Saturday, August 7, 2010
Sunday, August 1, 2010
Hospital Vacation
So I’m finally getting around to posting about last week. Glenn and I went in for my normal OB appointment Tuesday morning. Everything was going well and Glenn and I even joked, while the doctor left the office to get the ultrasound laptop, that we might be out in less than an hour! Yes! “Isn’t it great that everything is going smoothly again?!” chirped Glenn. He gets credit for the giant slip up in over-confidence. :)
Cue doctor and ultrasound. “Everyone is looking good…huh that doesn't look right.” It looked as though my cervix was funneling. She sent us over to do another ultrasound on a better machine and confirmed my cervix failure. There was only 1 cm still closed and the rest was open. This is only supposed to happen right before dilating and labor so it was definitely bad news and far too early for this to happen. (It was scary then but a little funny now: in the ultrasound we saw baby A sticking her little arm down into my open cervix like she was discovering the way out.) The Sonographer tried to console us by saying it could be worse and that they could still stop it. Off we went scared and upset to the hospital and so began our 4 day luxury vacation at the hospital.
As it normally seems to go with these things, you never really have a full picture of the plan of attack. You get little snip-its and the little snip-its keep changing. Our first impression was that we would only be there a a few hours to get the cerclage. Then we found out it would probably be late in the afternoon/evening since I ate breakfast that morning. Which is when we learned that this procedure was a little more serious than we had previously assumed. It required an epidural and involved some risks to baby A but the risks of not getting the procedure were far worse.
Next was the problem with me being on a blood thinner. They didn't want to go into the OR until it was out of my system for 24 hours. We would stay overnight, have the cerclage first thing in the morning and be out by lunchtime. It was a relief to be moved upstairs to our room though. The bed was soooo much better than the terrible thing I was laying on in Triage. Glenn camped out on the tiny pull out chair bed thing and we tried to come to grips that we were in the hospital.
The procedure was pretty scary I’ll have to admit. It took the anesthesiologists forever to get the epidural in. After numerous try's they finally got it in and apparently it took more than one person. Not sure what makes my back so much more difficult. After that, I think I may have been a little on the freaked out side of things. They kept asking me things and I had to try hard not to turn into a blubbering fool. It didn’t help that my hind side was up in the air for about 12 people to stare at. (The anesthesiologist assured me no one was staring..haha) After getting prepped and draped, prodded and poked they realized I was feeling far more than I should and I would never make it though the actual cerclage. Another epidural, rinse and repeat. That time I couldn’t feel or move anything from the hips down.
Afterwards things seemed to be going fine though the main doctor wanted me to stay the night for observation just in case. We were bummed but glad we did. The next couple of days involved pretty steady bleeding and some contractions that kept us in the hospital until Friday. The amazing thing about all of it was that at every check and ultrasound of the babies they were doing fine – heart rates were good and moving around like normal. It just seemed to be their mama that was having all the trouble. :) Apparently carrying triplets is hard work.
We are officially not planning any more vacations (Even if I wasn’t on bedrest!!). At the OB visit, mentioned above, we were planning to confirm with doc that it would be ok for us to fly down to Ft. Lauderdale. We had tickets we needed to use from our canceled cruise. We were going to stay in a nice hotel on the beach and relax. But alas no, we spent our vacation time in the hospital. :)
Cue doctor and ultrasound. “Everyone is looking good…huh that doesn't look right.” It looked as though my cervix was funneling. She sent us over to do another ultrasound on a better machine and confirmed my cervix failure. There was only 1 cm still closed and the rest was open. This is only supposed to happen right before dilating and labor so it was definitely bad news and far too early for this to happen. (It was scary then but a little funny now: in the ultrasound we saw baby A sticking her little arm down into my open cervix like she was discovering the way out.) The Sonographer tried to console us by saying it could be worse and that they could still stop it. Off we went scared and upset to the hospital and so began our 4 day luxury vacation at the hospital.
As it normally seems to go with these things, you never really have a full picture of the plan of attack. You get little snip-its and the little snip-its keep changing. Our first impression was that we would only be there a a few hours to get the cerclage. Then we found out it would probably be late in the afternoon/evening since I ate breakfast that morning. Which is when we learned that this procedure was a little more serious than we had previously assumed. It required an epidural and involved some risks to baby A but the risks of not getting the procedure were far worse.
Next was the problem with me being on a blood thinner. They didn't want to go into the OR until it was out of my system for 24 hours. We would stay overnight, have the cerclage first thing in the morning and be out by lunchtime. It was a relief to be moved upstairs to our room though. The bed was soooo much better than the terrible thing I was laying on in Triage. Glenn camped out on the tiny pull out chair bed thing and we tried to come to grips that we were in the hospital.
