Kicks and pics

I just had to share as I have been really excited for Pete to feel the baby, and finally this morning at 18w1d we sat still long enough for Pete to feel a few rolls and kicks.  We certainly have a wiggly one in there!

I am way overdue in posting the latest pics of our little guy.  Since I last posted pics, we have been to the peri twice and spent lots of time seeing the littlest Coyne squirm around.  Well, actually... when we are in the appointments, the ultrasound tech takes the usual approach of scanning the baby, freezing a frame, then measuring everything in sight; then she repeats that process over and over for 30-45 minutes before the doctor comes in and repeats everything himself.  A week ago in our appointment Saturday morning, I grasped the opportunity in between the tech and the doc to, well, grasp the ultrasound machine myself.  With Pete tuned in to the screen and my iPhone recording, I slid the transducer around the goop on my belly and had the best time seeing our little guy in action! Since we weren't freezing frames, we got a few solid minutes of seeing the little guy squirm and kick, swallow, stretch, and hiccup.  It was awesome!!  I don't think our doc thought it was so awesome when he walked in, though - the look on his face made me rethink whether the fun we had just had was worth the guilt I was feeling.  Luckily he said only because it was us was he not upset. :) (Apparently the probe alone is $40k, not to mention the machine, other probes, and attached equipment.)  I guess there are some benefits to being frequent fliers!  Somewhere around 14 weeks, our doc mentioned that he could not believe we were "only" that far along and that we'd been in so much it seemed like we should be delivering any day.  I think I made a comment about feeling like a whale gestating (which takes 16 months... although based on our peri visits, we fall more in the camp of an elephant at 22 months. :))

So here are a few shots.  First, our little guy last Saturday at 17 weeks exactly.

 And here he was two weeks earlier, at 14 weeks and 6 days:

I thought what looks like the hole in the top of his head (more obvious at 14 weeks than 17 weeks) was his fontanelle, but the ultrasound tech said it was just the result of the way she was pressing the transducer on my belly and that his head was perfect.  After a little research, I am still thinking it is the fontanelle where the cranium bones are still ossifying (which they do until around two years of age). Our little guy's head, it is normal, so don't worry. :)  Oh, and he measured 7 ounces and 6.5 inches at 17 weeks, so he is a good grower!

All the rest

I am happy to say that while now we are only two days away from hitting 18 weeks (yea!), I have started and restarted this blog post since 17 weeks and 1 day - this past Sunday.  Work continues to be a bear, leaving zero time to get on the internet, let alone update my poor little blog with even a single coherent post.  But here I am, now, at 1030p and just about to leave the office.  (This is much earlier than last night/this morning when I left, so we are improving!  My goal is to get out by 11p when the very nice man who will drive me to my car goes off shift and the not as nice man comes on. :))  Anyway, as a result of an out-of-whack work-life balance this year, below is a fractured collection of post snippets that I hope will read more fluidly than their writing has been.  

This post is about all the rest.  About all the story that has not been told these last two months when nearly every post has been about the terrific little dude growing away inside right now.  In no way, shape, or form, has all my thinking throughout the day or even most of it been about this little guy.  The sorrow I carry for our triplets is no less weighty on my heart and mind today as it was last summer.  At the same time, I am (and we are) so excited for Hope, Adam, and Charlie's little brother to join us - hopefully breathing and squirming in our arms this summer.  Hopefully waking us up at night with a hungry belly, needing the comfort of his parents arms as he adjusts to his new world.  Hopefully.

Speaking of hopes, I am glad to share that they have been strong and our worries few.  This is the best experience I could imagine for this pregnancy, given the journey of our past year and only preceding pregnancy.  One year ago today, I had been on bed rest for nearly two weeks already and was only 10.5 weeks along.  Today I have not heard the words "strict bed rest," have not lived the scares of hemorrhaging, and have entered nearly every doctor appointment with the excitement of eager anticipation rather than the baited breath of waiting to count how many hearts were beating.

More emotions have been filling my life, however, than just joy for this new little guy.  And while I hold an abundance of joy, it still completely breaks my heart that our triplets are not here with us.  I still think about it all the time - every hour, I would guess.  I still cry about it, I think every day.  The late car rides home from work on a lonely highway in the dark always seem to elicit at least a few tears, even if at the start of the short journey I think I might make the trip dry-eyed.

