sympathy

jordan here... so, good news to report, my belly is not growing! i've been reading this great book called 'the expectant father' and it has been incredibly helpful. there is this thing called couvade symptoms which explains my sleepiness, food cravings and splitting headaches. apparently it effects 90% of men during pregnancy so atleast i know now that i'm not losing it. watching tracey go through all these changes is really cool, but at the sametime i feel helpless at times when she's tired, feeling sick, etc. she is truly the most amazing person in my eyes and i can't believe that we have two babies inside her belly. she is going to be the absolute best mother in the world (no offense mama, no offense mama-alina). i am so excited and can hardly contain myself. but i am also scared and i pray everday for her health and our babies' health. this is such an incedible experience and i can't wait to meet the little ones.

13 going on...

i think the babies went through a growth spurt this week. i was VERY tired, kinda nauseus and all of a sudden my belly really popped. it still feels like i have a beer belly, but i think that's just because i'm not used to it yet. jordan is in love with my belly and thinks it's the coolest thing ever. here's me and our beloved matilda acting like the perfect pointer (as if you'd need it):

new visitors

we finally made it to the 12 week mark, which is a significant benchmark for many reasons. 1) in many circles it marks the end of the first trimester, which means the babies have passed their most critical development stage (now it's just a matter of growing like a weed!); 2) most problems happen in the first trimester, so if you make it past, you're likely in good shape; and 3) we set the 12 week mark as our date to tell the world - SO WORLD, WE ARE HAVING TWINS!

gosh it felt good to say that! you can't imagine how hard it has been keeping this a secret for the past two months. for those of you who are wondering how the heck we are having twins, your guess is as good as ours. it doesn't run in either of our families and we didn't do anything special (i.e. fertility stuff)...it just happened spontaneously. the doc is positive they are fraternal, which is actually a good thing for minizing prenatal complications. and honestly, as cute as identical twins are, they kinda freak me out a little.

so we had our 12 week appointment yesterday and it was an amazing experience. we heard both heartbeats - one was going at 155 and the other at 161, which is great. then we saw the babes on the ultrasound and baby a was wiggling around like crazy and kicking her legs. we even saw her little feet and toes! we could see baby b in profile and he was sucking his thumb - so unbelievable! we could even see the tiny bones in his hand and fingers. baby b is measuring perfect - right at 12 weeks, 5 days. the doc couldn't measure baby a 'cause she was squirming around so much, but thought she looked to be the same size. they are around 2.5 inches, which seems so small and so big to me at the same time. over the next three weeks, they head into their biggest growth spurt yet where they'll at least double their size.

here is a pic of baby a looking down at her. you can see her face on the bottom right side (she kinda looks like skeletor!).


















and here is baby b in profile sucking his thumb.














we go back in three weeks for another ultrasound and they will use a more advanced machine to measure the babes. yay!