Taking it all in

The next day Mark and I went in for an ultrasound to confirm that baby B wasn’t alive.  I knew it wasn’t, but I still felt like I was going to throw up as I was waiting to be called back.  I’m glad Mark was able to leave work to come with me.  His co-workers were understanding and they all hurried to finish building the schedule so Mark could leave to get to our appointment.  The u/s tech asked me why we were there for a scan, I think mainly to know if we actually knew why, not because she needed to know.  She confirmed that baby B didn’t have a heartbeat and after that anticipation of hear it again was over, I was okay.

I think the hardest thing for me to get over was the fact that we weren’t having twins anymore.  It was difficult to change my mindset from 2 to 1 and I think that’s what I was mostly upset over.  At 10 weeks pregnant, I wasn’t super attached to the babies yet, more the idea of having twins.  Yes, it totally sucked losing baby B and I was/am sad, but I’m not one of those that dwells on it for weeks/months/years and I just trust God’s plan with it all I guess.  I figure that baby B wasn’t completely healthy and I would much rather lose a baby at 10 weeks pregnant than like my parents did and lose one when they’re 10 months old.

The next week I had the nuchal translucency ultrasound to scan for downs syndrome and other chromosomal disorders and baby A was still doing well and moving around like crazy again so that was reassuring.  Not reassuring enough for me to make this pregnancy blog/ FB official yet, but it was still reassuring.

Telling Abbie about baby #3

We told the kids about baby #3 Friday afternoon.  We sat Abbie down (while Ben wandered around near us) and showed her a picture of our most recent ultrasound.  We asked her what she thought it was a picture of and she said she thought it was a baby raccoon.  Haha!  Once she grasped the concept that it was a human baby, she was very excited.  The first thing she said was that we were going to have THREE kids, and the next thing she said was that she wanted to help feed it and she would "hold it like this and then feed it like this".  That was funny because I had just told Mark the day before that he was going to have competition for feeding the baby because Abbie LOVES babies.  Abbie is such a little mama and she tends to gravitate towards babies.  A few of my friends have babies and Abbie always tries to play with them and get them to smile or laugh.  She's very gentle and it's sweet to watch her with them.  It will be interesting to see how she deals with a baby that never leaves.  Hopefully it'll be better when she's 6 years old vs when she was 2.5 when Ben was born.  That wasn't the most fun I've ever had, but she's much more mature now so I think it'll be good.  We're going to involve her as much as we can throughout my pregnancy so she feels a sense of connection to the baby once it arrives.

She calls this her little mommy outfit.  She is DEFINITELY a little momma.

I was at Hobby Lobby with the kids a few hours after we told them and Abbie was still bouncing off the walls.  She kept saying "I can't believe you're going to have THREE kids!  That's going to be so much work!"  Why a 5 year old is thinking about how much work 3 kids will be is beyond me, but Abbie has always been wise beyond her years.  She asked me who was going to be there when the baby comes out and I said probably just daddy will be there.  She asked where her and Ben will be and I told her probably at home with grammy and she wanted to know why they couldn't be there.  Luckily she didn't press the issue too much.

Abbie frequently will put her hands on my belly and ask when she’ll get to feel it move.  She’s full of lots of questions about everything and anything.  I’m so excited to see her interact with baby #3.  She can be a great big sister when she wants to be.

Bumpdate: week 11

I haven’t done these before, that I remember, so I thought I’d do them every few weeks to keep track of this pregnancy.  I don’t really remember what was going on in my other pregnancies when I was however many weeks along so maybe if I’m lucky enough to get pregnant again, these will help me remember.

Pics below are taken at 8 weeks, 10 weeks and 12 weeks.  (Excuse the disaster of a bathroom.  We are remodeling it and as you can see, making great progress…..)

How Far Along? 11 weeks

Size of Baby? 1.5 inches long, about the size of a fig

Maternity Clothes? No, not yet, but I'm definitely wearing my stretchier pants now or my ones that were a little bit to begin with.

Weight Gain? about a pound

Stretch Marks/belly button? No new ones anyway...  I still have plenty left over from A and B

Baby’s Sex? No clue, although on my NT ultrasound this week I could have sworn I saw a weiner.  The u/s tech said it was way too early to make any sort of call on that.

