Shower and Surprise!!!

So this past Saturday was my or should I say "our" baby shower! David surprised me a few days before the shower by randomly asking if he could come! I was sooo shocked! Never in my wildest dreams did I think to ask my husband to come to the shower, let alone that he WANTED to come to the shower! But of course I said yes because that is the awesomest thing ever to have a husband who wants to be apart of every aspect of a pregnancy! And mine, is defiantly that man. The shower was a big deal for me because a week before we decided to move it from Marshall to the hospital so I could be invovled, which is great because I really really did NOT want to miss that! I know people looked down on the fact that we had it in a hospital and not at the orginal spot, but what is a shower without the preggo, and it was being held in honor of the pregnancy so why get all mad if the preggo wanted to be there? Just askin! So anyways, I was so surprised when the shower started that ALOT of people actually came! 22 attended the shower and 23 ultimately came! It was great seeing everyone since I had been stuck in that hospital for almost a month! The girls got ALOT of cute things too! Like all these personalized things such as embroidered fleece blankets, pacifers, these pink stretchy things that you put on their bottles or sippy cups, and a couple of sets of oneies. On top of that they got lots of clothes! My favorite besides this one set of the personalized oneies, was a box of clothes that had an outfit for ever season for the next year in the correct sizes!! That took some serious thinking! and ooo my favorite AWWWW moment was when Lani gave DAVID a present! It was sooo sweet! The present was a set of matching oneies that are light purple and say "My finger my be small...but I have my daddy wrapped around it!" Now anyone who knows my husband knows he is always trying to be Mr. Badass, Hardcore, I'm a man, I don't show emotion. But he melted like a ice cube on a heated stove top! Soooo AWWWW!!! lol We didn't get ANY duplicates! (past the first two given, because duh they are twins so most of the outfits given matched lol) The cake was awesome and I probably could have finished the entire thing but I held off on just having two large corner pieces!! hahaha It was just overall a great shower! My aunt from Chicago even flew in so thats how awesome these things can be!! lol Now to tell you my surprise....

SURPRISE!!

I am offically HOME! Yes you read right! I am home! Because at 34 weeks I am considered out of the "preterm" labor woods, there is no need to keep in the hospital to prevent it. That said, if I go into labor anytime from here on out they WILL NOT stop me! Woot! We put one thing of prevention into place on Monday which was a Dellautin shot to cover me til this coming Monday so I wouldn't expect anything til after then! Both the girls are currently head down so if they will please stay that way it will much better during delivery!! haha Try telling Katherine that! (she's the one that can switch between head up and head down!) So I am home, I am overwhelmed with all this baby stuff everywhere! We have 2 highchair boxes, 2 crib boxes, bags that need to be gone through, clothes to be washed, thank you notes to be written, clothes to be folded, the room isn't completely finished, stroller and the box, its just crazy. So with that said I am really thinking about taking some time and not accepting phone calls or visitors. Maybe phone calls but if I dont answer...you know why!!! , but no visitors (unless we already have plans, I refuse to cancel that cause I am really excited!) Of course I cannot do alot of the things to clean up around here, but I can fold clothes and put them away where I want them to be (also known as where they can be found hahaha) and of course the Thank you notes...but with me being back I can bug and nag to get things done better than I could from my hospital bed!! lmfao Well nap time again!! Talk to you soon!!!

Love,
-C

Whirlwind of a week? Yea right! =]

So as of today I have offically been in the hospital for a week. Not much has changed over the days since I was first admitted except my contractions have slowed down to a much needed crawl. I still cannot feel but just a select few and even those are something to be proud of if in fact they were coming at the appropriate time. But of course we still have the minimum of 5 more weeks left for these two lil ones so at this time I must say I am a little concerned that the contractions are happening. In case you are pulling out your medical book to see what I could be taking to stop these things, don't worry. I have been put on a strict every four hour set of pills that have helped in stopping them, just obviously not all. Though I feel I should be freaking out at the thought that I am still have contractions, I am not. Actually I am probably the calmest person right now when speaking on this subject. Because I feel that if it was a serious threat to the health and well being of my children my doctor would be showing some concern. So if she is calm, I can be calm. I cannot say the same about Callie and Katherine however! See I have been told to limit ALL activity to nothing. So I basically sit in bed or on this funky couch watching TV or sleeping all day. Six times a day however, a Nurse and a PCT come in for vitals on me and the girls and thats when the fun really begins. The girls think that it is fun to give the nurses a hard time trying to get their heartbeats. They give me about five seconds worth then whoosh...roll....push....and they have flipped away from the prob and the game is on to find the heartbeat and once again try and count. So they get all the fun, and I get to sit back and feel or watch! The girls are currently at an even 3 pounds a piece so it is safe to say that with all the extra excerise they are getting, they are still at a normal weight gain and doing just fine! I will get to see them today because among the jackpot of medicines I take or inject, the tests that get ran, I also get two sonograms a week. I am not sure it will be a long enough sono to make a DVD but I have one just in case and will of course share! So until next time!

