House Arrest

In line (guest post by Mark)

Cell phone blogging. 10:30 and we have fancy duds, but that's all that's happened. Overheard a nurse tell another waiting couple that the hospital is short-staffed today.

Liz is trying to catch some sleep.

Hours now (guest post by Mark)

Liz is first in line for C-sections tomorrow morning. So, barring some other mother in an emergency situation, by 9:00 o'clock (about 12 hours from now) we'll be parents.

Mother is doing fine. Father is a mess.

For the knitters in the audience, be aware that liz now has several new fans among the hospital staff. I'll try to post pictures of what she's been doing in the next few days.

And pictures of babies, of course.

Nope, didn't happen today (guest post by Mark)

The ultrasounds came back about the same as last Thursday, which was good enough to let Hunter and Aden simmer for two more days. 

Wednesday Liz will definitely deliver the twins via C-section. The rumor has the procedure scheduled for 8:00, unless she gets bumped

Nervous? Nah........

Weekend Update (guest post by Mark)

A very uneventful weekend. Lots of Scrabble. Liz won most of the games. But not all. No, not all....

Monday is another ultrasound day, probably the last one. The doctors plan to do another set of Doppler tests on the twins to make sure both are getting the nutrients they need and that the nutrients are getting to the right places. If everything looks good, Hunter and Aden will be delivered by C-section on Wednesday.

If the test results don't look good, the twins come out tomorrow.

For what it's worth, both kids are moving strongly. (Liz' belly is pretty disturbing when a baby really pushes out; I find it impossible not to think of the movie "Alien" when I see it, but maybe that's just me.) So we know they're getting enough of what they need to be feisty.

I'm not predicting how anything is going to go; so far I have a perfect record of being wrong. But by the original calculations tomorrow makes 34 weeks, which is a big milestone, so in itself that's something good.

Keep thinking good thoughts, everyone. And thanks for the ones already thunk.

Holding pattern

All quiet on the Upper West Side front.

Liz had an uneventful day. The twins did their usual “dancing ’round the womb” thing this morning, making the twenty continuous minutes of cardiac tracing take a couple of hours to actually perform, but other than that no notable events occured.

(I expect the serious stir-crazy to start sometime Sunday afternoon, but for now she's hanging in there. As Liz says, she is for the most part self-entertaining.)

Tomorrow will be more of the same, I think. I'll bring up the travel Scrabble set and she’ll kick my but for a while, and life will be good.

By the way, hospital food sucks. Liz offered me her breaded chicken cutlet; I didn’t actually spit it out, but I didn’t take a second bite either.

Liz and I thank everyone for the good wishes you all have sent; we’re really hoping to get to Wednesday, so please keep thinking positive thoughts. I don't know if it helps but it certainly can’t hurt.

Growing Growing Growing (guest post by Mark)

Good news: Aden gained a total of 14 ounces over the last 20 days, and his umbilical blood flows, while still a little stressed today, are acceptable, so the babies get to stay in the mom until Wednesday.

The details: Hunter weighs in at an (estimated) 5 pounds, 3 ounces, while Aden tips the virtual scales at 3 pounds, 3 ounces. Both are active and besides for Aden's noted issues, seem happy and healthy.

On Wednesday they found a private room for Liz, and she's settling in nicely:

(Click on the image for a panorama of Liz' home-away-from-home.)

So the routine will be for the nurses to monitor the babies twice a day, with another Doppler study scheduled for Monday.  If everything goes smoothly and the babies keep kicking the stuffing out of Liz, they will defininitely be delivered by C-section on Wednesday. At the first indication of danger to Hunter, Aden, or Liz, they'll do the C-section immediately.

So at the latest, we're talking about being parents by Wednesday.

Now, more pictures.

Hunter has been good about giving us good pictures.  She's been above and in front pretty much the whole time, so her images have tended to be less "fuzzy" than Aden's. Plus, the kid moves a lot. Well, here's the latest of Aden:

Still not great, but mostly because of the angle.  Here's a detail, rotated:

He's going to be not only a rogue (inferred from all the consternation he's delivered so far) but a handsome rogue to boot.

Updated Delivery Date

I'm posting this update from my phone so there might be some problems with the comments area.

