10 week mark

not much new to post in preggo land, other than it's my dad's birthday today and i can't believe he is 72 years old. which means i'm going to be 32 later this year - yikes! a big happy birthday to dad for living this long and being in such great shape. it's a good thing because we've got great things in store for him when he visits us in austin, like changing lots of diapers and being agile enough to bounce two babies on his knee at the same time!

i have two new lovely symptoms to report - an occasional dull headache and a constant back ache, like in my sciatica. the back ache might be from moving stuff, at least i hope it is, 'cause it's WAY TOO EARLY for these babies to be giving me back grief! other than my constant, ravenous, must east every hour or i'll bite your head off appetite, things are pretty good. i'm tired a lot. i have weird food issues that make me even more convinced that i should be a vegetarian (any "whole" meat product - like steak, chicken breast, a pork chop - makes my stomach turn; on the flip side, any tart fruit is fabu). my belly is popping even more, and we'll have to take a picture soon to document. all my normal fitting clothing is pretty much not happening any more. good thing i have a few baggy items that i can still wear.

here's a picture off one of the zillions of pregnancy websites that shows what a 10 week old alien - i mean baby - looks like. now imagine two of these in my belly!



two more weeks until our next appointment and we can finally let this cat (or cats, i should say) all the way out of the bag!

wiggums

we saw action today! today was our 9 week appointment - an hour of questions about our medical and family history and four vials of blood later, we got to see our silver babies. we peered in on baby b first and he (i'll use one of each gender just because i can't bear to refer to them as "its") was all wiggly and moving about. at one point we actually saw his legs kick! here he his in aerial view. his head is on the left and you can almost make out his leg on the right.



baby a was sleeping when we peeked on her, but after a minute or so she started wiggling too, and gave us a perfect jiujitsu arm thrust. here she is in profile and you can see that her head takes up about half her length (she takes after her father).

here is baby a's close up (i swear i can see her eye and smile!):


both babes are measuring perfect for their age - 2.4 cm (about one inch) and 9 weeks to the day. they both had glorious heart beats. if you can imagine a big fat purple grape, that's about how big they are. we head back for our next appointment in three weeks, which will mark the end of our first trimester. i have to say, seeing both babies wiggling about was just about the most amazing thing jordan and i have ever witnessed. i fell in love with them immediately and it now seems very real.

we are also going to start documenting my belly, so here i am in front of our new fireplace:

8 weeks and counting

the babies took their first trip this past weekend. the three of us went to albuquerque for work and had a great time! we stayed at the beautiful hyatt tamaya resort in the mountains (http://tamaya.hyatt.com/hyatt/hotels/index.jsp), ate lots of green chile-spiced new mexican food and visited amazing pueblo sites.

here's me at the jemez state monument, a 700 year old pueblo ruin with fransiscan church built on site in the 17th century:


I even got to stand in the shed where little boy was assembled at los alomos (freaky!). we had to get special clearance to go "behind the fence" of the high explosives area. i kept asking if there was any radiation risk and i was assured it was perfectly safe. it was pretty strange to drive past buildings that said "detonation testing" and the like. and the energy inside the little boy building - a totally unassuming and stripped down shed - was palpable. i feel privaledged and sad at the same time to have experienced this site that caused such devastation and completely changed the course of history. on to lighter topics...

my symptoms: at times i feel great, but most of the time i'm very tired, and some of the time i feel pretty sicky. good news though that i'm not throwing up at all (thank god!). my hunger is persistent and at times ravishing and i'm thirsty all the time. and i can no longer tease jordan about his pea-sized bladder because i can't hold it for more than 2 hours, which includes while i'm sleeping! other than that (i won't mention the more intimate symptoms), i feel pretty darn good! my belly is burgeoning faster than i imagined and it's getting tough to wear my regular clothes. it's funny how something like this will make you realize that every decent shirt you own is form-fitted! i'm down to wearing my low-rider stretchy jeans and a few pairs of pants that were big to begin with. i broke down and bought a few shirts at old navy that hide the bulge until i'm ready to share the news. and mom sent me a slew of darling maternity clothes that i can't wait to wear. honestly, they are way cuter than my normal wardrobe!

