Saturday Afternoon update

So, I'm not into posting lots and lots of updates every day, but things have changed enough since this morning, that it's worth another update this afternoon. Basically, as of this morning, I thought for sure we'd have babies by this afternoon. But I don't feel that way now.

The doctor has had all kinds of restrictions and orders for Skye - like not eating food for the last 48 hours or so (I know it's to prevent the possibility of aspiration, but how can not eating for 2 days be helpful to anyone?!). After some discussion with the doctor (where she admitted that the hospital is not a prison and that they can't stop Skye from doing what she wants), Skye (with help from her mom) took it upon herself to do a bunch of things she wasn't supposed to do. She took a shower, she ate food (the doctor later gave her permission to eat) and now she's a completely different person. She's calm, relaxed and doesn't look like a woman about to go into labor. So, at this point, who knows - maybe she won't be having babies today. Only time will tell. But things are looking much better than they were this morning.

Saturday morning update

Skye started having pretty strong contractions last night. They put her on magnesium (via the IV) for the last 12 hours. There are a set of factors that determine whether you're a good candidate for a VBAC. The fact that she's had a previous c-section is actually only a very small factor. Current factors include her bag of membranes being broken, she's got an abruption (though small...they think), and she's having abnormally strong contractions without being dilated much at all. Those factors really put her in a high risk situation. So....everyone is recommending she have a c-section, perhaps as soon as this afternoon.

Obviously, this is NOT Skye's preference. But she's being a trooper about it. She's tender-hearted and wants badly to do things nature's way and be able to hold these babies right after they're born. These boys are going to have to spend time in the NICU, but we're going to make sure they're healthy and safe. Deep down, Skye knows that, but it's still going to be hard for her to see her boys connected to lots of tubes for the first few weeks.

But all things considered, I think things are going pretty well...

62 Hours and All is Well

I am still here and doing well. Contractions in the night got painful and woke me up frequently, but they have slowed and eased up. I was sent back to labor and delivery for a while this morning for monitoring, but everything looks good, the contractions are less severe, and they sent me back upstairs (to the comfier beds).

Blessedly, Seville is also doing better. She slept through the night last night and woke up walking, so she is now off to a friend's house to play and Jared will finally get some work done (not that work is the most important thing at the moment - we all realize that - but given that we are HOPING I will be here for a few weeks, we want to keep things as normal as possible until something noteworthy happens.)

I had hospital Cream of Wheat this morning, and it wasn't noticeably different than homemade Cream of Wheat. I can't decide whether that's good or bad. On the one hand, finally a hospital food that isn't either too soggy or too dry! On the other hand, it only emphasized the fact, in my brain, that Cream of Wheat is inherently bland and mushy and slimy, and I'm not sure I'll be able to eat it at home again without thinking of it as hospital food for the infirm. hm.

48 Hours Update

I'm still here and still pregnant. I'm still being monitored (though not as closely as before), still having contractions, and still losing fluid. But so far no labor. If I make it until morning, our outlook will be much better than it has been.

Meanwhile (as if we need more complications) Seville is having a problem with her left hip. She was up most of the night crying apparently (grandma reports) and wouldn't walk today until evening, at which point she started limping around a bit. We've had this problem before, and I'm pretty sure it's something called Toxic Synovitis. If her symptoms stay under control, it's probably ok and will eventual resolve, but there is a point at which we'd need to take her to the hospital. We've been through a Toxic Synovitis hospital stay with her before and it was no fun at all. They did lots and lots of tests and put her through a lot of miserable stuff. So we'd like to spare her that if she seems to be doing ok and improving. However, she really needs a parent right now, so Jared has gone home to be with her and have her sleep in her own bed and such.  The problem with that, of course, is that things with me could happen in an instant, and he might have to rush down here in his PJs in order to catch the birth of his babies. That's a worse case scenario, of course, but it's not an unlikely one. So we really are crossing our fingers and praying that nothing will happen with either me or Seville tonight, since Jared can't be two places at once.

Thanks so much to all of you who are wishing us well, including us in your prayers, and offering help.  I'm sure we'll need lots of help, we just don't know exactly what and when yet. We'll try to keep you posted. Thanks!

Back at the Hospital

So Skye went back into the hospital last night. Her water broke at about 9:30pm. Apparently - contrary to popular belief - having your water break does NOT necessarily mean you're going to have babies right away. They say it's 50/50 that she'll go into labor within 48 hours. It is possible that we can keep the babies inside Skye for another 3 weeks or so. At 34 weeks, they deem the risk of infection greater than the risk of prematurity, so I guess they would induce at 34 weeks if she makes it that far.

But...(this is just my opinion)...there's a good chance we'll have babies here in the next few days. This would mean a stint (perhaps several weeks) in the NICU for the babies (probably some breathing assistance, tube feeding, etc.). For those of you who know Skye well, you know that NICU is not a place Skye wants her babies to be. But...ultimately, safe and healthy babies are what we want and, personally, I feel fortunate that we have top-flight NICU care available to make sure our boys make it into the world safely. I feel quite confident that everything is going to work out.

On a slightly different note, despite having made a good bit of progress in our preparations over the last few weeks, we're totally not ready to bring the boys back to our house. We do have car seats - so we can at least get them home. But we may have to make a bed for them in the bathtub and swaddle them in old t-shirts. I find the whole thing kind of amusing because, obviously, we'll work it out. We tried to get ahead of the game with our preparation, but no matter how prepared you try to be, this baby stuff is just unpredictable!

