20w5d

Well folks, here we are.  20 weeks and 5 days pregnant.  The day Zoey Jane and Piper Ivy entered and exited the world.  It's been pretty surreal for the past few weeks, if I'm being honest.  For example, last week Will and I went grocery shopping, and I clearly remember thinking:  At this point last time, I was in Vanderbilt, hooked up to contraction monitoring machines and IV's and in Trendelenburg position, scared out of my mind.  And here I am today loading and unloading groceries.  Each day I have woken up, remembering the events of that gestational age with the girls.  This is the day I was put on bedrest.  This is the day I was bused by ambulance to Vandy.  This is the day I was sent home with a 'good luck'.  Until finally, today, the day the girls died.  Ironically, we had an ultrasound today.  Totally unplanned for it to be on THIS particular day, but here we were.  I didn't know what to expect, because I obviously never made it to a 20 week ultrasound.  The first thing she did was measure my cervix.  The average length for a singleton pregnancy is 3cm, for twins it is usually shorter.  With the girls, I was 1.8 at 18 weeks, 0.8 at 19 weeks, and then no cervix at all until eventually I dialated and lost them.  Just giving that information for comparison.. because my length today was a whopping 3.95cm!! The doctor said it is "nice and long" with "no problems indicated".  I can not tell you how amazing those words were, and how cool it is to see this abdominal cerclage doing it's thing.. saving my babies!!

Speaking of babies... Xander and Londyn are perfect!! He said they are both "thriving" in there, with only a 3% growth descrepancy between them, with X being a little bit bigger.  He is only concerned if the discrepency is in the 20-30% range, so these nuggets are good as gold :)

The only thing my doctor did talk to me about that was on the negative side was preterm labor.  He basically said that if my body were to go into labor, it would be extremely risky with the abdominal cerclage because the babies are trying to go to the birth canal, but they can't.  So, if they can't stop contractions, my uterus could rupture, I could have internal bleeding, I would need an immediate c-section, etc.  He said I need to be really careful and aware of my body, and monitor contractions if I have them, and come in IMMEDIATELY.  Luckily (unluckily?) I know exactly what contractions feel like at this point in the pregnancy, because of the girls.  It's hard to forget feeling those contractions and knowing your world was about to collapse.  So I know for a hard fact that I have not had any contractions thus far.  I am making sure I drink a TON of water and stay off my feet as much as possible.  At the end of this scary conversation he said "but to be honest I have a really good feeling about this pregnancy and foresee you delivering closer to 36-37 weeks with no problems."  Music to my ears!!

So, it's officially official, I no longer have a previous pregnancy to compare this one to.  Uncharted waters people!!  Our next ultrasound is 6/20, where we will be doing fetal echocardiograms on X and L.  A lovely 2 hour appointment :-)

In one of my (many) twin pregnancy books, it talks about splitting your pregnancy into milestones.  Thinking of each milestone as a "Touchdown", and visualizing every touchdown as being one step closer to winning the big game: bringing home 2 healthy babies as the trophy!  The milestones are as follows:

Milestone 1: week 20 pregnancy is no longer a "miscarraige" but "infant death" (and- past the girls' birth age! I threw that part in there)

Milestone 2: week 24 border of viability.  Life saving measures will be taken if babies are born at this time or later

Milestone 3: Week 28 very early preterm: odds of survival are good, but with long NICU stay

Milestone 4: Week 32 early preterm: odds of survival are very good with little NICU time

Milestone 5: Week 36 late preterm: twins are often born this week!!

Milestone 6: Week 39 full term for twins

So, right now we are working on milestone 2, which we will reach June 21st, right after our ultrasound!  So I will probably blog again at that point.  Until then, here are my little munchkins! Baby A- Londyn Mae                                   Baby B- Xander James