The nursery is painted!

My mom came up yesterday and she and I painted the "crib room." I took an accessory from our bedding set and had them match the color for the paint. It's about the color of a Granny Smith apple, which is funny since that's my favorite type of apple. My dad came today and we painted the trim in the room and my dad fixed some of my mom's slip ups from the edging yesterday. The room looks great! Now we just need to clean out the other room and order the furniture. I can't wait!

I went to the OB last Wednesday. We met the other doctor in the practice and we both really liked her. She's very cautious, which is nice. She wants to be sure to keep a close eye on our little girls since there is a size discrepancy between them right now. She said that things are alright for now since, as she put it, we have one fat baby and one average one. As long as Baby B stays average size or bigger, we're alright. Baby A also has a little more amniotic fluid than Baby B, but apparently their fluid levels are closer now than they were at our last ultrasound. Ben and I didn't realize that. The doctor said that the levels getting closer is a good sign.

I asked her about traveling since Mollie's bachelorette party is 3 weeks away and in Bethany Beach. The doctor wants to see the results of my next ultrasound before she makes the call on whether I can go to the bachelorette party or not. I'm hopeful that things will look good and I'll be able to go, but it all depends on their sizes and fluid levels at the ultrasound. I have to call the doctor's office after the next ultrasound and find out if I can go.

Oh, I asked the OB how big I am measuring and I was measuring at about 28 weeks, so only 6 weeks ahead. I don't think that's too bad. It was kind of odd, every time we asked if something was normal the doctor couldn't tell us if it was or not because they don't have "normals" established for twin pregnancies. You would think that after all these years of women having twins, someone would have gathered data and come up with some normals or at least averages... The couple of things she could tell us were that women pregnant with twins generally gain about 50 pounds and that half of them end up on bed rest. My weight gain may be a little high at this point, but it's hard to tell because we don't know what will happen with my weight gain for the remainder of the pregnancy. So I guess we need to keep an eye on that...

We had an exciting moment in the pregnancy last night- Ben felt one of the babies move for the first time! We were laying in bed and I could feel the movement- I'm pretty sure it was Baby B. I reached over and took Ben's hand and put it on my belly, at which point, of course, the baby stopped moving. Ugh! But then a few minutes later I felt her moving again so I asked him for his hand and put it on my belly again and she kicked! He felt it and said, "Was that it?" I told him it was and he was so amazed. He said it felt like a little tap, which is a pretty good explanation of it. I'm so glad he finally got to feel one move. Hopefully the other one will move for him to feel soon.

I'll post some before and after pictures of the "crib room" when I get a chance to take the afters and get them downloaded.

Big Ultrasound- 20 weeks 5 days

I'm going to be lazy and just cut and paste an e-mail I sent to a bunch of people on Friday after our level 2 ultrasound...

Ben and I went in for our "big" ultrasound yesterday where they did all the measurements and checked to make sure everyone looked alright. Some of you may not know, but we found out two weeks ago that we're having two little girls! We're very excited about them. Ben's family has not had a girl born into it in 4 generations, so it's really exciting that we're bringing two in at once!

Yesterday's appointment went great. Everything looked good on both of the girls. We saw all four chambers of their hearts, all of their little limbs and lots of other stuff. They are both currently head down, which is good. At our last ultrasound Baby A was head down and Baby B was breech. But now their heads are right there next to each other. In the pictures (which are all of Baby A) Baby A was actually laying with her head on the back of her sister's head. Then she pushed her sister away. It was pretty crazy to watch on the ultrasound.

We also got approximate weights on them for now. As of yesterday Baby A is 1 pound, which is in the 81st percentile for their gestational age. She's going to be our bruiser- especially since she's already pushing her sister around! Baby B is 14 ounces, so she's holding her own in the 51st percentile, but not as big as her sister. I'm not surprised that they're big, though, since their mommy was a 9 pound baby! Hopefully they'll keep growing like weeds like they have been. As uncomfortable as it may make me, I'd love to have a couple of big babies in about 4 months.

I guess I could throw in an update about me, too, huh? I'm doing fine. This pregnancy has been much easier so far (knock on wood) than I ever imagined it would be. I had no morning sickness to speak of. My biggest problem has really been heartburn, but at least that's treatable. I'm starting to get uncomfortable, but that's to be expected as my belly keeps getting bigger and bigger. And, boy, is it getting bigger! I can only imagine how big it's going to get by the time these babies are born! I've been seeing a chiropractor once a week for the entire pregnancy and I really think he's made a big difference in keeping me comfortable. He works on my flexibility and if I go in complaining about a certain area of my back or specific joints he works on those and really helps. I can't imagine what this would be like if I wasn't seeing him.

