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.

Oh the Joys of Clomid and those pesky Pharmacists

I had to go get my clomid refilled. No big deal give them the  RX and wait. When I get my prescription I ask if its ok to take with the amoxicillin I'm taking for the strep/scarlet fever. The pharmacist comes over to tell me its fine to take together and there shouldn't be any problems. He then proceeds to ask me about taking the clomid
"have you taken this drug before?"
"yes"
"have you taken this dosage before?"
"yes"
"ok because thats a pretty hefty dosage for you to be taking"
"yeah I know"

I then couldn't help thinking to myself, do you really think I'd be taking a dosage this high if I didn't need to? Trust me there are no good side effects to taking clomid besides the fact that they make me ovulate, every other side effect I'd be very happy to not have to deal with including the hot flashes and night sweats, dizzy spells and raging hormones.
So I get home to find that he has also included a pamphlet on infertility, with a website for me to check out. I don't know if I should be thankful he is trying to help or irritated that he thinks I'm not educated about my own condition. I'm leaning towards irritated though as I looked at the bottle today and he wrote no refills on my RX, which my doctor had specifically written that I get up to 4 refills so I don't have to keep going in to him to get a refill every month until March.

Oh an update on that I went in for my last Ultrasound and he said that the high dosage is working great and that we should hopefully see great results, that is if there isn't any other underlying issues. So he dosen't feel the need to monitor me every single cycle. Instead he just wants me to keep taking the pills and keep on trying. If we aren't pregnant by March then I am to go back in and start some bigger testing.  Wish us luck!!!

Scarlet Fever

This last week I've been so super sick and not in a good I'm pregnant kind of way. More like a strep throat cant eat a thing kind of sick. Its been miserable, and it took me 5 days before I actually went in to a doctor. I know a BAD idea but the ladies at work had all said that they had been sick and it all starts with a sore throat so I figured I needed to just ride it out. But when my hives wouldn't go away and my throat wasn't getting even a little bit better, in fact its gotten worse, I had to go in. He told me that he didn't even need to test me that he knew I had strep, said that he'd treat me and if it doesn't get better I could have mono. But that normally has a rash with it, cue me rolling up my sleeves and showing him my lovely little rash. He took one look at it and said oh no that's a strep rash we call it Scarlet Fever. WHAT THE HECK! I didn't even know people got scarlet fever anymore. He acted like it was no big deal so I just went with it. But when I got home I had to do some research. The only thing I've ever known about scarlet fever I learned from playing Oregon Trail as a kid. And anyone who has played that game knows that you lose people in your wagon party to scarlet fever so I had to make sure it wasn't something bad!
Its not bad its annoying and can cause problems if not treated but we've got that one under control. The surprising thing for me was reading that most people who get it are between the ages of 4-8 years old, I'm pretty sure I'm no where near that age group. This was just something that shocked me. So I want to know, have any of you ever had scarlet fever or known anyone who has? I really thought that this was something that wasn't around anymore!

After the Clomid

As you may know I had a follow up ultrasound last week to see if the clomid actually worked. We were checking to see if I had grown any follicles and if they were big enough. The results weren't what we wanted to see. I only had one follicle (he wanted to see 2-4) and it wasn't even big enough for him to want to give me a trigger shot. So we've had to wait it out and make plans for our next cycle, in which he will up my dosage again.  Because of this I've had a hard time being optimistic about us getting pregnant this time around. Our chances just haven't been looking good.

So you'll imagine my surprise when I saw this little dude smiling at me telling me that I'm actually going to ovulate. I'll be honest I know most people don't understand how exciting it is to see that little face, but when I haven't seen him since I got pregnant a year ago I can't help but start to get my hopes up. Fingers crossed we can find better success with this little man than the last one!

One Year

One Year ago today I was the happiest person in the world, nothing (that I knew of) could have knocked me down, I was floating on a cloud. One year ago today I learned that after two and a half years of trying to get pregnant I WAS actually pregnant. One year ago I was telling my amazing husband that I finally was going to make him a father. One year ago today my life was changed forever. In one year there has not been a day that goes by that I don't think about that baby and what could be happening in our lives today if we hadn't lost it.  One year has been the hardest thing I have ever had to endure.
Today October 15th also is the National Day of remembrance for pregnancy and infant loss. How fitting that it lands exactly one year to the day that we found out about our angel baby. Today not only is that angel baby on my mind but every person with their own angel babies are also on my mind. I'm so sorry for the loss and heartache that they have all had to endure and hope that they have/will all be able to find peace in their own losses. Today they are all on my mind, in my heart and in my prayers.