17w Drumroll, Please....

And the babies are….

 TWO BOYS!

We’re so excited – both of our families are very girl heavy, so having boys makes things feel even more special!  Plus I am pretty excited for the (at least temporary) reprieve from all the complicated baggage that comes with raising a strong, confident girl in this crazy world.  Hopefully I'll get a chance one day, but I think I’ll be better prepared with a few years of parenting under my belt first!

Anyway, as an apology for not writing so much lately (three things happened at once: I got a promotion, we bought a house, and my pregnancy got really boring... and then we went on vacation), here are some ultrasound pictures of our boys!

Baby A

Baby A

Baby B

Baby B

14w6d: Reading Material

No big updates at the moment, but I just wanted to share this Washington Post Magazine story - I started reading it when I got to work, then had to stop because I was tearing up.  Then I went back to it while I ate lunch, and sure enough it made me ugly-cry at my desk.

For men, infertility often becomes a private heartache

It also comes with this absolutely gorgeous picture of sperm and egg, which really reminds you of how amazing and miraculous the whole process is.

13w3d: Shopping Time

First of all, my NT scan went great – before the scan, due to our ages, the babies had a risk of down syndrome of about 1 in 700.  Now, baby A’s risk is about 1 in 7,500, and baby B’s is 1 in more than 10,000.  So it seems pretty safe the say that we’re in the clear!  Risks for all of the other trisotomies are way down, too.  My only hope going in was that the risk of a problem after the scan would be less than the risk of miscarriage with an amnio so that we would know not to do the amnio, and I’m SO happy that it worked out!

The ultrasound was a little long, but spending an hour looking at the babies was fun – we even started to get a sense of their personalities.  Baby A is going to be our troublemaker; no matter how much the tech jiggled my stomach, she refused to get into the right position (at one point, the tech even thought she might be holding her feet in her hands!), and the entire time we were looking at her face she was opening and closing her mouth… I’m wondering if that means she’ll be hungry, talkative, or both!  Baby B, meanwhile, was super cooperative, and even waved to us!  Well, sort of… he made a hand movement that the tech described as “saluting” us, and Henry thought looked more like he was giving us the finger.  Haha.  And no, despite the fact that I assigned them genders here, the tech would not make any guesses on sex.  However, I get to go back in three weeks for them to start checking my cervix, and she said they will most likely be able to tell then!

This weekend I’m going on a very important shopping trip: maternity clothes.  It’s time; I pretty much exhausted my closet finding things to wear to work this week, and I’m doing only slightly better outside of working hours.  The point that I really need maternity clothes was really driven home this morning as I dressed for work.

 

I planned to wear a pair of khakis that have always been a little too big, but I hadn’t worn in a while.  I ironed them (and I almost NEVER iron so you know I was desperate) and proceeded to get dressed.  I pulled up the pants, tried to close them…. and a good three inches remained between the button and the button hole.  I considered it for a second, sucked in everything that can be sucked, and just managed to get them to close.

Great!  Until I turned around – there on my butt was the world’s most obvious panty line.  And could you even sort of make out the pattern on my underwear through the thin pants?  Yup, you could.  I signed heavily, walked over to my underwear drawer, and started searching for the pair of nude, no-line briefs I’d bought for a wedding with a thin bridesmaid dress, all the while wondering if I’d be able to button the pants again.  No luck on the briefs, but there staring up at me was another possible solution to my problem: my one and only thong.

I know some women love thongs, but I am not one of them; I’ve just never been able to get comfortable.  And this was a particularly evil thong, a cheap novelty thing I got as a gift at my bridal shower when my butt was at least a size smaller than it is now.  But, it was a light color and would mean my ironing efforts were not in vain.

So, that’s how I ended up walking around all day with pinching pants and a permanent wedgie from a too-small thong with the word “bride” emblazoned across the crotch.  I can’t wait to go shopping!

13w1d: Confidence Rising

So, after that last post, I realized how silly I was being and decided to tell the rest of my friends.  I called them up, everyone was happy, and I haven’t worried since!

Yeah, right.

