First KICK!!!

On Saturday October 4th I felt my first real baby kick. It was the most amazing feeling ever. I didn't know whether to cry or to laugh...it was just so exciting. I called Tim immediately (he was in Louisville for our Baby Showers). When I called him he was watching the UK game!

Surgery went well...

Surgery went well. They gave Anne her epidural around 11:15 and rolled her into surgery around noon.



Having never seen an epidural administered, it was pretty intense, at least relative to the kind of things I see on a daily basis being a real estate lawyer. They sat her up on the hospital bed, leaned her forward to me, and then started poking things into her spine. I say it was intense, but I could really only tell that by the brief flashes of pain I saw come across Anne's face. Anyway, the epidural process happened pretty fast, and she survived...which is good because now she knows that she can survive an epidural if/when they do one when the babies arrive.



She was back out of surgery at around 1:00, but she was pretty drugged up...they had to give her a second hit of the epidural and some additional pain mediciation when she was in the OR. According to her OBGYN and perinatologist, the cerclage was a total success. Cervix is all secure, and they say it is completely reasonable to assume she will go the full 38 weeks (which would be late January/early February).



So, now we are back home, just woke up from a nap. I have to sit down and make Anne a 2800 calorie per day menu, and I also have to pick up some new vitamins for her. Her mom and Renee are going to be helpful in terms of keeping her fed with the high calorie stuff, and I'm going to need to spend every waking hour on the treadmill to maintain my girlish figure.



The doctor's orders are for pretty strict bed rest for another few days or couple of weeks...basically until Anne feels ok to move around the house. Even after that, she's confined to "house rest" (or house "arrest" - not sure which), which means she can move from large furniture piece to large furniture piece every so often, can get up every now and then to make herself a glass of milk, but needs to stay on her butt other than that. Fun fun. Again, all about the babies, and any sacrifice we have to make, we make.



Co-MVP awards of the day go to Mrs. Leslie and Herbie and Renee, who were good soldiers with us at the hospital. And, of course, my Anne, who was a total trooper and has been through this whole process.

Anne's big day at the hospital

For those not aware, Anne is having a "cerclage" put in today to strengthen her cervix. Turns out that twins + gravity = lot of pressure on the cervix, and if it is not strong enough to hold the kids, there is a risk of premature labor. Force = Mass x Acceleration. Gravity is 9.8 m/s squared, so if I just knew what the mass of the kids was, I could calculate the force on her cervix. Standby for further details.



Anway, we're at 2o weeks on Monday, so going into labor now would be very bad. Hence the cerclage procedure. As far as I can tell, the doctor takes some 20 lb test fishing line and wraps a nest around the cervix to reinforce. No pictures forthcoming.



The surgery was kind of a surprise procedure. Anne saw the perinatologist on Monday, who measured her cervix and saw that it had gotten appreciably weaker over the course of the last week. So, he scheduled the procedure for today (Thursday) and, low and behold, here we are.



Since Monday, Anne has been on pretty strict bed rest as we try to reverse the forces of gravity. That hasn't been much fun for her, and if this continues then I'm going to (a) renew our blockbuster.com subscription and (b) hire some help. Applications welcome. One hope is that the cerclage procedure will strengthen the cervix so that she can at least move around the house. We spoke to a friend yesterday who had a similar procedure with twins, and she was able resume her full daily routine after a couple of weeks recovering from the surgery. Fingers crossed. The bigger picture is obviously more important (i.e., that the cerclage keeps those kids in there as long as possible), though. If we have to endure a few months of bed rest to make that happen, we'll do it with a smile.



Today has been tough, mostly because Anne hasn't been able to eat or drink since midnight. Keeping food from a twice over pregnant woman is a little like climbing in the cage with the lion at the zoo and trying to keep it at bay with tv and magazines. Pretty soon she might eat me.



Right now we're hanging out in the hospital room waiting for the IV so Anne and the little ones can get some nourishment. Then comes the epidural, then the procedure. If all goes well, she'll be out of here later today. Again, fingers crossed.



She's doing very well and is generally much calmer about this whole thing than I am. Saying a prayer for her and the kiddos.



Blackberry Picture of Anne in a wheelchair in the hospital this morning:

How I got to be on Bed Rest...

I created this blog when we were trying to get pregnant. It just took me 5 months to actually post anything! This is a SUPER long post to get everyone up to speed on how I ended up on bed rest. I plan to post weekly - if I have anything to say!

We decided to do an IUI on May 26th, 2008 (Memorial Day! Our doctor was very committed) It would take two weeks to find out if we had been blessed with our first child. My friend Chrissy had come in town to visit and I thought for sure that I was not pregnant. So Tim told her to take me shopping because he didn't want me to be sad. Shop we did...literally till we dropped.





We had a great weekend with Chrissy!! We went out for crabs our first night...I might have had a few beers :).



