Perinatologist appointment – 26 weeks

Posted on August 5, 2010 by Laurie Blundell

Yesterday we went to have our monthly ultrasound with the perinatologist (high risk doc) and got a good report. We’ve got 2 almost 2 pound babies that are growing like they should. Baby A (Hayden) is still head down, like he has been all along and weighs 1 pound 14 ounces. Baby B (Ian) is now laying completely sideways and weighs 1 pound 12 ounces. They checked my cervix length to make sure the contractions still weren’t making me dilate and it was about the same as it has been. So based on that and the negative fetal fibronectin test I had a few weeks ago the perinatologist said I am allowed to get up and do some things. He said if I needed to go to the post office or if I wanted to go out to eat every once in a while I could, I don’t have to stay on the couch or in bed 24 hours a day. Obviously I’m not going to take advantage of this and I am still going to stay on the couch the majority of the time. Not doing as much and staying on the couch for the past couple weeks has helped with Baby B (Ian’s) growth and him catching up to his brother. They were watching his size because the difference between the two babies was getting bigger and this time they were almost the same – Yeah! I also get more contractions when I am up on my feet or move around too much, so I’m just taking precautions and trying to keep these babies in for as long as I can. We’ll see what my regular OB says when I go see her in 2 weeks.

Nursery

Posted on July 31, 2010 by Laurie Blundell

I think we have finally finished the nursery, well almost. We still need another crib bedding set that matches the other one and there are two blocks that I got that need to be painted. Other than that it’s pretty much done. Jonathan finished putting up the names above he cribs today and it looks finished now. Here are some pictures of the room:

Nursery - notice the 2 blocks I need to paint.

A changing pad will go on top of the chest below the tree

Hayden's crib and the glider

Ian's crib and their dresser I refinished

24 week OB appointment

Posted on July 27, 2010 by Laurie Blundell

On Friday we had my monthly OB visit and found out the test I had done earlier last week ( the fetal fibronectin) was negative. From what I understand it can turn positive and some doctors do it as often as every 2 weeks but I doubt mine will. My cervix still hadn’t changed but I was still having contractions about the same frequency as beofre. She said to continue the bed rest and with that Jonathan followed up with “what is your definition of be rest” and she said “staying on the couch and getting up to go to the restroom and a quick shower” and my reponse, “that’s it!”
She did give me privileges to go to mine and Jonathan’s parents house as long as I’m on the couch.

In other, not so depressing news, the boys looked great, as usual. Their fluid level in the amniotic sac looked great and the were moving like crazy. BabyA (Hayden) was scratching his head and flipping back and forth while Baby B (Ian) was kicking his feet. Baby B (Ian) is no longer head down like he was last week, he flipped back and is breech again. I think he just didn’t like being head down, but we’ll see…he could change again by next week when we have our next sonogram. Or maybe he didn’t like looking directly at his brother’s face so he flipped back!

My doctor did give me something to help me sleep at night since I can’t really fall asleep some nights and then when I do, I wake up several times a night and sometimes then I can’t go back to sleep for a few hours. I took it for the first time last night and slept all the way until 6:00 without waking up – wahoo. But since I took it kind of late last nigt, I still felt a little drunk so I went back to bed. So I am now up, a little more refreshed and ready to, well do nothing but lay on the couch – FUN! I’m thinking of asking her if I can have pool privileges since anytime I was in the pool in the past I didn’t have a contraction. Its not like I’m out there swimming laps or doing water aerobics, I’m just relaxing and floating in the pool. We’ll see what she says.

Well, that’s all for now, I’ll give you another update next week when I go see the perinatologist. Hopefully we’ll have some more pictures to show of the boys.

