2nd appointment.. 9 weeks 2 days!

Baby B on left, Baby A on right (we couldn't get a good angle to see them both well!)

Good view of B and his/her cord starting to form on the side!

B again! She/he was dancing up a storm and wiggling fingers for us :)

Profile shot of Baby A chillin on her head (cord above him/her!) and body to the right. It's so amazing how much they have changed in the past 2 weeks!!

WE GRADUATED!! It felt so funny to be walking out of the reproductive clinic today for the last time for awhile. We get to move on now to our regular OB and, as the nurse practitioner put it "be a normal pregnant woman". Yahoo!! Everything went wonderful today and it was such a relief to see our little babies again! Here are their stats.

Baby A:

-Measuring 9w2d

-Heartbeat 180

Baby B:

-Measuring 9w1d

-Heartbeat 174

Baby B was very active, but Baby A was just calm as could be in there with a heartbeat of 180. Old wives might say that she's a girl! Of course it is too early to tell, and we will be thrilled no matter what! I just scheduled my first appointments. The first one for bloodwork and paperwork and then the next at 12 weeks for my pap and first prenatal with the nurse practitioner. I am just giddy with excitement about these babies :)

Here is my 9 week photo. There are definite changes happening! They changed my due date again (Christmas Eve now.. 12/24/11) so my weekly bump shot will be migrating to Saturdays! Hope everyone is having a great week!

Gearing up.

Yup, I am headed to work tonight for another 3 in a row stretch after SIX nights off! I feel it is going to be increasingly difficult to get back in the swing of things. The good news is I will work three nights (Thursday, Friday, Saturday) get off work on Sunday morning and we will only be 24 short hours away from our second ultrasound appointment on Monday morning! Yipee! I can't wait to see these little miracles again. Of course I will have pictures and updates for you then :)

Even though I have had six nights off I have not been (entirely) lazy! Most importantly, our house is now on the market!! We have been thinking of selling and getting into a bigger place for quite some time now, but the presence of babieS coming in December is very effective at lighting a fire under our rears. We are going to have to take a hit on the price of our house (compared to what we paid for it and all the work we've done) but hopefully we will make up for that money lost by getting a killer interest rate on our new house. Please send any good, quick-home-selling vibes our way! I'd like to be outta here before I am as big as a house myself ;)

8 weeks and new jeans.

I caved and bought new jeans. The bloat is pretty crazy these days!! Prior to yesterday I had ONE pair that was comfortable for me to wear. (Sad huh?!) The others I can get on, but they feel tight/restricting because the waistband squeezes me exactly at the wrong spot. Hopefully this pair will get me through until I can switch over to maternity-wear! I would like to point out that the new jeans are the same size as my other jeans, just more low cut :) Not much else to report today! Am I the only one who can see changes in the belly??

Mother's Day

Boy did we have a busy Mother's Day weekend. Starting off with the shock of our lifetimes on Friday! My mom had been planning on coming up to visit on Saturday to celebrate our pregnancy and Mother's Day. Of course she has known since the day we found out that I was pregnant, but I was going to save the twin news and surprise her with it when she got her. Well, she totally ruined that! I called her at work after our appointment to ease her nerves "We saw a strong heartbeat... it was 140 and everything is growing right on target..." Which is totally true, just leaving out the small detail that we saw TWO heartbeats at 140 and lots of things developint right on target. She was not deterred. She kept asking, no matter how hard I tried to distract her from the topic, if we just heard just one heartbeat. The conversation went something like this:

Mom: You just saw one heartbeat right?

Amy: SO... what time do you think you'll be here in the morning?! I'm really excited to see you! And what do you think we should eat?

Mom: I will leave early. You just saw one heartbeat right?

Amy: Ok, well I was thinking we'd hit up the bookstore and Target first and then we can do bigger stuff like the furniture and the mall.

Mom: That's fine. You just saw one heartbeat right?!?!

Needless to say, there was no escaping. I asked if she was sitting and delivered the news right then and there. She is thrilled of course! I have yet to meet a person in life who loves babies as much as my mom. She is going to be an awesome 'Oma' :)  When she got here we had cards and an "I love Grandma" frame with our ultrasound pic in it. She ruins all the good surprises!!

On Saturday we literally shopped till I thought I might drop. We got some Daddy books for Tony to read, and my mom got me a few maternity things (capris and tshirts) to get me started when my belly starts to grow. They even had a fake bump in the Motherhood store for me to strap on. So I could see how well the clothes fit with a 'bump'... I really wish I would have taken a picture, it was hilarious!! We went to Babyland to check out furniture and got pedicures and had a fabulous day. I was asleep on the couch by 9:30p that night!