Actually, after that last post the achiness in my pelvis continued to nag at me.  It didn’t hurt much but it was constant and didn’t seem to be improving, and I started to worry that I had a UTI.  Finally I decided to call my doctor to ease my worries.  Everyone online calls their doctor and is told, “If it doesn’t hurt more than menstrual cramps and there’s no spotting, it’s normal.”  It didn’t and there wasn’t, so I made the call confident I’d get that reassurance and be able to move on.  I didn’t - instead, the nurse said, “We have an appointment open at 9:15 tomorrow, would you like to come in then?”  Once an appointment was offered I couldn’t say no (obviously they suspected something was horribly wrong if they weren’t giving me the standard line about spotting!), so I made plans to go in the next morning.

Of course, when I woke up the next day the pain was almost gone.  But since the missed appointment charge is almost as much as my co-pay, and I’ll never pass up the opportunity for an ultrasound, I decided to go in anyway.  The doctor was really nice (I’ve now met three out of the four doctors in this practice and like them all) and told me not to feel silly about coming in; since they have the ultrasound machine right there in their office, she said that they don’t mind taking a quick peek when we’re worried.  So that’s what we did and – shocker – the babies were fine, even moving around.  She also checked my cervix and – shocker again – it was long and closed, just like it’s supposed to be.

I was there for less than five minutes but it was very reassuring, especially since at the time of that ultrasound I was past the 12 week mark so starting to be in the range where some people say that the first trimester is over.  And with that reassurance, we really did tell a LOT of people over the weekend!  There are still a few friends left in the dark, but just because we haven’t seen them in person since we started telling and haven’t gotten to the point of calling people with the news yet.  I even told my coworkers!  And, amazingly, I haven’t had my post-telling panic attack thinking that we jinxed everything!

Speaking of telling, I also figured out the solution to a problem that’s been nagging at me.  See, I’ve been torn about what exactly to do when we “announce” on Facebook (I’m not a huge fan of Facebook “announcements” but whatever).  I want to acknowledge my infertility in some way, since I’m sure there are others out there having problems and I want them to know that they’re not alone, but I don’t want the news of my infertility (which has been kept 100% OFF Facebook) to overshadow the happy news.  Basically I’ve been trying to figure out a secret code that only infertiles will be able to decipher.

What I’ve finally decided to do is to “like” my fertility center on Facebook at about the same time that I announce my pregnancy.  I’ve always wanted to like the center, but haven’t been brave enough to publically do it.  By doing it at about the same time as I go public, I figure that anyone who is curious will put two and two together, and people who don’t think about infertility probably won’t even notice.  I’m really happy with this plan, and Henry even said that he is going to do the exact same thing!

So we’re almost ready to go public.  Assuming everything goes well at our NT screen tomorrow, there will be nothing holding us back!

12weeks: Superstitious

Want to hear about one of my family “scandals?”  Don't get too excited - I use scandal in the loosest sense of the word, since the only one who thinks it’s more than a juicy tidbit of family history is my 91 year old grandmother.

Are you ready?  Ok.  My grandmother was born as the result of a tryst between my great-grandmother and – gasp! – a Jewish man.

Jews and Catholics are, of course, not all that different – we’re all neurotic, feel guilty a lot, and have overbearing mothers (joking, of course!).  So being one eighth Jewish was never something I considered much until recently, when I discovered how superstitious Jews are about pregnancy.  The most superstitious Jews, it turns out, won’t reveal a baby’s intended name before the bris, won’t buy anything for the nursery until the baby is born, and have all sorts of customs to ward off the evil eye.  My Jewish co-worker tells me that when she was pregnant, her own mother wouldn’t even look at the ultrasound pictures.

Jews, it turns out, are excellent at not counting their chickens before they hatch.  And in that sense I am 100% Jewish.

I am 12 weeks today and, despite what I said in my last post, still not comfortable telling anyone about my pregnancy.  (The dull, consistent ache I’ve been feeling in my uterus for the last few days hasn’t been helping matters, even though intellectually I know that it’s probably the result of my uterus growing really fast + me doing a lot of walking this past weekend.)  No one at work other than my boss knows, most of my friends don’t know, my dad’s family doesn’t know, and Facebook most definitely does NOT know.  I cringe whenever someone gets excited or squealy about the babies.  Henry and I are getting close to buying that house I wrote about before, and it makes me so nervous to make such a big life change for two beings the size of limes whose heartbeats I haven’t confirmed in nearly two weeks.  I don’t even want to post about the pregnancy here, because I don’t want to jinx myself by saying everything’s fine when I haven’t had recent reassurance that it is.

