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

31 week appointment!

Ok! well, today's appointment went significantly better than last weeks! First, i'm measuring 49 inches, quickly pushing me into "enormous" from just being "huge" a few weeks ago :-) Babies are now both breech, having moved from both tranverse last week. This is encouraging to me, because if they can turn in that direction, then they can turn in the other direction too! so hopefully!! they are measuring around 1600 grams, or a little over 3 1/2 lbs each. If you were not aware, 1500 grams is the "magic" point where 95% of twins born then or later survive, and 80% have no serious problems long term. VERY COOL! Not that i'm lackadaisical about making sure they aren't born too early, i'm just encouraged that they are this far. So... let's see..

I got a penis confirmation on "B" didn't happen to notice on "A" due to how he was positioned, but i'm going to assume that my old doctor, a perinatologist, can recognize a penis when he sees one and i'll continue to assume i have 2 boys :-)

So babies are looking good, they are breathing now. I need to look up and find out when they normally start breathing, but she noticed chest movement, so that is cool! good strong heartbeats, and they are roughly the same size and measuring only about 3 days further than i am instead of 5 days further, which is good since we'd really prefer NOT to have 2 10 lb babies in there :)

OH and the REALLY Good news is i'm allowed to SIT!!!! yes, she said a couple hours of laying down a couple times a day should do it and then i can SIT the rest of the day which is ROCKINGLY AWESOME, since there's SO MANY things you can do sitting that you can't do laying down. Plus it is sooooo achy laying down all day, my whole body has just been sooo sore! YAY!!!!

Thanks for your prayers!!
Rebecca

Another update!!

Wow, the excitement! Ok, so yesterday, i posted when i got home from the appointment, etc, Well, i continued to lay down for about 2 hours, and kept getting contractions about 10 minutes apart, and they felt like the contractions i NORMALLY get at about 4 am the friday morning before i go into labor the next night. (i'm like clockwork with EVERYTHING) So i was concerned and called the dr's office, and talked to the midwife i'd seen that day, who put a rush on the fetal fibronectin test that i'd taken that day (Did i mention that?! probably not, but it was AWESOME, they did it blind without having to do the speculum thing, which was AWESOME! easy schmeasy. Anyway, so she put a rush on that in the lab, and told me i should really get to the hospital, so i packed up lots of books, Andy packed up the laptop, and we set off for the hospital.

They immediately admitted me to the hospital, about 4:30 pm put me in a wheelchair and sent me up to Labor and Delivery. They were SO nice there! The first nurse tried really hard to get the monitors to pick up the babies' heartbeats but the monitors weren't cooperating so she'd get them all jammed in there and as soon as they were set up, i'd have to to to the bathroom, having drunk water like crazy all day :-) by about 7 there was a shift change and i got a new nurse who was also really nice and she gave me a shot of some kind of smooth muscle relaxant. My doctor was there and read my pee test, and said i was severely dehydrated and my ketones were at a "2" i think the highest they can be- not good, so she ordered an IV. She wasn't sure if i'd have to stay overnight, which would have REALLY been a bummer because andy would have had to miss ANOTHER day of work or at least a half day. The results from my fetal fibronectin came back NEGATIVE, which is awesome, that means that at least this am when i had the test labor had NOT started, and was unlikely to happen in the next 2 weeks, but the dr. was concerned that we had to stop the contractions. it took longer than it usually does for the shot of muscle relaxant to work, and the contractions were still going. Then it started to work and i got really dizzy and shaky, but it definately helped, by about 930 my heart rate was still too high for another dose and my contractions were becoming more irritable and small with only an occassional regular contraction, so that was good! finally, after my 2nd bag of Iv fluids, my contractions were decreasing and my ketones were down to 1 and i was able to be liberated from the hospital by about 11:30! So i'm not sure what's up with the ketones, if it was just a dehydration thing, or due to not having really eaten much of anything since the pizza buffet we had at 11 am.

So i went home and took a SHOWER!! i was all gooeyed up from all the monitors and sweaty from my room being hot and blech! Then i drank another water bottle and went to bed. So this morning, i woke up with a headache and dark pee again. (WHAT THE HECK!?) its like i just can drink water constantly and still never get enough?!!? So i'm BACK to my bedrest routine. I was warned that i had to follow modified bedrest really strictly, or i'd have to be on STRICT bedrest, which is nearly impossible, so i'm trying really hard to not mess this up, since i do NOT want to get bumped up to strict and i do NOT want to end up in the hospital again!!! ugg. Prayers would be much appreciated.. there is SO much work to be done and it drives me NUTS staying in bed all day doing NOTHING!!!! uggggg...

Today's appointment- 30 weeks

Well, i just transfered over to Dr. Phoebe Ho's practice, and had my first appointment there today. It was eventful to say the least. I was having contractions ALL morning, i hit my 4th in an hour while i was being examined,and i'm supposed to rest for a long while and drink lots of water and keep an eye on how things are going, so HOPEFULLY i won't have to go to the hospital or anything... i still think i probably should have just gone in to St. Joe's ANYWAY, just to be monitored for a while and play it safe.. BUT my cervix is still high, though soft, and closed, so that's good.

ANyway, the big thing is, the twins are BOTH transverse. i knew that "B" was transverse as he's the one that's more on the outside, easier to feel movement and stuff, I think that A spends a lot of time kicking into B :-) So i asked the midwife that i saw at this appointment when the babies stop flipping around, and she said if not now, pretty soon they will be too big to move, she gave my odds of them staying that way at about 75-80% So i will probably have to have a planned csection, which is such a bummer. I really didn't want to go there. But at least i will have some notice, i can mentally prepare, which is much better than just BLAMO, Csection, NOW!

So, i'm a bit stressed.. it was a load off seeing them moving around on the ultrasound, getting to hear thier heartbeats and the weird movement i've been feeling makes much more sense now, AND i don't have to stress about whether or not to get the epidural in anticipation of her reaching in and grabbing B, which is how it usually works when the second twin is breach, but man... its still really scary to think about getting cut open like that. And my recovery time... and i never thought i'd say THIS but i'm worried there won't be enough HANDS at my house when they are born! at least helpful ones! Andy's going to take 3 weeks vacation, but STILL, i'm feeling seriously outnumbered right about now!! ugg. Just trying to remember to stay in prayer, none of this is an accident and God will make sure we are taken care of, in all ways, i'm certain; but still a little edgy, i admit.