Pregnancy

I’m currently in the waiting room as Melisa gets her epidural. Seems like we’ve been doing a lot of waiting lately, but at least things are moving forward at a faster pace now. We fully expect to welcome the two ladies into the world this afternoon!

For keeping up on our progress, I’d recommend checking my Twitter page (twitter.com/endonend) for the most up-to-the-minute action. I’ll also post pictures to our Flickr page (see thumbnails below) as I can. Camera phone pics are easier to get up the quickest, so the better quality ones will most likely be updated over the weekend.

Stay tuned! The fun is just beginning.

There are some things that pregnant women report happening that seem to come just before delivery of their baby (or babies).  They are kind of informally the “signs” of impending birth, but some women never have any and some women have several.  When I had Lucy I had very little warning I feel like (except my water breaking, which is pretty obvious!) or at least that I paid attention to.  I hadn’t gained that much weight, wasn’t uncomfortable and kept rolling forward actively with our everyday lives.  Things are different this time around and now that I think I understand and notice those changes in my body more, I have been noticing some of these!  You can check out the list through the link above which generally includes the big changes women report, but is not all inclusive.  Lately…. Read the rest of this entry »

That’s right, we found out yesterday that baby “A” is estimated to be 4 lbs. 9 oz. and baby “B” is estimated to be 4 lbs. 12 oz.! That’s almost 10 lb. of baby! They each seem to be putting on about a pound every 2 weeks. So, I am hoping to hold out for 2 more weeks. The perfect time would be around 36 weeks (July 26) to have them. I am 33.5 weeks and marching toward 34 this weekend. After this weekend, if I go into labor that’s that! They would ideally be about 5.5 lbs. each- which is what Lucy was too. Obviously the bigger the better though, so as long as it takes to have healthy babies that is fine. I’m not gonna lie though, this is getting tough. Its bad enough being uncomfortable moving around and doing normal life things like “walking”, but now just sitting and laying around is not comfortable! Also having a few “warm up” contractions each day now. They are painless and just feel like a lot of pressure, but still since I never had them with Lucy are a little unnerving. Hopefully things will happen in the next 2.5 weeks or so. Trying to be patient…

I’m getting there and getting bigger and bigger and bigger.  I’m 32 weeks now and marching on to 33.  The Dr. said by 34, whatever happens, happens and by 38 weeks, they won’t let me go any farther.  I’d love to make it as far as possible of course, but at the most, its 6 more weeks.  My next goal is to get to 34 weeks (around July 12th).  Not that the inability to breathe or numb arms when I wake up aren’t so glamorous, but really, now I know what it means to be pregnant and uncomfortable.  I never got to this point with Lucy because she was so small and early.  I actually woke up from a dream the other day where I was wearing my favorite normal jeans- yeah, not maternity stretchy ones.  So nice.  I won’t go on and on about these things because I feel lucky to be this far and look forward to going farther.  My BPP and NST tests at the hospital this morning were again great.  So we wait, patientlyand take in as much ice cream as humanly possible.

In other news, while shopping on Sat. at Wegmans, Lucy was getting kind of antsy so I took out the savior of ants in the pants, none other than the snack container.  My girl can hunt down a goldfish like no ones business, even when buried in numerous other crackers.  Anyway, she shoved another of her favorites, a pretzel, into her mouth.  Kinda a big piece I thought, but I weighed that against getting my finger bitten off with her surprisingly sharp baby teeth (which after nearly happening once before seemed pretty scary) so I kept a watchful eye.  Wouldn’t you know 30 sec. later she started choking.  I mean the no sound coming out, eyes watering, struggling for breath choking.  Terrified I tried to remember what to do and tried to pry her out of the seatbelt thingy on the cart to no avail so I tried to do the infamous finger sweep.  This DID NOT work.  It pushed the pretzel back farther and I started to freak a little.  By the time I called JD over, I had finger swept her like 3 more times, more forcefully (which I wasn’t sure I should have done) and it was all over and I flung that pretzel piece 1/2 way to Japan.  Anyway, we finally freed her from the belt and picked her up and she was surprisingly calm, with tears down her cheeks, but not crying freaking out or anything.  I thought I would have a break down, but we made it through a couple of more aisles and I was much more calm and she was back to her normal pointing and asking what everything is self.  Anyway, how scary.  It reminds you that you do what you can in an instant, right or wrong and try to remember how to do all this lifesaving stuff (we even took a baby CPR and First Aid class before she was born) but sometimes its sheer luck.  I can’t imagine what it would have been like if it’d been a worse situation.  Needless to say all the big pretzel pieces around our house are hidden now.  For a while.

I could just scream! I have heartburn to end all heartburn and no end in sight until about a couple of months after I deliver probably since that is what happened last time. Seriously, I have it 24 hrs. a day just about. At best it feels like Frank’s Red Hot is stuck in my throat (which if you love it like I do, sometimes it ain’t that bad!). At the worst, pretty much from 4pm-the early morning, it feels like someone is taking a knife and stabbing me in the back between my shoulders. When I bend forward at all (even to look down at a laptop on my lap like twice) or lie down it gets 3000 times worse so I have been sleeping sitting up for days now. Not very restful as you can imagine and I am starting to get a little frustrated. I am taking 2 heartburn max. strength pills each day on top of pretty much an entire bag of tums, which usually doesn’t even touch it. I am afraid to take anything else because of the babies and try to get through it without taking more pills usually, but its getting to the point of making me incredibly miserable. Sometimes a warm bath or milkshake/ice cream (believe it or not) or plain bread will help but usually it just has to work its way through. Any suggestions of things that’ll help? (BTW- this is Melisa, not Jason!)

On Monday, I went to Sisters Hospital in Buffalo to the Fetal Testing Unit where they do just that. My Dr. considers them the best at testing, especially with twins, so from here on out each Monday I’ll be there getting a Non-stress test (NST) and a Biophysical Profile on each baby (BPP) to see how they are each doing in there and making sure no one is having a hard time. This is what happened Monday. Read the rest of this entry »

So, I’ve been home from work on “house arrest” since May 16th now- my 26th week of pregnancy.  House arrest simply means that I need to be off my feet most of the day, not lift things (such as Lucy) and generally take it as easy as possible.  Being home has been really different than teaching every day and pretty mundane, but not as hard as I thought it would be actually to not being doing much.  I guess when your body tells you to slow down, you have no choice.  I spend my days doing stuff on the computer, some light stuff around the house, watching ridiculously mind-numbing TV and finally, meeting JD at daycare to pick up Lucy together.

What is strange though is that I don’t have Lucy with me during the day and can’t fully care for her when we are alone.  It is simply hard to get off the floor and get down onto the floor with her at this point, let alone changing her and lifting her in and out of her crib.  I watch her leave with JD in the morning for daycare and wonder what she is doing with other people and kids all day- that is the hardest part.  This morning, she crawled away from me to JD and called him Mama, giving him a hug, when she was sad.  I was so sad.  Due to me not being able to physically handle her, our relationship is definitely changing and she is relying on Dad more, which is sweet, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t sad sometimes about us losing some closeness.  I try to maintain perspective that this has to happen and is a natural part of growing a family and is seen in all cultures, but still at 6:30am I want to be the “Mama”!

Read the rest of this entry »