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.

Still Pregnant

I’m still pregnant!

That pretty much sums up my feelings lately – happy, but like it could be taken away at any second.  Even though, intellectually, I know that the chances of miscarriage at this point are only about 1 in 5, I’m still super paranoid and afraid of jinxing anything.  It doesn’t help that I’m not really feeling any symptoms. I have some off-and-on cramping, but that’s actually subsided a lot since the implantation window. My boobs are occasionally a little bit sore, but not alarmingly so. I haven’t really noticed being any more tired – I think the fact that I’m energized by my happiness and the fact that spring has finally arrived is counteracting any pregnancy fatigue.  It’s still a little bit early to be feeling much but I think I’d feel a lot more comfortable if I woke up one morning nauseated, exhausted and unable to touch my boobs without wincing.  Everyone tells me it will come.

However, outside of my paranoid brain, things actually seem to be going really well.  Here’s how my betas have progressed:

10dp5dt: 305

12dp5dt: 621 (doubling time of ~47 hours)

15dp5dt: 1,634 (doubling time of ~51 hours)

Since the internet tells me that betas are supposed to double every 48-72 hours at first, and every 72-96 hours once you’re above about 1,200, I seem to be right on track!  Of course I’m a little paranoid because I feel like everyone else’s betas are tripling and quadrupling every 5 minutes, but my clinic seems happy, I’m well within the normal range, and everything I read tells me that you really can’t compare betas between people.  So I’m going to stop worrying. (HA! Like I could ever manage that).

My clinic monitors betas until you hit 2,000, so I have one more blood draw tomorrow before I’m out of beta comparison hell and into “but how am I supposed to know everything is ok?” hell.  And then, once I hit 2,000, they’ll schedule me for an ultrasound.  My nurse said something the day of my first beta about possibly having the ultrasound this Friday, and so far my numbers have tracked with what she estimated they’d be.  I’m really, really hoping my ultrasound ends up being on Friday – I’m dying to know what’s happening in there, and I think I’ll believe this pregnancy a little bit more once I’ve seen it on a screen.

Until then, I’m going to appreciate every day that I’m “still” pregnant!