Well, we made it to 37 weeks. “Full term.” No longer would doctors try to stop labor if it started, no longer are we at risk for having “premature” babies. We’re on our last checkoff sheet – each homemade checkoff sheet I made holds about five weeks worth of daily spots to check off that prenatal vitamins, calcium, etc. were taken and over time we’ve added daily kegels, kick counts, and contraction monitoring. I can remember so clearly posting about how we made it to the second checkoff sheet – and now here we are, many many checkoff sheets later, now on the last one.
Because Baby B’s measurements on our last ultrasound earlier this week showed ze’s growth was 13 days behind the original estimated date of delivery (May 28th), our OB had a perinatologist give it a look over. The OB told us that the perinatologist concluded everything is fine, no need to worry. However, Baby A is still butt-first and further down in the pelvic canal. This means we have some very big decisions to make over the next couple of days. While there are many reasons the last couple weeks of pregnancy count, there are many, many others factors we now need to consider, not the least of which include Molly’s safety in terms of preparation to treat her bleeding disorders (von Willebrand’s and Platelet Storage Pool Deficiency) during the birth as well as that our (newest, current) OB is the only person at Molly’s heathcare provider we have been able to trust so far.
We have another prenatal appointment with the OB this coming week, after which I’ll post about whatever decision we’ve made.
For now, the babies are doing great, Molly’s doing great, and me…well, mostly I’m ecstatic about the thought of finally holding our babies, but I’m also stressing about how much school work I need to get done before the twins are born. Even though I’ve been incredibly busy with preparing things for the babies (and with schoolwork), somehow the knowledge that these babies may appear sooner rather than later makes me realize how many things I still need to do. Somehow it will all get done, it always does.
Daddyhood Transcribed 
Congrats on reaching full term! That’s gotta be a weight off of your mind!
Question about your check off sheets… was that your idea or did you get it from a book? I think it’s brilliant and would like to swipe it for my own use. Any resources for me to check out on what to include on such a list?
I wish I could take all of the credit, but I basically just continued and expanded on what our fertility center gave us. At the start of this cycle, the fertility center gave us a sheet that had columns for all the daily things we needed to remember to do. At the beginning, this included gonadotropin injection (and it listed how much we should inject on which night because our dose changed over time), prenatal vitamin, aspirin (they had Molly take low-dose aspirin up until 13 weeks), progesterone suppository (they had Molly use them until 12 weeks because some doctors think they may reduce the risk of miscarriage), IUI to record when they were done, and a couple other lab-based things like estradiol to monitor Molly’s response to the gonadotropins. The sheet they gave us really only lasted through when we did the pregnancy test (at which point if it had been negative, we would have started a new cycle, and thus a new checkoff sheet, with them). But there were so many things to remember each day, I made my own.
At the beginning, I continued the same columns that were on the fertility center’s sheet. Then we added columns for Omega vitamins, acidophilus, B6 (supposed to help with nausea), fiber, calcium, Zofran (to record if/how many were needed for nausea). Eventually kegels, kick counts, and contraction monitoring made it on the list. I also had a column to remind us to record weekly weight, take a belly shot, and measure belly circumference. I also put a column for Labs/Appointments and Other to record what days we had what appointments and anything interesting that happened (first kicks felt!). Each sheet held approximately 5 weeks so when it came time to make a new one, I just added/deleted whatever was necessary at the time.
Now that I type it out, it kind of seems excessive, but it really helped us keep everything straight! We have a book that goes through the pregnancy day-by-day (review coming soon!) so reading the book and doing the checkoff sheet every night together became a nice little ritual for us.
Super good luck! I’m really looking forward to following your journey!
Yowza, that’s a lot to remember! No wonder you had a check off sheet! 🙂
We’re bypassing some of the more “traditional” infertility stuff through our insurance provider as a lot of it simply doesn’t apply, but in order to make sure we’re covered down the road if things don’t go our way, we’ve decided to start attending their infertility classes and make sure we’re in the system.
First class is on Thursday, and I don’t really know what to expect, but I am hoping to at least come away with SOME useful information. Maybe even our own sheet…