Tuesday, March 6, 2012

(thanks)^3

Sorry for all the fly-by posting I've been doing lately. We're in the home stretch of finishing up all of the big home-improvement-slash-baby-readiness projects we wanted to do and are on day 12 of 17 straight days/nights of houseguests. First M's mom was here, followed by my parents, and on Thursday, it'll switch over to M's brother and sister-in-law. Then, our guest room is closed until further notice! I can't complain - we put out the call for help and were lucky enough to get a great response - but whew, are we ever exhausted. M and I did a LOT of work on our own before the parade of helpers began and the end result is that we haven't had a day "off" in over 6 weeks. But, our house is much improved, furniture has been relocated, truckloads of items have been taken to Goodwill, NB-3 month baby clothes are washed and in the nursery closet, and all we have left to do is to pick updated decorations for our newly bared walls. OK, we're not quite to that point, but we're close. Soooo close, and I cannot wait until all that's left on our to-do list is putting our feet up and waiting on the babes' arrival.

With all the chaos going on, I haven't taken the time to thank you for the kind and thoughtful comments y'all left on my last three posts. One of the things I treasure most about blogging is being able to stream out a barely-formed jumble of thoughts, and then have my fellow (read: wiser) bloggers come along and post comments that leave me thinking "Right! That, exactly!" or "Wow, I never pieced that together myself, but she's 100% right." And on that note... a couple of follow-ups:

HUGE thanks to all of you who empathized with my ramblings about our NT scan, and especially to those of you who shared "been there, done that" stories. Like Katie, who commented about her own pre-screening scare, my overwhelming feeling is one of regret, and I do not say that lightly. I wishwishwishwish we had never done the NT Scan. If I were to be pregnant again (ha!), I would decline it. I'm sure the test would be a useful tool for some people/scenarios, but for me, the magnitude of worry it caused when we had no desire for diagnostic testing any earlier than an amnio was simply a recipe for disaster. I realize I say this from the priviledged position of having several clean cardio scans since the NT, but my regret was instantaneous and has not wavered. And we're still not out of the woods. No one ever is, really, which - for me - is all the more reason that early testing is crap. You either get a possibly-false sense of security or a possibly-false sense of the world crashing down around you. Delightful!

Regarding viability, Bionic and tbean's comments pulled the chain on the lightbulb for me about WHY I was so underwhelmed by the 24 week milestone. It's because all of the sudden, people start talking about your baby's arrival like an Actual Thing; an Actual Thing that could happen, and holy hell, it is soooo too soon for that! It's true that a 24 weeker should do better than a 23.5 weeker, but nobody talks about your baby coming at 23.5 weeks because that's Scary. Then all of the sudden, they sneak a toe across this largely-theoretical line and everyone starts verbalizing how they can be born and be okay! And I'm left thinking "Um, they're only one day older than they were when they were Not Viable. Someone's going to have to explain the balloons and fireworks to me." Anywho. We're now a whopping 2.5 weeks over the theoretical line and while I'm still petrified at the thought of the babies making an untimely appearance, it certainly does get less scary by the day.

And SPD... thank you, thank you, thank you to those of you who offered tips and sympathy! I have been very conscious to keep my knees together as much as possible (there's a great joke in here somewhere...) and to find the right balance of gentle, frequent activity without overdoing it. I have been seeing a Webster-certified chiro since the beginning of February so it was easy to ask her to shift her focus a bit at my last appointment, and I think that helped too. All in all, I have to say that so far, I'm feeling VERY lucky to have what seems to be a minor case. As long as I keep my activity reasonable, it's manageable. For now. And at this point, I'm counting each day that it's tolerable as a win!

In other news, we had an ultrasound yesterday and got lots of good news - Crash (Baby A) and Bash (Baby B) are both within range for normal singleton weights. Crash was estimated at 1lb. 15oz and Bash was estimated at 2lbs. 3oz. Both hearts look good (144 and 152 bpm) and not only has Crash's placenta migrated off of my cervix, but he has turned head-down! I'm still working full-time and haven't had to limit my mobility yet, but it's getting tougher to do everything (oh sleep, how I miss you already) and my boss and I are meeting later this week to discuss a plan for scaling back my work schedule in the near-ish future. It's tough because my boss has her own medical leave scheduled for the second half of March, and I am HER coverage plan, so the goal is to make it to April (30 weeks) without any drastic cuts to my schedule if at all possible. That said, Crash and Bash are the number one priority so we'll do whatever we have to do whenever we have to do it!

Oh, and E's birthday party is this weekend. How exactly did it happen that he is turning THREE?

2 comments:

Emily @ablanket2keep said...

Boy have you been busy! I am glad everything is going well and Crash and Bash are growing so nicely!

Lex said...

Great update! Good to catch up with everything that's going on. Good luck over the next few weeks with house and work and get as much rest as possible!