Divided Loyalties

Wow, 4 kids sure generates a lot of laundry!

I’m struggling with the decision to work at the present time because I’m forever catching up and am always so exhausted. I’m constantly behind on my chores and getting laundry done, folded and put away is a momentous task.

We have to be in so early in the morning that I have to wrestle the boys out of bed while they are still sleeping and cart them off to day care. It makes me feel guilty. Because of an incident at another post, there are no daycare slots available and so we do two day care stops every morning (first the girls at their day care and then the boys). It is a. lot. I’m never in on time, luckily in this region it is not expected so I only have to bust my butt when I have a patient.

Then when I get home, it is making dinner, feeding babies, putting kids to bed. I’m happy if I’m in bed with the house cleaned up and prepped for the next morning by 10. It is a miracle if I’m in bed by 1100 pm. Did I mention I get up at 0500? I have a house keeper that comes in once every two weeks and we cook at home every meal. Did I mention that I’m still pumping/BF 40% of the girls’ food.

When I look at this written out I think wow. No wonder I’m so tired. Going to work is actually a break.

Spring Greetings

The girls are truly a delight. They are growing well. Sugar is our tiny one at 9’4 and Spice weighs 10 lbs at 3 months. Both girls sleep through the night!!! ( I will tell you that I do nothing different than with the boys, it is just their constitution). Here are some Spring photos:

The brother sister photo is Rock and Spice

This One’s For Kathy

( thank you my friend for checking in with me)

Our princesses are here!

Sugar and Spice were born 1/1/13 at 1123 and 1124 at 32 weeks, 4 days.

They are tiny but healthy and hearty and hopefully will head home this weekend.

The delivery was an emergency C like last time. Once I turned 28 weeks my OB started biweekly blood draws to check for signs of pre-e. By 30 weeks, we watched my liver functions start to climb. However the girls were doing ok on their biweekly NSTs. My proteins remained the same until 31 weeks. I also developed choleostasis ( yuck the itching!) On New Year’s Eve I had a scheduled NST and I noticed my ankles were swelling and my BP was elevated ( although not super high). They sent me by ambulance to Bethesda ( the new Walter Reed). The Dr made the decision to deliver me the next day.

I had general anesthesia due to the hardware in my back so I can’t tell you much about the birth… I have no memory of it and MO2 wasn’t allowed in the OR.

But here are our gorgeous results:

29 Weeks!

I am admittedly a very bad blogger…

I didn’t realize my last post was in September. Baby girls are doing very well and I’m an 29 weeks today. I still have gestational diabetes (taking metformin and testing sugars) and because of my cervical history, I do progesterone shots weekly but no bedrest and no limitations. I’ve gained 15 lbs this pregnancy and probably will end up gaining 25. Because of my history of preeclampsia, we are doing full panel blood and urine testing every two weeks so that if it starts early, we will catch it.  There’s not a lot that can be done to stop it, however.

I went on half days at work on 1 December and will be out on my self-imposed house arrest as of 1 January. My due date is mid-Feb and we are trying to make it to full term (36-37 weeks) with the little ladies. So my OB and I feel I would be best just incubating in January. Our goal is for these ladies to be full term. MO2 said something like, “next month, we’ll have babies in the house.” I told him to bite his tongue because I want them born in Feb! I feel huge but I am mostly belly and don’t look pregnant from behind except that I have the waddle. Luckily the military is down with that so if my OB orders it, it’s paid leave. We get 6 weeks paid maternity leave but I may end up taking 8 because I can combine it with my use or lose leave. I’m still planning to try to BF the girls so my plan is to line up a lactation consultant BEFORE they are born so we get started right away. I never made a tremendous amount of volume last time so I worry about rectifying this. We have names, too (that we both like an agree on).

Now onto the boys.

They are fabulous! We are potty training and they speak in full sentences. Roll told his teacher…”I have a little penis. Daddy has a big penis.” (Oh my). She said she could never look at MO2 the same way again. I had to bite my tongue and not say, “well it is all a matter of scale.” I had them alone for 11 weeks while MO2 was at a military school. We all survived.

Here is a recent photo of Rock and Roll at 28 months: Horseback riding is a favorite!

Rock is on the horse, Roll is off to the side

 

Girls, Girls, Girls…

We are having 2 girls!

At least our DR is 95% sure. I have my fancy, schmancy level 2 u/s tomorrow for a complete confirmation. I will also have a cervix check (last one was two weeks ago) and growth measurements. Like most people, I’m still waiting for the other shoe to drop. This pregnancy, I am doing progesterone shots (back to that) once a week because apparently it is as effective as a cerclage.

I broke out the ugly maternity uniform. I’m 18 weeks. The other uniform fit but it made me look fat. The hospital commander has decided he wants us in dress blues every Monday. There is no way i’m spending $200.00 for a uniform I can only wear for 4 months! This way, there is no question I’m pregnant.

My Dr told me to only prepare to work about month to 6 weeks more. I was hoping to make it to December ,I have 4 students this semester. We shall see. But so far, I feel great. GD is under control and I’ve gained 3 lbs so far. I am not a little girl.

Now names for my lovely ladies…that may be an issue. DH has proposed that he name one and I name the other with no veto rights. That scares me…what do you think?

Moving Along…

I can’t believe I’m almost 15 weeks….Wow, where has the time gone?

I apologize for my absence, there is a reason. In light our impending arrivals, we moved to a new house (2 streets away). We are now are the proud occupants of a massive 5 bedroom home on Post. However, in true military fashion, we only had 2 weeks notice about the house’s availability. If we chose not to accept it, we would be back to the bottom of the list. Typically, they don’t let you upgrade our housing until 7 months but since my DR wrote me a letter, we were able to move now.

