pictures

I have had a request for pictures on the blog. so here are a few I enjoyed when my mom sent them to me recently.

1) me as a baby! aren't I cute? (the answer might very well be no, but keep that to yourself!) mom and I were talking about various bedding options and how the vast majority of options are very gender specific which is somewhat tricky if we were to end up w/ a boy and a girl and want matching bedding (although I think the elephant pattern in the dif colors works for this). she was saying that my bedding was a nice gender neutral yellow and that she often dressed me in gender neutral clothes (as seen here in the red overalls). now, I happen to think I sorta look like a boy in this pic. but... who cares? I don't seem to have lasting scars. and if we have a girl and a boy, I think the ability to swap some clothing outranks random people in the grocery store knowing if my kid's a boy or a girl.

2 & 3) mom pregnant with... you guessed it - ME!!! both these pics sorta freak me out because a) my mom is HUGE (these are 9 months) and b) I really do look like my mom. :) heidi if you happen to stumble across some pics of baby blake and pregnant you, I would love to see them!
but on to the captions. mom says:

In one picture I am singing the jingle from an old ad … “I’m Chiquita Banana and I’m here to say …”. I hate to admit it, but I actually wore that dress to school a few times toward the end of the year. (I told myself that math teachers are supposed to be weird looking! Hadn’t even met Mrs. Michaelis yet!)

In the other picture, it was so hot! The picture is in our backyard in San Mateo sometime in May. Those are the weeds that caught fire two months later when someone shot a bottle rocket that landed in our yard after the 4th of July. I thought being pregnant when it was hot was the most miserable thing … until I tried holding a (sweet) sweaty baby in my arms during the even hotter summer!

well mom's here now. we're off to do a little more baby-stuff looking before my tutee comes (everyone else cancelled becuase they alwasy do the week after finals...)

9 weeks

pretend I posted this last Thursday, because I thought about posting it then...

our little babies are 9 weeks. I am excited about this because it's a crazy time. they are now each the size of a grape - and this is the ridiculous part - they're twice as big as they were at 8 weeks (from 1/2 an inch and 1 gram to a full inch and 2 grams). Isn't that wild? Doubling in a week! this is also, by my own definition, the week that they start looking sorta like humans. we've moved past arm and leg buds and they now have little fingers and toes - yes they're still webbed, but they also lost their tails this week which was a pretty significant anti-human trait before. so hurray for little human babies!

Cribs, bedding, the list goes on and on and on and on...

Monday was MLK Jr day and I had the day off work, but Blake did not. So mom and I planned a fun outing of looking at baby stuff. Blake and I had been to babiesRus right after our 6 week ultrasound and rolled the two twin strollers they had around the store, but we were pretty overwhelmed. I figured it would take another couple outings to get un-overwhelmed and... let's juts say I'm not there yet. But, mom and I did have lots of fun and I napped for several hours when we were done!

Where did we go? We started at my place showing each other things we'd found on the internet and checking out the "nursery" (read: this room. currently the office / guest bedroom / piano / work out room. a lot of stuff is going to have to go and the rest relocated). Then we headed to Merry Go Round and then to a late lunch at CPK (yum). Next it was off to the mall where we went to JC Penney which has essentially nothing baby oriented in-store, despite a decent online presence. We also checked out their dresses in case they had anything cheap I could wear to a wedding. I'll be 5/6 months preg for my coworker's wedding and will have just given birth for Jackie (and Dave)'s wedding. yikes. found a maybe dress, but didn't buy it. then we went to pottery barn kids where we found lots of cute stuff, including a crib called dana, but the $600-$820 price tag put a damper on that. it is just not that cute to have a crib w/ my name. seriously. after that we sat for a bit and then went to red mango where we established that really, we just don't like frozen yogurt nearly as much as ice cream. our last mall stop was a maternity store called bump where the lady was really helpful. they had nothing that would work dress-wise but she did tell me I'd look 6-7 months pregnant right after giving birth which is exactly the info I had been trying w/o luck to find. and she showed us how one wears a belly band and various maternity/nursing undergarments. I was tempted by the "due in august" shirt, but it wasn't as cute as the "due in july" shirt and I didn't look through the pile to see if there were other designs but... I might go back sometime :)