Even though my lips are sealed, the not telling is getting a little ridiculous.  I’m starting to show enough that my friends have been pulled aside by acquaintances who ask if I’m pregnant (the “or getting fat” remains unspoken).  The majority of my pre-pregnancy clothes don’t fit; in a few days, I’ll be down to one pair of work pants and one pair of non-yoga casual pants.  As my exhaustion eases up and I go out into the world more, I won’t be able to help people finding out, whether it’s me or my belly doing the telling.  Or, more likely, Henry, who feels no such qualms about announcing the status of my uterus to everyone he sees on the street.

But, dear God of Jewish superstition, please just grant me nine more days of secrecy.  On May 30, I will have my NT screen.  I will see the babies, hear their heartbeats, hopefully be reassured about their health, and recharge my faith that this pregnancy is real.  And then I’ll come home and, I promise, tell everyone I see before I have the chance to get worried again.

First OB Appointment

Something about having my first OB appointment yesterday seems to have flipped a switch in me.  Suddenly, I actually believe that I am PREGNANT!  I’m even tempted to put it on Facebook (I’m not that crazy, but we have roughly doubled the number of people who know).

 

Part of my excitement is because of the 10 week milestone.  While it’s not as big as the one that I’ll hit in a few weeks, a lot of things that I’ve read point out that 10 weeks is when the baby makes the jump from embryo to fetus, and risks go down significantly.  My odds of miscarriage, it seems, are now down to about 2-3% – still greater than the .5% risk after the first trimester is over, but pretty small.

 

But I think mostly, it was the OB appointment itself that made me feel so good.  The doctor I saw is part of the same practice that my other wonderful doctor (who is now on maternity leave) is part of.  I liked this doctor as much as my previous one – she was funny and energetic, and she has a set of IVF twins so immediately understood how I was feeling and answered a lot of my questions before I asked them.

 

Aside:  Fun moment from the exam room…. I’m sitting on the edge of the table in the very warm, very small room waiting for the doctor to walk in, when I’m suddenly hit by one of my most awkward pregnancy symptoms: incredibly stinky gas. I turn to Henry and whisper, “I really have to fart so the doctor is probably going to walk in right…” And then the door opens. Having an exam while clenching is NOT FUN, but I managed to save us all from the misery of my pregnant gas.

 

But the very best thing was that she treated me like I was a boring, low-risk patient.  She didn’t even take an exact reading of the babies’ heart rates – she eyeballed them, said they looked good, and that was that.  She quickly measured the babies, and when I mentioned my concern about the small sac, she looked at it, said it seemed fine, and moved on.  She checked my cervix and felt my uterus, declared all was as it should be, and I was on my way out the door with a bag full of vitamin samples.

 

Yes, eventually I’d like to get to spend a little more time with the doctor, ask lots of questions, get all of my measurements, etc.  But after spending the last ten weeks getting way too much information at the fertility center, it was such a relief to walk out of a doctor’s office with absolutely nothing to worry about or Google.

 

Oh, and the very best thing (besides, of course, my healthy babies!)?  I was cleared to stop taking my estrogen and progesterone supplements!  There are no words for how wonderful it feels to walk around without the progesterone suppository slowly leaking out of my vagina; I am panty liner-free and it is AWESOME.  Henry had better watch out – between stress and my less-than-fresh-down-there feeling, I haven’t been much in the mood for husband and wife special snuggle time (no, we don’t really call it that).  With no worries and clean lady parts, that might be changing soon!

9w6d: My Day So Far

I was away from home this weekend, which meant that I ate pretty badly and my body feels a little out of whack.  Then, when we got home I took an awesome nap, but it meant that I wasn’t that tired when it was time to go to bed at 10 and I did a lot of tossing and turning.  And we accidentially left our pillows in the car and didn’t feel like going to get them, which meant we were sleeping with fewer pillows on the bed than we are used to, which further exacerbated the sleep issues.  Here's how my day has gone so far with all of those factors working against me...

7:00 a.m.  Wake up after a horrible night's sleep.  Have awful taste in my mouth from the crackers I ate in the middle of the night when I felt nauseated.  Go downstairs to eat breakfast but there’s only a tiny bit of milk for my cereal because we didn’t do our normal Sunday grocery shopping.