I wasn't feeling 100% so I decided to do a home pregnancy test. I knew it was still a little early to get a positive result, but we were going to a fancy dinner and I did not want to drink if we were really pregnant. So while everyone was getting ready for dinner I took the test:

WOO HOO!!!! We are pregnant, but I was the only one who knew. I didn't want to tell Tim with Chrissy in town so I had to wait! I woke up extrememely early on Sunday morning because I was so excited. I decided if I could tell anyone before Tim it would have to be my mom. So I called her very early to give her the good news. Then I went all day Sunday without telling Tim or Chrissy. This was SOOOO hard. I just wanted the moment I told Tim to be really special. Chrissy did take a picture of us at Ft. McHenry and I put my hand on my belly to signify that we were pregnant.

On Monday June 9th I decided I should go ahead and do another pregnancy test - this time I did the digital one because I wanted to be sure!

After I saw this I called my doctor and she had me go in to do bloodwork so they could start testing my HCG levels. I was so excited. Immediately I had to figure out how I was going to tell Tim. I had ordered a T-Shirt for Abi online but it wasn't going to be in for a couple of days - and there was no way I could wait anymore! I started calling all the doggie stores to see if they had a t-shirt that read: I am going to be a big sister! Unfortunately no one had anything that would work. Then I Started to call t-shirt print shops...they don't typically like to have rush orders on a monday, but I found a place that said they could possibly do it. I just had to bring in the dog shirt to be printed on. Uh oh...now I needed a shirt! They don't just have plain doggie shirts so I headed to Babies R Us and got Abi a little plain white knit dress for a 3 month old. The place where I got the shirts done was super helpful. We designed the shirt and they printed it instantly!



I decided to go ahead and get two more t-shirst for the Grandpa's (Fathers Day was less than a week and I figured this is how we could tell our Dad's!!)


So the day was going well...now I just needed to tell Tim. This was not as easy as I had planned. Tim informed me that he was going to work very late. I finally convinced him that he could leave for a little bit to grab dinner. I told him I would pick him up at his office at 7pm. Perfect. Abi and I loaded up in the car and headed downtown. We got front row parking and went to the bench to wait for Tim. Then one of his coworkers walked out...I was hoping Lynn wouldn't read the shirt Abi was wearing. We visited for a bit then she read the shirt and realized what was going on, so she actually found out before Tim that we were pregnant! She offered to take pictures of Tim realizing what was happening. Tim came out and saw me, Abi and Lynn and was very confused. He just starts chatting it up and I had to ask him a couple of times to look at Abi's t-shirt. He said he saw it and was embarrased that she was dressed up. Then I told him to read the shirt. His response: How did this happen? (We were convinced there was no way we were preggars!)Here is a short video:

You can tell how happy Tim was to found out he was going to be a daddy - look at his eyes:



We had already planned a trip to Miami as a getaway from the whole trying to get pregnant, not being pregnant and just to have some Tim and Anne time. Well this trip ended up being a very early Babymoon. It was such a great vacation. We stayed at the Delano which was fabulous. We saved a ton of money by me not drinking too! It was the first time I really got to enjoy a high end hotel room to the fullest. I was in bed by 8 pm everynight ready to watch TV on the massive Plasma TV! All we did while we were in Miami was lay by the pool, walk on the beach and watch movies in our room. The perfect Babymoon!!!

On June 23rd we went to see Dr. Hinton for our first appointment. At this point I was only 6 weeks so I figured this would be a quick appointment. I knew we wouldn't hear the heartbeats this soon, and that we might see the heartbeats but overall this was going to be just a little dot on the screen to confirm that we were pregnant. I did ask Dr. Hinton if she would know this soon if there was more than one baby. She started the ultrasound and said: "Oh, it is Twins!" I about jumped off the table. I was in shock. Tim's face went white. WHOA...didn't see this coming. We were told there was about a 5% chance of twins with our IUI procedure. Needless to say it took us a minute to absorb all of the information. After the doctor left the room I started to cry. The news was a bit overwhelming for me.



When we left the doctors office we started making phone calls: Mom, Mr. Mike and Mrs. Wanda, and Dad and Mrs. Renee. As you can imagine all of the grandparents were shocked!! After we made a few phone calls we each had to head to work. So we both went to our offices and I just started researching everything Twin on the computer.

The same day we found out we were having twins Tim told me we were moving to Lafayette! I was sooooo excited! But there was going to be a lot to do before we could move.

It wasn't too long after the twins news that my body realized we were having twins. My morning sickness became an all day sickness! The next few weeks were really difficult for me. I actually began to lose weight - which is NOT a good thing while pregnant, especially with twins. Tim began to take over just about every duty around the house. He had to cook dinner, pack the moving boxes, do the laundry, and everything else I just couldn't do. As we got closer to the move I was able to help Tim a little with some packing of the more fragile items. I felt like that was all I did for the move. Tim literally packed the rest of the house. Then he and some friends drove a massive moving truck, my tahoe with a trailer and Abigail to LA!

Our first week in town we had our first appointment with the OB in Lafayette. The next week we had an appointment with the specialist (he's the one who does ALL of my ultrasounds and monitors the growth of the babies) and he was concerned that my cervix was incompetent. He told me to come back in a week to recheck the cervix...on September 22, 2008 he informed me that I was immediately to go on bed rest and that he would schedule a cerclage for later in the week. And that is how I got to be on bed rest!