Why I'm All Stitched Up But The Curtains Aren't!

So.. long time no post.. It's been an eventful week!

Last Wednesday I had a routine cervical scan where it was found that things were begining to look decididly dodgy! Not at the emergency levels yet but perhaps heading that way.

For the gynaecologicaly minded of you..the Drs look for your cervix, or neck of the womb, to be over 25mm long if it's under but still over 15mm then they just up their monitoring if it's under 1.5mm then they spring in to action! Mine was varying between 23mm (not too bad) and 13mm (action stations!) depending on how hard twin 1's head was pushing at the exit.

Anyway, after some discussion with the consultant who told me that I had a 50:50 chance of having the twins in the next 2 weeks, I was admitted to hospital there and then to have a cervical cerclage stitch put in that evening- How's that for NHS efficiency! . The riskiest bit is the operation it's self. It can irritate the uterus and send you in to premature labour or if the babies' membranes get in the way they can get caught on the needle and then the waters break.. Not good. However neither happened, I did have a few small contractions afterwards but they did go away..phew...

Anyway, apparently the procedure was straight forward and after the spinal anaesthetic I went up to the ward to recover for 2 nights. I have to hand it to the RVI I was looked after so well, all the ward staff from house keeping to midwives to the consultants all were fab! In addition the other girls on the ward were really nice too and those of you who know me know I love a good natter!

I was discharged on Friday to the care of my amazing house hubby Chris, full of progesterone (to stop premature labour) and steriod injections (to mature the babies lungs incase they do make an appearence very soon.

All in all, although it has been a scary week. I am feeling quite positive. The problem was caught at a much earlier stage than it was with Oliver and Matthew. While I did have the steriod shots to mature their lungs, I only had time for half the course and even that probably didn't have much time to work. Even though we aren't out of the woods yet, we are in a better place than last time. I also had a bit of a reaslisation during the scan: I have struggled for a long time not to blame myself for what happened to my boys. Why didn't I notice what was happening?, Why didn't I go to the hospital earlier? etc, etc,. Yet, when watching my cervix lenthen and shorten on the scan, I couldn't feel a thing. I could have been walking around like that with Matthew and Oliver for weeks and not have known.

On Saturday, when I had to go back in to hospital for the second steroid injection (huge needle in bum...lovely) The midwife was having trouble distinguishing between the 2 heartbeats- this is quite normal but they decided to do a scan to see the heart beats separately.

The consultant on call did the scan and it became obvious that the reason that they couldn't distinguish between the heartbeats was because the Beansters were one behind the other. At this point The Consultant said that the Holy Grail of 3D scanning was to get twins together facing the same way in a pic and that he couldn't resist having a go. Then he turned the machine on to posh 3d mode and look what we saw....

Already got Daddy's jawline!

 

 

 

 

And I know you are all wanting to know about the curtains. I was cutting and pining the nursery curtains when I went in to premature labour with Oliver and Matthew. Tuesday night this week was the same point of this pregnancy and the curtains stayed, half made, in a box under the bed where they will stay for at least another 5 weeks...not that am superstitious or anything.

23 Weeks and Counting....

I'm now just over 23 weeks pregnant. The last time I was 23 weeks pregnant was just after my 30th birthday- The week before (my actual birthday) Chris had taken me to Edinburgh on a "Pamper and Panda" trip- I had wanted to see the Pandas at Edinburgh Zoo for ages!!!

The following week I was celebrating with my friends and family, we went to see "Dirty Dancing the Musical"- Not exactly high theatre but pretty much does what it says on the tin and was a good, girly laugh!

I can honestly say this is the last time I ever felt really happy and carefree. We had recently had our 20 week scan where our babies had been doing just fine, we were enjoying our celebrations and looking forward to meeting our babies just after Christmas. We had absolutely no clue of what was only just around the corner.