Bed Rest

Posted on July 21, 2010 by Laurie Blundell

A week ago today my OB took my off work and was told to “take it easy”. I had been having contractions off and on starting at about 19 weeks and I was told to take it easy and call my doctor is I have 6 or more in an hour. Last weekend (22 weeks) I started having more regular contractions and by Wednesday I was having 6-8 an hour so I called her and she said to come in. She checked my cervix and it still looked long and closed so she was happy with that. She put me on the monitor to check my contractions and one of the babies heart rates (she doesn’t have a double monitor, that’s why we only checked one baby). I was having contractions every 5 minutes or so and Baby A was moving so much that we could hardly get a heartbeat. He moved the entire time I was on the monitor, which is pretty normal for him, he moves regularly throughout the day. My doctor made the comment of how active he was and one of the MA’s that was in there looked at me and asked, “does he move like that all day?” My asnwer, “yep, but luckily I don’t feel all of those movements…and that’s just one of them. The other one likes to move at night when this one is calm.”

After she monitored me and saw the contractions, she told me to go home, take it easy and I’m off work. She did a urine culture to see if I had a bladder infection because sometimes that can cause contractions. So I went home and layed on the couch. She never told me I was on bed rest at that time, she did mention that she may put me on bed rest, but not at that point. All weekend I was having contractions and Monday I called to get the results of the urine culture, which did show a mild bladder infection so she started me on an antibiotic to take and when I talked to her I mentioned that I was still having the contractions just as frequently and even throughout the night while sleeping. She told me to come in that day so she could check my cervix again and do a test to see if the contractions are doing anything, like pre-term labor. My cervix was still long and closed and she did the test, a fetal fibronectin test. Fetal fibronectin is a protein that acts as a “glue” during pregnancy, attaching the amniotic sac — the fluid-filled membrane that cushions your baby in the uterus — to the lining of the uterus. It is often present in cervical secretions during early pregnancy, but also shows up later in pregnancy, about one to three weeks before labor begins. A positive fetal fibronectin test is a clue that the “glue” has been disturbed and you’re at increased risk of preterm labor. I will go back to see her on Friday for my monthly OB visit and will get the results of the test at that time. I did find out, however, that Baby B (Ian) is no longer breech so they are both head down now. But that could change next week too, he could flip back.

I will be 24 weeks tomorrow and that is a milestone in pregnancy because that is the point of viability for a fetus. At 24 weeks a fetus has a 50/50 chance of survival if they are born now. We went on a tour of the NICU at Baylor last weekend and they told us in their NICU babies born at 24 weeks have a 75% chance of survival. Even though that is a good percentage, I still don’t want them here yet, they aren’t done cookin yet!

My doctor did mention starting me on some medications to stop the contractions, but with my history of cardiac issues, she doesn’t really want to unless its a MUST. And, since my cervix isn’t shortening yet, it’s not a must. Tocolytics, or drugs that stop contractions, are known to have cardiovascular side effects and in someone that already has those issues, it’s not a good combination. But again, if I needed them, I would take them. She called and talked to my perinatologist, high risk doctor, and they both agreed at this point the best thing to do is for me to be on bed rest…so here I am, on bed rest. She hasn’t told me exactly what my restrictions are for bed rest, but I’ll find out Friday. I think it’s more of a modified bed rest, where I’m supposed to stay off my feet as much as possible, no working, cleaning, shopping, etc but I can still get up to shower, take a ride in the car, walk around the house some, etc. My dreams of that may be shattered on Friday, but we’ll see. I’m hoping she says I can still go and relax in our pool, that’s taking it easy!

We are also meeting with a pediatrician on Friday before my appointment with the OB. I worked with this doctor some when I was at Children’s and liked her. She was good with the kids, parents and knows her stuff. I really don’t want a pediatrician that doesn’t have any hospital experience, other than residency and being in the medical field, I am going to be REALLY picky when it comes to picking a pediatrician for our babies. She has years of hospital experience and since I worked with her some I know she knows how to handle serious medical issues that may come up….you always want to be prepared and you don’t want to pick a pediatrician for your child and then when they get really sick, you find out they don’t know how to handle it. This doctor is in a practice with two other ladies and one of the other doctors was a doctor at children’s as well, while I didn’t work with her as much, I did some and liked her too. So we will meet with her and get to see the office/staff, ask some questions and Jonathan an meet her. I have pretty much made up my mind that she’ll be the boy’s doctor but I still want to meet with her because working with her as a resiratory therapist on a professional level and having her as MY children’s doctor are two very different perspectives.

