Graduation

Today marks the graduation of the twins from the embryonic stage to the fetal stage. They are now fetuses...or feti? Anyway, at the 10 week mark, they should have all their foundation in place, and for the remainder of the 30 weeks will spend their time bulking up and fine tuning the system. Happy graduation, little ones. Wish I had a window to my womb where I could peek in every once in a while to see how things are going. Who am I kidding, that window would be open wide 24/7 if it were there for viewing.

Off topic

What is up with random spam comments being left on my blog? I even have the spam blocker control on, I think. It's annoying!

Twin trivia

While at the Perinatologist last week, I got a fast track biology lesson in twins. In case you are interested, here's what I learned:

There is 1 type of fraternal twin and 4 types of identical:

fraternal= 2 eggs, 2 sperm separately fertilized and they have their own placenta and amniotic sac with a fairly thick membrane separating them.

identical= 1 egg and 1 sperm fertilized and split during cell division. The following are the types of identical twins:

di/di= zygote split during cell division 1-4 days after fertilization, and they have their own placenta and amniotic sac.

mo/di= zygote split during cell division 4-8 days after fertilization, and they have their own amniotic sac but share a placenta. High risk of twin to twin transfusion syndrome (TTTS).

mo/mo= zygote split during cell division 8-11 days after fertilization, and they share both amniotic sac and placenta. High risk of cord entanglement.

conjoined twins= zygote attempted to split 12 days after fertilization, share amniotic sac, placenta and body part(s).

--Also interesting to note that the reason my hCG numbers didn't indicate twins from a blood test taken 14 and 16 days past ovulation may be because they split later in the process.

Fluke, fluke, fluke

Read the title however you may, I'm using it as an expletive at this point. First and foremost, these babies are well and good. I know this because I went to the Perinatologist today to have another ultrasound performed due to some pretty dramatic red spotting that occurred last night. I was starting to get used to the tan to light brownish spotting companion, but the red sent me into a frazzled frenzy. So I called my OB and was told there's really nothing I could do and it could be nothing. Well, having spent the entire night sleeplessly thinking that I might pull my already graying hair out if I had to wait another 2 weeks in the unknown zone, I made a call to the specialist this morning. See, during my last consultation with him, he told me I could come in for a sanity ultrasound when I did indeed get pregnant. I called him on this favor and he made true to his word. They were so accommodating that I got in right away. Their super high tech equipment immediately reassured me of the twins good health. Cause of the spotting? Still not completely identified, but there's nothing coming from the uterus and cervix is closed. But I do have a very sensitive cervix and again the pressure on it could be creating havoc.
And guess what? It was also determined that we are having IDENTICAL TWINS. Now ideally you'd like for your twins to have their own amniotic sac and their own placenta. These babies have their own sac but share the placenta. Which leads me to another--yes, you guessed it, risk. There's a 1 in 10 chance these twins will have TTTS. I can't find a web site that doesn't completely freak me out, so I'd rather not link to anything yet and trigger mass freak out. All I will say is that if this happens to be the case, I will be going through laser therapy (surgery) on the veins within the placenta that control the blood and nutrients to the babies. But we'll go down that road if we have to. Today I'm not going there.
To end on a happy note (as if IDENTICAL TWINS doesn't put a smile on your face) the Dr. also reassured me that at this point I have a minimal chance of miscarrying one or both of the babies, due to all the things they saw on the ultrasound today. Doesn't mean it couldn't happen, but it's not something that should keep me up at night, spotting or not.

Double trouble, literally

Twins. Yeah, crazy. Clearly I wasn't prepared to go into my ultrasound and get this news. We only saw one baby 2 weeks ago, so I was completely, utterly, and absolutely shocked. I can't even stutter out the word c-cc-ca-cautiously optimistic, but apparently I can write it out. So that's where I am. So I'll start from the beginning of this appointment--actually I'll go back to the last ultrasound a bit.

At the last ultrasound, we identified the baby and saw a great heartbeat. So really, that was all we were hoping for. That's all the Dr. was hoping for, and we had high fives all around and then moved on. So this appointment, again saw the one baby with a strong heartbeat which measured at 8 weeks. So I asked the Dr. while she was there to see if there was anything visible in the ultrasound that could rule out a subchronc hematoma (bleeding in the uterus), because I have had some brown spotting recently that causes me some concern. So she started looking around. And then she flashed on something and said, "Oh my God!" Now I'm thinking tumor, mass, hole, I don't know but anything terrible that could mean the demise of my beautiful beating heart bean growing in there. So she frantically moves the ultrasound back and forth. And I try to calmly say, "WHAT THE HELL?" So she says, "I think I see another baby." She adjusts the machine and voila, there's this other beautiful beating heart bean playing hide and seek.

So yes, I'm excited. If you peel away the first layer of terror. Terror for what I know can happen, what I don't know that can happen. And then peel away that layer of armor that contains all my emotions. Hiding behind all of that is a glimmer of hope and excitement.

There is so much that can go wrong, that I think there might be some hope. I'm always the fluke. Well, this might be a fluke in the right direction for me. It would be a fluke if these babies made it to full term. It's highly risky and I'm already a high risk.

So again I wait another 2 weeks to get another ultrasound to see if these babies continue to grow, and if they have all the supplies they need. I've been requested by my Dr. to take it day by day and not to get my hopes up too high, but that if all goes well past the 10 week mark, these babies just might be around for the long ride.

ABC...

Sophia knows her ABCs! Well, for the most part. Here's some mid-week distraction for you. Notice she's not looking at the camera during 95% of the taping. She's so smart, she can sing her ABCs and watch TV at the same time. We are so proud.