and then, our last stop - babiesRus. happy to see cheaper cribs there. the lady also told us about strollers, but I was on info overload at that point, especially since the summary was to buy a stroller online because, like I said, they only carry two twin strollers there. we also discovered that gliders are incredible (we sat in them at every store when I got tired), but that they are way more expensive than I would have thought ($700ish). I have the ultimate chair in my mind - let me know if you run across anything like it anywhere - it's a glider, w/ an ottoman, but w/ big arms. the arms are the tricky part, but I think if I could find it, it would be great to have big arms for nursing twins. I may not find it, but for now, that's my goal.

so, I came home and decided to focus on cribs and bedding. cribs becasue now i've seen a lot and have got a handle on what I want at what price point, and bedding... well mostly for fun. tricky not knowing if we're having girls, boys, or one of each, but still fun. so here's what I've found bedding-wise (our room is currently painted light green and we mostly plan to keep it that way):

this was one of my favorites before we went shopping:

this one is a favorite for theme (the sheets say 6...5... etc 1... blast off), but the black is just too dark for a nursery I think:

but this is my current favorite favorite:

in pink for a girl, blue for a boy, and if we had one of each, we'd get a few accessories in green.

so cute! I'm ready to buy it, but blake's going for the rational, let's wait approach. hrumph. ;) speaking of blake, today is 8 years since our first date. awwww... :D well no time for a nice closing, I have 5.5 hours of tutoring starting in 1 minute. it's finals week. later gators.

pictures!

these pictures are from our 6 week ultrasound. although we had an ultrasound today we didn't get any pics to take home. we have another appt at 12 weeks, but I don't think there will be more pics until 16 weeks which seems like forever away at this point.

since they're only 6 weeks old, they need a bit of explaining...

So, the gray fuzziness is the uterine cavity background. the two black spaces are the babies' amniotic sacs. pretty clearly two of them there, eh? then, on the left most picture you can see some white in one of the sacs, that's baby #1. baby #2 was hiding from teh camera; pic 3 is baby #2 from a different angle being measured. still hard to see, trying to blend in by hanging out at the edge. if it's still looking fuzzy to you, here's a diagram of twins at 8 weeks.

our appt was at exactly 6 weeks and baby #1 measured at 6 weeks 1 day, heart rate 105.63 bpm. Baby #2 measured at 5 weeks 6 days, heart rate 96.15 bpm. apparently those are good numbers.

off to sneak in a little nap now before my next kid comes for tutoring. poor blake. I used to occasionally clean or take care of bills and such on Wednesdays. now I just nap. yawn.

8 weeks babies

well, first I have to say I laughed when I saw I had followers. haha, how funny. I (sniffle) feel so loved (sniffle).

Today was our first appt w/ a group health doc. The whole full body exam deal - super fun. As far as I can tell there are ultraound and non-ultrasound appts at group health, and this was a non-ultrasound, except... we had an ultrasound. I didn't ask specifically, but sorta infer/guess that they have a lower quality ultrasound machine which they used today just for fun and will prob use at all non-ultrasound appts. whereas, when I have an ultrasound appt (at 16 weeks) then I think there will be measuring and official-ness happening. But, we saw 2 little guys in there again, so we're still on the twins train. the images were much less clear than at the other clinic; I couldn't see the little guys, much less their heartbeats, but the doc could, and I could certainly see that there were two separate "blobs" (to use a technical term). I got a little printout on emoms (eastside mothers of multiples) and told that I should join that group or another similar multiples group. I also learned that they really recommend that I try for a natural birth and they'll do what they can, but about 2/3 of twins are delivered via c-section. if the first one's breach they can't turn it (but if the second one is then they can turn it after the first one's delivered) and if the first one is much smaller than the second then they don't want the first to come out and then not be able to deliver the second. plus there's lots of preterm labor and fun like that too. sounds like they'll schedule a c-section for 38 weeks (aug 12), but they think I'll prob go in to labor before that. of course, nothing at all is for sure yet, but I just wanted a basic idea of what is "normal" in the case of twins. crazy to think about how very un-normal my life is about to get...

how AM I doing?