Love
-C

Hospitals Suck Dude....

So since I haven't told anyone I figure its high time I say that I have been admitted to the hospital for the duration of the pregnancy. Which hopefully will be about 5 1/2 more weeks. Right at my 36 week mark. My doctor is really awesome, so she is just trying to make it that far and then let things fall where they must.

The reason I was admitted was because on Monday 1/25 I went in for my usual sono and turns out my cervix was shortened by like a couple of mm from the monday prior BUT it was funneling worse than usual. So I was sent to get hook up to a machine to see how their heartbeats were and check on contractions and low and behold I was having some crazy contractions that I "should" have felt but wasn't. Which leads my doctor to believe that when I came in to see her the Friday before (1/22) and was worried about severe pressure, I could have been having them then. I was sent home on Brethine and Vistaril with a follow up on Thursday 1/28.

Thursday came around and I had a late appointment so I was HUNGRY and STARVIN because I was with my Dad and I was waiting to go eat after the appointment. Well I got the bad news at the appointment. My cervix went from 2.8 to 1.7 since monday and AGAIN while on meds I was having some pretty decent contractions but still I was not feeling them. Except for like 3 over the course of 4 hours. So I because I cant feel these contractions and because of my cervix trying to open worst than usual! I get a new home for the next few weeks!

If you were invited to the shower it IS still on. I just don't know if it will still be at the Ducan address or if it will be moved to the hospital. I have to be moved again to a new section when it opens so we are waiting to see how much room is there before deciding!

So sorry for keeping you out of the loop! I just wanted to make positively sure I was actually going to have to stay but I am! If you need anything I have internet access and my cell!!

-C

28 weeks tomorrow!!!

Crazy how time flies when your having....nothing to do?! Yup bedrest is the life for all of two seconds and then it drives you crazy! But good thing for me I have figured a way to keep my screams of boredom away. Before I was sent to the hospital the first time I found two of the cutest scrapbooks for our girls! Some pages where already premade so I would be able to just slide my photos in but it also made me realize how awfully ameture I am at scrapbooking. So to bide my time I have spent most of my awake moments scouring the internet for ideas and forums to learn how to better my scrapbooking ways and make my girls the best scrapbooks for them to have when they are older! I will admit that some people just are to damn good and I bought several "premade" pages that I knew in my heart I would never be able to make, but then I found myself in a shop on etsy.com that has made me feel much more better about creating beautiful scrapbook pages, not spending an arm and a leg, and still allowing me to make the pages so I still feel a personal connection to the book itself. www.upinthenight.etsy.com has these two wonderful ladies that have created kits of pages. Each kit comes with the page, embellishments, photo mats and titles, all you need to add is your pictures, or your own personal touch to the final product! Once explaining my perdicament about needing two "grandma" layouts (one for each girls book) they quickly came up with a plan and I ordered two different kits one being an actual grandma kit, the other being a family kit that they customized into a grandma kit at no extra charge!! The kits arrived quicker than expected and the pages are amazing!!! As I said in the review that I left at their shop site, for a person on bedrest who can't run out for something needed to finish a page, their kits are perfect! They even came with the brads!! If thats not top service I don't know what is! The price wasn't bad either! between 5 and 10 bucks you get a kit! Very nice! When you can purchase a pack of BASIC cardstock paper for 15.99 at michaels no embellishments or anything. I don't gush on shops or stores that often, but when someone does a fabulous job not once but twice I have to speak up! I have also decided that since I do have alot of time on my hands and I won't when the girls get here, why can't I make premade layouts for their books? That way when something great comes along (like easter, first smile, first bath, 4th of july) I already have the page made! Just need to add notes, and the photos!! Makes sense to me now, but we will see how it goes later! I was given permission to cheat a little on my bedrest since everything is doing so well so I saved up all my energy and some christmas cash and went to Michaels yesterday after my sono and only looked at the scrapbook isles. Which are conviently located as the first 4 isles of the store so no extra walking was needed and bought up as much as I could to make these books special! I was so excited to get started I went home and made a couple of pages =] I feel confident already about my new way of scrappin! I have even gotten someone to take all of our ultrasounds and scan them nicely onto an SD card so I can print them, and someone else has taken our sono DVD's and are creating copies so I can put them in the books as well! Hopefully technology won't have changed so much that they will be able to view them when they are older! I feel so invigorated (sp?) about the new things I will be able to do for their books!! At the beginning of this pregnancy I felt alone, horrible, sick, tired, aweful, just all around shitty. But after getting my "24-hour" sickness under control I feel a thousand times better! Things that drove me crazy before don't now. I will answer my phone (though I am still horrible at calling people back) and I feel like I have something AMAZING to look forward too! I have done a 180 and it feels great!!!

love,
-C

Week I have been dreading....

