December 1, 2010

Well, unfortunately for the blog, I missed posting anything the month of November. That really is because it was such an uncomfortable month for me. I didn't want to do anything except lay down or sleep. But it was actually more uncomfortable to be laying down and I couldn't sleep for more than an hour or two at a time before I either had to go to the bathroom or my hips started hurting too badly for me to keep laying down. I really was lucky, though, that the worst symptoms didn't appear until the very last month. I didn't even have major swelling until last week. It was like, I ate turkey and stuffing for thanksgiving and it never left my feet and ankles! It was quite an eventful month, though. Right around Halloween, I went in for a routine visit and the doctor said from now on I needed to get weekly NST's or Non-Stress Tests. Basically, I had to go to the ER in the women's hospital and get hooked up to the fetal monitors to make sure the babies were not under any stress. It was difficult because I had to lay on my back in whatever position they could find the babies heartbeat in and stay there until they got the reading. They had to have around 20 straight minutes of readings from the babies, which meant if one of the babies moved, they'd have to come in and rearrange the monitor and start over. It usually became about an hour long process, sometimes more. Anyway, this first time I had to get the NST, they also found out I was having contractions around every 4 minutes! They decided to admit me into the hospital to monitor me and the contractions. I was totally unprepared for this, of course, and was terrified the babies were coming that night. I was only 32 weeks at this time and I knew that meant the babies would have to go to the NICU. Luckily, the contractions were first slowed with medication and then, eventually, they slowed on their own. They never did completely go away, but the doctor said I will probably just have irregular contractions until I give birth. Great! This also meant they wanted me to stop working immediately! I had not finished my P/T conferences and wanted to work one more week to get things organized and to prepare the students. Unfortunately, I had to be done and that was that. So, I spent November at home, sleeping, watching the baby shows on TLC and eating. Dr.Hix decided the c-section date would be December 3, if I made it that far. I didn't think there was a chance in the world I would go that long and actually in the middle of November, when I thought my uterus was just going to fall out of me and was more uncomfortable than I'd been in my life, I even tried to convince him that he needed to deliver the babies then. It didn't work. And surprisingly, here we are now, two days away from what I've been calling "C day!" I'm so excited and anxious at the same time. I will be delivering at 37 and a half weeks, which is pretty uncommon for twins. I'm thrilled both babies are over 6 pounds, so they should be healthy enough to avoid the nicu, I hope anyway!