The trick was, we only had 5 days to vacate our old house and get into the new one. Sadly,  I am spoiled. Typically when the government moves you, they send a packing team and a moving team. However, because we moved at OUR convenience, we had to do it all ourselves. I made MO2 hire a moving company to do the heavy lifting but the rest was and has been us. Oh my Lord! It is slow unpacking/organizing with toddler twins running around. By the time we get home from work, get dinner made, boys bathed and in bed, and the house picked up it is hard to find the motivation to unpack. However, we’ve been slowly pushing through at the rate of 2 or 3 boxes a night. I LOVE the new place. It has 4 big bedrooms and 2 baths upstairs and a full guest bedroom and bath downstairs. there are two living rooms; a formal one which is smaller and a large family room that I can see into from the kitchen. It also has a 2 car garage (which sadly is so full of stuff that we can’t get a car into right now). It is the biggest house I’ve ever lived in and the same price as my old one. Our housing is based on rank, not size 🙂

The bad thing is MO2 is going to school (mandated) from mid-September to November. I am in the process of trying to hire a Mother’s Helper (at the insistence of my parents) for weekday evenings while he is gone. it is going to be harder as I get bigger and less mobile. I wasn’t showing until recently when my stomach just popped out. However, I’m still in my regaular uniform (not the ugly maternity one) because I am wearing MO2’s pants! I will probably have to switch to maternity clothes soon but for now, most things still fit (I just look fat).

Babies seem to be moving around pretty well on u/s. I still have an u/s every two weeks. My gender scan is not until Sept 22 but since MO2 will be at school, my OB has been willing to attempt genders. Our Baby A is a girl!!!!!!! Baby B was modest and would not show us the goods.

Sending warm internet wishes to Loren who has her transfer tomorrow and tons of baby dust.

Shock & Awe

I’m not really sure how I feel about having twins again…

I was looking forward to a singleton pregnancy because it clearly has less complications than a twin pregnancy. I am being monitored very closely. They’ve done a baseline of pre-eclampsia labs that I will repeat every two weeks for the remainder of my pregnancy. I have bi-monthly ultrasounds. I am on a bunch of supplements; iron, folic acid, calcium, prenatals… not to mention I’m still on progesterone and delestrogen until the 9th of August. I already have gestational diabetes so I am on the diet and glucophage. Oh and if there are not enough things to take, they added colace!

I have to admit I was suspicious of twins when my blood sugar wouldn’t behave. I am not a diabetic, except it seems when I am pregnant. I knew something had changed when the doctor said, “there has been a lot of growth…”

I am kind of dreading telling my family. My Mother is not super enthusiastic about pregnancy or large families. My lovely SIL who is 8 months with her second received a very blah reaction when my brother announced her + positive pregnancy test back at XMAS. My Mother I’m sure won’t have anything pleasant to say and I’m really not sure how to tell her. I will say, in her defense, that she does love her grandchildren. I think most people will think we are crazy. MO2 will be gone from mid-September to mid-November for a military school he is dreading. So it will be me and the boys. I’m sure it will be fine but as I get bigger, I will be able to do less. I am already working on lifting them less, however, I don’t think they got the memo.

It looks like we will have to move. With both boys, me and DSS who moved in permanently in April we are getting crowded. There are 5 bedrooms available but we have to be on the waiting list. Typically they won’t move pregnant women until 7 months, but there is a lilelihood that the new set will be here by then. I got a letter from my DR and hopefully they will do an exception to policy so we can move sooner as opposed to later. I dread moving but I also dread being cramped.

Rock & Roll celebrated their second birthday on Saturday with a day a Dutch Wonderland with my Mom and SIL and niece (my brother is frantically remodeling their bathroom before their new baby arrives) and MO2. We all had a great time! 2 already? Where did the time go?

Spoke Too Soon!

Apparently the new set has other plans. Baby A with a hb of 170 and B with a hb of 180!

We are having…..

1 baby!

There is a second sac but the baby is not developing visibly. The baby in sac 1 has a nice heart beat so all seems to be going well. We have to check back in 2 weeks.

I’m thrilled to be having a singleton ( at least we are assuming we are at this point). I want to have a drama free pregnancy and this is the first step. I am still following the gestational diabetes diet. Hopefully there won’t be as great a risk of preeclampsia because this is not a first pregnancy! Here’s hoping for a great 9 months!

Embryo Donation (not as easy as people think)

So they’ve caught on to me…. Word Press is no longer loading on my work computer. Damn! Well, I will just tap this out on my phone….sigh.

I am in the waiting mode. My OB intake is next Monday and I am not even sure if they will do an u/s. My clinic wants one done at 7 weeks. I think here they don’t want one done until 11 weeks, so we shall see. Most days I don’t really feel pregnant. My boobs hurt and sometimes when I get up quickly I get twinges on my ligaments but that’s about it. I guess I should feel lucky I don’t have m/s but it would make me feel better if I did!

What this post is really about is how we ended up using donor embryos to begin with. There are a lot of people in the embie donation community that would want you to believe there are thousands of embryos available for donation in the US. Truth is, not really. There are thousands of people who do have embryos frozen but they aren’t typically giving them up. If they are, there may be a reason, primarily that they don’t want to pay fees for storage or that they are a 1) large number of embryos (12+) or a very small number ( 1 embryo) that people won’t want to risk paying the transfer fees for 4k+….

There are several routes of embryo donation. Here are the main ones…
1. Donated to a clinic or program
2. Private donation ( like giving a friend your unused embryos)
3. Private donation through a third party like a web group like Miracles Waiting
4. Creating embryos to be used in a donor program ( using donor sperm/egg ).
I think that is about it. In subsequent posts, I’ll talk about the pros and cons of each.