Ok, I think this long enough of a post but I’ll leave you with a picture of my resting buddy…

Perinatologist Appointment – 22 weeks

Posted on July 20, 2010 by Laurie Blundell

I just realized I never updated on our last visit with the high risk doc. So much has been going on it just slipped my mind….More on that later. We saw Dr. Rosnes (high risk Dr.) about 2 week ago and everything looked good. They checked my cervix length since I had been having some contractions off and on and it was still long so that’s good. The boys are growing and looked great. Baby A (Hayden) was roughly 1 pound, 1 oz and Baby B (Ian) was about 14 oz. There was a little bit of a difference in weights so Dr. Rosnes said he will keep an eye on it and measure them again in a month to make sure the difference between the two isn’t getting bigger.

There has been a question whether or not there are two placentas which could mean they are identical instead of fraternal. He looked at the sonogram and is pretty sure there are two placentas that just fused together to look like one, but he said we can’t be 100% sure until they are born. I’ll go back in another 2 weeks for another check and we’ll see how much bigger they are!

20 week update

Posted on June 28, 2010 by Laurie Blundell

I hit 20 weeks and everything started to fall apart.

What happened? Last Saturday I started having contractions (braxton hicks), just a few a day. Monday and Tuesday I started getting more and they were becoming more frequent. By Wednesday I was having on average of 5 an hour. They aren’t painful, just uncomfortable. Luckily on Thursday I had my monthly appointment with my OB and she did a sonogram and checked my cervix to make sure it wasn’t thinning out at all from the contractions. Everything looked good, the cervix hasn’t thinned out any and the boys looked great.

She told me to “take it easy” and by that — she means don’t do anything. I can still go to work but she said once my cervix starts to thin I will be off work. It’s difficult for me to not to do anything. I had planned on painting the nursery this past weekend, but because I can’t do that now, Jonathan had to step up and paint it all by himself. He did a great job and it looks awesome. I’ll post pictures once we get it all finished.

So needless to say I was on the couch the majority of the weekend.

Then yesterday, we had a fun time at church, and let me add, this was only our 2 time to visit the church. My brother and his girlfriend had come in and sat by us, so we were all there just singing and worshiping and I started to feel a little lightheaded so I sat down. When the pastor got up and started the message, Jonathan went out to get me some juice to drink. That seemed to help and for about 4-5 minutes I felt semi-normal. Then all of a sudden it hit me again, and this time it hit hard… I leaned forward and put my head down hoping that would help, and well… that’s all I remember.

The next thing I remember was opening my eyes and my head was on Jonathan’s shoulder, well as close to his shoulder as I can get – its kinda high up there. Then I knew what happened. Once I came to a little bit more and was able to walk, we left and came home. I ended up staying on the couch all day because I was pretty out of it. I was also very nauseous all day, which I haven’t been in over a month. And by the end of the night, my body finally gave in and well, lets just say I lost everything I ate for the day.

I was still pretty out of it last night and still getting lightheaded so we decided that I would stay home today from work. This morning I was still getting lightheaded and didn’t feel “normal” but as the day went on I started to feel a little bit better. I made a call into my cardiologist and OB’s offices. Of course my OB was out of the office today, so I talked to the nurse and she basically said if I still feel bad tomorrow I should come in and see my Dr. and I will see my cardiologist Wednesday morning. Since I have been on the couch for 3 days I haven’t had too many contractions. Some, but not too many. She told me if I have 6 or more in an hour to call her. I’ll keep you updated on everything.

The boys are doing great, the HR’s were 151 and 146 and they’re moving around like crazy. Ian was having hiccups when she was trying to get his heart rate so that was funny to watch, and of course he wouldn’t cooperate. He’s our little wiggler, in every sonogram he’s the one wiggling all around and won’t let them get a good picture. Then there’s Hayden who is a good little boy and just lays there so we can get a picture. He does move around a lot too, just at better times. He is the one I feel move and kick more often. The last few days I have felt them both move and kick a lot. I have to say that is probably the best part of being pregnant, because the rest is for the birds!

