lifeismessy

Bedrest and babies

Well, I'm up to 34 weeks finally - this is a great milestone for twins as we are out of the micro preemie and preemie stages and now into the "late-preemie" stage.  It's excited to think we are so close to having our baby girls.  I've been on bedrest for several weeks with various amounts of limitation.  At 24 weeks I had quite a few contractions and had to really take it easy.  At 28 weeks I had to do a trip into Labor & Delivery over a weekend (not overnight) to get steroid shots and be monitored (all was fine).  Since then, I've remained pretty stable although my activity is pretty seriously limited.  It's so strange being on bedrest at the end of a pregnancy. I know in just a couple weeks (or less) I'm going to be crazy busy and dying for the kind of sleep and rest I'm getting right now - but it doesn't help the time go any faster.  I've read several books, spent an immeasurable amount of time piddling online, knitted and scrapbooked a ton.  I'm definitely ready to get to the end of this so I can get out of the house again.  

Here's a family photo from Thanksgiving - it will probably be our last picture as a family of 6. I look forward to taking one as a family of 8!

 

Halloween 2009

We went to the Fall fun fest at church tonight - and did Halloween pictures before we left, so here's the boys in their costumes this year.  Sam's  pictures were a bit blurry so I'll probably have to re-do them.  Should be a fun weekend with trick or treating tomorrow night - it's like a whole weekend of Halloween! :)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jack's apple pie

Jack and I have been doing a unit on apples as part of his kindergarten fun.  We've read books about apples and Johnny Appleseed and made apple crafts; and then a few days ago Grandma helped Jack make an apple pie.  Jack was REALLY excited for this!  Here are some photos:

 

 

 

 

Proud Jack with his finished pie!  We had it for dessert after dinner and it was a huge hit with everyone. :)  We're planning to do a pumpkin unit next.

Good news!

A short post today and I don't really have a picture to go with it....I hate posting without a photo!  Anyway, I got the results of my bloodwork from early this week and have good news.  The titer (amount of antibodies) in my blood for the big E went *down* again.  This is really, really excellent and another good sign that this blood compatibility issue won't be a problem for us.   With only 11 weeks to go and the amount of antibodies gone down twice,  we are really feeling hopeful.  Yay God!  :)

Mini baby update

I had a visit to my regular OB yesterday; dr visits are quickly becoming more frequent for me.  All is well with the babies but I seem to be headed down the path to pre-term labor.  It's difficult to assess how much of a concern it is at this point, but I am having more frequent braxton hicks contractions and my cervix length has shortened again and seems to be moving in that direction.  I need to "take it easy" and return for a pre-term labor test and non-stress test next week.  The pre-term labor test will give a fairly good indication if I'm *not* going into labor the following 2 weeks (after the test).  The non-stress test will pick up the severity and frequency of any contractions I'm having.  So we'll find out more next week.  I had a pretty tough time with pre-term labor on Henry's pregnancy (#2 of our 4 boys) but had none whatsoever with my last 2 pregnancies.  Twins do, however, up the odds in favor of early delivery.

In other baby news we bought our first "baby stuff" Friday night at Target. I got a couple packages of newborn sized gowns in girly colors and I bought this outfit as well.  We have a thing for bunnies at our house so all of us loved this.  They only had 1 in stock of the newborn size, but my friend Stacy in Omaha has already tracked down and bought us a duplicate so the girls can be all matchy-matchy. :)

The boys were very excited to look at baby clothes and are already talking about finding some dolls for the girls.  We should have some fun shopping ahead of us! 

Babies report

I had a great visit to the perintologist yesterday.  Aside from the fact that I'm having twins, I have various issues with the pregnancy this time around that required me visiting a "high risk" doctor. As with my last several pregnancies I have gestational diabetes.  Uncontrolled, this can be very serious but I've had good practice controlling it in the past and expect I'll be able to do so again. I also have a thyroid issue that is new - my bloodwork shows me to be hyperthyroid.  It's not definite but probably that I developoed this issue before I was pregnant. So far, it hasn't been difficult to control with medication. I'm strep B+, anemic and have had a couple infections as well - all easy enough to monitor and deal with, just a lot to keep an eye on.  And lastly, the issue that surprised us the most, we have a blood compatibility issue.  It's almost bizarre to find out about this after 4 children, but apparently Scott is a carrier for a very rare blood antigen called "big E". Only 2 percent of the population have this antigen. At some point I've been exposed to this antigen and my blood has developed antibodies to it.  In general this isn't a huge deal, but it is now that I'm pregnant again.  There is a 50% chance (for each baby) that they inherited the "big E" antigen from Scott. If either of them has it, then there is some risk that my immune system will attack their blood - via these antibodies I've developed.  It's very, very serious and can cause anemia in the babies and ultimately can result in stillbirth.  We've been praying a lot about this one.  Basically, what we do is simply monitor the level of antibodies in my blood each month and watch for them to rise.  So far they've gone down slightly and stayed low.  That is a very good sign!