December was particularly teary.  I went back to work (the second time) just before Thanksgiving, and I don't know if it was the more structured days or the ramp up to Christmas, or something else entirely that made it seem as if I was extra teary about not having the triplets in our arms.  And then this year work has been nuts - and while I am happy to be back at work and doing well there, in no way does the "distraction" lessen my missing our babies.  While I feel no less sad or brokenhearted about their not being here with us, I have noticed a few shifts that have quietly, subtly transpired over the past few months.

When I think about our babies, no longer does it seem like I hurt because they should be here with us and are not.  That deep and resonating ache of the soul now feels more like a wistfulness that the wonderful, incredible, perfect dream I once held on to so dearly - the dream that they would join our family and grow up together, and the dream on which I bet my very life, literally - did not and will not ever come to fruition.  Don't mistake me, it is still soul-crumbling sad, but instead of approaching that sadness with my heart rooted to they-should-have-been-here, it now is tied more to how-incredible-it-would-have-been.  Or something like that.  Emotions have never been more difficult to describe.

When I think about the time we held our babies and the two weeks that followed in the hospital, I often see us in third-person.  The view is looking down, like in those afterlife stories you hear of seeing your body on the operating table while doctors are saying, "we've lost him," or whatever it is they say in those dramatic tales.  The perspective is like that except I don't imagine the emergency moment on the operating table; it is just Pete and I in our hospital room, with me hooked up to IVs and Pete sending out email responses to people's kind notes on his blackberry.  When I think about the weeks after we came home, the third-person perspective still reigns.  I see Pete and I walking, very slowly and me with tentative steps, along desolate Hamptons beach on a weekend we tried to get away from our quiet house that haunted me; I see me driving to the doctor for follow ups, drinking an Inko's white tea - probably the only calories I'd had that day; I see me lying on the couch with a heating pad on my belly which hurt after trying to eat for the first time in weeks (thank goodness for my mom's potato-shallot soup).  And the most unusual element of remembering these images is the without-fail wave of empathy I get for that girl.  Isn't that crazy?  Empathy for oneself?  That sounds like a pity party!  But it is the oddest thing - one of these images will pop into my head, I see that girl, and I just feel so very sad for her.

I don't know of any other memories in my life that I see in third person, so I find it interesting that I see us this way when I imagine us in our hospital room and the weeks after.  (Interestingly, I just had to retype that line as I initially typed "hotel" instead of "hospital" - a malapropism I constantly made when we lived at the hospital after the babies.)  Why, I wonder, does my mind shift its perspective in these memories?  Seems like a psychology-101 guess to say first-person is perhaps too painful, and so this third-person shift is a means of self protection.  The mind is interesting.  And confusing - I love thinking about our babies and the time we spent with them - and even the time we spent in the hospital because in that time I still felt so very close to them, so very close to the reality of their being alive and well in my belly.  Those days I could not sleep - literally for two weeks not more than 15-60 minutes in any 24-hour period - because I so feared sleeping would let me forget something about them and the experience of giving birth and holding them.  And in the midst of those memories being so precious and gladly unforgettable to me, maybe some part of my subconscious enters with care, aware that the road is dangerous and injury possible.  Who knows.  What I can say is that I am very glad that I do remember.  I love having the few pictures I do, and I also cherish remembering my mom holding our babies and saying she will never forget the feeling of their weight in her hands, or Pete's mom saying with such emotion, they're beautiful, or the many doctors visiting us in the mornings every day and being so very kind to us as my body healed and we learned the next chapter of our lives was to be very different than what we expected.

So now it is nearly 11p, and while I have so much more to say, I think I will stop here and go meet my new friend, Joseph from security who will save me the cold walk to my car.  Every night this year until this week I ran it - it would cut a five-minute freezing walk to only two, and I enjoyed holding my belly, thinking about the little guy waking up from the bouncing, and realizing the good ways in which this pregnancy was different from the last.  Last Saturday at our peri appointment, however, our doc told me I cannot run due to the placenta location (low) and the possibility of bleeding with the bouncing pressure of running.  So no more running, even short jaunts to my car at night.  But the good news is that I have made a new friend to help me avert the thing I like least about New York - the cold!