The procedure was pretty scary I’ll have to admit. It took the anesthesiologists forever to get the epidural in. After numerous try's they finally got it in and apparently it took more than one person. Not sure what makes my back so much more difficult. After that, I think I may have been a little on the freaked out side of things. They kept asking me things and I had to try hard not to turn into a blubbering fool. It didn’t help that my hind side was up in the air for about 12 people to stare at. (The anesthesiologist assured me no one was staring..haha) After getting prepped and draped, prodded and poked they realized I was feeling far more than I should and I would never make it though the actual cerclage. Another epidural, rinse and repeat. That time I couldn’t feel or move anything from the hips down.
Afterwards things seemed to be going fine though the main doctor wanted me to stay the night for observation just in case. We were bummed but glad we did. The next couple of days involved pretty steady bleeding and some contractions that kept us in the hospital until Friday. The amazing thing about all of it was that at every check and ultrasound of the babies they were doing fine – heart rates were good and moving around like normal. It just seemed to be their mama that was having all the trouble. :) Apparently carrying triplets is hard work.
We are officially not planning any more vacations (Even if I wasn’t on bedrest!!). At the OB visit, mentioned above, we were planning to confirm with doc that it would be ok for us to fly down to Ft. Lauderdale. We had tickets we needed to use from our canceled cruise. We were going to stay in a nice hotel on the beach and relax. But alas no, we spent our vacation time in the hospital. :)
Saturday, July 31, 2010
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Journey to Triplets - 17 Weeks
(If the text in the image is hard to read, click it for a larger view)
Note: our 17 weeks date was 7/19, and these pictures were taken 7/18, but it took most of a week before we were ready to post this image (more about that in a separate post...) Expect most of these pictures to show up on the blog about a week after they were actually taken.
Sunday, July 18, 2010
My Pregnancy So Far
Everyone asks if I’ve had morning sickness and luckily I haven’t. Not the least bit of puking has happened over here. Just don’t ask what I want to eat. I have no idea. Nothing sounds good except chicken fingers or avocado sushi rolls from our local sushi restaurant. Strange I know.
Even though I’ve managed to bypass the so hated morning sickness, I’ve collected my own set of strange complications.
Ovarian hyper stimulation syndrome: My ovaries basically refused to work (maybe since puberty?) but definitely since we started trying a year and a half ago. When they finally did work they swelled up to the size of melons in a matter of days. Ovaries are normally supposed to be about 4 cm and mine grew to many times bigger than that very quickly. Also my blood was dumping all water into my abdominal cavity and at the worst I had gained about 15 lbs in water. This of course was pretty uncomfortable and I spent several days going to the doctor getting blood work and an IV drip. Unfortunately we had to cancel our cruise that we had scheduled on doctors orders. Very sad but we learned we were pregnant during all of this so that definitely made up for all of it. :) My ovaries are still bigger than normal at 16 weeks but they have continued to go down and all the discomfort associated with them has gone away.
Retinal Occlusion: I woke up one morning a little over 4 weeks ago and realized I couldn't read the computer screen very well. Upon further investigation I realized I had a cloud shaped blob in my right eye. It was completely opaque. When using both eyes it just seemed to make my vision blurry and reading was difficult. My OB sent me to see a Ophthalmologist, who brought in a Retinal specialist, who decided I had this retinal occlusion (blood clot) in my eye which is apparently super rare for someone under 50 or 60. They recommended full blood work and my OB scheduled me to see their OB/Hematologist specialist. However many days and hours at the doctors later I am on a blood thinner for preventative reasons since they did not find a direct cause of the occlusion. Luckily, last week we found out that the occlusion has healed and now just waiting to see if the vision loss is permanent or not. And I still have to shoot myself with blood thinner twice a day. But it has gotten tons easier to do!
Gestational Diabetes: Sort-of. I failed the first test they gave and then I barely passed the second. Only one bad score out of 4 and you have to have 2 bad to be diagnosed. But they are concerned about me being high risk so I had to go to gestational diabetes nutrition counseling and check my blood sugar every so often. Thank you Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome.. and the multiples. :)
So that’s the main stuff and I’ve now bored myself to tears and anyone that is still reading. :) It’s definitely an adventure so far. I’m just so glad nothing has really been untreatable or harmful for the babies. Knock on wood it continues!
Even though I’ve managed to bypass the so hated morning sickness, I’ve collected my own set of strange complications.
Ovarian hyper stimulation syndrome: My ovaries basically refused to work (maybe since puberty?) but definitely since we started trying a year and a half ago. When they finally did work they swelled up to the size of melons in a matter of days. Ovaries are normally supposed to be about 4 cm and mine grew to many times bigger than that very quickly. Also my blood was dumping all water into my abdominal cavity and at the worst I had gained about 15 lbs in water. This of course was pretty uncomfortable and I spent several days going to the doctor getting blood work and an IV drip. Unfortunately we had to cancel our cruise that we had scheduled on doctors orders. Very sad but we learned we were pregnant during all of this so that definitely made up for all of it. :) My ovaries are still bigger than normal at 16 weeks but they have continued to go down and all the discomfort associated with them has gone away.