We will see the high risk doc next week for another sonogram and we’ll get to see how much they have grown… it better be a lot because I know my belly sure hasn’t just gotten big overnight for nothing. Well, this has gotten to be a long post, so I’ll update you next week after my appointment with the high risk doc.

The name game

Posted on June 15, 2010 by Laurie Blundell

Now that we know we are having boys we are able to finalize the names. We really only had to come up with one boy name because we already had one that we wanted to use if we ever had a boy. We just had to narrow down the middle name.

Baby A has been named Hayden James Blundell. Hayden is a name that both Jonathan and I wanted to name a boy ever since before we were married. I just love the name Hayden and can’t imagine not naming a boy that. We are into the meanings of names and when we looked up the meaning of Hayden, we got a few interesting meanings…from the hedged valley, heathen, and our favorite – leader of the elves. So we obviously didn’t choose this name from the meaning!

Baby B has been named Ian Christopher Blundell. My 9 year old nephew said we should name him Payden since the other baby is Hayden, HAHA. I told him thanks, but we’ll stick with Ian. I went back and forth on this name, not because I didn’t like it, I love it. But because I have a friend whose son’s name is Ian and I didn’t want it to feel like we were stealing his name. But then I thought about it, and we aren’t stealing his name, we are naming our son the same name as a cutie pie little boy and is honestly one of the toughest/strongest little guys I know. We did choose the name Ian because of the meaning, and we both just really like the name. Again there are several different meanings of the name but the one that made us choose it is “gift from God”. It also means God is gracious and it is Scotish for Jon. These babies are truly a Gift from God, and He gave us two gifts at once!

So those are the names we have chosen to name the boys and we no longer have to play the name game and go back and forth, YEAH.

Boy oh Boy!

Posted on June 13, 2010 by Laurie Blundell

You got it, we are having two BOYS! I had a level II sonogram (high risk sono) this past week that looked for any structural defects including heart defects, club feet, and cleft lip and measured both babies to make sure they were both growing equally. Everything checked out great. And we were able to find out the gender of both babies. A few weeks ago when I went for my monthly check up and sono with my OB she was able to tell us we definitely had one boy but wasn’t able to tell the gender of the other one, so we had to wait a week and a 1/2 to find out what the other baby was..it was a long week and a 1/2.

We were able to get a good picture of Baby A and you can see the profile pretty well, but Baby B wouldn’t cooperate, he kept turning his back to us so we couldn’t get a good picture. But here they are at 18 weeks.

Now that we know they are both boys, I can finally start doing stuff in the nursery, putting things on a registry, buying clothes when I see them, etc. We also have been able to narrow down our name list. But, you’ll have to wait to find out the names….

More updates to come

Baby update

Posted on May 31, 2010 by Laurie Blundell

I realized that I haven’t posted anything about the babies, pregnancy, etc for a while now. Sorry about that, but here’s an update for you. I am now 16 weeks and feeling quite a bit better. I had a tough first trimester with 24 hour nausea and getting sick. Morning sickness is a joke, mine was evening sickness for the most part. As long as I took my zofran (medicine for nausea/vomiting) I was much better and able to keep food down. I am actually still taking it most days of the week because if I don’t I get pretty nauseous. Now that the nausea has eased up a bit, I am having to deal with wonderful headaches, I’m not sure which is worse, nausea or headaches. Let’s just say so far, I’m not one of those women that loves pregnancy! I will absolutely love the end result though, so I’m not complaining one bit.

we love going to doctors appointments because we get to see the babies and I have had a sonogram every month from my doctor (3 so far). Its crazy to see how much they grow just in a month. The last sonogram, which was last Thursday we were actually able to find out that one of the babies is a boy! The other one was moving around quite a bit and the umbilical cord kept getting in the way so we weren’t able to get a good enough picture to find out what he/she was. My doctor thinks its another boy but we couldn’t confirm it, so it could still be a little girl. We didn’t get any good pictures of the sonogram on Thursday so I don’t have anything to show ya’ll. I am going for a level II sonogram (a high risk sono) in about a week and a half to look for birth defects, etc. It is a pretty detailed sonogram so we should find out for sure what the sex is of the babies and I’ll have much better pictures to post from that.