Anyhow, we'll try to keep people posted on the blog. I ain't gonna be doing any Twitter-style updates every other minute, but when there is something news-worthy, I'll try to let you know. Skye may post some smaller micro-updates on Facebook, if you're of that ilk.

Thanks for checking in and thinking of us...

Back At 'Em

After a week of extreme caution and virtual bedrest, trying to get my contractions to slow down, I had a doctor appointment on Friday and they checked "things" out. Everything is looking good! I've had no dilation to speak of since I left the hospital, so nobody is worried anymore. It looks like the pre-term labor of last week was an isolated incident due to the stomach flu (or whatever), and I'm back to being a normal 3rd trimester twin pregnant person. Which means I'm not very mobile and it hurts to walk around, but there's no danger in it, which is awesome.

I celebrated the good news this morning by prepping a couple of garden beds for planting. I had assumed before that I might not be able to plant a garden this year, which would be so tragic! So I got all stoked at the idea of putting peas in the ground. I admit, after about 5 minutes of shoveling dirt and turning it with a pitchfork I realized how ridiculous this idea was (I mean, come on. I can hardly walk by now, danger to fetuses or not). But Jared helped me out and we got a couple beds mulched and ready to go. I spent the next loooooong time sitting in a reclining lawn chair gasping for breath while my hip joints trembled and attempted to relax.

Seville climbed all over me, bounced around, sang songs, and peed on the lawn while I lay there (with my permission, nay, even at my suggestion, because I didn't think I could walk up the deck and into the house with her. Am I a bad parent?). The chickens got a little break from their coop and scratched and pecked in our yard for a while. It was a great day.

Oh, and the OTHER great news is that Baby "A" turned around and got his head down last week. Not that I needed them to tell me that - it was quite an event. It happened Thursday night and it sent me grasping myself and lying on the couch to recuperate. Afterward I could tell by the types of movement I felt in which places that he had turned around. Anyway, this means I'm officially in the game of being able to attempt a VBAC (Vaginal Birth After Cesarean). I chose my doctor, hospital, and everything based on NOT wanting another C-Section, which is what 99% of doctors will automatically do if you have both a previous C-Section AND twins in there.  But there are criteria, and the first is that the first baby needs to be head down. So I was happy about that too (now, if Baby "B" could only turn around, it would makes things easier still).

Hospital Stay

Well, I suppose it's time to start using this thing again (as in, this blog), now that we have lots of people wanting updates on our situation. I just looked back and was semi-surprised to see that I've included a few pictures and some drivel, but little of consequence for the last few months.

Here's the nutshell update:

We are pregnant - and with TWINS, no less. (now let's just get these next couple questions out o f the way: no they're not identical (fraternal), and no that doesn't run in my family. If you'll recall, Jared had cancer and chemotherapy a couple years ago, and that left our situation... shall we say... somewhat compromosed. We were so fortunate to have an oncologist who was cognisant of and sensitive to cancer-life-related issues for younger people, and who made time for us to get some of Jared's "boyz" on ice before he started chemo. So... despite our efforts at having one baby at a time, fertility treatments are unpredictable, and here we are).

The babies are both BOYS, and Jared is about as stoked as can be. He's resisting all kinds of urges to buy little basketballs, I'm sure.

So we're excited, and life is changing fast. The pregnancy hasn't been without complications - I was on bedrest for several weeks at the beginning, and have some other complications that make me pretty uncomfortable pretty much most of the time. I have several "indications" that put me at risk for pre-term labor, but things have been looking great lately. I hit the 28-week pregnancy mark a couple of days ago. I was excited to reach that benchmark (a big one for twins).

Of course, as fate would have it, the instant I was excited about reaching week 28, I started having some pre-term labor symptoms. The next night I was sent to the hospital and have been here since (3 days). I'm one of those contraction-ey pregnant women - I get 'em all the time - and this is pretty normal for a twin pregnancy in the 3rd trimester, so it's nothing to be alarmed about usually. But when the contractions wouldn't slow down with rest or water, and especially when they were only 3 minutes apart, it was looking a little scary. At the hospital we determined that I was starting to dilate with all the contractions, so they put me on medication to stop them and IV fluids to keep me hydrated. We also figured out, as the night wore on, that I had the stomach flu.

I hate the stomach flu. HATE. THE. STOMACH. FLU. I'm one of those people that just doesn't deal with nausea very well, and I can't throw up, so I'm just miserable the whole time. BUT, believe it or not this is good news, in a way. It's probable that the stomach flu is what was actually causing the contractions and pre-term labor symptoms, and once I got over that, they were able to take me off the medications and things have been ok since.

So today I get to go home! I have to take it easy and watch closely what happens over the next couple of days, but I don't think I will even need to go on any kind of long-term strict bedrest at this point, which is great news. I will probably need to have pretty limited activity for the next couple of months, so we'll try to find a way to work that out, but that's not nearly as bad as I was thinking it would be.

The pictures, by the way, were taken here in my room during my stay. Seville came to visit me yesterday. Apparently she dressed herself, and arrived completely decked out in poofy pink princess attire with matching shoes and tiara with fuzzy pink embellishments. While she was here, Grandma helped me untangle and braid my hair. She wanted matching braids, so I tried to put little ones in her hair. I couldn't get over how cute they were, so we took pics.

Also, the view from OHSU windows is pretty fun. There are lots of cool cloud things that go on up here, and I've been watching them from my bed (I guess you can see Mt. Hood from other places in my room. Just not the bed).