Posts Tagged ‘doctor’

On Thursday, wifey, myself and “the unborn duo” headed to Delnor Hospital’s SAFEKEEPING High Risk OB. We met them during our last pregnancy after a scare with Julie and some bleeding around 24 weeks where the ER doctors determined her to be classified as high risk just to be on the safe side.

The first few times we visited we were extremely impressed with the staff, and over the course of the final trimester we enjoyed our time there, getting to hear our lil dude and see him on a reglar basis.

Costly? Yes. But who cares about money when you’re looking your unborn kiddo in the face and saying what up long before many other people get the chance to.

Of course, having twins puts her in the high risk category but we were told because the first one was high risk, the second one is most likely high risk as well, so we are doubly high risk this time around.

The goal for this visit was to get the NT test taken care of. The Nuchal Scan is done with ultrasound to screen for higher risks of Down syndrome. Because our last pregnancy only included one ultrasound at 20 weeks to determine the sex, we hadn’t experienced the test first hand, and this time we got to see it done twice.

The ultrasound technician, who was a ninja-ess in our opinion, was quick to point out the 4 arms, 4 legs, 20 toes, 20 fingers, 2 heads, 2 torsos, 2 stomachs, 2 healthy beating hearts, 2 bladders, 2 nasal cavites, and then we got to the ‘nuchal translucency’ party.

She zoomed in on each neck and measured the amount of fluid behind the necks of the twins. Both measurements were the same and in the safe category, so for now, things are looking good!

We’ve learned that our twins each have their own placenta, one anterior and one posterior and fused together in the middle. We were also able to see that the subchorionic hematoma and any and all cysts have disappeared.

Well, what else can we look at in there?
Surely we can’t find out the sex at this stage can we?

“I’ve had great luck the past few years with determining the sexes at this age, let’s give it a shot.”

The ninja ultrasound technician then started snooping around the pelvic areas of each sack and informed us that with practice she is able to pretty accurately determine the sexes based on the angle of the pelvic bone or something to that effect.

She then introduced us to our daughter, Baby A, Leah (spelling to be determined later) and our son, Baby B, let’s call him SuperDuperSquishyFace for now because we are in the midst of a battle for supremacy as far as boys names are concerned.

We’re having a matching set.

Salt & Pepper
Bread & Butter
Brandon & Brenda Walsh
Milli & Vanilli
Cream & Sugar
Venus & Mars
Awesomina & Awesoman

I could go on for pages, and I just might!

We have a permanent grin on our faces. We cannot wait to meet the pair.

We had our first appointment with our new OB group on Wednesday, July 29th @ Focus On Women in St. Charles, IL.

We had no expectations but to hear the heartbeats of our babies for the first time. The last time we were in a position to hear them, they were looking for one heartbeat and found three (a, b & julie – not triplets), so the sound was forgotten in order to celebrate the multiple factor.

Our first impressions were all awesome. Nice office, nice people, awesome Doctor and a huge favor that we won’t forget.

As the MA was poking around with the doppler, we found one heartbeat at 160 bpm but couldn’t find another one. She apologized and left the room saying the doctor would be in shortly. Now, there is nothing like hearing your child’s heartbeat for the first time, and there’s nothing like finding out you’re having twins, but when someone says they cant find the heartbeat of one of your babies, no matter how tough and strong you are, you start to freak out a little bit.

We’ve read about “disappearing twins” and about the mothers who birth one live and one stillborn baby, but we haven’t actually put any of that into our stockpile of preparation ammunition by ANY means. After a few minutes of silence the doctor enters the room and sees Jules crying and me fighting back tears unsuccessfully. She asked what was wrong and we explained without actually explaining so as to keep those words unspoken.

With a quick tilt of the head and a smile the doctor says “Do you want to go see them? I have an ultrasound down the hall. Come on, let’s take a walk.”

A few deep breaths and a squirt of some cold ultrasound lube later we were looking at our two babies. The heartbeat on the right side twin was clear as day, the left side, not so much. Just as we were about to look at each other the left one JUMPED and twisted like a microscopic version of our son. We were overjoyed, again.

I pulled out my cell phone and asked if I could take a picture to which the doctor scoffed and said “I can print you a picture.”

So I have the first picture of our two lil’ ninjas.

Most people would have no idea what they hell they were looking at, but our son was considered high risk so I have improved my ultrasound viewing capabilities considerably since the first time I witnessed one. If you don’t know, up top, exact middle is one and to the left of that is two. They are both playing Playstation 3 in this picture like their daddy does when all the kids and wife are asleep.

START EM YOUNG!

Needless to say, we’re not as freaked out knowing that they’re still kicking a ton of ass, but we’re not to 12 weeks yet.

This is the part of my life where I hold up encouraging signs for my wife like I’m at a ballgame saying things like:

DRINK THAT WATER!

EAT THAT PROTEIN!

SLEEP SLEEP SLEEP!

I will take care of everything else, you just take care of you three.

photo credit: NickStenning

*NOT OUR DOCTOR’S PARKING SPOT – A MERE REPRESENTATION*

Well on July 8th we saw our general practitioner for the first time for this pregnancy.
The “prenatal visit” they tell me.

I don’t really remember all that poking, prodding and depressing conversation when we were there for our first child.
It seemed besides the initial excitement felt on our end and our continuing worry about managing a house with twins and an older brother, we have a truckload of bigger things to worry about.

Most importantly is the first 12 weeks. If the twins survive to 12 weeks inside the womb, their chances of survival make a huuuuge jump. If you were talking with your hands, you go from “weeeee chances” before 12 weeks to “yay chances” after 12 weeks.
So rather than convincing Julie to take a complete bedrest and avoid work altogether, our doctor put it out there that regular life and activities can continue but to put EATING, DRINKING FLUIDS and REST at the top of the list of things to do today, and tomorrow and for the next 4 weeks.

What I also thought was a pretty cool thing to say, our doctor made the comment that the prenatal vitamin CAUSES NASEUA, so in this case, since Julie has already been to the ER for dehydration and a nice little “HEY YOU’RE HAVING TWINS” moment, fluids and foods outweigh the necessity for the prenatal horsepills. So if you have to choose between pukey pukey and yummy yummy slurp slurp, go for the yummy slurps and foresake the pukey.

In addition to some simple counseling about the safety of our unborn twins and encouraging Julie to take the Zofran in case of emergency, we were also informed that we would no longer be seeing our general practice doctor for the remainder of the pregnancy. “I do singletons.” The doctor told us.

In a bizarre and morbidly blunt tone he said: “If you happen to lose one, then you’ll come back and see me.”

Coming from a family where the law of attraction and the belief that positive thinking is quite powerful, I don’t care to harbor such negative ideas, but I appreciate the sentiment.

The doctor continued to tell us that he WILL be in the delivery room, but not as quaterback as he was during our son’s birth.

So we learned a few things:

• Our due date is now February 16th, 2009
• We will be seeing a team of OBs (three to be exact) so on the day of delivery we will have an OB that knows all about Julie’s vajayjay and the state of our twins’ health
• This pregnancy is considered High Risk, so we will be going back to see our High Risk doctor from Julie’s last pregnancy on a regular basis

p.s. I always wanted to use vajayjay as a post tag! HAHAHAH!