Me and the Hubby on our Kate's 30th Babymoon last September

This time being just over 23 weeks pregnant means something totally different. Every twinge is a panic. Every day brings me closer to when we met and then said goodbye to our gorgeous boys. I think if we get passed the 26, 27 weeks mark then the fear will start to lift but for now it is still there, a constant feeling of waiting for something to go wrong...

I guess that everyone who is pregnant again has these milestones and they way I'm feeling right now I think it must be supremely tough for people who lost their little ones right at the end of pregnancy..that milestone would take a long time to get too!

But for me the next few weeks are baby steps, day by day, because, unfortunately a couple of Valium and a large G&T are a no go!

Shock Horror.. Doughnuts are not an accurate gender predictor!

So on Sunday we went to Krispy Kreme for coffee and dougnuts. Our local branch opened last year and, dangerously for a pregnant and usually hungry lady, it has a drive through and is pretty much on my route to work!

Krispy Kreme have a new baby doughnut out in honour of " The Royal Baby". They have either a pink or blue centre and then you are suppsoed to put a little dougnut sticker on a chart to see which gets the most votes.

It is worth noting at this point that I don't really have any opinion at all on the Royal Baby as long as he or she is healthy, although a bit of me thinks it would be good if "it" was a girl for the whole "girl power law of succession" argument!

Chris and I got one each of these tasty looking chocolate coated treats complete with little feet on the top, to see what they had to say about the Beanies (we are keeping there genders a surprise until the birth!) Anyway, we know they are identical twins and ergo are they same sex and tada here are our doughnuts...

So one blue and one pink!

Ladies and gentlemen the moral of the story is that doughnuts cannot accurately predict the gender of your baby royal or otherwise.. where as possibly an ultrasound scan could!

Pigs and Penguins

I haven't been keeping up with this blog as much as I have meant to recently. This is largely because of the unusually warm weather 'Up North where I have largely been sitting on the patio drinking squash from a wine glass pretending it was a large glass of Pinot. However have had a few thoughts of things to write about whilst trying not to get sunburned (in Gateshead...Yes really!).

Today I thought I'd write about the random things that can really make the feelings of loss I feel come bubbling up to the surface.. They are always there and I'm pretty sure always will be but sometimes unexpected things hit me like a ton of bricks. It isn't always the obvious things either. The neonatal death that was covered recently on "One Born Every Minute", The cot death on "Call The Midwife"... you can prepare for and avoid if needed. The couple in the park with the blue twin pram and the trolleys with twin seats in at Sainsbury's are harder to avoid but it gets even more random than that.

On Saturday afternoon, Chris and I decided to go to our local farm. Not just because he is from the West Country and needed a tractor fix, but because they have a nice café with picnic tables etc.

Anyway, while we were there we met this gorgeous creature and her 9 little ones!

Whilst feeling slightly guilty about the bacon sandwich that I had had for breakfast that morning, I noticed that one of the little piglets looked a bit..erm runty! He (or she) was very skinny you could see his ribs and his brothers and sisters weren't letting him anywhere near his mum and food! I suddenly felt really worried about Runty Piglet, were the staff bottle feeding him?, would he be ok, should I mention it to someone etc, etc, and it brought home to me how it isn't always things that you would expect that brings the subject of loosing a baby to the front of your mind.

Not long after we lost the boys there was a BBC nature documentary about penguins called "The Spy in The Huddle" In one episode a baby penguins freezes to death in a storm and the bereaved parents go hunting for it. I got so upset watching it .. at one point I think I turned to Chris and said "I bet there isn't even a Barbara Penguin!"- Barbara is the name of our bereavement counsellor.

I was tempted to go and check up on Runty Piglet this afternoon, but I'm sure he is being well looked after by the staff at Bill Quay Farm. However it just goes to show, emotions are unpredictable things. I can hold my friend's new born son but get upset by a penguin and a piglet!

Tomorrow's post will be about doughnuts.. I can taste it already.