An expensive day

Today was an ultrasound, a fetal heart monitoring session and a visit to the Dr. Everything is looking good. We found out that the girls have hair and are a couple of big gals. Reagan is 4lbs 1 oz and Riley is a whopping 5lbs. That is a combined weight of 9lbs 1oz of baby plus 2 placentas, double the fluid, etc. That is alot of kid in there. No wonder she looks like she should beep when she backs up. Now consider this, she is due in another 7 weeks and they will gain an average of 1/4 to 1/2 pound each week from here on out. Andrea got a new medicine to try for the indigestion which causes a good puke at least once a day. Of course the new med is not covered by insurance and was $55. Combine that with the $520 we had to pay the Dr. today in copays and it was an expensive day. I sell Kobe beef for about $25 a pound. Today these kids cost us about $63 a pound. I am sure they will be worth it. Both babies are now breach. If they stay that way then Andrea is in for a C-Section. If Reagan flips to a head down position then they can probably be brought out the old fashioned way. Weekly visits from now on and another ultrasound in three weeks if we make it that long.

Trip to Virginia

Against my better judgement we went to Williamsburg Virginia for the weekend. I wanted to skip the trip because of how Andrea was feeling but she really wanted to go and needed to get out of the house. We took a side trip to Virginia Beach to see our friend John and went to the boardwalk and had dinner on the water. Had a very nice time. On Saturday we went to Yorktown and shopping in Williamsburg. Saturday night we had a dinner with a bunch of my coworkers and home Sunday. With the exception of about 5 emergency puke breaks over the weekend Andrea got through just fine. She is fairly uncomfortable all the time but she really needed to get out of the house for a few days. The pictures above are of our room in Williamsburg, an emergency stop alongside the PA Turnpike and Andrea on Virginia Beach. We have an ultrasound, fetal monitoring and Dr's visit this Wednesday.

Cabin fever

A customer of mine told me a joke the other day and as it turns out it is true. What is the difference between a pregnant woman and a terrorist? You can reason with a terrorist. Andrea has a case of the 3rd trimester pukes and terrible indigestion. She is back on the Zofran for the sickness and a new medicine for the acid reflux. She is not sleeping well and getting a bit of cabin fever. To try to combat this we are headed to Williamsburg Virginia for a few days with a side trip to Virginia Beach. As for the babies, everything is doing good. We are going every week for check ups and fetal heart monitoring. We have an ultrasound scheduled for next week and we are still expecting a deliver date of December 10th but I think it will be earlier. The picture above is of Andrea doing the fetal heart monitoring. She has to sit there for about 30 minutes each week from now on. Unfortunately the Wexford office that we used to go to does not have a monitor capable of handling twins so we have to go to Magee every week to get it done.

Happy Birthday

No, not Reagan and Rileys, today Andrea turns 31. To celebrate we went to Arbys for lunch, her choice, not mine. Then we went to Babies R Us and bought some things that were on the registry and we did not get at the shower. Surprisingly it ended up being over $1,000 with the one dresser that we needed. We had other places to go but pregosaurus had enough for the day so we came home. We were not home long when she had one of the most impressive pukes of the pregnancy. This is becoming a more common occurrence. It appears that the pukes are back for a third trimester run.

8 weeks and counting

We started the weekly Dr visits and fetal monitoring. We are now less than 8 weeks away from the expected due date of December 10th. Andrea has not been feeling great between a cold, not sleeping well and getting as big as a house. While still 8 weeks away she is currently carrying as much baby as a normal single pregnancy at full term. We are continuing to get the house ready and trying to prepare as much as possible. This picture was taken this week at the Dr's office.

Baby shower

Today was Andrea's baby shower. We had about 50 people come and it was a great event. Thanks to all that were there. You were all very generous with your gifts and we are looking forward to using the gift cards to finish off the furniture in the nursery. I have limited knowledge of what baby showers are like as this was my first but I think this one was a winner. Thanks to my mother for hosting such a great event.

Really good news

It has taken over a month but today we got the news we have been waiting for and it was all good. We have been looking to find out what gene mutations Andrea's cousin has. He has Cystic Fibrosis and if he had any mutations that can be tested for then we would be in the clear. As it turns out he has 2 mutations that are tested for and Andrea was negative for those. That with the fact that the Echogenic Bowel that was present 3 months ago has been gone in the last 2 ultrasounds means that all should be well. This means that we are at no higher risk than anyone else for CF and only a very slight chance of Downs Syndrome. Chances are that the original Echogenic Bowel that showed up was either a fluke or the baby may have swallowed a small amount of blood. I sometimes wonder if we were better off without all this medical technology. One bright spot on an ultrasound and we lose months of sleep and while insurance paid the majority of it there was about $10,000 in tests to find out that everything is fine. While I am sure that she did not do anything on purpose I think Riley is still grounded as soon as she comes out for putting us through this. Thanks to everyone who has been praying for this and thanks God.

Man hands

It has been a long last 24 hours. My first meeting yesterday was at 7:30am and I didn't get home till 7:30pm. I then got little sleep last night as preggo kept me up all night. We had a Dr. appointment, blood tests and an ultrasound appointment in the afternoon. Blood test was for gestational Diabetes and results will be in a few days. Dr. said all was good and starting in two weeks we will be on weekly visits with weekly tests on the girls before the visits at Magee. The ultrasound was good with no echogenic bowel in Riley. Andrea has been saying that Riley is my daughter and Reagan is hers because Riley is always up under her right rib and causing her pain. She was convinced of that yesterday when we found out that Reagan weighed 2lbs 9oz and Riley weighed 3lbs 3oz. The ultrasound pics are harder to see as it gets more crowded in there but in the above picture you can see Rileys hand. Look at the size of that paw. Reminds me of the Seinfeld episode with "man hands". During the ultrasound Reagan flipped us the bird and Riley put her butt in the face of Reagan. These are definitely my daughters. Last night after a long day we tried to go to bed at 10pm but this was made impossible by Andrea who has a cold and she also had what she calls "jumpy legs". It is also called restless leg syndrome and it is impossible to fall asleep. Between her jumping around all night, not being able to get comfortable and the cold we did not get to sleep till about 2am. At 2:52am the dog who never barks at night started losing his mind downstairs and let out some barks and howls I only hear when he is really mad. Andrea woke up screaming and I went off to investigate. You may not want to picture this but I sleep in a natural state. When the dog tells me something is very wrong in the middle of the night the last thing I think about is getting dressed so down stairs I went with only a gun and flashlight. I figured if someone was in the house I would not have to shoot them. They would see me and Ruger (that's the gun, not what you were thinking) and be scared to death. What do I find, a burglar? No, my stupid dog is angered that a neighborhood cat has the nerve to look at him through the window. I contemplated shooting the dog and the cat but did not want to clean up the mess at 3am so back to bed I went. Up at 7am and now off to go sell something to pay for these kids, or maybe a new dog.