Latrine Duty

It was a holiday weekend here and boy was I productive.

We washed the windows, I completed about half the housecleaning, and we nearly completed the cleaning-out of the nursery room and the guest room. All activity was punctuated by stints on the couch. I definitely get tired quickly, and more then an hour of activity at a time elicits a series of cramping sensations (not actually contractions, I assure you…) which I believe to be my ligaments protesting loudly. My reward came on Sunday when I watched the Indy 500. *sigh* ‘Twas fabulous!

Natalie, Dave and the kids came over for a BBQ and a dip in the pool yesterday. Here is a picture of my 2 yr old nieces…



I wasn’t scheduled to work this morning, so my plan was to complete the housecleaning today. But I woke up without my usual early morning surge of energy. In fact, cleaning of the toilets and sinks was a down right chore and was quite tiring. So I made the plunge. I contacted the housecleaner Sharon has used for years. She and her crew will be by next week and every two weeks thereafter to give the house a good scrubbing. As of the end of next week, I am on “light bed rest” (that is, until he puts me on “don’t-move-that-fat-behind-from-the-couch-EVER bed rest” which should be following soon thereafter). I’m thinking heavy housecleaning is not included on the list of approved activities for “light bed rest”. In fact, I do believe I would receive serious demerits from Dr. Peri if he was aware I was still scrubbing showers and floors. So… shhhhhh!

Can’t say I am sorry that I have cleaned baseboards for the last time…. for 6-9 months at least :-).

Will update on the babies tomorrow.

Half-Baked

(17w2d)
Not only the name of my favorite B.en and J.erry’s ice cream flavor (brownies AND chocolate chip cookie dough. Rock on!), but is also an apt description of the babies.

They are exactly half-baked.
I am, as of two days ago, half way through my pregnancy.
So I hope they are cooking fast.
Is there a convection mode on this uterus?
The more well-done they are at 34 weeks, the better.

I am slowly making my way through the list of projects I want to complete before being restricted to the couch for good. I have managed to digitalize my childhood pictures up to 1984 (a long way left to go, but a good start nonetheless). I have been busy converting VHS home movies to DVD and we have been uploading our library of DVD movies onto the A.ppletv which should make bed rest a bit more tolerable. The nursery room is not very large, but I am determined to have only ONE nursery. Running from room to room in the middle of the night is not my idea of fun. We chose the cribs and crib bedding. We are now just trying to find furniture that will fit into the nursery and fill all of our needs. Fitting three cribs, a glider, a dresser/changer and an additional piece of furniture i.e., bookcase (we need a place to put the monitors, music, etc) has become a bit like solving a r.ubix cube. But we are coming closer to a solution (I hope!).

Overall I am feeling great. My feet get sore (especially with 3” high heels while teaching Gospel Doctrine on Sunday! Ouch!) much more quickly than before, and I blame my sore knees on the 24 lbs I have gained. Speaking of weight… I am now only 2 lbs behind the lower weight goal range for this stage of my pregnancy. It has taken me a while, but I have finally caught up… without, I might add, the aid of fudge sundaes, or hamburgers of any kind :-). The babies seem to be growing as my belly protrudes slightly more every few days.

Quick ultrasound is scheduled for Wednesday and as always it will be reassuring to see the three little buggers.

Will update then.

Four Months

(16w2d)
So I have passed the 4 month mark. Not quite half way, but for some reason, four months seems much more respectable than “15 weeks”.

We finished the garage on Saturday which means I now have tons of shelves to fill up with baby stuff and childhood mementos. I am nesting something fierce. I am all about organizing our “stuff” and purging what we don’t need. My weeks of being vertical and somewhat active are numbered (actually… exactly 3 weeks 5 days). So I lie on the couch for a few hours, then spend a while running errands or cleaning out a room… then I go back on the couch.

My most recent joy of pregnancy: waking up every night about 1 am with heartburn so bad my chest feels like it is on fire. Tums is my new friend :-). According to the books on pregnancy with multiples, women with triplets start to develop heartburn between 19 and 24 weeks. *sigh*. Ever the overachiever :-).

So here is another belly picture…

16 WEEKS

Mixing It Up

(15w4d)

This pregnancy seems to be defying the odds at every turn.
First I actually GOT pregnant (seemingly a miracle in and of itself)… with FIVE babies… including a set of poorly-progressing monochorionic twins in the worst placement possible-- over the cervix… then we lost the two and managed to keep the rest of the pregnancy… then I fell into the 30% of asthmatics who have their asthma worsen in pregnancy… then I started having problems over the weekend-- the same symptoms Dr. Peri would expect if I were getting ready to miscarry as a complication of losing the twins, yet my uterus appears to be locked down tight (Yeah!).

So why should I think the guessing of the sexes would be any different?
Well, I didn’t.
I have been looking at boy as well as girl crib bedding.
Because although Dr. Peri gave us an 80% chance for each of them that they would be girls (60% chance that all three would be girls), I was well aware that meant we would likely fall into the 20% category… at least once.

I wasn’t expecting twice.

Yep.
At this point, it appears we have two boys and a girl!
Dr. Peri is pretty confident.
And pretty surprised… “I’ve never been wrong TWICE in one pregnancy!” He said.
Natalie’s response when I told her? “That’s because he hadn’t met you yet.”
Don’t worry.
Considering the pregnancy I have been having, I’m not holding my breath…

More importantly, they are all progressing well. All limbs are in place, all brains are developing normally, and their hearts are very developed for their gestational age… ah yes, the bragging starts in utero :-).

We couldn’t be happier.
And I would gladly be on “increased rest” for the next four months if such good news would just continue.

