Our Babies...

We got to find out the genders of our beautiful babies this last week. And honestly I'm so excited!!! These two little girls are going to be spoiled rotten! When the tech said that baby A was a girl Shawn smiled and said oh my mom will love that (he comes from a long line of boys) then when she also said that baby B was a girl I could tell there were some thoughts going through his mind. Including "I'm going to need two shotguns" to keep the guys away I'm assuming. That one he actually told me, he's already getting super protective of our girls. The ultrasound was 1.5 hours long, so we got to see them moving around, or not moving around in baby B's case for well over an hour. The best was seeing their little yawns and hiccups and seeing daddy's reactions, priceless!
They both look like perfectly healthy little girls. I am now starting to go in to be monitored twice a month, once with my OBGYN and the other with my Maternal Fetal Medicine Specialist. I'll be 20 weeks exactly at my next OB appointment next Wed. Its crazy how fast the time is flying yet going so slow all at the same time. 20 weeks is the halfway point for most pregnancies, my goal for this one is 37 weeks. This means that we would be more than halfway there already. Yet 17-18 more weeks seems like an eternity away!

17 Weeks

Week: 17

Me:

Weight: Down 5 lbs

Symptoms: Starting to feel uncomfortable most of the time. Shawn the wonderful husband that he is went and got me a boppy body pillow, he's a saint! Now I can sleep a little better through the night. I feel great and am starting to eat whatever I want now.

Cravings: This last week or so I've wanted spicy things but mostly just flaming hot Cheetos  Don't believe me you can just ask the poor missionary I stole them from the other day. I couldn't help myself I'd been craving them and then like a wonderful gift he came walking through the door with a bag in his hands. No worries he was a wonderful guy and willingly shared them with me. Thanks Elder Kongaika! The other thing I've really been craving is fizzy. I know that might sound funny but I don't want most sodas but I crave the carbonation. 

I had my appointment last week and found out that I was already measuring 24 cm. For those that don't know your measurement with a single pregnancy should be about the same as you are in weeks. With twins I was told you can measure up to 4 weeks more, but 24 cm is double that. I'm not sure how this makes me feel!

I start seeing a specialist at the hospital at the end of the month to monitor myself and the babies. I will still be seeing my normal OB once a month for now as well. This means that I will be going to two appointments a month for now and it will become more than that as time goes on.

The Babies: 

Size: Each approximately the size of a 

Approx Length: 5.12 in.

Approx Weight: 4.94 oz.

Position: Top baby is transverse meaning laying sideways across my belly

              Bottom baby is breech meaning sitting head up

We were supposed to find out genders last week but they are a pair of very stubborn little babies. Baby A (bottom baby) had legs tucked up. The doctor said that it looks like a girl BUT there is a chance its a little boy being modest. Baby B (on the top) was not tucked up but had his/her legs shut so tight it was hard to even see  where one leg ended and the other started. They were not ready to reveal their genders yet. They were so stubborn we couldn't even get a good shot of their faces. Maybe they knew that daddy was there and were being shy I have no idea. Hopefully we'll find out their genders at my specialist appointment on the 22nd. Fingers crossed!!!

15 weeks

As promised I have a bump photo for you! I was going to wait until 16 weeks but we are supposed to get a peek at genders at 16 weeks, so if babies cooperate then we will have a small gender reveal for our families so I probably wont update again until 17 weeks :) Plus I had the urge to take a photo this week so why not share it with you guys.
Before you say anything I know its a mirror shot but I don't have a tripod and no where to set a camera to take a decent photo so yes its a mirror shot, please forgive me! :)


Here it is

Twins, Week 12 :)

So I have decided to start doing regular updates on the babies. They will only be seen about once a month for now but I can always share belly shots if you would like. Today I went in for my 12 week ultrasound, I'm officially in my second trimester, thank goodness!!! Here are the stats:

Week: 12

Me:

Weight: Down 8 lbs dang morning sickness

Symptoms: Most of my first trimester stuff is starting to fade now, my energy doesn't seem to be returning but the morning sickness is starting to fade and that makes me jump for joy!

I am starting to not fit into my normal clothing so I believe I will be maternity shopping for my birthday! I don't have a bump picture yet, but when I went to lunch with my family a few days ago the first thing my mom said to me was "wow you look pregnant!" so I know its not just in my head that I am starting to show now. I'll see if I can get one then update :)

The Babies: 

Size: Each approximately the size of a 

Heart rates: 147 and 152

Position: Still sitting side by side

The babies are not identical which I'm sure you can see from the ultrasounds below I have a gut feeling that its a boy and a girl. And I think that baby b looks a lot like S already :) We get to find out April 3rd what the babies are as long as they are willing to cooperate. I'm so excited!!!