Sleep? Good!  Get up about once or twice to pee, but I'm finally feeling that I can function without a 3+ hour nap every day.

Food Cravings? Still no cravings really, more like aversions.  Usually nothing sounds very good to eat.

Best Moment This Week? The u/s tech telling me that she was having a really hard time finding what she was looking for, which was a good thing because if there are problems it is enlarged.

What I am loving? Seeing Abbie's excitement when we told her we were having another baby.

Movement? I've been feeling movement since around 9 weeks - probably because there were/are 2 of them so they are taking more room in my belly and this is my 3rd pregnancy, so I know what I'm feeling.  I'm definitely still feeling baby A occasionally.  Just little flutters though.

What I’m looking forward to: Being able to have Mark, Abbie and Ben feel the baby move from the outside.

Other Updates… We told the kids yesterday about baby A.  It was really cute.  I'll write a separate post about that.

The irony…

I've been feeling particularly anxious about this pregnancy with the twins.  It's not at all like me to want to withhold exciting news like this from my friends, but I have been a little hesitant to tell people that I'm pregnant with twins, for fear that something happens to one of them.

Last night was a squadron coffee.  Some of the girls I'm closer to in the squadron already knew I was pregnant with twins.  I told a few more people, and then had a few people that I didn't tell approach me about it, so I know the news is traveling fast.  Which is fine, I don't really care, but it made me anxious.  The squadron commanders wife wanted to announce that I was pregnant with twins to everyone and I asked her not to because I wasn't ready for that.  A few people that knew I was pregnant asked me how things are going and I had to say that I don't really know.  I know things were great at 7.5 weeks but now it's 3 weeks later and this early in the first trimester, you really don't know.  I haven't had any cramping or bleeding, so that's a good sign, but not a guarantee that everything is fine.  

A few of the girls told me to call my doctor and just ask for an extra ultrasound if I was worried about it.  So this morning I finally got enough guts to call my doctor and ask for an ultrasound before my scheduled appointment next week.  I felt like an idiot asking her but she humored me and said come on in.

She found baby A right away.  Baby A was very clear and showed up great on the ultrasound.  You could see it's little arms and legs flailing all over the place and it's heart rate was a strong 176bpm.  She mentioned something about both sacs still looking good and then she looked for baby B.  And she looked... and looked... and looked.  You could see a very faint outline occasionally of something, but it was nothing like baby A.  She kept saying she couldn't get a clear view of baby B.  She looked for the heart beat once, but couldn't find it.  After about 5-10 mins she said she wanted to try a vaginal u/s to see if she could see it better, but I had a full bladder so she couldn't see anything that way.  So she went back to prodding around on my stomach and then finally said that from what she could tell baby B stopped growing at 8w4d and she couldn't find a heartbeat.  But then she went on to say she never really got a clear shot of it and that the portable machine she was using isn't the most accurate or reliable so she wanted me to go get a second scan to confirm what she thought.

So it's been a rough day, to say the least.  The thing that is mostly throwing me for a loop is that I basically knew where both of the twins were before she even did the scan.  I swear I can feel the little baby movement flutters occasionally, and they were both right where I've been feeling them.  And I've felt baby B in the last few weeks, which doesn't match up if it stopped growing at 8w4d.  Maybe I'm hallucinating and I'm not actually feeling them.  Maybe baby A is somehow moving so much that it's making baby B move.  Maybe baby B stopped growing a lot later than she thought and she just couldn't get a good enough view of it to make an accurate estimate.  I don't know what it is, but this definitely sucks.  I go back and forth between not wanting to get my hopes up that the conclusion was wrong because I don't want to be that disappointed all over again, to wanting to hold out hope that it was wrong and that both babies are still okay.  It's kind of a fine line that I've jumped over many times in the past few hours.

My next ultrasound is tomorrow morning.  I am putting Ben in daycare for a few hours (he was with me today, running his toy car all over the table as I was laying there getting the ultrasound done) and I think Mark will be able to go with me this time.  

And the irony of it all is today is October 15th - Infant and pregnancy loss awareness/remembrance day.