One step forward, two steps back.

It has been a long week. Andrea still has the shingles and they have just started to improve in some areas but are getting worse in others. She is not very happy and I feel terrible that I can't do more for her. We had to cancel our ultrasound we had scheduled for this past Wednesday. There was no way she could lay there for 2 hours. We will try again this coming week. These shingles are really something. They hurt her all the time. We did the test results back that we were waiting for. Some good, some not so good. The Downs screening came back good. There is a 1/388 chance that the baby with the echogenic bowel has Downs. The test for the infection came back that she had been exposed to that virus in her life but not recently and they were not concerned. The CF test came back that I was a carrier so our odds went south on that one. Before we started the process we were told that we had a 1/1200 chance of having a kid with CF. Two weeks ago we were told that we were at 5% of the baby having CF and now with the new information we are at 15%-20%. On a good note she has been feeling the girls move more and more and that is always exciting to her. Her job has been very good to her and letting her work from home. I wanted her to take the time off but she wants to stay working. So that is it for now, pray for her and the girls and I will update after the ultrasound on Wednesday.

Valtrex and Percs

We love pharmeucitical commercials. We always pay attention when they come on the TV. Our favorite part is at the end when they list the side effects of the product. We crack up when an allergy medicine commercial ends with. Yada yada has been known to cause dizzyness, hunger, ulcers, cramping, anal leakage, blindness, incontinence and in some rare cases death. Our other favorite is for the drug Valtrex. Valtrex is a medicine for genital herpes. The commercial starts with a good looking couple talking to the camera. He says "I have genital herpes" and then she says "and I don't" then they say "and we want to keep it that way". That one slays me, that is always funny to me. Andrea and I have reenacted the commercial before, that's how much we love it. Where is this going you ask. I am about to take you there now. MY WIFE HAS THE HERPS! That's correct folks. Shingles is a form of Herpes. While I feel terrible that my wife has Shingles I have been walking around for a day telling everyone I find that my wife has Herpes and I don't, and we want to keep it that way. She even played along with me last night while hanging outside with the neighbors. She said she was mortified when she went to the pharmacy yesterday with a prescription for Valtrex and Percocet. She said she thought the pharmacist not only thought she had the herps but the really bad kind that hurt so bad that you need narcotics. Her sense of humor while dealing with this is why I love her soooooo much. Even if she has the herps. For better or herps, till death do us part.

Shingles- no Doug not the roof kind

Friday afternoon Andrea started to really complain about a rash that she had on her side and belly. She called the baby doc and had a prescription called in for a cream to put on it. The rash continued to get worse and more painful through the weekend. Last night at 3am it was so unbearable that we went to an urgent care center that we thought was open 24 hrs a day. They were closed and Andrea did not want to go to the Emergency Department so back home we went. We got to bed at about 5am but did not really get any sleep. At about 9am she got an appointment at her primary Dr and it was diagnosed as Shingles. They are spreading across her chest and back and hurt all the time. They gave her medicine to treat them and also pain medication to try to help her get some sleep. It sounds like it is not a quick fix and she may be pretty uncomfortable for a week or more. Her primary and baby doc both say the pain medication is fine for the babies so hopefully she will be able to get some sleep. On another note we got notification back from Magee for the first test for infection which was negative. We are waiting on the other results but they will not be in till later this week.

Gun not needed, it's a good thing.

Last night Andrea shrieked in bed. While I would like to tell you that I was involved and it had something to do with my skills in the bedroom I had little to do with it. As I was falling asleep she started yelling something. I woke up concerned but luckily did not reach for Mr. Ruger 9mm in the nightstand. As it turns out it was a good shriek. She was excited that she was feeling the kids moving around in the belly. Not enough movement for me to feel but she was able to feel them moving several times. It was an exciting experience for her. Our friend Maria is pregnant and due in about 5 weeks. I have been able to feel Cameron moving and kicking in her belly several times and it is an unbelievable experience. I can't wait till I can feel the twins.

We have not received any of the test results yet from last week. We may get some of them today or early next week.

If you build it, they will come.

Remember that line from the movie Field of Dreams. I guess it applies here also. The future grandparents have been very excited about the pregnancy and we have been able to parlay that into free stuff for us. Andrea's parents bought us the whole car seat-stroller set up and my parents bought us the two cribs. They had one of the cribs in stock so we brought that one home earlier this week. I opened it up, looked at the directions and quickly gave up on the assembly. We were not in any hurry to get it set up until UPS showed up yesterday with the "Baby Minnie" bedding that Andrea ordered. It was then made clear to me that the crib should be assembled and the sooner it was put together the better it would be for me. This morning for only the cost of a cup of coffee and fresh cinnamon rolls my friend Bob with my supervision of course put the crib together. One more thing I can cross off the ever growing honey do list.