7:30  Get in shower, feeling like a zombie.  Fantasize about calling in sick, but don't because I'm already taking Thursday off for my first prenatal appointment.  Beg Henry to walk the dog, which is usually my morning chore.

7:45  Get out of shower.  Headache hasn’t gone away; guess it’s here for good.  Fantasize about going back to bed.

8:00  Thank Henry for walking the dog.  Get dressed.  My shirt is tight; this might be its last wear for the next nine months.

 

8:10  Grab few remaining pregnancy-friendly foods (last apple, cheese stick, granola bar) to take to work.  Tell dog sorry since he still thinks I'm going to walk him, especially after I reach for my umbrella (which is right next to his leash).  Leave for work.

9:00  Arrive at work.  Decide that I’m not going to be a martyr – Tylenol is safe during pregnancy, and I have a horrible headache.  Raid the office first aid kit.

9:30  Headache is gone but Tylenol has upset my stomach.  I hate being nauseous.  If I was offered a deal where I could escape all morning sickness in return for not being allowed an epidural during childbirth, I would take it in a second.  Unfortunately no one arrives to offer me that deal and the nausea persists.

9:40  Eat all of the food I’ve packed in the hopes of watering down the Tylenol and settling my stomach.  It kind of works.

10:00  Try to make grocery list for after work trip.  Thought of grocery store makes me want to vomit, then take a nap.

11:00  Get e-mail from Babycenter about this week in my pregnancy.  How big is a kumquat?  Add kumquats to grocery list.

12:00 p.m.  Office meeting briefly distracts me from feeling horrible.

1:00  Head down to deli for lunch.  Plan on getting a BLT on a bagel, but there’s no bacon.  Have choice between deli meat (listeria!) or tuna (mercury!).  Decide on tuna since everything that I’ve read has said its ok to eat in moderation.  Feel guilty anyway.  Also get a ginger ale and a bag of chips.

1:05  Google eating tuna when pregnant before biting into sandwich.  Thanks to a typo, instead pull up information about playing the tuba while pregnant.

1:10  Tuna is delicious!

1:30  Ahh, my stomach feels so much better!  But I’m still exhausted.  Maybe I can put my head down on my desk for a second and take a little rest?

1:31  No, that’s really uncomfortable.

 

1:32  Am I sure?  I’m really tired.

1:33  Yeah, that just doesn’t work.

2:00  Nausea has returned.  Doubt tuna will be delicious on the way back up.

2:30  Wonder if I’m going to get any work done today.  Probably not.

2:35  Decide my only hope of feeling better is to complain on my blog.

9 weeks: Graduated!

The sad news first: we lost Baby C.  It wasn’t a huge surprise; at my last ultrasound – the only one where we saw the third heartbeat – he was measuring a week behind, so we knew it was a possibility.

It’s sad, but I’m also a little relieved.  Three is more complicated than two in every possible way, from big, scary things like the babies being born very prematurely, to smaller, inconvenient things like the near impossibility of finding a decent triplet stroller.  There are two parents, we have two arms, I have two boobs – we can handle two.  So, I really do think it’s for the best.  Baby C was also the identical twin of Baby B, so in a weird way I don’t really feel like we lost a wholly distinct baby.  Assuming B continues to do well, I’ll never wonder whether C would have been a boy or a girl, what color eyes or hair they would have had.  I know C would have developed his own personality, but genetically I still have him with me.

Anyway, onto happier news!

 

Overall, my appointment went really well.  Baby A is perfect, in a nice big gestational sac with a heart rate of about 184 beats per minute.  She’s exactly where she is supposed to be right now.

 

Baby A

 

Baby B is the one that’s going to keep worrying me – although he is the right size, his heartbeat seems a little fast at 205, and his sac is measuring about a week and a half smaller than it should be at his gestational age.  Here’s what I’m thinking:

First, the heart rate - He was moving around a lot (so exciting to see!), which can increase the heart rate.  And the doctor said that 9 weeks is about when the heart rate peaks, so we might have just caught it at its fastest point.  I also haven’t read much about problems with fast heart rates, only slow ones.

