25 Weeks

About two to three pounds of babies in there.  I think I'm in the 'cute belly' stage where it's obvious I'm pregnant but I don't look like I'm going to explode yet.  Haha.

Well, we sure had a crazy week.  We had a bit of a scare that resulted in a consultation with my OB after my anatomy scan (due to the tech seeing something that required his attention), a visit with a perinatologist (aka maternal-fetal medicine specialist or high-risk OB), a late night trip to the hospital, and another visit with my OB.  I guess this is a good reminder that they call twin pregnancies high risk for a reason.  I ended up having a (not fun) test done that, if you get a negative, means that there is almost no chance you will go into labor within the next two weeks, and luckily I did get a negative.  I am feeling so grateful and relieved right now.  My doctor is going to keep closer tabs on me from here on out to make sure we keep those babies in there.  I have three more appointments scheduled for the next three weeks, one with the perinatologist and two with my OB.  But he is optimistic and is very confident that everything will be just fine.  I am so glad we have such a great doctor, someone who is careful and watchful but also doesn't jump to conclusions and start intervening when there may be no real cause for alarm.  My appointment with him on Friday made me feel so much better after having a very stressful and scary few days.  He thinks it's entirely possible that we won't see any more changes until we're close to full term.  So for now we're going to watch and wait.

Having said that, let's go back to the beginning of the week, the big anatomy ultrasound.  This was definitely the coolest one to date.  I finally know approximately where my babies are, and can make a better guess about who I'm feeling (though I could be wrong because they are very close together.)  The ultrasound tech was really fun.  She named baby A 'Aragorn' and baby B 'Boromir' since we haven't really figured out name assignments quite yet.  Baby A has his head way down super low in my belly (hooray for A being head down!), and his legs up by my ribs towards the middle right side of my body.  Baby B's head is near baby A's feet, and he seems to like to put his feet up by his face sometimes and down low in my belly at other times.  The crazy thing is that even though they are in separate sacs, they can still touch each other.  The tech said to think of the layer of sac between them as cellophane.  We watched them kick each other and sometimes they would raise their arms to try to protect themselves.  They are beating up each other already!  Sibling rivalry!  I love the 4-D ultrasound they have because you can see so much better what the babies look like.  They are so adorable and actually look like little babies!  I'm so in awe of them and how cute they are.  And the good news is they are developing super well and have a good amount of fluid and their organs all look normal.  One of them is measuring right on with our due date and one is a few days ahead, just like they were before, which is fantastic.

My favorite picture of the day.  You can see my sweet baby's little nose, mouth, and chin, and his brother's foot kicking him right in the cheek.  I might have my hands full with these two.

You can see the whole head, facing to the left.  He has his mouth open and his hand near his mouth.  The tech said he might have been sucking his thumb right before this.  Awwww

So I guess in summary, I'm feeling very grateful right now.