27 weeks - What a long day, but a day of good reports.

My day started at 4:30 this morning being woke up to start my glucose test. The lab woman took my first draw of blood and came back with my glucose drink an hour later. After drinking that drink, I got so shaky and nauseous. It was awful - much worse than the initial one blood draw glucose test. An hour after drinking it, they came back to draw my blood again and did this two more times every hour for a total of four blood draws. My arms look like I am a drug addict. I finished the testing around 9 am and I finally got to eat breakfast and felt much better. My results came in and the test was negative, so no gestational diabetes! Yeay!

I went to see Dr. Koster today for what I thought was just a quick check on the babies and a cervical check. Turns out, she does growth checks on her inpatients every two weeks rather than every three like we had been doing. This threw a kink into our plans because Craig had arranged to take next Thursday off in order to be here for that appointment. He is still going to come up here and go to the appointment next week and we are going to do a NICU tour and possibly another NICU consultation when he is here. Anyway...the babies growth...they all looked very good and are growing like crazy! I couldn't believe how much they had grown in the past two weeks. Their weights are:

Baby A (Tyler) - 2 pounds 10 ounces (our little chunk - very feisty and not cooperative with the monitoring)

Baby B (Hannah) - 2 pounds 6 ounces (not too far behind. She is our "good" child because she doesn't kick me too much and always cooperates when the monitoring starts)

Baby C (Whitney) - 2 pounds 4 ounces (I am surprised she is the smallest because I feel her kicking me more than anybody. Also our feisty child.)

A total of about 7 1/2 pounds of baby. That is a lot of baby! Also, I was so relieved to know that my cervix is still holding strong at 3.3 cm. Yeay for that! Sorry, I can't put pictures of the sonos on here anymore because I don't have a scanner here at the hospital and Craig just doesn't have time to do it at home. :(

After all that, I came back to the room and went straight to bed. I was exhausted! I postponed lunch and everything. :) It was a good thing I got that nap in because my afternoon was so busy!

One of the NICU nurses stopped by to talk to me about the NICU procedures and everything. She talked to me for over an hour! I had no idea they would cover so much information which is why they are coming back to talk to Craig. It was SO much information! My brain was on overload!

I had a couple of pleasant surprise visitors this afternoon. Kim from church dropped by to visit and Dr. Goldstein (my fertility doctor) also came by. He had heard I was here, so he thought he would drop by. It was nice to see both of them. I keep forgetting to get everyone's picture when they come visit. :( I can't get consistent. Oh well...at least I have it noted on here for future reference even if I don't get the pictures taken.

Our friends Heath and Carla from church also stopped by and brought us Abuelos for dinner. Yum!! I love Abuelos! They stayed and ate dinner with us. Well... I made them go ahead and eat without me. I couldn't eat when they got here because I had just had another Terbutaline shot for out of control contractions (first time in a few days) and wasn't feeling well. It was nice to catch up with them as well.



A couple of charge nurses came in to talk to me some too to make sure my nurses are doing what they are supposed to be doing. I like most of the nurses I have had but I don't think all of them monitor me as closely as they should be. Like this afternoon, my contractions had been getting out of control a bit this evening (as I mentioned earlier). I asked my nurse to get the monitor so I could be monitored and she asked "why?" in a way that made me feel like she didn't want to be bothered with it because she was about to go home. Maybe she was concerned and that is why she asked why, but it didn't seem that way. We began the monitoring and it started picking up contractions every minute or so for about 10 minutes and she hadn't even come back in here to do something about it. I had to call out for her. I'll explain...the nurses don't stay in my room during the monitoring, they are however, supposed to watch from their monitor at the desk and I am not supposed to go that long having contractions without getting a Terbutaline shot. I understand that they have other patients, but it seems every time I have her, it takes her a while to respond and when I have another nurse, this doesn't happen. So, needless to say, I was a little irritated. Now, after talking to the charge nurses, they are going to try to get me a different nurse. Okay, enough of that...sorry I rambled on and on.

My 27 week belly shot. Yeay! Another week down!

10 week update

I went to a M.O.M.'s meeting earlier this week and it was very nice to be able to get tips and ideas from other M.O.M.'s and see how they did things. Although, it was all a little overwhelming because there was a lot going on. We had our expectant moms meeting first, then all the moms came together to have dinner and listen to the monthly speaker. They introduced all the new visitors and I was surprised at how shocked the other moms were when they learned I am having triplets. I guess triplets aren't as common as my doctor led me to believe. In the expectant mom group, there were only two of us pregnant with triplets. There were more triplet moms in the other groups, but I am not sure how many. The majority of the moms there have or are having twins. All in all, it was very helpful to get some ideas and motivating to meet all the other moms who have multiples and have done just fine.