The doctor came by this morning and said that they're going to deliver the twins next Wednesday, not Monday. Apparently, way back in the day, my due date was calculated as July 4th, not July 1st as I have always gone by. (Which makes absolutely no sense to Mark and I since we KNOW the IVF transfer was done on a Monday and all the other due date calendars put me at the 1st.) The July 4th due date pushes the 34 week mark back a couple of days.

The caveat is tomorrow morning's ultrasound. If they see that the babies haven't grown or that the venusos thing is back, then Mark and I will become parents tomorrow.

Thanks for all your good wishes so far. I can't tell you how much they gladden the heart from this hospital bed.

In the Hospital for the Duration (guest post by Mark)

Today started out as a virtual repeat of last Tuesday. In other words, what the doctors saw yesterday (the same scary thing called ductus venosus reversal in Aden) on the Doppler testing didn't appear at all today. Once again, they had Liz scheduled for a C-section to follow the ultrasounds. Once again, they called the operation off.  Once again, we sat around for hours waiting for the Doctors to tell us what the next steps would be.

Here's where things diverge from last week; the Doctors aren't calling yesterday's readings an anomaly this time. This reversal thing doesn't usually get better spontaneously, which is why they thought last week was a false positive, but the fact that it happened again, and that Aden isn't growing as fast as he should be, has turned the Docs into believers.

So Liz is now hospitalized, and scheduled for a C-section this coming Monday.

Why didn't they deliver the babies today? Well, because other than the weight and the flaky reversal thing, Aden seems like he's doing fine.  He's very active (very active) indicating he's getting enough oxygen and nutrients to keep him revved up. And all things considered, every day in the womb makes developing easier on the tykes.

Next Monday will be 34 weeks, which is only two weeks short of average for twins anyway.

Liz is hospitalized as a precaution. The staff will check the babies multiple times during the day, and they're scheduled for a full growth check ultrasound on Thursday. Both Liz and I are feeling a lot less stressed, because at the first hint of a problem Liz can buzz a nurse and she can be in the O/R in a matter of minutes.

Which is a huge relief to me, because it took me an hour and forty five minutes to get to the hospital this morning, door-to-door. I barely got there in time to catch the end of the ultrasound. (But I did get to see Aden stick his tongue out at the ultrasound tech. He really does make it hard on the ultrasound people.)

Liz can't check her email from the hospital; she apologizes to everyone for not responding to messages.  She can read her blog from her phone, so if you'd like to leave her a message she would certainly appreciate it. Obviously she can occasionally post from her phone as well, but the keyboard on that phone is tiny, so she probably won't be composing long posts.

I'll be posting updates here in the evenings. Yesterday I was able to steal some time on a PC in the triage room, but Liz' ante-partum room has no such amenities, so bear with us.

Update from Triage (guest post by Mark-- UPDATED WITH A PICTURE!)

So far this looks like an exact repeat of last week.

Except for scary reversal thing (which had disappeared last Tuesday morning, only to reappear this morning) babies act like happy little gymnasts.

In the light of that, there's no pressing need to take the buggers out.

But the doctors are worried.

So Liz gets to stay another nite at the Chateau Ante-Partum.

And they'll run the tests again tomorrow.

And we'll see what happens then.

Maybe a C-section, maybe a "stay a while longer", maybe a "go home now" thing.

Me, I just wish they'd keep me here, because I'm not sure about how my heart is going to hold up...

33 Weeks: Here We Go Again

A quick update from my phone: The scary venous thing showed up on today's ultrasound again so we're on our way to Labor & Delivery again. The doctor who read the scans basically said, "Well, you're at a good point to have your babies." Aden was giving the ultrasound tech a run for her money while she was trying to get the dopplers. He was squirming and moving and generally finding all sorts of difficult to scan angles to get into. She said that this was a very good sign because usually babies in distress don't respond to stimuli and are lethargic. It looks like our boy is gonna be a fighter and that lightens my heart. I feel like shit today. I want to blame it on too much ice cream (I'm lactose intolerant) and bad Chinese food but my guess is that my body is starting to think the time has come also. They say pregnant women tend to feel a little "off" before they deliver and I certainly feel "off" today.