Retinal Occlusion: I woke up one morning a little over 4 weeks ago and realized I couldn't read the computer screen very well. Upon further investigation I realized I had a cloud shaped blob in my right eye. It was completely opaque. When using both eyes it just seemed to make my vision blurry and reading was difficult. My OB sent me to see a Ophthalmologist, who brought in a Retinal specialist, who decided I had this retinal occlusion (blood clot) in my eye which is apparently super rare for someone under 50 or 60. They recommended full blood work and my OB scheduled me to see their OB/Hematologist specialist. However many days and hours at the doctors later I am on a blood thinner for preventative reasons since they did not find a direct cause of the occlusion. Luckily, last week we found out that the occlusion has healed and now just waiting to see if the vision loss is permanent or not. And I still have to shoot myself with blood thinner twice a day. But it has gotten tons easier to do!
Gestational Diabetes: Sort-of. I failed the first test they gave and then I barely passed the second. Only one bad score out of 4 and you have to have 2 bad to be diagnosed. But they are concerned about me being high risk so I had to go to gestational diabetes nutrition counseling and check my blood sugar every so often. Thank you Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome.. and the multiples. :)
So that’s the main stuff and I’ve now bored myself to tears and anyone that is still reading. :) It’s definitely an adventure so far. I’m just so glad nothing has really been untreatable or harmful for the babies. Knock on wood it continues!
Friday, July 16, 2010
Three, Tres, Drie, Trois, Tri…
Three is our new lucky number! We are almost 17 weeks pregnant with TRIPLETS! We’ve known about it since we were about 6 weeks along but I still have a hard time realizing that this is actually happening. That first ultrasound was a complete shocker. I believe the only thing Glenn said while we were in the ultrasound room was “huh.” :)
The babies at 9 weeks old
The babies at 15 weeks
Since many of the doctors warned us that there was a risk that one or more wouldn't make it through the first trimester, we took a break from the blog, wanting to make sure that all of the babies were thriving before sharing the news. Thankfully they are all growing, thriving, and healthy so far!
We spent many weeks worrying what would happen and just what our future was shaping up to be. Feeling shocked and overwhelmed were a major part of our first few weeks and months. These days we have the same feelings but they are overshadowed with a lot of joy and excitement! We feel blessed and so happy that these little guys are coming into our life and can’t wait to get to know them.
You will hear lots more from us about this in the coming months!
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Expectations
(Posted retroactively, since at the time we found out, we weren't quite ready to tell the world yet...)
First, the big news... *ahem*...
We confirmed it at the doctor’s office today, after a positive home pregnancy test result this morning. We’re excited, overjoyed, and terrified all at the same time — and it hasn’t even entirely sunk in yet! We’ve been trying for more than a year now, so we’re at the same time amazed that it took this long to get here and amazed that it finally happened.
Heather is technically a month pregnant (!) already, which makes our expected due date December 29 — looks like we’ll be having a winter baby, though who can tell at this point if it’ll be 2010 or 2011 when baby arrives! Either way, I think that pretty much decides our Christmas plans for us... :-)
We want to do something big to celebrate, but we haven’t been able to yet because Heather’s pretty well out of commission due to a bad case of ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome. It’s causing her a lot of pain, shortness of breath, and loss of appetite, so even just going out to dinner tonight was out of the question. We’ll celebrate once Heather's feeling better, which hopefully will be really soon.
I really want to do a whole photo series tracking the pregnancy, a la Pacing the Panic Room, but Heather's not feeling well enough to be a photo subject at the moment, and I've still got some more learning to do with my fancy camera before I'm a master photographer (ha!). We've got a decent amount of time for that still — the Panic Room series started at around week 16, and I guess there’s not really much to show before then anyways.
One thing is absolutely certain — there are exciting times ahead for us!!!
First, the big news... *ahem*...
We’re
PREGNANT!
PREGNANT!
We confirmed it at the doctor’s office today, after a positive home pregnancy test result this morning. We’re excited, overjoyed, and terrified all at the same time — and it hasn’t even entirely sunk in yet! We’ve been trying for more than a year now, so we’re at the same time amazed that it took this long to get here and amazed that it finally happened.
Heather is technically a month pregnant (!) already, which makes our expected due date December 29 — looks like we’ll be having a winter baby, though who can tell at this point if it’ll be 2010 or 2011 when baby arrives! Either way, I think that pretty much decides our Christmas plans for us... :-)
We want to do something big to celebrate, but we haven’t been able to yet because Heather’s pretty well out of commission due to a bad case of ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome. It’s causing her a lot of pain, shortness of breath, and loss of appetite, so even just going out to dinner tonight was out of the question. We’ll celebrate once Heather's feeling better, which hopefully will be really soon.
I really want to do a whole photo series tracking the pregnancy, a la Pacing the Panic Room, but Heather's not feeling well enough to be a photo subject at the moment, and I've still got some more learning to do with my fancy camera before I'm a master photographer (ha!). We've got a decent amount of time for that still — the Panic Room series started at around week 16, and I guess there’s not really much to show before then anyways.
One thing is absolutely certain — there are exciting times ahead for us!!!
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