Sooo monday was our 9th sonogram. Everything was going good and then my cervix was noticed. In the past 3 weeks its gone from 3.5 to 3.2 to all time low of 2.8. Which isn't "terrible" but scary enough to put in the hospital....again....

Two long nights in the hospital later I have since had another sono and been sent on my merry way home. Here I will be for the next ten+ weeks doing absolutely nothing. In the words of my specialist "You are not allowed to lift anything heavier than a spoon." I will still see my specialist on mondays as usual, and my doctor every other friday. But to add to that, I will also see my OB nurse on mondays after my sono to get a shot to help prevent preterm labor. So my schedule for mondays are full. Fridays half full, and the rest of the week you can find me in bed, or on the couch. Lucky for me I have some serious scrapbooking to catch up on so I won't be to terribly bored til I am caught up! Then once a week I will be able to work on it because I found the girls their scrapbooks and with the amount of sonos I am getting, A scrapbook is needed =]

Everything else is good, the girls heartbeats are perfect, their measurements are right on so all is well in their world =] Hopefully these ten weeks will fly by so I can finally be up and moving with my girls!!!

-C

Another Sono Update!

So yesterday was a busy day for us! Mom got to attend our sonogram where the girls were getting measured at 24 weeks so we went all out and made a DVD of it! Callie was of course her crazy self and gave the doctor a hard time trying to get measurements, but not as nearly as bad as she had the last time! Katherine was very sweet and made things easy like always. My cervix is still funneled, but since being on a heavier dose of zofran and something else I can't say let alone spell, I am proud to say that as of this Thursday if I make it, I will not have thrown my guts up in TWO WEEKS!!! YAY!!!! So that means I'm not applying more pressure on my cervix to make it open! So wootness!!! Our girls have also gain some weight!!! As of Dec 7th Callie weighed 1 lb 1 oz, Katherine 1 lb 2 oz. Dec 21st Callie is at 1 lb 8 oz, Katherine 1 lb 11 oz!!! Nice!!!

And a update on my weight, on Dec. 7 I weighed 162 which meant I gained about 9 lbs since the beginning of the pregnancy. But as of Dec 21 I weigh 158 again, so needless to say I need to stuff my face a lil more but not by much. The women in my family have a history of not being able to hold onto pregnancy weight so as long as the girls grow and I don't get sickly looking we will be fine. It just sucked to hear I had lost 4 lbs when I felt like I was growing!

We also are now doing this test every two weeks called a Fetal Fibernectin. This is a test that can give a percentage of preterm labor within the following two weeks. So due to rules on how to take the sample for this test, we are now switching from having both sonos and doctors appts on the same day to having the sonos on mondays (as always, cant change the day for the sono) and doctors appointments on every other friday! Whew!

This specialist we see that does our sonos every monday also changes. My cervix gets measured at every appt. But every other appointment the girls get measured. On measurement days we see Dr. Graham (who is good but he doesnt TALK! so with mom seeing the sono for the first time on a measurement day I'm trying to explain everything as he zooms thru the sono....needless to say he isn't my favorite! but he is good at his job) and then on a normal check day there is this other dr that I can never remember his name but he is sooooo nice and talks and does like "ooo look theres a hand, a foot, ahh look still a girl" he just is really nice and relaxed. I like him the best. lol


Try explaining that to your husband....mine is soo confused! lol Well I bet you didn't think you would get such a wide range of information but it helped me to explain it to someone!!! Hope everyone has a really great Christmas!!! Love you!

-C

Third Day...

There is such a difference between putting yourself on bedrest and being told you need to be on bedrest. It kind of makes you want to go against it. Though the more I sit and the less I do is for the better of this pregnancy I can't help to want to get up and do something crazy! Again its only because I was told to slow down, not that I don't want to or don't need to. You see where I'm going with this?

The babies I "think" have noticed a slight change in how much activity mom has. They are kicking more as if to say "hey you still out there?" Yes baby girls I'm here, along with my trusty computer and remote. I do still get up and do things around the house, but with the weight patrol around I can't seem to do a whole hell of a lot without getting yelled at. I mean seriously, I picked up a box with a blanket in it and you would have thought I picked up a boulder. I swear I heard sirens and gunfire... FIVE POUNDS PEOPLE....5 pounds....geezzz....

They put me on some stronger medication for my nausea so even though I have only been taking it for 3 days, I feel a change. Hopefully it keeps getting better, *crossesfingers*

Oh on a good note cause I love to tell this, David and I got to see Katherine YAWN!!! It was soooo cute!!! The sono probe was right in her face and then her arms went up and she yawned the cutest yawn in the entire world!! David had this amazing look on his face!! It was the best moment!!!

I plan on getting the new sono picture up this weekend. Since the scare on Monday I will no longer be seeing my normal sono tech Chrissy, I will be seeing this specialist. So that means no more fun 4D sonos. =\ kinda sad but the change is needed for precautionary reasons so complaining is not needed.

Have a good weekend everyone!! <3

-C