So - given all the issues I have this time around, my OB referred me to a perintologist for review.  Yesterday I had 2 1/2 hours of ultrasound time while they checked over the babies.  They looked at all their organs, checked the blood flow through each ventricle of their hearts, did echocardiograms on their hearts, measured their length and weight and even looked over all their facial features for signs of cleft palette or other anomolies.  It was great to see them moving around and doing so well and the good news is that everything looked perfect!  It was a huge relief for me and I left the appointment very excited about meeting our babies in a few weeks.

Here are some pictures:

So that's the news!  We would definitely appreciate prayers for the babies.  I repeat the big E, thyroid and anemia bloodwork on Tuesday, so I'll have another update in about a week when those results come back.  24 weeks down 12-ish to go!

Facebook deters blogging

I don't think I've posted to my blog but once or twice since I joined facebook last spring.  And yet it's not the same thing at all...facebook is a great place to post a sound bite or make an announcement (of which we've had a few...), but it's not so hot for longer posts.  So I can't imagine there's anyone left reading my blog that isn't on facebook but hey - perhaps!  So the top 5 things that have happened since I last posted are:

1. We found out we were expecting.  Big surprise.

2. We found out it was twins.  (Scott's response: Do we always have to be SO SPECIAL???)

3. We found out both babies are girls. 

4. We celebrated our 15th wedding anniversary

5.  We started school for the 2009/2010 year.

Everything kind of pales in comparison to #2 though, right?  As surprised as we were about the twins, we have become accustomed to the idea and are getting pretty excited. I am almost 24 weeks now, so we're nearly 2/3 of the way done. My official due date is in January but being twins, we're expecting them sometime between mid December and Christmas.

I'll have to load my most recent scrapbook layouts here, I've done a lot of pages this summer. For now, here's the first day of school here this fall.  Alex is in 3rd grade, Henry in 2nd grade, Jack is excited to finally be in kindergarten.  Sam is 3 - no school for him! :)

In defense of scrapping....

Well, now it's time for a more silly post.  :)

So...I am a scrapbooker.  Yes, a scrapper.  It annoys me how cliche that is but I have to come by it honestly. It's not enough for me to take pictures, I want to get the stories that go with my pictures recorded as well. 

I started scrapping not quite 9 years ago when I was pregnant with Alex. I have from 1994 to 2003 scrapped in 12x12 paper albums. The style of those pages ranges from very simple to very embellished.  In retrospect I wish I had stayed more on the simple side of things but what can you do?  In 2004 I started digital scrapping and that changed my scrapping a *lot*. I now create all my pages on my computer and just print out a finished copy of them. This has made my life so much easier!  No mess, less expensive, easier to store, easier to print extra copies, it goes on and on. 

Occasionally I feel a bit tied down by my scrapping - I get tired of it and need a break and start looking at Kolo albums and envisioning the ease of slipping photos into books and doing nothing more...but then I remember that it's not just the pictures, it's the stories. And I see the kids pouring over the albums, Alex reading the journaling to the others - and  I remember why I love it.

I won't make this post too long by posting all my recent layouts here; but I will post one of my recent favorites:

if you'd like to see more of my recent pages you can check out the album on the top right sidebar of my blog.   I tend to jump around scrapping whatever strikes me so they aren't all recent pictures but the majority of them are from 2008 as I'm trying to finish that album. I add layouts to that album as I go, so if you ever want to see what I'm scrapping check it out.

And let me know if you need help getting started digital scrapping, I love to spread the love of scrapping - despite how cliche it makes me. :)

Book a week challenge - 2009

I have been keeping up on my book a week challenge for 2009  - I just haven't been keeping up on the blog posts. :)  I updated my list of books I've read recently - you can view it over there on the left sidebar. I'm only keeping the 10 most recent books listed so the blog won't be annoyingly long to scroll through.  I need to find some good fiction to read - I've been reading homeschooling books and discipline books and I'm ready for a story.  I might have to go back and read some older favorites if I can't think of something soon. Happy Reading!

My week

This photo pretty much sums up my week!  Some good - some bad! :-)

It was week 6 in our 6 weeks on / 2 weeks off school rotation and it was a tough week! The kids were difficult to say the least. I think we will soon switch to a 4 weeks on / 1 week off schedule - hopefully that will help everyone's attitude.

Tuesday we enjoyed the warm weather by walking to the park - it was a great outing until poor Sam fell (with help - grrr) off some playground equipment and got a stellar black eye and cut on his face. It was NOT a fun walk home with Sam screaming and bleeding in the stroller and the guilty culprit whining the whole way home that it wasn't "fair" he had to miss the last few minutes of playtime in time out (you know - the 5 minutes I was comforting the screaming baby he had pushed off the playground equipment - ugh). No names will be mentioned.

Thursday we did have a great coop day - the anatomy class I am teaching is going well and the kids love their science classes; I'll do a post about our wonderful coop another day. Friday our coop had an awesome Valentine party for the kids - so by the end of the week we were on to the good part of the week.   The picture above is Sam after the Valentine party enjoying a sucker - which he claims is "my favorite mom!".

And today - recognizing that I am going crazy and need to get out - Scott is taking us up to the Art Institute to view medieval weaponry and the Impressionists.  I'm hoping the outing will lift my spirits a bit and help me remember the "good" parts of homeschooling!  Hope everyone is having a great Valentine weekend. :)