And here are the pictures:

I felt the girls move!

I was sitting at my desk today at work and I felt the girls move! It was an odd feeling. It felt like bubbles popping inside of my belly. Then I felt a few taps right above my belly button. I kept feeling things like that for awhile. It was so cool! I could definitely feel Baby A more than Baby B, but I think Baby B was the one that tapped me. I can't wait until I feel them more regularly!

I think I've probably felt them move before, but today was the first time that I was pretty confident that it was actually the girls. I've also never felt anything like this as much as I felt it today. Now I just have to wait for the movements to get strong enough for Ben to be able to feel them. I know he's going to love that.

Ben and I went and registered this weekend at Babies R Us. It was a long involved process, but we're almost done. We still have a few things that we have to decide on, but we'll do that online. We registered for a lot of stuff, but it's all stuff that we'll need for the girls. We also picked out our nursery furniture and ordered a glider. We figured out that we cannot fit all of the nursery furniture (2 cribs and 1 dresser) in one of the small bedrooms in our house, so the girls are getting both of them. We're going to put the cribs in one room- with a bedside table or two- and the dresser/changing table and glider in the other room. Hopefully that will work out well for us. At least that way the closet that holds their clothes will be the bigger closet up there. Now we just have to figure out how to organize it.

We go for our level II ultrasound on Thursday. That should be fun and exciting! At our last ultrasound we were told that this one would take about 30 minutes per baby, so we'll get to see our little girls for a good hour, probably. They'll also double check to make sure they're really girls. I'm pretty confident that they are, though. If not, we'll have to make some changes to our registry...

More belly pictures

I finally downloaded the pictures I took at 10 weeks. They're not very good because I was taking them myself and couldn't figure out how to turn the flash off. But you can still see my lack of a belly...

And here are a couple of pictures Ben took of me on Saturday at 19 weeks. My belly has changed just a little, huh?
I still can't believe there are two babies in there!

GIRLS!!!

We went in for another ultrasound on Thursday at 18 weeks 5 days. We decided before this ultrasound that we were going to find out what the little ones are. So when we got in the room, Ben told the tech that we wanted to find out. It was a different tech than we've had the other times we've been there- and a different room. That was fine, though. This tech was really nice and talked us through everything.

First she measured my cervix. She said they like the measurement to be over 2 and mine was measuring 4 something, so that's great! My cervix is still doing exactly what it's supposed to be doing, thank goodness. Of course, they'll keep checking that every 2 weeks to make sure it continues to do its job. Then she measured the fluid in the babies' sacs. They both looked good, too. It's amazing what you can see on the ultrasounds. We clearly saw all 4 chambers of one of the babies' hearts. That was so cool! We didn't get a picture of that, though. She also pointed out some of the other body parts, but none looked nearly as cool as the heart.

Baby A has turned head down since the last ultrasound. And Baby B is still breech. Baby A is on my right side and Baby B is on my left side. The tech also showed us where the placenta is and told me that I may not feel much in that spot since it's padded by the placenta. It's on my left side right below my rib cage for now. I still can't feel them. I think it's so crazy that Baby A flipped all the way over since our last ultrasound and I didn't feel a thing! Hopefully I'll start to feel them soon.

Then it was time to try to find out what they are. First she asked us what we thought they were. We both thought they were boys. So she moved the ultrasound wand so that she's got a shot of Baby A's legs and what is between them. She moved her little arrow and asked us what we saw and what we thought it was. Well, neither of us could tell anything. We couldn't see what she was looking at. Turns out she was basically looking at nothing- they're GIRLS! She showed us how you can actually tell- they look for 3 lines to see if it's a girl. Well, that and the lack of boy parts. And there were definitely no boy parts there!

She then went and checked Baby B, just to be sure. Baby B was being a good girl, and had her legs closed, but the tech could still tell that she was a girl.

So we're having two little girls. And everything looks great with them and with me for now. All good news from the appointment! Just the way we like it.

Here are a couple of shots of Baby A:

And here's is Baby B:

This is what will probably be the last picture we have of both of them together until they're born. They're getting too big to fit together on the ultrasound screen.