Second, the sac – Babies B and C were in the same sac, but separated by a membrane.  When measuring Baby B’s sac, the doctor only measured from the membrane over, even though there was still a lot of the sac still being taken up by Baby C.  The nurse thinks the sac was crowded because there were two, and as Baby C and the membrane dissolve Baby B will take over his real estate.  Makes sense to me.

 

Also, the sac did grow since last time.  Not as quickly as the baby, but it is bigger.

Also, I think baby B is higher up in my uterus, where I’ve heard it’s harder for them to get a good image.  My uterus is also a little tilted, which from what I understand makes things even harder.  So the image might not be that reliable.

Finally, Baby A also had a slightly small sac last time, and it definitely caught up.  So maybe Baby B’s sac will catch up, too.  Time to drink even more water!

So even though Googling “small gestational sac” can give you nightmares, I’m not too worried.  As I Google more and more things, the main determining factor in outcomes seems to be whether or not the doctor is worried.  Whenever I read a story, if the woman’s doctor isn’t worried, she’s usually fine; if the doctor is worried, often there turns out to be something to worry about.  That has been true for me: the doctor wasn’t worried about my betas, and they were fine; the doctor said that Baby C might not make it because of measuring behind, and he didn’t.  My doctor isn’t worried about the heart rate or sac size – he said that everything looked good and that the important thing is that the baby is measuring on track.  So, I’m going to stick with that!

Finally, the most exciting news of all: I’m a graduate!  I’m officially done with my fertility center and get to go to a normal OB starting next week.  There were lots of hugs, and promises to send pictures and come back to show off the babies.  I’m going to miss my little fertility center family!

Symptoms at 8w3d

So I thought I’d write a little bit about my symptoms at 8 weeks (8w3d, to be exact). I’m still not feeling as many symptoms as I think I “should,” but they’re definitely present.

Tiredness: This peaks after lunch, at about 1 p.m. I have to fight the urge to fall asleep at my desk. For a while I thought I wasn’t very tired in the evening, but I think that’s because I’ve been resting - one night I was out and about and had to go home at 8 because I was so tired. Then last night I went to a friend’s house to catch up on Mad Men and got home at 10:15, and you would have thought I was coming home at 3 a.m. by how “late” it felt.

Boobs: Nope, not sore, although they might be a tiny bit bigger.

Peeing constantly:  I’m definitely peeing more, but I am also drinking a ton of water – I have a cup at work that holds 20 ounces, and my goal is to finish three of them before I leave for the day.  Then I keep drinking in the evening but don’t keep track.  I figure I end up drinking at least 80 ounces of water a day!  So am I peeing more because I’m pregnant, or because there’s all this water sloshing around in there?  Who knows.

Hunger: I have to force myself to eat my breakfast, but once it digests for about an hour I’m suddenly starving. I stay starving until about lunch, and after that slowly get less and less hungry throughout the afternoon.

Nausea: I still only get this a tiny bit, when my stomach is empty or I’m confronted with one of my food aversions (see below). I can prevent the hunger-nausea in the morning by eating breakfast (toast with peanut butter and a glass of milk – aka a mix of carbs and protein) as soon as I wake up. Sometimes it gets a little worse later in the evening, but even then I wouldn’t call it nausea as much as lack of desire for food.

Food aversions: Chicken salad – the thought of it can gross me out. In fact, just did. Other than that, I’m turned off by anything I ate yesterday;  yesterday I ate and liked almonds, and today they made my stomach turn. Tomorrow I’ll probably like them again. I also don’t like eating in restaurants – the two times I’ve done it have been my worst days.  My first theory was that it’s the grease in the food, but getting take out doesn’t cause the same problem.  So maybe it’s just the smells of a restaurant subtly turning my stomach?  Or maybe being out makes me more tired and that upsets my stomach?  It’s a mystery!  Finally, I used to love dessert but now, while I don’t hate it, I don’t really care about it.

Food cravings: Impossible to tell. Yesterday a cheese stick was the most delicious thing to ever cross my lips. Today it was a cranberry nut muffin. I consistently love classic Utz potato chips, though. So salty and delicious! At the moment I really want a BLT on a plain bagel. We can put some avocado on it, too, since that’s a “pregnancy super food.”  And cheddar, for some calcium and a little more protein.  Mmmmm.  For the record, a BLT on a bagel was pretty much my favorite hangover food before pregnancy, so it’s not that strange that I want one now.

