I know that I'll want to clean stuff out as I go, so better to get started sooner rather than later.

It's also a big week for pregnancy. I have an OB appointment on Wednesday, and our 20-week ultrasound on Friday. Halfway there! We'll hopefully get a verification of Baby A's sex, too.

Life is changing in other ways, too. According to my friend's scale, I've gained 18 pounds, which is right on track, but I've gained the last 8 or so really quickly, so I think I need to cut back a little and also start eating healthier. No problem - I'm a little tired of the junk food anyway.

My back and hips are hurting more, although I DID manage to do a 20-mile bike ride yesterday. After that I did two loads of laundry (including carrying them up and down the stairs) and I made two lasagnes, one for dinner sometime this week, and one to freeze for when I'm not feeling up to cooking. After that, my back was killing me.

I am feeling the babies all the time now. It doesn't feel anything like what I expected. It's much more gentle, I guess. It's awesome. It's like my daily reminder of why I'm going through all the difficulties of being pregnant with twins - it totally makes up for all that.

I am so grateful and happy for this pregnancy and these babies - I hope we have a house that's not completely under construction for them when they're born!

19 weeks

All right, here is my 18-week belly pic; I think we actually took this around 18w3d. And sorry, these pictures really aren't very good (you can blame my husband).


And here is 16 weeks; again, I don't think it was exactly 16 weeks, but I don't remember which day we took it:


And before that, we didn't take any pics, but I didn't really start showing until somewhere between 13 and 15 weeks, so there wasn't much to see.

I'm very anxious for my scan next week - I always get more nervous as I'm approaching an ultrasound. I've been feeling the babies move a little bit lately, though. I guess I've been feeling them a bit for a week or two, but it was so sporadic and rare (like every few days) that I didn't think much of it. Now I usually feel those weird little flutters at least once a day, sometimes more, and I'm no longer questioning if 1. I even felt it at all and 2. whether it was the babies or not.

Since we don't have a scale at home and I haven't really been going to the gym (gulp), I don't know how much weight I've gained. Despite my mother's insistence that I'm going to be HUGE EVERYWHERE (usually said with a not-so-nice smile and cackle), I don't seem to be getting bigger anywhere else. My mother gained a LOT of weight after having her kids, so sometimes I wonder if she hopes it will happen to me, too, and she'll feel vindicated. Nice.

Anyway, something else I thought I'd mention is the uncomfortableness of not having everyone know that we did fertility treatments. Many of my friends know, and of course my immediate family, but that's it. It's not common knowledge at work or among extended family or friends. And I get a LOT of comments about the twins, especially because some people know that I myself am a twin.

And on top of that, twins actually do run in my family - besides me and my sister (and we're identical), I have identical twin nephews and fraternal twin cousins. AND my husband's mother (my mother-in-law) is a fraternal twin. So twins are all over the place in our family. People ask me about twins running in our families, and most people don't know that idential twinning is random. It's been so easy to just tell people that twins DO run in our families and never bring up ART at all, and we're not even lying. But I FEEL like I'm lying, and I feel a little uncomfortable. I don't know what to do about it. If anything.

So - belly pics, a bit of movement, and lots of twin questions. Yup, that's life right now.

Oh, and house-hunting (or offer-making). I guess our realtor would have to actually call us back before we can make an offer. Are we crazy to be trying to buy a fixer-upper 4 months before our babies are due (meaning we can only start fixing-up/moving in 2.5 months before they're due)? I'm starting to freak out about that a little, even though I know it will be worth it in the long run. Yikes.

Nicknames!

I just came up with nicknames for the babies!

For Baby A, the girl (we think), I still like Tadpole.

For Baby B, the boy, I like Turtle. Any objections?

I want to write a 19-week post tomorrow, but I had a few things I just wanted to get out there.

First, a friend of mine who was dealing with MFI just announced that she is pregnant without intervention while they were waiting for their insurance to change to pay for IVF! I'm so incredibly happy for them. She is about two months behind me, due in September, and they went through a bunch of IUIs and started the IVF classes. This will save them a lot of time, money, and heartache, and it's such great news.

Second, due to popular demand, I will probably post a belly pic. Maybe tomorrow. I have a 16-week pic and an 18-week pic, although nothing before that. I do have some pics from last year before pregnancy that might be a good comparison, but since I am an active person and I'm finding my activity severely limited these days, looking at those pics makes me a little grumpy right now. So I'll see what I can do.

Third, we're closing in on buying a house! We've found a fixer-upper on a large lot near the center of our town. It's really expensive b/c of the location and size of the lot, and it's going to need a lot of work to get it into shape. Still, if we decide to bid and we buy the house, it will be a hopefully fun ongoing project that we'll take some pride in eventually completing. And it will be nice to make a house that really reflects our tastes. Even if it takes a few years. Our realtor is supposed to let us know today if there is anything else on the market worth seeing - otherwise, wish us luck!

Back tomorrow with my 19-week update and how things are going in pregnancy.