This will hurt me more than it will hurt you.

Have you ever heard a parent say "this will hurt me more than it will hurt you" before they spank a child. I never understood that. I thought it was a load of crap. If it is hurting you so much stop hitting me and we will both feel better. I think I understand now. I now realise that the thought of hurting your children or the thought that there may be something wrong with them is an attention getter. Last week when we had the ultrasound we were told that baby B had an echogenic bowel. What is that you ask. Well I have quickly become an expert on it so here is what I know. Any time the bowels show up as bright or brighter than the bones it is considered an echogenic bowel. On average 1 in every 200 children present with this. She said it was probably nothing but the Dr. may want to talk to us about it. I will save you some of the details but since last week we have spoken to Dr's, genetic counselors, had multiple tests done and had a few sleepless nights. Here is the cliff note version of what we found out. It could be 1 of 6 different things.

1. It is nothing at all, and this is by far the biggest probability.

2. The baby swallowed some blood and this is what is causing it to show up on ultrasound. This one will fix itself.

3. It is some type of birth defect where the bowels are not forming correctly and this could be addressed by surgery after birth.

4. It is a specific infection that would not cause Andrea any symptoms but would effect the baby. This one is not that big of a deal and can be fixed with medication. We have done a blood test to rule this out. Results early next week.

5. Downs Syndrome- this is unlikely based on several factors. Andrea is 30 yrs old and age is a big factor with Downs. The older you get the higher the risk. I guess it was a good idea on my part to marry a young one. Also there are measurements that can give an indication of Downs and the baby does not have any of these. There is a blood test that we did to give an indication of Downs and we are waiting for those results. It will not be a great indication though because the second baby will throw off the results. There is something called an amniocentesis that will tell definitively if the baby has Downs but there is a 1 in a 1000 chance that the test will cause the babies to die. Being that there is only about a 1% chance of Downs we decided that we were not comfortable with the 1/1000 chance that it would cause her to miscarry. We would not have an abortion if it was positive so why risk it.

6. The biggest concern for us is that this is sometimes a sign of Cystic Fibrosis. Andrea and I both have a family history of CF. Andrea was genetically tested last year before we did the invitro deal and she was shown to not be a carrier of the top most common CF genes. We did not have me tested since it is very probable 66% chance that I am a carrier of the gene. We did have me tested yesterday and those results will not be if for 2 weeks. We are also trying to contact a distant relative of Andreas to see if we can get the specific gene mutations that he has. This may be able to rule out CF if he has one of the most common types that Andrea was not a carrier of. The other hope is that I will hit it lucky with the 33% chance that I am not a carrier. The genetic counselor told us that based on currently known facts there is about a 5% chance that the baby has CF.

This is alot of information to digest but the short of it is that the odds of 2 healthy babies are on our side. We are now waiting for the next ultrasound and the results of all the tests. We may not have a definite answer on everything until they are born, so for now we continue to work with the experts, pray and keep putting everything that is pink and says anything about daddy on the registry.

I changed, she changed we all changed.

Her change-

About a month ago Andrea asked me for the first time if she looked fat or pregnant. I know what you are thinking, there is no way he said fat, wrong. Every day since she has asked the same question. Awhile back I told her it was starting to lean towards pregnant and last week I told her it was official she looked pregnant. Last night we met her family in Washington, PA to celebrate her grandmothers birthday. As we were being seated the waitress looked at her and said congratulations, when are you due? I of course told the waitress, no she's just fat. The waitress wanted to die but the good work had already been done. Andrea was thrilled to have had her first confirmed stranger preggo sighting.

My change-

This morning I walked up to her and felt her stomach. I put both hands on her belly and said good morning to the girls. I did not even realise I was doing it. It just happened. Andrea said that I have changed. I asked her how and she said for the last 10 years or so if I walked by I was usually going in for a hooter grab now every time I get near her I grab the belly. I will make an effort to share my attention between the girls and "the girls" in the future. Is it weird if I combine the two?

Babies R US round 2 with the dream team

We set off last night to conquer the registry at Babies R Us. We put together a crack team of shoppers and hit it hard.

