Touchdown! I made it to 20 weeks!

So I made my first touchdown. The book my doctor gave me on multiple births gives you six time zones for a multiple pregnancy. Once you've reached 20 weeks you've made your first touchdown! The next goal is to make it to 24 weeks. The goal is to make it through each time zone and add another touchdown to stay in the game. The more touchdowns the more likely we are to have healthy babies. We are very excited that we have made it to the official halfway point (Ok, more like 2/3 for me) of the pregnancy with not many problems. We are hopeful that the babies and myself continue to do well so we can bring them home happy and healthy in a few months. I have typical aches and pains of a pregnant woman; back pain, indigestion, exhaustion, and just being plain uncomfortable. But I can't complain! I am not in bed and still able to get out and about and I'm very grateful for that. Our next visit to the doctor is February 5th. We are very excited to see our boys again! We love to see how they've grown and to see them moving and of course to see that nice healthy heart beating! We are looking forward to registering and painting the babies room this weekend. (Ok so I can't paint, my mom and Aunt Karen are going to do it, but I'm still looking forward to it!!!) We are painting the room 2 shades of yellow and putting up a John Deere wall border. Hopefully it will turn out as cute as I picture it! We can't wait!

As you can see in Dale's 20 week belly picture, it is much smaller. He has been working hard exercising, but he also didn't push out this time!!! I on the other hand, have definitely gotten bigger.

Was that a kick?

I have been feeling the babies move for several weeks now. It first started out like flutters and lately has felt like tennis balls rolling around slowly in my tummy. This usually occurs right after I eat or when I am laying in bed. Well yesterday after I ate lunch I was sitting on the couch and was feeling some rolling. I always pull my shirt up and put my hand on my belly hoping I can feel something. I then felt a slight flick that I could actually feel with my hand. I think Baby A kicked me!!! Later in the day after one of my several snacks I sat down with my hand on my belly and again felt a couple more of these light flicks. They weren't very strong (the babies are only about a pound), but it could definitely be felt outside the tummy. Of course when I yelled for Dale to come feel, it stopped! Only Baby A kicked me so far, but now that I felt a kick (at least I think that's what it was) I am sure I will start feeling a lot more. It was very exciting to feel the kick and I can't wait for Babies B & C to kick me! (Ok, kick me in the womb ONLY!!!)

A bump in the road.

So Wednesday morning about 3:00 a.m. I woke up to change positions and felt a sharp pain in my right side. I didn't think anything of it at the time because round ligament pain is common at this point in pregnancy. But as I lay there the pain was not going away. Round ligament pain should go away quickly. I got out of bed around 8 a.m. and it hurt to stand up, it hurt to sit down, it just hurt. I hurt my back in May of 2006 and that is what this pain reminded me of, except this time I also felt it in my abdomen. (Maybe I could feel it in my abdomen then, but didn't pay attention to that because I wasn't pregnant.) So I put a message in to the nurse at the doctor's office. Of course it wasn't until around 2:00 p.m. that I finally got a call back, but I was impressed because my actual doctor called me. I explained the pain to him as in my back, in my abdomen, and down my leg all on the right side and that I thought I twinged my back. He was concerned because the pain in my abdomen surround the uterus and thought I could be having contractions or I could be hurting as an after thought to contractions. He instructed me to take 400 m.g. of Ibuprofen every 6 hours for the rest of the day and all day today. If it becomes worse even with the ibuprofen I need to go to labor and delivery at the hospital to get evaluated, if it doesn't get better in the two days I need to call him back. I just had an appointment the day before and my cervical length was great so he didn't see the need for me to be seen again at the moment unless I felt I needed to.