Oh, boy, a quarter pounder!

So here I am, back after way too long and dropping in now while awaiting a flight home from Orlando.  Life has been hectic the last two weeks.  But enough about that - that is not what you want to hear. :)

What might be more interesting is something along the lines of...

We saw in the 12.5-week NT scan (four weeks ago now) that we were having a little guy.  We were planning to wait on finding out the gender when our Ob announced the big news after the delivery. We learned, however, that the twenty ultrasounds of our little triplets (that means 60 ultrasounds on a baby!) gave us a solid education of ultrasound baby anatomy, and we ruined our own surprise by paying too much attention in our appointment.  (Although we did tell the tech up front that we did not want to find out, but still. :))

While Pete was dutifully filming our little babe's amazing kicks and rolls up by the flat screen on the wall, I noticed the quickest of glances between the legs as the ultrasound tech (Kathleen - the sweetheart who scanned our triplets week after week) swept from the brain to the kidneys.  If I had not seen so many baby parts on ultrasound last year, I am sure I would not have known what I had just seen.  I did not say anything, though, because I knew Pete really didn't want to know until the birth and I didn't want to spoil it for him.

As Kathleen wrapped up our ultrasound, I asked her if she knew the gender.  She said she had a pretty good guess, to which I responded that I had a pretty good guess, too.  She advised, "well don't buy anything yet," and I told her that I had been buying things since at least week 6.  Actually, I started working on the boy quilt (almost done!) between the embryo transfer and the positive pregnancy test. :)

After she asked what color I had been buying (blue), she smiled and rotated our little one's 3D body image right to left.  When the image showed the baby's little legs spread in front of us in 3D, Pete shared, "I have a pretty good idea, too, based on that right there."  Our tech was nice to say that we couldn't necessarily judge gender from that image, but when she asked again if we wanted to know, Pete surprised me and said yes.  So she swung back into 2D, showing us this:

So while that looks pretty obvious (and of course I never doubted he was a boy from day one!), we thought we would hold off telling anyone because until babies are about twelve weeks along, shes can look like hes on ultrasound.  We thought we would wait until our next ultrasound at 14.5 weeks (two weeks ago tomorrow) to share the news.  So sorry it has taken so long to get the update on here - my life has spiraled into work craziness in 2010, and sadly my words here have been few.  But now you know the big news!

We really both would have been equally elated either way, but it was still fun to leave these last couple appointments feeling like we knew our little baby a little better.  Going through this discovery with our triplets, I clearly remember how my thinking and imaginings of our future changed the day we first saw we would have at least one girl and one boy.  I was completely elated.  We only learned two genders by week 13 because little Adam was always turned backwards and made for a tough shot below his brother and sister.  (We finally found out he was a boy in our 15-week appointment - and laughed we ever could have missed that news earlier as it seemed soooo obvious then.)  It was exciting to know what kind of adventure would be before us.  And this time while our vision of the next year of our lives is more prosaic than extraordinary and more tame than frenzied - at least in comparison to what we were imagining this time last pregnancy - we welcome with open arms the joy, the fun, the tears, the angst of what will be parenthood to our own little boy here on earth.

Oh, in reference to the title, at 14 weeks and 6 days, our little guy was weighing in at an estimated 4 ounces!  That makes him even bigger than our triplets at the same gestation.  From what I read, babies at 14.5 weeks are more like 2.4 ounces on average.  When this past Monday I asked my Ob about gestational diabetes (which can grow really big babies), she asked how much I weighed when I was born.  When I said 8 pounds, 11 ounces - and that Pete was ten pounds - she laughed and said, "It's genetics, not diabetes, Kerry!"  Funny for a moment until I started thinking about labor... !  I would love a sweet little baby who would fit into his 0-3-month stuff for, well, close to three months... but I am not being picky.  Any baby is wonderful, and one who will come home from the hospital with us will be an even bigger blessing.  It will be interesting to see how the little guy is measuring this Saturday when we go back to our peri.  

Next up... pictures of our more recent ultrasound (than the one shown above four weeks ago)!  We have shots of our little guy SMILING and SUCKING HIS THUMB!  Seriously, how cute is that for a little quarter pounder!?

