Overachieving Fetuses

I'm not sure my brain is qualified to keep track of what I've updated here versus Facebook versus what I've told people.  But it does look like we are due for an update here.

With the exception of one 12-hour stint in L&D Sunday night/Monday morning, I've been successfully serving my bedrest at home.  That was the product of a flareup of the uterus of bitching.  I started contracting Sunday afternoon every 6-7 minutes which increased to every 5-6 minutes after a couple hours.  They were only about 40-45 seconds in duration, so it seemed very unlikely that they were causing cervical change, but since we are still pretty early gestationally and they were regular, they had me come in to get checked and run additional IV fluids on top of my water chugging.

Thought 1 from that 12-hour visit: I was dubbed level-headed and rational for the fact that I took myself.  My logic was that I was pretty sure that I was not having cervix changing contractions, it was bed time and it's much easier to deal with one of your parents leaving at bed time than both and barring an immediate emergency c-section, even in the worst case scenario we should have at least 2.5 hours of warning, so Paul could get up to the hospital.  The nurse said that most moms are too flipped out to think about what will be best for their existing children, so apparently I'm calm as a cucumber.

Thought 2 from that 12-hour visit: if you let them give you 5 of Ambien, you can actually get some sleep on the L&D side!

Thought 3 from that 12-hour visit: I think I've come to an understanding of my uterus of bitching.  It basically responds to anything being off or stressful on my body as a system by contracting.  The actual cervix changing ones from a couple weeks ago I really think were just because of the cold I had.  It does seem like a rational response from the body: body under stress, want to reduce stress, evict occupants.  The destabilizing factor this time is a bit more embarrassing.  I think I had a little constipation going on and that was enough to make my uterus declare that this wasn't what it signed up for and it was going to make things simpler!  So, I think the grand conclusion is that I just need to keep things easy on my body and the uterus of bitching will keep its trap shut aka not contracting.

Got discharged at 5:30 am, so was able to hit my normal Monday morning perinatology appointment.  The preterm nurse was out of town, so I didn't have to see her and went straight to the perinatologist which was very nice!  This was our first week of doing biophysical profiles.  The peri was willing to accept my statement that both achieved 15 by 15 accels during monitoring the night before, so we skipped the NST and just did the ultrasound part of it.  Both got 8 out of 8, but it took quite a while to get Lefty to show her breathing practice.

My favorite ultrasound picture of this appointment was Righty's hand and Lefty's feet together:

Also got a shot of someone's tongue:

 And someone yawning:

Because of the time waiting to get Lefty to show off her breathing, we also get profiles and face-on views of both babies.  And confirmed they are both still girls!

Also confirmed that I don't have the gestational diabetes!  But my vitamin D and calcium levels are low despite the supplementation, so we are stepping them up even more by tripling my vitamin D.  No changes are necessary to my calcium amounts because the theory is that getting the vitamin D levels up will increase my uptake of what I am taking.  And I need to take a belly shot as requested, but here's one from last weekend for now:

And this picture of Chiron sitting on Trajan amuses me and so I am passing it on:

Oh yeah, why did I call them overachieving fetuses?  Well, biophysical profiles don't normally start until 32 weeks and they both got perfect scores at this 28 week appointment and also achieved accelerations of 15 by 15 (meaning 15 beats for 15 seconds) which also isn't normally looked for until 32 weeks.  So, they are overachieving fetuses.  Good girls!

And in one last celebration, hitting 28 weeks will mean that they while they may still end up being preemies, they will not be micropreemies!  And even if they were born in the next few days (not the plan), they should be able to skip the Giraffe incubator phase in the NICU.  So again, go girls!