Here are our babies

Baby a

Baby b

Gaining Weight

Never in a million years did I ever think that I would have to worry about not being able to gain weight. I mean that's every woman's dream right? Eat whatever you want and not gain an ounce. Normally I'd be over the moon excited about this recent development except I'm trying to grow a couple of babies. So far I have lost about 8lbs since finding out that I'm pregnant. I'm nearly out of my first trimester now and was hoping that by now I'd be seeing some weight gain. Again an other sentence I never thought I'd hear coming out of my mouth.
I will attribute this weight loss to morning sickness 100% I've been pretty sick the whole time we have known about this pregnancy. Which I guess is supposed to be normal and blah blah blah with twins. I did end up having to talk to Dr S about how bad it had become, which is when he put me on Zofran. I'm not a fan of being medicated and try to avoid it at all costs. So the Zofran is only taken when I'm having a really rough day.Beyond that I'm just trying to tough out the morning sickness like anyone else would. So I do blame my weight loss on the morning sickness and hope that it will start to subside soon.
Here is what makes me feel a little better about the weight loss in my first trimester. In all I'm supposed to put on close to 45 lbs with twins! Losing 8 lbs helps me feel just a little better about my final goal weight. This is such new territory to me. I've always been concerned about the opposite. I keep putting on weight I can't take it off, I want to lose 40lbs. And now its completely reversed and I'm having to worry about weight gain. Funny how that happens!

PS Once I have my next appointment and officially make it to Trimester Two then I think I might start doing weekly updates. What do ya'll think? Good or bad plan?

Update

We went in on Wednesday to confirm that both of our babies were viable. I stressed for an entire week about it. This is news that I know some people don't ever want to hear, but for us the thought of having twins was such a blessing. It been four years of trying and losing a baby and not knowing if we were ever going to get pregnant again. So I stressed that we weren't going to see the second baby when we went in for this ultrasound.
The doctor looked at the screen and first thing he said was well there are two healthy babies in there I see both heartbeats. He went on to measure them and make sure they looked like normal little "blobs" my mom gets mad at me for calling them that but for now that's really what they look like two little blobs on the screen. Dr H then started to look much closer at the screen we were both worried that something might be wrong. After what felt like forever he said " The reason I'm looking so closely at this ultrasound is because I see a third sac." Insert heart dropping followed by quickened breathing, Shawn didn't even say a word but later told me he just about passed out when he said three. All I could mutter was "oh gosh." The med student that was with him confirmed that she too saw the third sac. In the next breath Dr H calmed our nerves and told us that he still considers this a twin pregnancy because the third sac is empty. He said he is confident it will only be two babies and not three since by this time we should have seen something in the third sac for it to be considered a third baby. HUGE SIGH OF RELIEF!
 I know I said twins are a blessing and something we welcome with open arms but we never even thought of the idea of having a third and it freaked us out! Two is going to be a ton of work and neither one of us is delusional about it. But I know I'll be able to adjust and take care of both of our babies and be just fine. I don't know if I can say the same for three, that may require help. Coincidentally I just found out that a lady at church is indeed having triplets sometime this summer. We're going to be growing by lots of little feet in a short time period.
We are extremely excited that we have been blessed with these babies and can not wait to meet them. I am somewhere between 7.5 and 8.5 weeks and will go in next Wednesday to my OB (way cool I got to graduate from my specialist, but sad to leave him at the same time) he'll date the pregnancy and we'll have a more solid due date. Either way look out for the Marra Twins to be making their grand arrival sometime between Aug and September of this year!

Twin A

Twin B

Two

The number of months I've been on this high dose of Clomid. The number of weeks until I'm also two months pregnant. Two the number of babies we are having! That's right my friends we found out this morning that we are expecting twins. We have known for a few weeks that I am pregnant but needed to wait for a viability scan to tell people. We are very excited but trying not to get to excited yet.
Here's the story of our experience this morning:

We had a student doctor there with our normal Reproductive Endocrinologist the student tried doing the ultrasound first. The first thing I noticed was that there were two sacs instead of one, I did not see anything in them though. This made my heart drop a little bit, I wasn't sure what to think about it and then my doctor started to ask me a lot of questions like could my dates be off and lots of stuff like that. He then took over the ultrasound thank goodness! This is when he explained that he saw two sacs and that she just wasn't pushing hard enough (Shawn still had no idea what was going on at this point, as he's never seen an ultrasound and didn't know any of the lingo.) This is when I saw the first baby, what a huge sigh of relief. Baby A had a heartbeat that we could see and hear. It was exciting and to be honest I teared up a bit over it. The Doctor at this point was now referring to it as twin A this is when I heard Shawn taking some nice deep breaths, I'm pretty sure that its when he realized that we were having twins. The Doctor then moved on to Baby B, this one he looked at for quiet a while I thought I saw a flutter on the screen but it wasn't anything like Baby A's. This is when he told us that he wasn't sure we could call Baby B viable yet because there wasn't a heartbeat that we could see or measure. We were told that it is most likely too early to see Baby B's heartbeat since they are measuring around 6 weeks. And since you can't see a heartbeat for the first few weeks and you can miss seeing it by a day the doctor was not concerned. We have an appointment next week to see if Baby B will make it or not. I'm feeling super calm about it at the moment and really have faith that everything is going to be just fine with both babies, and if not we have at least one beautifully healthy baby on the way.

The start of this commercial in the car makes me think of what we will be like when we bring our babies home.