I had my 10 week sonogram yesterday and first I just have to say... I GRADUATED TO EXTERNAL SONOGRAMS! YAY! After going through infertility for so long, I have had like a million sonograms, all of which were not external! It was so nice to be able to graduate. Okay, so enough of that... All the babies look wonderful; they all have great heartbeats and are all a good size. The sonographer said they seem bigger than she expected, but I am not exactly sure I understand her thinking because they all measured 9 weeks 6 days rather than 10+ weeks . Also, two of them were moving around so much she had a hard time getting their heartbeats at first. It was really neat to see them squirming around. She said they must be feeling really good to be moving this early. Although, I am thinking that is pretty normal because I read that with multiples they do everything at a faster rate than a typical singleton would. I just turned my scanner on and realized it is acting up again. For some reason our computer isn't recognizing it. I will have to have Craig show me what he did to make it work last time since it seems this is going to happen frequently. I'll post them on here later tonight or tomorrow. These pictures are really cool too because they are the first ones where you can actually see their limbs forming.

We have our first perinatal (the high risk doctor) appointment in two weeks, and they feel pretty certain they will be able to tell us what the sexes are. Isn't that crazy? Because it is a high pregnancy, the peri has better high-tech equipment and they look at things differently. Supposedly this test is 85-90% accurate, but I don't think I am going to run out and start buying stuff until we can actually see little girl or little boy parts. Apparently with this type of testing, the peri looks at the spine and the tail bud and whether they are parallel to each other or not determines the sex. I am not sure...I don't quite understand it yet. That was just the brief explanation my OB gave me.

As always, I am leaving you with my 10 week belly picture. I don't really think I have grown any from the 9 week picture. I guess my growing goes in spurts.

What an overwhelming weekend...

So, many of you probably know Craig and I have been having some fertility struggles for quite a while now. I finally got pregnant and we found out on July 4th! What an awesome Fourth of July huh? Except for the fact that Craig worked and didn't get home until 8:30 or 9. I was supposed to test on the 5th, but I wanted to surprise him, so I tested early (and I don't know too many people going through infertility who do that)! It was positive so I got him a cute expecting card. I didn't want to just put the card in the envelope because I knew he would immediately know what it was before he even opened it. So, I taped it to the shelf inside the refrigerator because I knew he would see it immediately when he got home. Most of you probably know how many insane hours he has been working with all this rain we have had lately. Well, that being said, he is a complete zombie! He came home, put his stuff down, opened the refrigerator to put his left over lunch inside and didn't even see the card. (I think part of the problem was because I put it on the shelf at my 5'4" height, not his 6'1" height.) Then, he says he is too tired to eat dinner... I was like geez... I have been waiting all day for you to get home, you don't see my card...ugh! So frustrated. Then he says he is going to take a shower. I thought, he is never going to see my card. I couldn't hold it in any more, so I went into the bathroom before he got in the shower and told him "I am pregnant and I got you a card and you didn't even see it" (whining). Craig was very happy - made his day and mine.

The past 2 1/2 weeks, I have been very tired and very hungry except for Wednesday and Thursday of last week. Because of past experiences, I feared something was wrong with the baby. I called my doctor to talk to him about my fears and he told me to go ahead and come in early for my first sonogram. I was supposed to come in today the 23rd but I went in on Friday the 20th instead. I had a very strong feeling all along that I might be having more than one. Not only because I have been doing fertility treatments, but also because I have PCOS (polycystic ovarian syndrome) which puts me at an even higher risk of multiples. Well.... I was right, my gut feeling was correct. I am having TRIPLETS!

When we first started the sonogram, I immediately saw two sacs and said "twins". I wanted the nurse to do a quick scan to find out for sure how many there were before measuring their sizes and checking for heart beats. She wanted to do one sac at a time, so the entire time I am thinking twins...which we really wanted. So, she checks baby #1...good size and a strong heart beat, she then moves on to baby #2...good size and a strong heart beat... I was thinking "Thank you God!" She then does a scan around my uterus and yes there is another baby! Okay, so we are freaking out by this point. She checks baby #3... good size and strong heart beat. By this time Craig is tightly squeezing my hand and checking my pulse! I think I held my mouth wide open for about 15 minutes straight.

So that was our Friday... nothing big... J/K We have been in complete and total shock ever since. Our lives are about to change drastically - we need to get a new car, eventually a bigger kitchen table and even a new house! There is just so much to think about. Also, we have a two year old boxer and she is soooo hyper. I don't know how we are going to work this out. She is an inside dog, so it should be interesting. She is our baby and we can't and will not get rid of her. She is part of our family and we love her, but it is going to be an added challenge, I am sure we will come up with something.

Many of you have already asked to see updated pictures of my belly as it expands, so I thought I would show the initial belly. Well... not really, it is a little poochier than normal (even from before I found out I was pregnant) because my ovaries are about the size of cantaloupes. Well, not really but they are huge! I am not sure how big they are, but considering I had about 15 mature eggs in my ovaries, they got pretty big.

Friday, 7/20 - 6 weeks 1 day




















I'll try to scan my sono picture of the three munchkins , but we are having problems with the scanner. For some reason our computer isn't finding the scanner....GREAT... :) I will probably just wait to get a better picture in a few days because my RE was having problems with the sono machine and the picture is extremely dark.

Please pray for us to have peace of mind and not to stress and feel so overwhelmed. Also, we would appreciate your prayers for my health and the babies health.