It was amazing to see them on the screen and watch them moving all around, stretching and what not. One of them looked like they waved at us (we have genius fetuses already-ha). The are about 5 1/2 to 6 inches long and doing great.

Here are some of the pictures of the babies “growing up”, they grow up so fast…just kidding, actually at this point, not fast enough!

8 weeks old…they look like a couple of blobs at this point.

12 weeks old…my little alien and monkey babies….Yes Margie, I did call them that!

I’ll show you what they look like at about 17/18 weeks in a week or two. To be continued…

From infertility to pregnancy

Posted on April 9, 2010 by Laurie Blundell

Now that I’m pregnant, I am experiencing a wide range of emotions, from joy to apprehension. It can be difficult to relax and enjoy a pregnancy after dealing with infertility for so long. Going from infertility to finding out your pregnant will leave you, not only feeling like you are back on the rollercoaster, but almost like you are in denial of the pregnancy. It’s just hard to imagine that it finally happened and I guess in a way you can’t believe it. It is hard to keep from thinking that something will happen between the time you find out your pregnant to the time you go to your first doctors appointment. While the whole time you are extremely excited, you don’t want to get your hopes up. My biggest fear was that we would get to the doctor and there wouldn’t be a heartbeat. But, to my surprise, there were TWO…and both had excellent heartbeats! They both had a heartrate of 171 and it was so cool to see that little flickering heart beating.

The goal of every couple dealing with infertility is to have a positive pregnancy test. When that finally happens, most couples feel both elation and fear. For many couples who have experienced the hope and disappointment of infertility, it may be hard to believe something is really “going right.” The only way I can even comprehend how this happened to us, is that it is a complete gift from God and for that I will be eternally grateful for my two little miracles.

Infertility is about so much more than the inability to conceive. It can rock a woman’s very foundations — her sense of control over her own future, her faith in her own body, and her feelings about herself as a woman. It can result in a loss of innocence, as a woman finds herself on the wrong side of the statistics. Suddenly, bad things don’t just happen to other people. Despite all her efforts, she is unable to achieve the experience that many women see as a birthright. Pregnancy likely cannot be achieved except with substantial medical help, and may very well never be achieved at all.

When a pregnancy finally does occur, it can be difficult for a woman who has experienced infertility to view herself as just another pregnant woman. This long-desired pregnancy may not be the joyous experience I had always dreamed about. The experience of infertility brings its own baggage to a pregnancy: grief for previous losses or inability to get pregnant; anxiety; and fear that my body, unable to conceive on its own, may not be able to carry a pregnancy.

Going through a pregnancy after infertility has it own unique challenges:

* You may feel like you don’t belong. You feel like the average pregnant woman canâ€™t understand your feelings, yet you may feel uncomfortable talking about your pregnancy with your infertile friends who are still undergoing treatments.

* You distrust your body’s ability to carry a pregnancy since it took so much medical intervention to get pregnant in the first place.

* Fear of preparing for a birth, buying maternity clothes, or purchasing baby items so as not to â€œjinxâ€ a pregnancy. Although, I’m so excited I can’t help myself so this one is pretty much thrown out the window for me.

* I think the biggest one for me is the fear of complaining about pregnancy symptoms or discomforts because you might seem ungrateful. I feel like if I complain about anything people will just think, “you asked for it, you wanted to get pregnant”. And because I did want it so bad and went through so much to get it, I don’t feel like I have any right to complain. Now I’m not complaining about this, but 24 hour nausea and vomiting is not fun…but I take it as a good sign, that’s why I don’t complain. The truth is, pregnancy can be uncomfortable, but disliking frequent vomiting, 24 hour nausea, or heartburn does not mean I cherish the pregnancy any less. The way I see it, the two little babies I will have in the end will be completely worth all the discomforts in the world.