Well, blake is not home from class yet (he's getting his master's degree in computer-ness from UW, taking one real class and one non-real class/quarter - he's currently taking real class 5 of 8) so I shall continue blogging.

how am I doing? this is definitely my most FAQ (from caring people of course, not saying I mind!)
On the food front I'm doing better than before. Around Christmas-time I was not enjoying life too much. I failed at my goal of skipping the morning sickness aspect of pregnancy w/ a couple bouts of 2 am sickness. but now, while I often feel crummy, nauseous, and like nothing sounds good, I am thinking of taking "the bowl" away from our bedside. I've lost a couple pounds and it's the most odd thing to think that's not a good thing. I don't think it's too bad either because I didn't start on the ultra-slim side, but I am also trying to make sure I eat lots of snacks throughout hte day even when not hungry so that I can get some calories to those little guys. I don't like some of my favorites anymore, which is the saddest part. I have some chocolate covered popcorn that I am considering storing away until I like it again because usually that would be SOOOOO good, but now it does not sounds good at all. I do seem to like tomatoes and mozzarella more so than usual though, caprese is like my new thing that I order whenever I see it. I suppose turning a love for chocolate into tomatoes is a healthy turn of events, but my desire for ice cream has not decreased so... :) we have a pretty good book on eating during pregnancy w/ recipes and such and blake made a crazy tuna, avocado, tomato, sweet pepper, olive salad last night that was pretty darn good. oh, and I like protein shakes. that's a nice no-fail food for me. protein powder, banana, and other fruits, yogurt, peanut butter - excellent and healthy.

tired-ness-wise... I have never, ever, been so tired in my life. here was my glamorous day yesterday. 9:00 alarm. 9:20 get up, shower. 9:50, leave for church, realizing we'll be late for the 9:45 service. 11:00 breakfast w/ the fam at panera. noon-ish back home, take a nap. 3:30 wake up, eat dinner part 1. 5:00 another nap while blake went to the grocery store. 6:00 dinner part 2 (the salad above), watch a movie. 9:00 go to bed. 8:15 this morning, sleep through the alarm again.

but then, today, after I finally got my butt in to work, I worked a full day, did happy hour w/ the girls and a movie and am now feeling awake while I wait for blake to come home. which he has. so now I shall leave you, my internet friends. wish me luck tomorrow. tuesdays I work 9:00 am - 9:00 pm. and it's bad when you're falling asleep while people pay you to tutor their kids in math. but one of my kids is getting As on his test now instead of Ds, so... that's awesome.

Songs

Tonight I had a lovely outing w/ some of the girls; we went to see the Princess and the Frog, complete w/ happy hour beforehand - I had them make me a non-alcoholic, non-carbonated cranberry mojito, it was great. anyways, none of that is the point. the point is that, as I was driving home listening to delilah (yah, yah, yah I listen to delilah), a caller called in (imagine that) and said that this dad had a song for his daughter (butterfly kisses) but needed one for his twin sons; could delilah pick one? she picked In My Father's Eyes. These songs are all wrong.

I hope Blake doesn't mind too much, but I've picked father-daughter and father-son songs for him already. My favorite father-daughter song is creatively named Father & Daughter by Paul Simon. My favorite father-son song is good ol' Danny's Song by Loggins & Messina. Ah... greatness. I'm going to make myself a Kenny Loggins Pandora station right now...

the background

I've been putting off starting this blog for awhile now because I wasn't sure what I should say in my first post. Some of you might appreciate a little background, so here goes, bullet point style:

