Category — Ultrasounds

Shhhhhh! I’m going to share something with you guys that has me very concerned.

I think the government is performing some kind of experiment with my pregnancy.

I think they’re trying to see if I can be pregnant long enough to give birth to a seven year old.

I’ve hit a point in this pregnancy that I’m running out of mental motivation. I’m just over 32 weeks and I feel like it might as well be 32 years. I have been pregnant FOREVER. I don’t feel anywhere near the home stretch. I can’t believe there are still two months of this left. Two months! Do you have any idea how that fact makes me feel?

Yesterday, I broke down crying to Chris. I was having painful-ish contractions in the morning, followed by a full day of Braxton Hicks. The girls had no mercy on me at all. I just couldn’t take it. So I cried it out.

Every day, I remind myself to enjoy the pregnancy, as we don’t know if it’ll be my last one. I think of how many women give birth to premature babies, and how it must feel to want to give anything to just keep being pregnant again. I tell myself that the next 7 1/2 weeks are filled with one event after another — Halloween, the girls’ birthday, Thanksgiving — and that the time will go flying by. I think back on the newborn days and remember that it’s much easier being pregnant than it is having a newborn.

These are thin threads to hold onto some days, but I’m trying.

I do get a little motivation looking at these photos of our new little girl in 3D. Chris took me to get one of those creepy-yet-awesome ultrasounds last week. We saw that Baby Girl has chubby cheeks and a head full of hair already. She seems to look like a mix of Elise and Althea when they were newborns.

I could have sworn. SWORN. That I was carrying boy bits in me.

So when Chris and I opened the envelope containing The Ultrasound Photo that would reveal our third child’s gender, I fully, 100% expected to see only three letters.

Instead . . . Well, you can probably see where I’m going with this.

I won’t deny it. I cried. I cried and cried. I was disappointed. Shocked. I wanted a boy. I felt nothing but boy. I really had my hopes up.

As “insurance,” we had the tech take a photo of the baby’s bits and put it in an envelope for us to open later. We joked that we didn’t want to cry in front of everyone if it was a girl.

And when the tech told us that, in case we would later wonder, he was 100% sure of what he saw, I thought YES!!! It’s definitely a boy because he saw the undeniable.

As the tears streamed uncontrollably down my face when I saw the word “GIRL!!!!” I was simultaneously filled with shame and pain. Yes, I was disappointed. But the idea that overwhelmed me was that I could be at all disappointed in this tiny little baby, this innocent little girl who is completely welcome and wanted and loved.

I thought of my perfect daughters and how much they’ve improved our lives, of how endlessly I love them, of how the last thing I feel in them is disappointment or shame. So I was embarrassed and mad at myself for feeling what I felt.

I know, I know. As a mother, I’m not supposed to feel these things. And even if I do, I’m certainly not supposed to admit them. But the deal is, it’s over. I was disappointed. I’m still kind of in mourning.

But I love my daughter. Like Chris said, the sadness is in the idea that it’s not a boy, not that she is a girl.

So. On the bright side:

• We are experienced parents of girls.
• We don’t have to buy anything new for a while.
• Surely with three girls, we’ll get some grandkids out of them somewhere.
• She’ll have two awesome older sisters who will dress her in silly costumes and carry her around like a baby doll. Or a rag doll. Or a football.
• Who says we’re done, anyhow?

(Okay, that last one was a bit premature. I AM NOT THINKING OF #4.)

I think at this point, I’m mostly dreading the reactions from the general public. I’ve gotten enough negative BS about having twins — I can only imagine the shit we’ll hear about having three girls. “Blah blah blah three prom dresses,” “Yadda yadda three weddings,” “Yap yap yap you’re really in for it.”

Ugh. Like we haven’t already thought of that? Like we can do anything to change it?

“Girl” is not a four-letter word, even when multiplied by three. (Because that would be 12. Right? I took math. YES I PASSED.) There are plenty of four-letter words that aren’t bad — words such as good, luck and love.

Also, ulna.

Here are the rest of the photos of our darling doll of a daughter. We’re pretty happy now that it’s sinking in. Her profile looks a lot like the girls’.

Besides, if she’s half as wonderful as her sisters, we’re set.

Dr. Fabulous sent me to have an unexpected nuchal translucency scan on Squiggy on Monday.