The mission-

To get the registry built up to a reasonable amount with things that we actually need.

The team and their responsibilities-

Andrea- to pick everything up in the store and ask Darci "do I need this?"

Darci- to answer yes or no and if a yes how many.

Jeff- researched the big ticket items, crib, mattress, dressers, chair and baby monitor.

Dominic- To run around the store being cute.

Russ- To chase Dominic around the store and attempt to avert all disasters.

The results-

Some great success but we are still far from the goal. The staff said we should put about 4-5 things on the registry per person that is coming to the shower. Some items are hundreds of dollars but some are only a few dollars. Based on that equation we need about 300-400 items on the list and after a combined 10 man hours of work we are at about 125 items. We have alot of work to do.

A pink hamper and pee targets

We decided it was time to start the baby registry for Andrea's shower. Sounds simple enough, yea right! First, Walmart, USA Baby, Target, Baby Depot or Babies R US? Ok, settled in on Babies R US. We walk in and meet with the registry specialist lady. We fill out several forms get a list of things that they think we need and a Star Trek phaser looking thing that I get to shoot things in the store with. We are then set loose on the store. I figured my firefighting training would pay off here as I have been trained on how to search and clear a large building and this time I was doing it without wearing 60 pounds of gear. I started off on a left sided search and rescue pattern which quickly brought me to toys. Great, the girls don't need any toys yet, they are infants, they cry sleep, eat and poop. Oh wait, that is cute, oh Jeffrey look at this, they definitely need 2 of these. This may take a bit longer than I thought. We will come back to toys later. Off to crib mattresses. I guess we need to pick a crib first, we will come back here later also. Next blankets, this one has got to be easy. Nope, if you thought that a blanket was a blanket then you are an idiot. Do we need adjustable, fleece, receiving, wearable, micro fleece, adjustable micro fleece or some thing called a super blanket. We have no idea, we better come back to these later. Next was a clothes hamper, finally something easy. There were only 3 styles and once we picked the style we had only 5 different colors to work through. I am proud to say that after only 45 short minutes a decision was made. We now will be the proud owners of a "kids line folding pink clothes hamper". We have been in the store now for an hour and we have one thing on the registry. The registry lady told us we should pick about 300 things. You do the math. At this rate we only have 225 more hours to go. Living on the high of our recent hamper victory I decided we should go take on the biggest ticket items and get them out of the way. How hard could it be to pick a crib? Yet again I am quickly defeated. For those of you that did not know it cribs are now "convertible" This means that they transform somehow magically from a crib to a toddler bed to a full size bed. While this seems convenient and is a financially sound concept it does not work for us. The girls will need to share a room as long as we are in this house and the room is not big enough for 2 full beds. Ok, how about a convertible crib that magically transforms from a crib to a toddler bed to a twin bed. Nope, no one has been smart enough to invent that one yet. We can send a man to the moon but a crib that turns into a smaller bed is way too much to ask. At this point we abandoned the list they gave us and just started shooting. Neighbor kid Noah seems to like this pacifier, great get 4, saw one of them at the mall once, great get 2 and so on. As we were passing the potty training area I saw these things that you put in the toilet for little boys to aim at. How cool, I suddenly wish I was having a boy so I could get these. Wait, I am a boy, on the list it went. Andrea said I could use the practise. We then decided that we needed help from an expert so I called Darci a mother of a 2 year old and scheduled a meeting for her to come with us and tell us what we really needed. We were ready to be done for the day anyways. I took one more quick run around the store and scanned everything I saw that was pink and said "I love daddy" and we were out of there. Next week we are going back to try again but I sit here at least knowing that if nothing else at least we have one hell of a nice pink hamper!

I could not wait

I called the ultrasound people yesterday and told them that I could not wait until next Wednesday to find out the sexes of the twins. We got our appointment bumped up to this morning. It looks like I have a future of watching dumb shows like Dancing with the Stars, leaving the toilet seat down when I am done and playing "Pretty Pretty Princess". I have two girls on the way.

Cost of twins

A recently released government report says that it takes $221,000 to raise a child from birth to 18yrs old. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090804/ap_on_re_us/us_fea_parenting_cost

Does anyone have $442,000 laying around that they do not need?

America has voted

After 1000's of votes the results are in. Ok, really only 24 votes. And the winner is- one boy and one girl.

1 of each- 54%

2 boys- 33%

2 girls- 12%

The real results will be next Wednesday at the next ultrasound. Stay tuned for the big announcement Aug 12th.