Cramps: Yesterday I felt crampy for the first time in about 5 weeks. Of course I immediately started worrying, so I Googled it. Turns out that 8 weeks is about when another round of cramps shows up because your uterus is starting to expand even more. It was great to be a textbook example of something!

Other: This isn’t directly related to being pregnant, but I tried to make the switch to a “natural” deodorant without aluminum.  Well, apparently my body prefers the chemicals, because my armpits are currently covered in a red, scabby rash.  And they stink.  Gross. 

So those are all of my symptoms! I feel so incredibly lucky – they’ve barely interfered with my normal life at all. The nurses have all been shocked that I feel so great with triplets growing in there.  Woo for being 2/3 of the way through the first trimester!  One more sonogram with my RE next Tuesday, and then I “graduate” and am like every other pregnant person (well, every other person pregnant with triplets).  Once this last sonogram is past we’re going to start telling a LOT more people, so that will be really fun!

Adjusting Plans

Sorry for the long silence!  The whole triplets thing has thrown us into a bit of a tailspin, so we’ve been really busy.  While we’re happy, it was completely unanticipated and changes a lot of our plans.  For one, where we will be living.  Our current house simply cannot handle triplets, so we have to move.  Moving brings up the question of, “To where?”

We currently live pretty close to Henry’s family, but about two hours from mine.  I love Henry’s family (and he does, too, of course), but my family just has more of a culture of helpfulness.  To sum it up in a really stereotypical and possibly offensive way, I come from a big sprawling Irish Catholic family, and Henry’s family is very WASPy.  Make sense?

Anyway, on top of the fact that my family is the kind of family where you walk into a gathering and are immediately handed a baby, my mom doesn’t work and is really excited about helping out.  My siblings are all younger and don’t have kids, and are all really excited about helping out.  My two cousins in the area have four kids under four between the two of them, and there’s a lot of baby sharing and play dates and fun.  So it just makes more sense to live down there with triplets.

 

As luck would have it, the perfect four-bedroom, three-bath, two-acre yard house is on the market for a price we can afford in the middle of the cute little downtown of my family’s town.  We could make an offer tomorrow!

Except.

Except, the town is a little bit isolated, and Henry doesn’t have a job lined up for down there.  Neither of us wants him to do the grueling hour-long commute into DC, so we want to wait until we’re sure he’s going to have a somewhat-convenient job before making an offer.  And all the while there’s another family circling the house.  So he’s frantically looking for a job in the hopes that we can beat the other family and get this house.  (It’s really a great house, and makes moving out of the city and to the middle of nowhere MUCH less of a sacrifice.)

But at the same time, I’m not exactly excited about the thought of betting large sums of money that I’m going to STAY pregnant with triplets – my last ultrasound was only at 7 weeks 2 days, and even though we saw strong heartbeats we still have a LONG way to go before we’re out of the danger period for losing one, two, or all three babies.  I have another ultrasound at 9 weeks exactly, so hopefully we will know more and feel more confident then.

But if I am really having triplets, we have to act fast on everything, because having triplets cuts two months off the end of the pregnancy, and probably another month off for me because of bed rest.  Considering that I'm already 8 weeks into the pregnancy, I'm already feeling a time crunch!

So, it’s just a lot to think about, and you can probably tell by my writing that we’re feeling a little crazy!  I know it’ll all work out, but it’s just a little wild right now while we rethink everything but also try to wait and see what's really happening.

And all this before we’ve even told our friends…

Three.

It's official:  one of our eggs split.  At my ultrasound this morning there were three heartbeats.

Holy crap, this is WAY more than we bargained for.  I'm still sorting it out.

TRIPLETS.

TRIPLETS.

TRIPLETS.

We always did want three kids, I just never imagined we'd be having them all at once.

One, Two... Three?

This morning, in the shower, I was shaving my legs in anticipation of my ultrasound.  (I always figure it’s a good idea not to give the doctor rug burn as he comes at me with the wand.)  I was distracted and nervous and using a new razor, and cut my ankle – not just a nick, but one of those cuts that seems to take out a whole chunk of skin and bleeds forever.  Gross.