A quick note to say

It's a quarter after 11p, I just got home from work, climbed into bed, and don't have enough time to invest in a good update. Unfortunately, this is what my last week looked like, hence the lack of posts in that time. As I've gotten a couple of worried emails, though, I thought I'd drop a line to share that the babe and I are both doing well. We had an incredible visit with our peri last Friday - pics and details (including an important one, in case anyone else wants to guess gender) will be added soon. The little one was in nonstop action during the ultrasound and is still active - kicking me as I type this note. :)

I hope to come back with a couple real posts - including one about the trips and how things on that front are going these days - very soon. Sorry for being so remiss in the meantime!

My favorite part of Saturdays

Best purchase of 2009: my very own Doppler from amazon!  I don't indulge more than once a week, but hearing and seeing that rapid little thumping heart always is a great boost to my day. :)  This morning I was having Braxton Hicks contractions again (have had them every morning since 12 weeks), and when I saw a rising bump on the left side of my belly, I thought I would check over there first to make sure everything was all right.  Sure enough - the little baby was hanging out right under the hard bulge.  Too cute!  

We are fourteen weeks today, and our little tyke is growing up - the heart rate has finally dropped below 160 (which is normal at this point).

Poignant present

With Pete and I away for Christmas this year, we came home to a bucket of mail.  Amidst the many adorable Christmas cards (that made me feel a bit guilty for not sending any this year), I found a small, padded envelope from Richmond, Virginia.  While most Richmond mail is from my pool of friends, the last name did not immediately ring a bell.  Only when I pulled out the black velvet sack inside, read the attached note, and saw the ornament did I realize how incredibly kind this dear package was.

Years ago I worked in Richmond at Capital One, and my closest work friend there was Sarah, the mother of twins I have mentioned here before.  She had a good friend named Katie, whom I saw occasionally in the halls and at parties.  A few months after we had our triplets, Sarah told me that Katie and her husband, Kevin (whose last name on the package had thrown me off) had lost their baby girl, Gabrielle, about six months into their pregnancy.  I vividly remember the day early last summer when Sarah told me Katie's story which left me crying in my parked car in our garage.  It was so heartbreaking to hear how Katie and Kevin had learned halfway through their pregnancy that their little girl had a trisomy condition "not compatible with life," as docs say, how they went on to carry their little girl forevery day they were given, and how they had just said goodbye to her at her birth.

Any gift, note, or comment to remember our sweet babies touches my heart deeply.  Reading Katie's words about how much it has meant to her to see her Gabrielle's name in print resonated with me, as I felt I understood something about how hard it had been for her and how much it meant when people showed they cared and didn't forget her little girl.  Knowing the journey she had traveled made her gift all the more poignant.  Realizing that she barely knew me years ago, let alone now, left me awash with grateful tears, touched by her kindness and missing our babies so much.

Womb with a view

A week later, I finally have a video from our last ultrasound to share.  This one was shot during the NT measurements, so there are a few still moments in the middle, but I think the wiggly-baby shots in between are so cute!  My favorite is at the end when the baby is trying to eat his/her hands.  Please forgive the angle  - I'd asked Pete to scoot to the side so I could watch, too. :)

In all, Pete took fifteen videos in our appointment last week. (!)  Some of them are quite funny, but I have to hold off in posting them for a bit.

Answers

So I just spent some time reading back through all of the posts that you guys have left me since the rainbow post at the bottom of this page (or at least it was the post on the bottom of this page - I think this post will shift it to the next set of entries).  I receive so much from your comments.  Thank you to everyone for leaving them!

It occurs to me that there were a few questions lingering among those posts, questions that I have yet to answer.  So I thought I would give some time to that.  Starting furthest back...

Nan, you asked how that woman with triplets could have reacted with such disgust at my "you have triplets??" question in the grocery store.  I have spent some time thinking about that.  Initially I chalked it up to the fact she was exhausted and trying to grocery shop with triplets.  Some time later, however, I came up with a more comforting answer, although there is a good chance it is entirely wrong (and in a way, I hope it is).  When we first found out we were pregnant with triplets, we went on a perinatologist-and-Ob tour.  One we visited right by the grocery store had just delivered a set of quads.  I thought it might be possible that this mother was that mother, and that her triplets were quads, and she therefore hated questions from strangers regarding her "triplets."  It's a stretch as those babies seemed really young, but it did stretch my perspective on what the context could be.