Sunday was my first day to volunteer in the nursery at church. What do you know... I had two little girls that would not leave my side the whole morning. Maybe that was a sign?! It was awesome though, I love hanging out with the little ones and I met some great people in the church! Then Tony and I came home and I took a nap while he mowed the lawn (still exhuasted from Saturday!) Tony totally spoiled me on my first Mother's Day! He got me really thoughtful cards and these things:

He really is a spoiler, that boy! I have a collection of Willow Tree Angels and have waited so long to be able to add this one. I love it so much! And the necklace is just perfect. I will have to be careful not to wear it around before the news is out all over!  Then in the evening we headed up to Tony's parents house to have dinner with them, his sister and grandma. We had a frame just like the one for my mom with "I love Grandma" and the ultrasound picture. I think they were shocked! Especially when I casually mentioned that they were looking at two babies :) It is so much fun to break the news to our loved ones. It is still early, so we are keeping it to close friends and family... even though I want to scream it from the rooftops!

Tomorrow night starts my 'work week' with my first three in a row at work since we found out I am pregnant. It should be interesting since even two in a row right now is more than exhausting! I'm sure I will make it, but I will be tired!!

Two blueberries

As you know, we found out on Friday that we are having TWO babies! Fraternal twins. I am still in shock and so completely thrilled I can barely contain myself! They also changed my due date to 12/25 based off of my LMP (I had previously gone off of my ovulation date and calculated 12/23/11). Christmas Day!! Of course she then proceeded to tell me that most twins come about a month before their due date, so we should probably not be counting down to that particular day. DUH! I see early twins almost every time I go to work, and this is the part that scares me. I want to avoid a NICU stay for our babies if at all possible. Of course I know they will be receiving great care if they have to go there, but we are going to pray hard for term (or at least 35 weeks) healthy babies :) With the due date change, my picture day is now Sunday instead of Friday. I didn't really want to go two days in reverse of where I thought I was, but it could change again the next time too. Who knows!

So here's the story of our first ultrasound... I worked Wednesday night and Thursday night. Our appointment was supposed to be at 0800 Friday morning so I could go directly there and meet Tony right after work. Believe me, getting through work in the first place when I was so anxious was challenging! Except then the clinic called me on Thursday and said they were going to have to push my appointment back a little because the NP got called out on an emergency meeting. Of course I was disappointed, but took it in stride and took the spot at 1030 instead (I wasn't about to wait till Monday!). Which meant that I had THREE hours to kill in town after work before our appointment time. Sheesh. Thankfully a coworker needed some help delivering Nurse's Week baskets and we also had some breakfast. That kept me busy till 0930, when I went in Walgreens and spent $50 on absolutely nothing! All I can say is it is a good thing I wasn't left to my own devices for the whole three hours. I was so anxious! Finally the appointment time came (and at this point I have been awake for 18 hours) and we proceed with the ultrasound. The nurse warned us that she would be taking lots of measurements and if she's quiet it doesn't mean that something is wrong. She measured my cervix, which looked good and took a look at my ovaries too... Then she was quiet for just a moment (the u/s screen is still facing away from us mind you) and suddenly turns the monitor our way and says "Happy Mother's Day, you are having TWINS!!" Talk about a shocker. I started immediately laughing/crying/shaking and Tony just freezes with this "Did-that-really-just-happen" look on his face. I could have shoveled his jaw off of the floor. The nurse was cracking up and wishing she had our reaction on tape :) Needless to say, it was a total surprise! Here are some stats:

-Both babies and both yolk sacs are measuring right on time and exactly the same as each other
-Both heartbeats were strong and steady at 140bpm!!
-The only thing we want to keep an eye on is their gestational sacs. As you can see in the pic from the last post, Baby B's gestational sac is about half the size of Baby A's. The nurse and NP both said this is something to keep an eye on, but it was a positive thing that Baby B's size was perfect and the yolk sac looked great and the heartbeat was really strong. They would have been concerned if Baby B looked all around behind Baby A. I googled and researched and found that this is fairly common in early fraternal twins.

We have been praying hard and of course would appreciate any additional thoughts and prayers! Our next appointment is on Monday, May 23 (9wks3days) and we pray that we see two babies growing right on track and that their gestational sacs have evened out some so that B has a little more room to move. Ha! After that appointment I will graduate to our OB doctor. Who I have had picked out forever and ever :) Lots of exciting things on the horizon...  Here is my 7 weeks belly pic!

Is it just me or are there changes occurring?? (and I'm not talking about my bad hair day...). My pants still fit, but I feel my belly looks different! It will be interesting to see what the next few weeks have in store.

Happy Mother's Day to all Mommies, Mommies-to-be, and hopeful Mommies out there! I hope everyone was sufficiently pampered and loved!

There are no words.

I will of course update later with all the specifics. But for now I have two healthy babies growing inside of me and I am speechless. God is SO good.

48 hours

That's all the time left between this minute and our first ultrasound on Friday! And I work tonight and tomorrow night, so it should go by quickly. I thought this day might not ever come, and now it's right around the corner!! I can't wait to see our little bug in there and crossing my fingers that we also see that everything is progressing right on schedule. Any thoughts and prayers are greatly appreciated. I am pretty nervous to say the least!