Today marks the "first goal milestone" in gestational age. 28 weeks! This seems so much better to me than 24 1/2 weeks - when I first started bed rest and puts the babies in the survivable category. But they would be in the NICU for over 2 months (probably) so more "extreme bed rest" for us. It is much more comfortable and a lot less expensive that sitting next to isolets in the NICU.
27 weeks 3 days
On Monday we went to meet with the perinatalogist - Dr. McGongil. He is out of Denver but contracts with EIRMC. He was very nice and knowledgeable. I appreciated that most of what he had to say we had already heard from Dr. Robison. They did a REALLY long ultra-sound - measuring the babies everything including the blood flow in the heart and the cerebral blood flow. We also got a close up in 3-D of both babies faces so they could rule out cleft-palate. They are pretty cute! :) The bottom line findings are that both babies are a little undersized for their gestational age. Our son is at the 26 percentile and our baby girl is at the 9th percentile. Shane Jr. was 950 grams (2 lbs 2 ounces) and Shanette was 830 grams (1 lb 13 ounces). He felt like this could be a result of my recent scares with high blood pressure so he increased the dosage that Dr. Robison had started me on last Thursday. Also he advised us that it could be that we have somewhat shoddy placentas and that I should be spending most of my time lying on either side - and very little time lying on my back. This has proven to be less that fun.... it is very difficult to do anything on my sides besides watch tv. He also noted that during the ultrasound I was having contractions the whole time. I find this to be a bit alarming since I'm supposed to call Dr. Robison if I have 4-6 contractions in an hour time period - but I can not feel the contractions. The hospital told me the same thing while I was being monitored overnight - that I was having regular contractions. A beautiful and gorgeous friend of mine told me that when her sister was pregnant with twins she couldn't feel the contractions either... Maybe it is a twins thing. We set up another growth ultrasound for 3 weeks and I'm supposed to get a Doppler blood flow check on both umbilical cords each week. I was glad to hear that he thinks I will still be pregnant in 3 weeks. He said, "if you will stay down like you are supposed to - I think you will be. If there were 10 women in your same circumstance I think 8 would deliver early for preeclampsia and 2 for preterm labor". And then reminded me that he doesn't give out guarantees. But still - I liked hearing that!
Wednesday we went to see Dr. Robison and my blood pressure on the increased dose was great. Shane and I enjoyed listening to the heartbeats on the Doppler and Dr. Robison reminded us of all the things that we should watch for and contact him about. And that he hopes not to see us until the following weeks appointment. We joked that after all this drama and laying around I would have to be induced at 37 weeks. Which would be great! (miserable for me - but great for the babies.)
Both babies were breech during Monday's ultrasound - our little boy's bum was right down as tight and as close to the cervix (the whisp of it that is left) as it could be - so it was hard to get a profile photo - but we did get a good profile shot our our little Princess.
Baby Girl Profile at 27 1/2 weeks - Gorgeous!
This week we got a call from ToysRUs that our order from BabiesRUs in Utah had been delivered and so we were able to get our glider. (Or I should say that my angel father was able to go pick up our glider, dresser and conversion kits!) We will leave it out in the living room until Shane (and his fantastic helper, Anna) paint the nursery. This is a shot of him trying it out. He has my porcelain doll and a wedge pillow for my ever expanding internal isolet in both arms to get a feel for what it really will be like. I love this guy!!
We certainly couldn't make any of this bed rest mumbo jumbo work without so much dedicated and loving service from our family and friends. We feel very loved and yet more than a little embarrassed at how much people need to do for us right now. We are very blessed!
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