I really just think I twinged my back in some way and maybe that caused some contracting causing the abdomen pain. Today only my lower back feels dull and achy (as it did when I hurt it in 2006) and I don't have pain in my abdomen. I really didn't think I was having contractions either, until I read exactly what they were and how to monitor them and I was in fact having some. (This early in pregnancy you can't feel pain with contractions.) So today I am doing much better and won't have to stay in bed all day. This was really a wake up call for me. I have stopped doing lots of things but there are still times that I do things that I probably shouldn't, such as laundry. So as guilty as I feel for having my aunt and grandma clean my house once a week, and now my mother-in-law coming up to do laundry, and I'm sure plenty more help where that came from, I need to get over it and accept the fact that I just need to take it easy. I don't want to be in bed for the rest of my pregnancy (although I know it will happen, this is just too soon). It is not worth it for the sake of our children for me to think "oh that's ok, I can handle that". I need to "just say no"! These boys need to stay inside me for as long as they can and I'm not going to take any chances of them wanting to come early. So from here on out, it's lazy Misti. I will make up for it when the boys arrive!

I know all we have to do is ask for help and it would be there from someone. So thanks to everyone who has helped so far and thanks to all of you that will have to help in the future. We are so grateful to have such a good support system.

Another appointment!

We had another doctor's appointment today. We had an ultrasound to check the heart rates and to check their lips for cleft pallate. All looked great! We were able to hear their heartbeats again also, which is cool! We always feel such relief after our appointments when we see the boys and see that they are doing well. The top and bottom pictures are of baby A and the middle picture is of baby B. Baby C was not cooperating to give us a good picture of his profile. We were lucky he cooperated enough for the tech to see his lips and get his heart rate. He was moving all over the place! We then met with the Nurse Practitioner. I gained another 5 pounds! Yay! Only 45 more to go!!! My belly measured at 26 weeks this time. I asked her about back spasms that I have been having constantly. She said it was normal especially since women pregnant will triplets gain weight so rapidly and that Dale will just need to learn how to rub my back really good! (Yeah right!!!) I will probably go get a professional massage instead! He really hates to rub my back! We go back for another appointment on February 5th. During that ultrasound the babies will be measured again. We are so excited and can't believe how fast it is going. We better go do more shopping!

Stroller!

We went to Babies R' Us today to scope out strollers. Strollers have been the big issue thus far. We have to decide what stroller to decide what car seats to decide what vehicle they will fit in. After going round and round with this we decided that we don't need a stroller that works with the car seats as we won't be taking them many places before they can hold their heads up and sit in a normal stroller. So we decided that we will get a double stroller and a single stroller. We found a double stroller we liked and then noticed it was on clearance so decided to go ahead and buy it. They have a matching single stroller that we will put on our registry when we go back to register in a week or so. We also picked out the cribs we want and the car seats we want. We can't wait to go back! Everything is starting to feel so real now that we are buying things!

They also told us that we get a 10% multiples discount and when we register everyone that buys us something will also get this multiples discount! It's always exciting to save some money!

17 week appointment!

We had a long ultrasound today. They measured all of the babies. They are all doing well and measured good for their gestational age. Baby A and Baby C were 8 oz. and Baby B was 7 oz. I gained another 7 pounds-yay! (I know, this is the only time in my life I will ever get excited about gaining weight!) We listened to the babies heartbeats for the first time today. It was very cool. My belly measured as if I were 24 weeks along (meaning my belly is as big as a woman pregnant with 1 baby at 24 weeks along). Scary to think what I will look like at 24 weeks! I only posted 1 picture of each baby as we had 22 pictures this time. Some were of the foot, the legs, etc. so we just posted profile pictures! We are so excited everything is going well. Also, it's hard to believe that I am half-way to the goal of 34 weeks. We better start shopping to get ready!

16 week belly pictures!

Here is our 16 week belly picture! I am definitely getting much bigger and it looks like I caught up to Dale. Although, as much as he has been working out lately the next picture is sure to show a big difference with him going the opposite direction of me!

A picture of Dale and I!

This was a picture of us taken on New Year's Eve. This was the first time everyone said that I actually looked pregnant.