P.S. As you can see, I added the widget off to the left showing the development (grossly) of the triplets. Instead of using my actual due date, I used 34 weeks. Because that is the latest I will be allowed to go before having my c-section. So although it seems to be cheating a bit, it gives me the actual # of days I have left to go.

Score!

(15w3d)
Nothing makes me happier than a chance to see the babies.

Dr. Peri and I both thought my ultrasound tomorrow was just a quick check. As a result, on Saturday he told me to reschedule for next week. But it turns out that my appointment tomorrow was for a “full” ultrasound, not just a cervix check. As a result, Dr. Peri’s office called to tell me I should come in as originally scheduled (my “full” ultrasounds are scheduled for 60 minutes, and there simply isn’t a place to reschedule me for next week… which is why they normally schedule my every-other-week ultrasounds a month in advance).

Cool.
No complaints here.
Dr. Peri will give us an update on the boy/girl count.
Right on!
We are anxious to know whether it will be an all-pink nursery :-).

This evening I looked down at my belly.
And you know what?

I look pregnant.
Finally… I look more pregnant than fat.

I swear my belly didn’t look like this when I woke up this morning…

Because I LOVE Being On Bedrest...

Come on y’all, sing with me (all you LDS’ers will recognize this childhood song… ok, with some adjustments)…

Saturday is a special day,
It’s the day we get ready for bab-ies.
We purge the junk and we set up some shelves
And we call it our clean-the-garage-day.

Yes, Saturday was our project day. Nesting and all, I was intent on cleaning out the storage garage, putting up more storage shelves and generally purging all our unused junk. I mean, we have to have room for baby storage! In four hours we made huge progress and had were starting to wrap it up when I started having some troubling symptoms. Nothing super serious… that is, if I was having a “normal” pregnancy.
But I am not.
And Dr. Peri reminds me at every appointment that my pregnancy is extremely high-risk and I am to call him with questions or concerns of any type.

So after lying on the couch and arguing with myself for a period of time, I finally bit the bullet and called him. Luckily he was on call (I was not looking forward to explaining my history and why I would bother calling with these symptoms to one of his partners). He asked us to meet him at the Labor and Delivery ward of one of the hospitals in town. It had been 10 days since he had seen me and was concerned I may be starting to miscarry as a result of the twins being resorbed over my cervix.

So off we flew.
The charge nurse was expecting me and they got me right into a room.
Dr. Peri showed up a few minutes later.
The ultrasound showed three heartbeats.
We were all very relieved!

The other parameters were also normal.

My symptoms appear to be caused by inflammation which resulted from the loss of the twins. There is no evidence that I am in significant danger of imminent miscarriage, but I am not out of the woods yet. As a precaution, I am on “increased rest” again until my next appointment (Next Wednesday instead of this Wednesday).

After a stern lecture that “rest” means being horizontal, NOT sitting (Gravity is still working on your cervix when you are sitting, he reminded me), we were released to head home.

One important lesson I learned is that the L&D staff at this particular hospital (one of two I have to choose from with Level III NICUs in our area) is fabulous. They were friendly and helpful. An important nugget of information I will consider when deciding between the two hospitals.

Anyway, so went our inaugural (of what will hopefully be VERY, VERY few) trip to the L&D ward. I hope there is some good daytime tv on this week…

P.S. Matt single-handedly completed the project in style. We now have spotless garages, with plenty of storage. Ahhhh, such a relief.

V.olvos and Car Seats and Strollers, Oh My!

(14w6d)
Oh Happy Day!

I actually wrote this post a few days ago, but it has taken me this long to post.
I plead pregnancy.

But I have good news!

Matt and I have been hoping that (despite the skeptical looks of multiple baby store employees when I mentioned what we wanted...) we will be able to fit three infant car seats in the 2nd row of my V.olvo SUV. For a couple reasons. 1) I really like my car… it is a compact SUV… big enough to haul things around without being monstrous. 2) It is reportedly very safe "like a bank vault". One of the main reasons we bought it initially was for it’s safety record which was a real bonus since we were at the time expecting I would get knocked-up ANY DAY. 3) It is only 2.5 yrs old. We usually keep cars for much longer to get more value out of them. 4) I am REALLY waiting for a plug-in hybrid SUV to come out. That won’t be for another 2 yrs.

So I hauled myself to a local children’s store for a scheduled consultation with their car seat installer. He was mighty skeptical we could do three across in our car. But after some cajoling I convinced him that from my perspective it would be nice to at least TRY to fit the car seats in before heading out to trade in my car for a mom-mobile. So he measured to find the narrowest car seat in the store and we carried three of them out to the car.

What d’ya know… THEY FIT! In fact, we have room for another ½ inch for each seat… meaning I now have a choice of three different car seats! Wow!

Not very exciting news, I know. But for someone who has spent two weeks trying to get this sorted out… it is a breakthrough!

At least with all the decisions we have to make in the next few months… buying a new car won’t be one of them :-)

After several hours of reading reviews, perusing threads on high-order multiples forums and even pushing a few around… I have also come to a conclusion on the stroller I want to order (I had to wait until I knew which car seats were possible before I was able to decide on a stroller). For multiple reasons that I won’t be getting into right now, I have decided on a T.riple Decker. The highlights are that it will fit in the back of my car, and give me the flexibility to leave the house with the little buggers by myself if needed.

Ahhh.
So the big, complicated decisions are now out of the way.
I won’t order the stroller until they are actually born. Alive.
But I feel a bit more relaxed.
Because even if I get put on bedrest tomorrow, the rest of the decisions can be made from my couch.

(No, universe… that is not at all meant to be a hint).