• You could say this all started one rainy night as we were driving across the 520 bridge into Seattle, and blake said, "I think I'm ready to have kids now."
• You could say it started a few months later in March 2008 when I had my first lung surgery. My favorite nurse said to me, "so, if you don't mind my asking; now that you know you have a genetic disease, are you going to have kids, knowing they might get it?"
• Or October 2008 w/ my second lung surgery, which suggested that BHD was affecting my life a little more than I had anticipated.
• Or, sometime fall 2008 when Blake's cousin called to say she was pregnant (hurrah!) and did we know the amazing things science could do these days, including ensuring that your baby didn't have certain genetic diseases?
• Or Dec 2008 when we had our first appt at the IVF clinic to learn about this new science that could allow us to have BHD-free kids.
• From that day forward we started planning. Any last trips we wanted to take before kids? (kayaking, hawaii) things we wanted to do? (a triathlon or two in the summer) things we could cut out of our spending so that we could pay for all these appts? (lots of stuff)
• In March we told our parents our plans. We needed Dana's parents' blood so that a special Dana specific BHD "probe" could be made, and the process of building and testing the probe would take a few months.
• In August Dana did the danskin triathlon, and the next day, started treatment. Pills, injections, more injections, lots of blood draws and ultrasounds to measure and count diff things to make sure everything was as expected.
• In September we harvested 47 eggs (that's a lot). 46 were mature, and 42 fertilized. on and on, as each day passed a few more dropped off the viable chain and in the end we implanted one back in Dana and froze 9 that looked healthy enough to possibly sustain the freeze / later unfreeze process.
• Insert a fun story here about hyperstimulating. okay, actually it wasn't fun and included gaining 2-3 lbs of water a day for a few days in a row and having to get drained.
• Pregnancy test two weeks later - weak positive. although we knew we were looking at 50/50 odds by only implanting one, it was still sad to hear it was such a weak number. 3 days later we retested and by then I was officially not pregnant. they think the embryo prob started to implant, but something didn't go quite right 'cuz it didn't stick.
• So... then there we were. Had to wait 2 months for my body to recoup which gave us a little time to think about what was next. Frozen embryos in general have 70% the success rate of "fresh" embryos. So if we wanted to implant one and try again, we'd be looking at 35% odds. Plus, in my specific case, using a frozen biopsied (because of the BHD probe process) embryo, our clinic, and most others, have experienced a 0% success rate. a few clinics on the east coast had pulled it off, but... not looking too likely. But here we were w/ 9 little frozen guys, hard not to use them at all...
• So, in November we started treatment again and this time we decided we'd transfer two. At the high end of stats (not taking the biopsied part into account), that gave us a 46% chance of one baby, 42% chance of no success, and 12% chance of twins. At the low end of course we were looking at nothing working at all, or 100% chance of no babies.
• In Dec we transferred, and two weeks later, while at lunch w/ some girl friends I got the call - I was pregnant!
• My hcg levels from my blood draw were high enough that they said there was a chance of twins. oh my, not what we had bargained for.
• On Christmas Eve / Christmas Day while talking w/ family we told them all the news. It was funny thinking that 4 years ago on Christmas Day was when Blake proposed, and here we were again, sharing major news.
• On new year's eve, we went in for our six week ultrasound. (IVF, my having lung issues, and the possibility of twins makes me high-risk, so I'll have more frequent checks than your average bear). That ultrasound confirmed twins.

So... where are we now? We're at 7 weeks today. Another ultrasound is scheduled for 8 weeks. The twins thing is crazy, crazy news. Part of me is getting all worked up about it and how my life is about to change even more than I was planning, and the other part knows that 6/7 weeks is still really early. There are all sorts of scenarios where you begin w/ twins but only end up w/ a singleton. Until we make it another 5 weeks or so, there's still a decent chance we could lose one. but we did hear both babies' heartbeats at 6 weeks, which is apparently a really good sign. So I'm just itching to get to 8 weeks and the next ultrasound so I can make sure they're still in there and happy!

Now, I have made this a public blog, but I havne't told my coworkers yet, or many of my friends, so for those of you who are reading this, I'd love to hear from you via comments, email, phone, etc, but please don't do any facebook posting about this quite yet.

well that's about it. blake has been incredible through this whole thing, including the fact that I can now smell my dinner cooking downstairs. So... I think I'll go eat it!