35 week appointment

Ok, so today was my appointment, and i arrived with a mission. To convince my Dr. that it would be best for me to have the babies as SOON as possible, specifically, next friday, the 17th. I was unsuccessful in that attempt. She said at 36 weeks 3 days she'd need specific REASON to prematurely plan a c-section. Darn. I really thought i approached that in a convincing way. So i THINK i got her to sort of agree to exactly 37 weeks on the nose which would be the Tuesday AFTER that friday that i was shooting for. My rationale behind the friday was that it would give us the benefit of the weekend, and since i'm having a Csection, i'm going to need my dh home for as long as possible on a LOT Of levels. But i would still rather have them the tuesday after rather than 2 weeks from friday, namely because Leif's bithday is on the 28th and i'd like to be at least moderately recovered by his birthday, like i don't want to be coming out of the hospital the day BEFORE his birthday, and i think the chances of my body waiting till after are minimal.

So anyway, back to the appointment. My uterus is measuring 53 cm, 2 more than last time, and the babies are both transverse... they kind of have their own diagonal half of the uterus, and their heads are surprisingly close togther. They weigh about 6 lbs and 6 1/2 lbs respectively. NOW, the troubling thing about their heads, is she was moving the wand along my belly saying "here's a head, and here's a head, and here's a head. And i was like WAIT a minute, that was 3 heads!! WHY do my babies have 3 HEADS????? There is still just 2 BABIES, RIGHT?!?!?!?!?! and she very hesitantly said "Yes....." and i was like WHOA, you are so not filling me with much confidence with THAT "Yes..." So she looked around more and determined that she was seeing A's head from 2 opposite sides of the uterus. We THINK. So in all likelyhood, there IS just 2 babies, but if they find another one in there later, i would not be ENTIRELY surprised, though i still think i would completely freak out. 2 babies at once is crazy enough. Another thing is they seem to be hanging out only at the top of my uterus which is weird. The placentas are at the top, so its not like they are blocking the bottom off, so i'm a BIT concerned about THAT turn of events, but i'm trying not to stress about it especially since i have enough to stress about as is. Right now the combination of waking up stressed about some element of the coming birth, and the EXCRUCIATING hip pain that i get during my 1 3 hour stretch at night when i don't have to pee, is getting me up REALLY early, and i'm tired and cranky and really really sore all over ALL the time.

34 week appt.

Ok, so what a frustrating appointment. First, the babies are the same as last time, A is breech, B is transverse, though B is more transverse than last time he was more vertexish, he's kind of moved up. i think hanging out on my pubic bone wasn't very comfortable for him either! Anyway, so she's fairly certain at this point that we are looking at a Csec although she won't schedule one earlier than 37-38 weeks! UGG! AND she thinks my contractions are braxton hicks, which is completely baloney. I've had 5 children, HELLO! i can tell when i'm in LABOR! and she insists that if my cervix was problematic they'd be able to find it and something would be bulging out of it, like A's bag of water or his little butt :-) eww... soooo.. after my 5 minute waste of time appointment, i'm no further than i was before. So who knows. Andy is "I told you so"ing big time about me opting to change to a more laid back doctor, and i think he's right. Oh well... at least she wants me to be stress tested on sunday, (provided i'm not in the hospital prior to then, which i'm guessing is pretty much a GIVEN at this point, since i'm supposed to go in after 2 hours of 10 minutes or closer contractions. But at any rate i'm definately mentally preparing for a Csection, which creeps me out still, but i have to admit, no 20 hour labor is very tempting. So i'm glad the decision is out of my hands, i'm not sure i'd make the "right" choice. AND i'm glad to have the time to mentally prepare. I don't do well with spur of the moment crises. Anyway, i'm trying to distract myself, hoping that it might make me less likely to go into labor? not easy on BEDREST! ugg. anyway, that's pretty much it. Thanks for reading.
R

What a night!

Ok, so around 6ish, i started to notice that my regular contractions are getting a bit harder and more regular, roughly every 10 min. or so... I was laying down already when i discovered this, and drinking lots of water already so i got up to serve dinner and eat, and it continued on, Andy got home, let him know that we'd probably have to go to the hospital, and eventually called the L&D floor, and they said to come in, so i took my time got stuff squared away, took a shower, and left. We got there around 8ish, and my contractions were 4-5 min apart and strongish and very regular! Yikes. So since i'm only 34 weeks, they wanted to stop them. Basically they said they'd not to go heroic measures to stop them, but if they could be stopped that would be good, so i got 2 failed cervix checks, ugg and a shot of terbutaline, which i didn't even FEEL, which is weird because it hurt last time, i was like, are you sure it worked? LOL, but it did and eventually the contractions gave way to just irritable "i've been on my back WAY too long" bumps on the chart. So at about 11, i was discharged and midnight just got home. UGG. What a night and poor andy! Hope he has an easy day tomorrow. And really hope this doesn't become a regular thing.. So anyway, i'm off to bed, wiped out. HOping i don't go into labor futilely again tomorrow :(

PS. we did get a pretty spectacular fireworks show right out the window of the hospital, i could even see them in bed, it was really neat!!

a day in the life....