It felt like a bad omen.  All I could think about was how if this was a movie, that blood would symbolize the fact that I was about to get bad news.  Needless to say, I was feeling a little dark.

And then Henry walked into the bathroom. “I feel like we’re going to get good news today!” he said.  I showed him my foot.  “Well, that’s the bad thing, and the ultrasound will be the good thing,” he said, WAY too cheerfully for how nervous I felt.

As we drove to the doctor, my dad, my mom, and my cousin Tracy (who is having her baby tomorrow) all texted me.  WHY had I decided to tell my cousins, again?  It just felt like more people to disappoint if we saw something bad on the ultrasound.  (For what it’s worth, I had told them about my pregnancy, but spilling the ultrasound news was all my mom’s doing).  Tracy told me that, at 6 weeks exactly, I should be able to see a heartbeat.  Great, more pressure for my uterus.

We waited nervously in the waiting room, and then got called back to the ultrasound room.  I barely had my pants off before the doctor walked into the room.

“How are you feeling?” he asked.

“Nervous.  I was a little bit scared by that last hcg number.”

“Why, because you think it might be twins?”

“No!  I’d love twins!  Because it slowed down so much.”

“Oh it wasn’t that bad.”

And thus ended the saga of the slow-rising beta (though not before Henry and the doctor ganged up and did a little teasing about my propensity for Googling).

“What can we expect to see on the ultrasound?” I asked the doctor.  I’d done my Googling, of course, but wanted to hear what he expected so that I wouldn’t freak out if we saw less than what I was hoping for.

“We should see a gestational sac and a yolk sac.  Maybe a heartbeat,” he said.  I laid back on the table, forcing myself to acknowledge that if we didn’t see a heartbeat, it didn’t mean anything awful.  We only MIGHT see one.

A second later the ultrasound wand was inside of me, and up on the screen appeared…. TWO gestational sacs!  TWINS!

The doctor set to work measuring the more visible one, and then we could see it: the tiny little flicker of a heartbeat.  So much relief, so much happiness, I teared up.  It was even strong enough that the doctor was able to pick up the sound of it with the ultrasound wand; we couldn’t hear anything, but we could see the little sound waves, pulsing at a perfect pace of 103 beats per minute.  Everything measured exactly right.

Then he moved up to the other gestational sac.

“I don’t want to alarm you,” he said, “but I see two yolk sacs here.”  I started laughing, making the ultrasound jump all over the screen.

TRIPLETS?!?!?!

Only maybe – in the double-yolk sac, the doctor only found one heartbeat.  It’s possible that’s it’s too early, and it’s also possible that one of them didn’t make it.  I asked if the vanishing triplet could have caused my wonky numbers, and he said yes.  That’s my theory of the moment.  Henry says that clearly the twin that might have eaten his twin is the evil twin.

Baby number two was measuring a few days behind – at 5w4d – which is pretty much fine at this point from what I read.  We didn’t measure the second heartbeat but it looked similar to the first to me.

So, in conclusion, everything is wonderful and I have at least two adorable little beating hearts inside of me!  The only bad thing is that we were in SUCH a state of joy and shock that we walked out and I forgot the ultrasound picture I’m pretty sure they printed for us.

But I get to go back and see them again next Thursday, so hopefully I’ll get a picture then!

Only Me

Here’s one for the “it could only happen to me” file.

On Saturday, I went to my friend Chloe’s birthday party.  It was her 30^th, and she had decided to relive her 10^th birthday with 90s themed decorations, food, and games.  One of the games that she and her husband had planned was a massive Capture the Flag battle.  Fun, right?

Yes, except for the fact that they had re-imagined it into a drinking game.  Instead of flags, we were retrieving bottles of booze, which we had to bring back to our safe zone and chug in order to win.

Oh, and the bottles each had our names on them, so that there could be no cheating by not having someone drink their own bottle.

Oh, and the bottles had all been pre-filled, so I couldn’t fill mine up with something non-alcoholic.

Oh, and Henry was not on my team to help me be sneaky.  In fact, most of my teammates were people I didn’t know very well.

Henry and I were giggling SO HARD when the rules for the game were explained.  I’d been pregnant a week and was suddenly in one of the hardest to get out of drinking situations of my life?

