Queasy, antsy, & itchy....

As those of you who have been pregnant, or been married to someone who is pregnant, can attest to, it's not easy and certainly not always fun.  Although the morning sickness hasn't been as bad as it could be, having your stomach feel "off" pretty much every day for a few hours still isn't fun.  And sometimes when your tummy feels yucky all you want to do is lay down and rest, but that's not always an option for Michelle because her restless leg syndrome has been even more obnoxious since she's been pregnant.  So she'll lay down at night, or during the day, and her legs will get that antsy, gotta move feeling in them making it hard to stay still and almost impossible for her to sleep. Typically, the go to remedies are to sleep on her stomach, take ibuprofen or tylenol PM, and/or take a hot bath.  Now it's a little trickier because she's not going to take any ibuprofen PM, it's already not very comfortable to sleep on her stomach, and the bath has to be less hot and it seems like taking lots of baths might contribute to pregnancy complaint number three...itchy skin!  Oy!  The itchiness has been a tough one.  People say your skin on your belly and breasts gets itchy from stretching out, but Michelle's itchy in lots of spots including her back and legs.  We've tried all sorts of things including pine tar soap, lathering her head to toe in coconut oil or cocoa butter, oatmeal baths, mint tea compresses, changing laundry detergent, soap, etc.  And yet the itchiness continues.  The intense lotion does seem help a bit and has become a nightly ritual, but some nights it's still pretty tough.  We'll just keep trying things and hope something helps!  I remember when I had chicken pox as a kid and we painted our bodies with calamine lotion using foam paintbrushes...maybe that's next! =)

Foodie returns to her roots...

People keep saying "wow, you look amazing!" or "you look like you're doing great!" to Michelle when they see her.  And she does and she is.  There have been plenty of annoying pregnancy things but overall I think Michelle is doing a great job and we've been pretty lucky so far.  Sure, there was some morning sickness (that happened at all different times of the day) but she's only thrown up three times which isn't bad considering she's carrying three babies. Lots of women with multiples are dreadfully sick and some even have to go on a pump of anti-nausea meds. Soooo glad that isn't the case for us!  The hardest thing for me has been trying to get Michelle to eat vegetables and other healthy foods.  It is really amazing how pregnancy can change your diet!  Seriously, we are pretty healthy and adventurous eaters; we eat tons of vegetables and all kinds of ethnic foods.  Well, that pretty much went out the window for the first trimester!  Michelle's "go to" foods were toaster waffles with peanut butter, macaroni & cheese, chicken & rice, and other carb heavy comfort foods!  For those who have known Michelle for a long time, this lack of interest in vegetables probably sounds familiar but it sure feels weird to me because probably 80% of our diet pre-pregnancy was vegetarian!

It was my mission to get as many healthy nutrients in there as I could so I made her green smoothies with spinach, added chia seeds to her PB waffles, and made homemade mac & cheese with pumpkin in the sauce.  Our usual Sunday routine of making food for the week was also gone because she couldn't predict what she might be able to eat at any given time!  We've eaten a lot of sweet potato fries over the past couple months because that was one vegetable I could usually talk her into!

The other crazy eating thing is how much Michelle has to eat!  Lots of people recommend that moms carrying multiples gain a lot of weight early because the babies will be born early.  Calorie recommendations range from 3,000-3,500 daily!  And when you sometimes feel nauseous, and if you eat too much at once you get heartburn, it can be really tricky to get that many calories in your system in a day!  And she's also supposed to try to eat upwards of 180 grams of protein a day.  That has also been a big challenge and one I doubt we're beating every day.  It's particularly tricky when eggs don't always sound good and when chicken is the only meat that ever sounds do-able.  I've started making her protein shakes every day with soymilk, some protein powder, lots of peanut or almond butter, a few slices of frozen banana, and some cocoa powder and that gets us closer.  Every time we leave the house we have to have a bunch of snacks packed.  Michelle has a snack by the bed each night so she has something to eat if she is hungry in the middle of the night or to eat as soon as she wakes up in the morning.

Thankfully, now that we're heading into the second trimester Michelle is starting to eat vegetables again!  Cobb type salads have been a weekly event so that's been lovely!  Last night she even tried a bite of my kale portobella mushroom bowl with spicy peanut sauce and said it tasted pretty good!  Hopefully by the time our CSA starts in June we'll be back to our normal diet (well, plus 1500 calories for Michelle!) 

4, 8, and 12 week belly pics

We enjoyed seeing my sister Kate's "belly pics" as she progressed through her pregnancy so we thought we'd do the same.  So far we are taking them every four weeks but I think we need to switch to every two weeks because I already feel like I can tell a difference from week 12 to week 13.  And I'm sure we'll do every week this summer because the change will be more obvious as these three babies start competing for space!  When Michelle saw this line-up she said "man, I didn't realize how little I actually was in Hawaii!" (week 4)

4 weeks

8 weeks

12 weeks

 The biggest change from 4-8 weeks is definitely in the chest!  One of Michelle's professors (who knew we were doing IVF) said "I knew you were pregnant because your boobs are HUGE! Seriously, they're like 3 times the size!"  =)  By 12 weeks though, and especially now the belly is starting to catch up!  And having read other triplet blogs and seen their belly pics, I think by 20 weeks her chest will look tiny compared to the belly!