So last night Andy and i had what was probably our last date night for a LONG time, and we went to tour the hospital maternity area, and i was surprised to see the class was taught by Patti Ramos, THE Patti Ramos whom i'd heard so much about but never actually seen or met, so that was really cool. The whole hospital setup is SCARY! Particularily the OR where they do csections. I discovered a few things... 1. I am allowed to labor in water but not birth in water, close enough. If i have a vaginal birth, i will be there 1 night, and 2 nights if i have a c-section. So anyway, got home and the kids had completely trashed the house, company makes my kiddos a little distracted :-) But they were all in jammies and ready to go, which sped things up a bit. Poor Chloe had this monster fat lip from falling off her bike. Poor thing, I made them stay up and clean. It was alex's night so he did the bulk of it. (my older 3 take 2 night blocks where they get to stay up when the other kids go to bed and clean, do whatever chores need doing, they usually get a treat or something, and everyone seems to LOVE it when its their turn, which is an awesome deal for us. So... THAT helped, and then this AM alex made his weekly oatmeal, using yummy thick steel cut oats which is our wednesday tradition. we had breakfast, and i printed out all my homeschool ABC lessons to read while i bedrest, and went to make my bed. Then i thought, gee, i should get DRESSED, and went to see if alex did his last two loads worth of laundry which he did NOT. So, no getting dressed for me. Sigh... i put the boys on timers, every hour they will be switching that darn laundry till its DONE! probably all day. Sigh... AND, i discovered that the middle children ate almost my ENTIRE BAG of pita chips from COSTCO!! UGGGGGG! And chloe's pouting because i called her on it... sigh...

So, i'm here, being good, resting... not like at this point i'd even WANT to not be resting, they are so low it hurts to go anywhere, today is much better though, it doesn't hurt to lay down, which is great. I'm trying to decide if we are going to eat at home or go to Arby's tonight. I still have a fabulous dinner brought by Lashell monday, which i should really freeze if we aren't going to use it tonight, BUT tonight is free roast beef night at arbys when you buy a drink, which for all of us, plus a couple extra sandwiches and a couple fries is $20 or so which is AWESOME for us... hmm... this is a pretty good dilemma..

33 week update

Well, i had my appointment today, no major news... a few little things.... its "appears" Baby A is breech and baby B is vertex (head down) i say "Appears" because its really hard to tell which is which... but since A seems to be deeper, i'm thinking "A" really IS "A" So there's that, and also, i've dropped! Very cool! She checked my cervix and its still too high up to tell, which is good, so i'm not dialating anyway, but the babies are laying off the ribcage and instead are pounding on my pubic bone, making it easier to breathe but harder to stand and move around and i'm having a lot of uncomfortable contractions. I'm also starting to sleep not so well, for the first time this pregnancy. Which in all fairness is pretty good, But nonetheless, its kind of the pits being me right now!

So Anyway, let's see... what else.. i have a nonstress test for sunday, and still have to figure out how to do the next appointment, since its a weird time for andy's work, want to make sure he still gets paid for the 4th of july. but other htan that.. not much going on...

I will say that i'm fully sick of being pregnant. The rational side of me keeps reminding myself how much EASIER these babies are to take care of on the INSIDE than the outside, Eat, go potty a lot, lay down a lot, voila! I can still sleep, and go places, and whatnot... NOT so when they are born. Of course its not like its my choice anyway, at some point my body is just going to be like "ENOUGH!!!" and i personally feel like that time is coming! I'd give it about 2 weeks personally, i just don't feel like there's that much longer left!! i actually found myself ASKING my doctor, if i scheduled a Csec how SOON could i schedule that! She said probably not sooner than 37 weeks. SHEESH! that's a whole month from now. Ugg.

So anyway, we had our appointment and then got to swing on down to Gig Harbor, which is always a treat, especially right now, getting to GO somewhere :-) yay! So we went to pick up from a friend a snap in stroller set with peg perego carseats!! it was a GIFT, one of many lately!! And a WONDERFUL blessing, (THANKS Miranda!!) then we thought we'd drive through Gig Harbor, just a nice change of scenery, so we did, and we stopped at Ben and Jerry's and went in, and promptly LEFT, LOL! (cones, $4 each ;-) We laughed the whole way out at how tacky and conspicuous we must look!! Good times!! Then we went to dairy queen! And spent a more reasonable $16 on icecream :-)

Now we are home and Lashell brought us dinner for tonight and tomorrow, that i can HARDLY wait to dive into!! oh my gosh, REAL FOOD!! What a luxury!!! i'm getting WAY too accustomed to Mcd's and the like!! :-) (My MOPS group is bringing by meals twice a week, which is just so absolutely AMAZINGLY helpful... just ONE less thing to worry about.

Anyway, that's me! hope you all are well :-)
Rebecca

32 weeks!

and a new twin diagram to go along with it!!

Homeschooling with lots of babies!

So, i'm getting my year plan together and i'm wondering what all of you who have BTDT have done to prepare for a crazy insane whacked out year, homeschooling 4 and having an additional preschooler and 2 newborns!!

My plan for the year is to keep it REALLY simple. I'm buying pieced together versions of the Timberdoodle full year curriculums http://www.timberdoodle.com/Complete_Homeschool_Curriculum_Packages_s/363.htm since i use a virtual school and they won't pay for the apologia science... so anyway, i chose those since they require much less TIME than most curricula, and so i'm hoping that will help.

Also i'm focusing now on getting ready ahead of time. As soon as the stuff arrives, which probably won't be till after they are born sadly, i'm allowing myself lots of time to break down everything into weekly folders so we know exactly what needs to be done on what weeks. Whatever doesn't get done will get done on the weekends or evenings. That's my plan anyway :-)

I'm contemplating a "Managers of their homes" style schedule, including the babies, but am nervous, having never scheduled babies before. From what I understand, many twin parents go the schedule route purely for sanity's sake, when they may not have normally scheduled their newborns, its merely a survival thing. So i'm very seriously considering it, making sure to allow close feedings for the little guys.

Does anyone else have any sanity saving ideas for how to make things come together?!

thanks,
rebecca