Thankfully, Chloe knows we’ve been trying (though not the details of my infertility) and is used to me occasionally being a teetotaler for a week or two, so I was able to just pull her aside and say “What if you’re not drinking?”  There must have been something different in my voice because she said “For real this time?!” but thankfully she recovered and said that I didn’t have to answer that before I stammered out something awkward.  She gave me permission to pour out my bottle instead of drinking it, which I did and all was well.

So, the rumors have probably started. (Really, they probably started last week when I passed up the opportunity to have $1.25 good beer, but I was able to use the Lent excuse that time).

Anyway, ultrasound tomorrow!  I’m feeling much better about my beta numbers, so thank you all for the reassurance.  It’s so easy when you’re reading stories on the internet to focus on the ones that turn out badly instead of the ones that turn out well.  When I forced myself to look only at the ones that were closer to my actual situation, it seemed like those usually ended up fine.  Next time I do this, I might just ask for the initial beta number but then only have the nurse tell me if I'm rising at an acceptable rate.  Too much information = too much stress.

All that is not to say that I’m not still very nervous; however, I will be exactly six weeks tomorrow so there’s a pretty good chance that I will get to see a heartbeat to ease my worries.  Henry is hoping for two, but to me and my nerves that just seems greedy.  I say let’s stick with one good one.

I promise to keep you updated!

Beta Hell

Yesterday was my fourth and last beta, and I was hoping for a good strong number to fortify me for the wait until my ultrasound (which has been scheduled for next Tuesday).

Instead I got 2,543.

Now, actually, this is a fine number, it’s the doubling time that has me worried.  Based on beta doubling calculators, between my first and second beta (305-621 over 2 days), there was a doubling time of about 47 hours.  Between second and third (621-1634 over 3 days), it increased a little to 51 hours.  But between the third and fourth (1634-2543 over 2 days), it went allllll the way up to 75 hours.  That’s means that it’s suddenly taking a whole extra DAY to double!! That’s scary.

I am really, really trying not to freak out.  I am also failing miserably at not freaking out.  But, to make me feel better, please indulge my list of reasons not to freak out.

Why Chelsea Shouldn’t Be Freaking Out

• The nurse said it was fine.  Actually, she didn’t say fine, she said great.  The word “spectacular” was used.
• When I called the nurse back to ask for reassurance, she said that when the doctor saw the numbers he was not at all worried by them.  I’m pretty sure that his years of experience with hundreds if not thousands of betas trumps my Googling.
• The nurse also said that, after everything that I’ve been though, it’s normal to be anxious.  That could be part of it.
• According to this website, normal doubling times are 31-72 hours until the number gets to be about 1,200, then 72-96 hours.  I seem to be sticking to that perfectly.  The nurse also mentioned that the doubling time can slow down as the number increases.
• I’ve also read online that, once you get to about the 5^th week of pregnancy, you can’t rely on betas as much anymore and ultrasounds are better.  Yesterday I was 5w1d.
• If my clinic hadn’t insisted on testing me until I got to 2,000, everything would have looked perfect.  A lot of people only get two tests, to make sure the number is doubling, and I would have aced that.  I might just have too much information.
• It still rose 900 over two days, which is more than it has risen over any other two day period.  So not only is it still going up, it's still snowballing.
• I haven't had any spotting or over-the-top cramping that would indicate a miscarriage.
• I’m starting to wonder if my body just doesn’t produce as many hormones as some other people’s.  My estrogen never doubled very fast or got very high while I was stimming, either, but I still did ok.
• 2,543 is a good, healthy number.  Lots of pregnancies destined to fail never get that high.
• From my Googling, I’ve found plenty of people who had similar numbers and went on to have healthy babies.

Why Chelsea Should Be Freaking Out

• The rise seems to have hit the breaks very abruptly.  I would expect the normal slowing to be more gradual, wouldn't you?
• All the people on the internet seem to double with lightning speed well into the 10,000s.
• The nurse said that they want to see it double in three days.  Although she didn’t seem very concerned about this, at the current rate it would take a little more than three days to double.
• From my Googling, I’ve found plenty of people who had similar numbers and went on to have miscarriages.
• Hydros increase the chance of miscarriage.
• WHERE ARE MY SYMPTOMS???? All I want to do is throw up.  it would make me feel so much better.

It’s going to be a loooooong five days.