Lots of questions...

Like I said in the last post, even as we were leaving the ultrasound we started our list of questions and that list just kept getting longer. Does this change what Michelle should be doing as far as eating and exercise? How about prenatal vitamins? We were planning on a 38 or 39 week c-section since Michelle had fibroid surgery in 2011 so now what will they do? It is tricky because average gestation for triplets is only 32-33 weeks! And you really don't want to go earlier than that but of course we want to be sure Michelle isn't at undue risk either!

We went for our first appointment in Danville on Friday April 12th.  It takes about an hour and a half to drive to Danville and I have a feeling we are going to get pretty sick of that drive!  The first person we met with was a fellow (as in a guy doing a fellowship) and he was nice, but awkward.  I know they have to do this, but he basically just went through a big list of the risks associated with multiple pregnancies which is pretty intimidating. And because we are who we are, we had already done a lot of research and already knew all of this.  He asked if we had questions, so we asked about diet and exercise and about the plan for the c-section.  He couldn't really answer either question for us. So when he asked if we had any more questions we were thinking "Well, since you haven't answered any questions so far...no!"  The "real" doc came in and repeated almost verbatim the list of risks! Michelle started crying and the guy totally back pedaled and apologized.  They left to get a print out of supplement recommendations and Michelle was like "I wasn't even crying because i was scared, I was crying because I am so frustrated because I feel like this is a waste of time and we aren't learning anything!"  I was just floored by the way he freaked out when Michelle started crying!  Really, Mr. Maternal Fetal Medicine...you see women in high risk pregnancy situations every single day...I would think that these women with raging hormones in stressful situations cry on you at least daily!  Eventually he did answer our questions about diet and also told us that if everything was going well he would let Michelle go until 35-36 weeks.  That was great news!  But by far the best part of the visit was the ultrasound.  So at this point we were at 9 weeks 3 days.  The ultrasound tech was super friendly and positive and sooo excited for us!  What saws amazing was that even as tiny as they all were (about the size of grapes) they were already moving their arms and legs! We got to see all their heartbeats and they all measured pretty close again, though so far Baby A is the bruiser. =)

Baby A- 9wks 6 days, heartrate 171

Baby B- 9wks 4 days, HR 168

Baby C- 9wks 4 days, HR 178

Our little alphabet! 

 

A little scare...that turned into, well, shock...

So we went to Seattle at the end of March to celebrate our good friends Scooter and Margo's wedding.  It was a wonderful weekend and so great to see so many good friends.  It felt a little like rewinding the clock a couple years before so many of us moved away.  It was fun to share the news that we were pregnant in person too.  On Sunday we had an Easter egg hunt and brunch before we headed to the airport for a red-eye flight home.  That red-eye might have seemed like a good idea when we bought the tickets but we were already dreading it before we were told that our flight from DC to State College was cancelled because of an impending snow storm!  We got rebooked on US Air through Philly which meant losing out aisle seats and getting middles for the overnight flight!

We were a wreck by the time we got to Philly because we hadn't slept much at all, Michelle was nauseous and puked up her bagel, and we were both a little freaked out because she had some bleeding on the flight.  Oh and it was snowing like mad and our flight to SCE kept getting delayed. The OB office told us to call when we got to State College and they would try to squeeze us in for an ultrasound just to make sure everything still looked okay.  About two hours later we finally boarded our flight home...and then proceeded to sit on the plane on the ground for over two hours!!  They served us cookies and drinks to help keep us quiet but it was pretty miserable, especially for poor Michelle who still felt pretty sick. :(

When we finally made it back to State College around 1:30 we called Geisinger (the OB office) and they were able to squeeze us into the schedule at 4pm so we went home to take a nap before the appointment. We got to the appointment and they called us back. The ultrasound machine only had one smallish screen so Michelle couldn't see while the tech as doing the scan but she told her she'd look around and then see if she could find a cause for the bleeding and would then show Michelle everything.  I could see the screen and just held Michelle's hand nervously waiting and hoping to see a black blob appear on the screen.  We weren't quite seven weeks in so at that point you pretty much just see the yolk sac and a blob of cells called the "fetal pole."  After two years of fertility treatments Michelle and I have gotten pretty good at reading ultrasounds.  I was pretty sure that I saw not just one, but two black blobs but didn't want to say anything until the tech said something and showed Michelle.  Well, I was right-ish...a minute or so later (which felt like an eternity) the tech said, "Well, I don't see any cause for the bleeding, everything looks good. But, I'm going to be busy because I have three babies to measure here!"  

We were, well, shocked.  I'm not even sure we said anything other than maybe something like "three? really?!  We held it together, but when the tech left to get the doc and Michelle got dressed she said "I wanted to be crying happy tears, but instead I just feel like crying."  The PA we had seen at our first visit came in, basically just told us she would be referring us to Danville to the Maternal Fetal Medicine specialists who handle the high risk pregnancies, and that they would call us to schedule.  We walked out in a daze and I immediately started thinking about practical things like "um, can we even fit three carseats across the backseat of the Rav4?"  Our list of things to be nervous about was getting pretty long so we decided we needed to start a mental list of things to be excited about too because we have obviously waited a long time to have a baby.  And now we are having THREE!!!



Here's the ultrasound pic of all three! A, B & C

got this in the mail from my mom!