It was so different from the one I had with the girls. Theirs took a good while and the tech let us view them in 3D/4D. I guess with a singleton pregnancy, no one gives a shit about you…? The tech spent eight minutes taking the measurements — and 20 minutes talking about his semi-failed music career as a penis pianist. Bastard.

Anyhow.

Squiggy looks good. His nuchal fold is practically non-existent, so no apparent worries. We met with Dr. B, our perinatologist from the last pregnancy. She was so happy to hear about the girls and how well they’re doing. I’ll bet happy stories like ours make her day — she probably deals with a lot of tragic cases.

Here are the ultrasound pictures. I’m still thinking boy. He looks so different from the girls. Also, he appears to already be drinking a beer in one of the photos. We’ll find out on July 16.

Eight pounds, baby! Or rather, eight pounds of baby. That’s how much I’m carrying around these days, as estimated at yesterday’s perinatologist appointment.

Baby A is estimated at 3lb 14oz, Baby B at 4lb 1oz. Wow! Both of the girls look awesome. No problems with the shared placenta or the gestational diabetes. The fluid and blood flow look great. When talking about how much longer I have to go, the perinatologist said, “Well, you’re not going to like what I have to say, but five or six more weeks…..”

I nearly lost consciousness at that point. Then she said something about having seven-pound babies, and I became incontinent.

Okay, maybe I didn’t pee on the bed, but I probably should have.

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Did you expect my two little girls to be anything less that totally adorable?

I saw the maternal-fetal specialist today and everything looks awesome. The girls are doing excellent. Baby A is now at a whopping 14 ounces and Baby B at a bone-crushing 15 ounces. That’s almost two full pounds of baby in me!

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You read that right, folks! These babies in this here belly are GIRLS!

After the most agonizing wait in the history of mankind, we found out the sex of the babies yesterday. I cried. Chris probably could have cried, but not for the same reasons. (Instead, he came home at noon and drank heavily.)

Everyone looks perfectly perfect. Baby A, formerly known as Poncho, had a heart rate of 143; Baby B, formerly known as Lefty, was at 130. Both weighed in at an estimated 8 ounces and both were very active. Bones were where they should be, hearts working just right, bladders and tummies full (I will not judge them for swallowing their own pee, I will not judge them for swallowing their own pee), brains fully developed, strong bones. Perfectly, perfectly perfect.

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On Wednesday, I had a quick ultrasound. I think the doctor did it more just to appease me than to actually observe the babies. Dr. Wonderful printed out three of the shittiest ultrasound photos I’ve ever seen. I wasn’t even going to post them . . . but then I looked at them more closely and saw that they are quite . . . good.

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On Friday, I went in for the nuchal translucency screening. We’d been counting down the hours until the ultrasound. It’s one of those bad-ass ultrasounds where they can look at the baby in 3D with real-time motion. The morning of, I was practically trembling with anticipation and anxiety. It’d been over three weeks since my last peek at the babes and I was so nervous that something had happened in the meantime.

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I had my second OB appointment today. Did the pap, boob smash, long medical history, etc etc. At the end, the nurse was leaving and my husband asked, “No ultrasound?” She said no, it’s too early. We insisted… “But the doctor said you’d do an ultrasound if you couldn’t hear the heartbeat!”

She relented. She first tried to find the heartbeat with the Doppler, but no dice. So she sent us to the tech, who decided to do a vaginal ultrasound instead of an abdominal one.

Not two seconds after inserting the probe, the tech gasped and threw her hand over her mouth.

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This morning I had my first doctor appointment! He smashed my uterus a little bit then we got to the good stuff– the ultrasound!

From the way the doctor was acting that first minute he moved the wand around, I thought for sure something was wrong. He asked, “Did they do an ultrasound after your miscarriage?” “Did they do any exam while you were miscarrying?” “Did they do a D&C?” I thought, OMG, there’s something horrible going on. I pictured myself on one of those weird Discovery Health stories where “I have 1 1/2 babies” or “I am my own twin” or something bizarre.

But thank god, that wasn’t it. He was asking those questions so he could show me the difference with my pregnancy now. We saw the little smudge that is our Shrimpy. The Shrimp is measuring 8mm, right on target with my calculations– about the size of a grain of rice, the doc said, so we’re possibly renaming him/her Ricey.

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