We meet again, 3rd trimester...

Well, here we are at 27 weeks! Boy have we been waiting anxiously for this!

We had our 27w appointment yesterday, and it went really good. The boys are weighing in at 2lbs, 2oz each, so I'm carrying about 4.5 pounds of baby, 3lbs of placenta and 4lbs of fluid right now. Yowza. Their heartbeats were 145bpm each. My MFM says it's pretty rare that their weights and heart rates would be the same for more than one visit - clearly they're twins!

My MFM (Maternal-Fetal Medicine specialist) said that the babies look VERY good and that my cervix is locked up like Fort Knox. (As if THAT was ever a concern? Sheesh if the last three weren't able to get out, I highly doubt a team of two will make much difference.) Now that's not to say that my water won't break on it's own anyway sometime in "the 30's." With everything being as stretched as it is, there will come a point where my body says, "Okay, go time!" We will schedule a c-section for the first couple of weeks in December, but will deliver the babies whenever my water breaks after 35 weeks. The cervical measurements are just a good way to see that preterm labor isn't an issue at this point and that the contractions I've been having, although they've definitely been "working" contractions, aren't making a change in my cervix at this point. She's assuming that my contractions have just been from not drinking enough water or from routine activity.

I also saw my cardiologist, and it sounds like my heart issues have been doing a little resolving over the past few years and that my regular OB will be getting a great report in the next couple of days. Wahoo! I also did my glucose test a couple of weeks ago and passed that, so it looks like I'm out of the woods where gestational diabetes are concerned. Whew.

The babies are moving like crazy, and Baby B is now breech. We felt him turning the other night, so we weren't too shocked to hear that he made a complete 180. They are both very, very strong and spend most of each evening going nuts in there. I'm taking Zofran again, as the movement can just get to be too much around 8 or 9pm!


Andrew's dad was here for two weeks and left today. I can't even describe how helpful he was during the past two weeks, or how ROUGH today was after he left! He basically spent two weeks picking things up, changing Claire, carrying Claire, extracting Claire from situations, bathing Claire, getting Claire in and out of her crib and letting me rest. It seems like each day gets a little tougher, and having someone here to relieve me and let me sleep when my eyes closed involuntarily at 9am was so, so, so nice.

That's not to say we didn't have a little fun, of course! We went out for lunch, took the girls to their soccer games, went to a birthday party, went shopping, etc. I can generally set aside about three or four good hours in the morning to run two (and only two - any more than that and my day's shot!) errands, and then about two hours in the late afternoon to help with dinner, go outside, play with the girls, etc. We got into a pretty good routine just in time for him to leave!

I asked my MFM about potential limits to my activity and she said that with everything looking as good as it does, it's just a matter of listening to my body and dropping onto the couch at the first sign of fatigue. Some days I feel awesome, but I'd say that 5/7 of the week I feel POOOOOOPED. And let me tell you - if I don't get at least two hours of sleep midday, the entire house comes crashing down by 2pm. It's ugly. It's like being 40 weeks pregnant for 4 months, so think on that for a bit. The hardest part of the day is the 4pm to 8pm hours, when I'm just sore and crabby. I really love planning dinners and preparing them, but sitting down to eat them is when the muscles in my belly just start screaming. Something about sitting upright at a table kills me. I've had that problem with every single baby. Going out to eat is just as bad - ouch! So for the past couple weeks I'd prepare dinners and eat quickly, and then crash on the couch while the guys cleaned up and got the girls into bed.

My activities are very quickly coming to an end - just too much energy to put out there! The good news is that most of the stuff we were involved in was planned to end about now as we knew that with a twin pregnancy, things would need to be dropped or cut short. So I'm really not trying to do too much anymore. I still have a morning meeting once a week to meet with my mom's group and socialize, and next week ENDOW starts one evening a week. It looks like I'll probably wrap up the Mom's group in November some time and spend more time on the couch, but I'm hoping to save my energy for ENDOW and make it to most of the meetings before the boys arrive. It's REALLY important for my mental health to get out just one night a week to get a break from the house and family and just do Laura things. Andrew is being super nice about it and since my OB says that driving is peachy keen, he's biting the bullet and loosening up on me. ;-)

 Other than that there really isn't much more that I do, save for doctor's appointments. Those will increase a lot in the coming weeks, so I guess I'll be trading socializing for ultrasounds. Whee. Andrew does soccer practice in the evenings, which is super nice. I like going to the games, but soccer practice is a little "eh" for me. That's a Daddy thing! I'm still making it to games on Saturdays, but that's an easy one, as I just sit there and yell. Heck, I do that on the couch!

Andrew's mom will be here in one week for the "second shift," which will consist of fighting random acts of Clairorrism for three months of active duty in a war zone. She's so brave. She'll take over all the "Grandpa duties" of the past few weeks, with my couch time increasing as the days (hours) go by. Her stay will involve a LOT of doctor's appointments, soccer practices, bus-stop waiting, lunch-making, kid-bathing, Claire chasing, laundry-moving, blood-pressure checks, swing-pushing and Play-Doh. Talk about a working vacation! I anticipate that I have about another 3 weeks of feeling "okay," and will probably be VERY horizontal by Halloween. The thought of having ten more weeks to go REALLY gets me down, but as much as I'm mourning the loss of the entire season to rest, my body tells me that I won't want to do anything else anyway! Needless to say, I'm filling my DVR with all sorts of mind-numbing TV!