we move tomorrow to our house on the greenbelt and will be setting up all weekend. tuesday is our next appointment and ultrasound and we can't wait to see how our silverbabes have grown. until then!

holy cow, we're having twins!

j and i had our first ultrasound today and got the surprise of our lives - two babies with two strong heartbeats! i was a nervous wreck before the ultrasound and just wanted to see a heartbeat. when the doctor said, "i see one heartbeat, now let's look at the other baby" i started laughing hysterically and crying at the same time. it was the most amazing image i have ever seen - two flickers in two peanuts on a black and white screen. both babies measured exactly 7 weeks, which is exactly where they should be.

here's the very first picture of our babies:
baby a is on the right and baby b is on the left. the big dark blobs are the gestational sacs. the babies are the peanut-like solids and the round things with the dark in the middle are the yolk sacs. each baby measured .94 centimeters, which is about the size of a small blueberry! the doc thinks they are definitely fraternal because of the thick membrane between the two.

i don't know if it's quite sunk in for me yet, but i guess this explains why i've already developed a little pooch. the strangest thing is that i actually had a dream i was having twins and this past week i haven't been able to get the idea of twins out of my mind. chalk it up to mother's intuition.

jordan and i will be anxious to make it to the end of the first trimester, especially with twins, as there is a slightly higher risk of losing one of the babies. but after seeing two heartbeats, our ob (who we love) said we have a 90 percent chance of the babies being healthy. we go in for our next appointment on july 25 when the babes will be 9 weeks. in the meantime, i have a work trip for 5 days in alburqurque and then we move, which will be excellent distractions.

we've told our moms and my dad but we going to keep this a secret from the rest of the world until we make it to 12 weeks. it's going to be super tough now that we know what we know. TWINS!

why must i be so hungry?

i feel like an eating machine. never in my life have i felt such hunger. fasting on fresh-squeezed juices for days in undergrad - pishaw! the apple diet in high school - not even close! this is a hunger that feels like your stomach is nawing on itself. constantly. food will only satisfy it for a mere hour at most. it's the craziest thing i've ever experienced. the funny thing is, the websites say you don't need any extra calories in the first trimester, and shouldn't gain but a few pounds. yah, right.

from the start

i decided to create a separate blog to document baby silver. j and i took these fantastic classes with dr. carrie, a prenatal/perinatal psychologist, and learned all about the fantastic world of babies. from preconception to breathing air, our babies have amazing capacities that most of us take for granted, or are at least ignorant to. and while i've always been overambitious about journaling, this is important history for our little silverbaby to have access to. i'm committed!

we found out i had life brewing in me about 2 weeks ago - june 17 to be exact. so that means baby silver's conception was likely on june 5, 2006. go baby! i felt pretty great the first week or so after we found out - no crazy symptoms. and then last week it hit me. naseau, extreme hunger, bloating, fatigue, short fuse, crampy, light headed. lovely symptoms aren't they! but they also are strong, happy reminders that there is another life inside of me, which is completely overwhelming to me at this point. the hunger deal is crazy though. j calls me the garbage disposal. i can't eat enough food! last thursday i was so hungry for chinese food i thought i would die if it didn't inhale potstickers and moo shoo. today it's all about a burger and onion rings and it's 9:45 am.

so i'm 6 weeks tomorrow (they count it from the first day of your last period). we have our first dr. appointment on july 11 and they'll do an ultrasound. i'd be lying if i said i wasn't nervous - i pray everyday that baby silver is healthy and strong. we should be able to see a little peanut with a heartbeat!

here is what baby silver may have looked like last week:
and now!:it's pretty unbelievable to look at pictures of embryos on the internet. it's freaky and yet completely beautiful and miraculous. baby silver is not even as big as a blueberry!

this blog is a secret for now - we're waiting until we get close to finishing the first trimester before telling family and friends. it seems like forever, but i know in real time it's only about a month away. hopefully this blog will give me an outlet so i'm not too tempted to spill the beans.