Passive Superstition Be Gone

I think I have not been posting through a mix of passive superstition, by not typing things it is totally logical that I'm not tempting fate (right?), and honestly just not wanting to process some thoughts.  Neither of these was a conscious move, just kind of happened.  But I got forced to a few thoughts, including realizing that I wasn't writing anything for silly/nonexistent reasons, so here I am.

First thought: at some point in the last week or so, my expectation has changed from this could result in 0, 1 or 2 babies to there will be 2.  Yesterday morning, my OB was as usual sitting in the rocking chair beside my bed chatting and writing up my chart and when she finished she asked if I had anything else.  And then said that she thought there was something else and that I sometimes get a look where she knows I'm thinking something, but she just doesn't know what it was.  I felt oddly stressed, but couldn't identify what it was.  In thinking after, I think it really was just that I'd made the transition to expecting 2, and thus exposing myself.

That's my big thought.  Figure I should give a status update and summary now since I have been so non-communicative.  However, just like with Chiron/Aurelia, I've actually done a good job through Facebook and it's hard to keep straight what I've said where, so figure I'll just go general here.

Two new things were declared by the OBs this week: next baby who pulls a hijink is getting born at that time and bring her sister with her and we are staying through delivery.  Why, you ask?  Well, Monday when we actually were at the point of considering discharge in the next couple days, Righty aka baby A, started having late decels followed by tachycardia on our normal morning strip.  Initially responded with trying positional changes while a nurse got the oxygen setup in place.  Then she called the OB and had her look at the strip just to be sure she knew what was going on and the OB told the nurse that we were going to c-section them and to start an IV, get labs drawn and get me moving towards L&D.  Then in the thirty minutes all that was going on little miss behaved perfectly and so my OB backtracked and said we would do 24 hours of monitoring.  No more incidents occurred after that, so was shipped back to stable antepartum, but it was declared that these two were out of chances.

Background: at 25 weeks, I had a cold and my body started contracting/dilating in response to there is stress on the system, lets do something to simplify.  Stayed in-patient for ten days, things calmed down and was discharged to home bedrest at 26&2.  Then at 28&5 I was at the perinatologist for normal BPP and Lefty, aka baby B, was having variable decelerations and some moderate bradycardia on her NST.  He wasn't worried, but wanted to make sure that it stopped rather than continued and since it was 5 pm, sent me over to L&D for two hours of monitoring.  Instead of discharge after two hours, I instead got another 2 rounds of steroid shots and was admitted.  She continued having some of these events until the morning of 30&5 when there was some insane fetal motion and I again started having contractions.  Had dilated more and so went over to L&D.  By middle of the day, I was having beautiful, rhythmic contractions of mountains and values every 2.5 minutes and it looked like we were heading towards birth.  Then it just petered out.  Stayed in monitoring in L&D another day and a half and then back to stable antepartum.  Good news of that event was the huge motion was Lefty moving from transverse to breech and as a result seemed to have gotten her leg or whatever out of the cord loop and we haven't seen variables at all, much less bradycardia from her since.  Then on Monday, at 32&5 we had the late decels event with Righty.

So, now I'm back to hanging out in stable antepartum.  Looking pretty stable and while I have a couple rounds of regularish contractions a day, nothing significant.  Both babies are behaving on their strips and so we continue on.  The delivery date barring someone misbehaving ahead of then is July 19 at 37&1.  My OB, who you may remember is really amazing, competent and just a good human, just left my room and is heading out on vacation and will be out of town until July 2.  Of course, there will be other OBs on call and I know them all, but I am spoiled and really prefer MY OB, so think behaving thoughts through at least July 2. That would also get us to 34&5, which I would count as pretty awesome.

That's my ramble and now some random pictures because captions are fun.

Chiron playing around with one of the new strollers while hanging out at Trajan's swim lesson.

Trajan is by the rail waiting at swim.

Amusing nurses with hijinks and jocularity make the world better.

So do nurses drawing fun pictures.

And awesome coworkers who bring amusing things as well as folding zombies out of paper!

And grandparents who come into town and amuse boys and generally help.

As well as hold little boys with colds when the pass out.

Friends coming by, talking, bringing food, amusement and even making a five-foot tall kangaroo makes the world a lot better as well.

So do wonderful friends who I've actually never met in person who amuse me every single day on multiple occasions and have sent more surprises, notes and thoughts than I ever would have imagined.

Even being challenged to a massive hamburger eating contest is pretty cool.  And as a bonus, you see here the pictures that some amazing friends I work with thought to print and bring up (and some of the zombies!).

This little man loves wandering around the hospital on our 30-minute wheelchair privileges and is amazing us with all he's mastered.

This little man prefers to be silly and luckily there are some great nurses who go along with it!

These three are pretty awesome and photographic evidence that Trajan may come here to play iPad almost as much as to see me.

Happy, loving boys

Everyone

I don't have an innie or an outie now, I have a flattie.  Also, tell the kids at home not to pierce their belly button because even if it's only for two days due to some impulsivity and fun with roommates, it will stretch to impressive size as a scar.  And my first two skin marks ever appear below on diagonals on each side.

Someone tell me to shut my trap

Apparently I did not learn a life lesson from this post.  Note that it was written on 12/21 and Chiron was born 12/23.

My putting into writing that she had had no more decels and just some slightly extended variances may have been a bad idea.  I'm not really very superstitious by nature, but both L&D and the NICU kinda make me so.

So, can you guess what happened between the last post and now?  More variances plus a couple decels.  They were V's, not W's, which I'm reassured is very good and she recovered on her own each time and is still achieving accelerations and the like, but NOT what we are looking for.   She got down to about 90 from 150 or 160 and then recovered back to 150 or 160 over a couple minute period on one of them and I didn't get the specific numbers on any others.

Her line does look crazy compared to her sister's. 

Nothing has changed, just the clock to feel confident that her positioning has resolved itself and she is not at risk has reset.  Nothing to be alarmed about.  Nothing to overreact to, but seriously?  Just STOP doing that, little miss lefty.

I am finding it much harder to actually work while monitoring, so I'm going to celebrate the positive side and declare this an opportunity to nearly guilt-free work on getting caught up on my blog reading!

Thank you all for keeping track of us and sharing your thoughts and jokes and experiences.  Really does mean the world.

Oh, and Tanika, the uterus of bitching is totally behaving, so I think we may need to get a nickname for little miss attention magnet...