Fiona, you didn't ask a question, but you mentioned you lost your Bailey on the same day as we had Hope, Adam, and Charlie.  I just wanted to say that I remember you!!  When Carly was nice enough to write our babies;' names in the sand, I browsed around her site and saw Bailey's name in the sand, with a birthdate matching our sweet babies'.  I am pretty sure I left you a note on that memorial.  Anyway, just wanted to say that I remember you and I have thought of you and Bailey.  I hope you are doing as well as you can and that the holidays were not too hard.

Jenicini, Tina, and everyone else with a blogspot blog, I have issues posting comments to blogspot blogs, for some reason.  95% of the time, the comment box does not pop up for me on public blogspot blogs.  I have tried to fix the problem unsuccessfully.  Just wanted you to know that so many times I have clicked over to comment and been unable to do so.  I have been reading, though...

Tina, CONGRATULATIONS!!!  I am so very excited to hear of your rainbow baby sister to Sophia and Ellie!  I really could not be happier for you.  I got goosebumps on my arms and a lump in my throat when I read the news.  Can't wait to follow along. :)

Jenicini, you asked for lurkers to comment, but now you know why I can't (or at least that I can't).  And I love packing boxes for our soldiers.  If you know some in need, let me know.

Brenna, you are welcome to come visit any time - when visiting your step-sisters or just because you want free lodging near NYC. :)  And how fun that we would get to meet Tatum!  Lots of thoughts and prayers are headed your way until I read the news of his birth. :)

BeckyB, how interesting you thought you saw a second sac, as I could have sworn I felt both embryos implant.  It was a good way to forecast our triplets, as I felt them implant, too.  Maybe you did see a second sac, but it just didn't make it very far.  BTW, I still think of you and your Olivia often - especially when I check for updated FB pics of your cute kiddos and see little Natalie.

Kelly, I just saw tonight your comment about my "accent" on the video post.  You're a funny Aussie!  I guess you know that Americans think Australians sound really cool when they talk, right?  Do we Americans sound... um, cool, too?  Maybe?? :)

Raluca from Romania, I would have loved to send you an email as you asked, but you did not leave your email address!  Drop me another comment if you would like me to write.  BTW, I spent some time volunteering in a Romanian orphanage years ago... beautiful country and beautiful people!  

Stefanie, I also did not see your comment until tonight.  (I must be better about going back to read comments left a while after I post!)  I absolutely know of you through Sarah, and your story of Abby and Jack broke my heart.  I have thought of you many times since I heard of you.  I will get your email and send you a note to say hi more personally.  I hope you are doing well as I know the months between now and holding your sweet babies have not healed the hurt.  

Nina, you want a belly pictures?  How about you send over some triplet pictures!! :)  Just to oblige you, here you go - a shot on my way out to work this morning:

It is not as exciting as a triplet bump, but there it is.  After growing so quickly with the trips less than a year ago, I thought it would seem like forever before this little babe started making himself/herself (more on that later) obvious, but it appears the ole abs remember how to stretch out after all!  Judging by photos, I think I am measuring about a week behind where I was with the trips.  Crazy!

Oh, and as far as names, I wouldn't count on anything too soon.  Until we actually had the triplets, Pete was insisting his leading names for them were Sven, Angus, and Hildegard.  I am not sure he is capable of a serious name discussion without a live, needing-name baby in the room. :)

Meg, I wrote you an email with my answer to your H1N1 question.  Hope you got it!  If you missed it, let me know - it is still in my sent mail.  (I have had junk-mail discoveries in the past few months, so if you did not see it, maybe check there first.)

Jackie Mitchell, your comment about losing your babies decades ago touched my heart.  I wrote you an email also.  Hope you got it.  (Let me know if not - I'm sure I still have it.)

Christy W, I am so happy to learn you are also due with your rainbow baby... and hearing we are due on the same day makes it so much more exciting for me!  I hope your pregnancy is going smoothly... physically, at least.  I know it is hard, and the experiences you have shared resonated with me.  I am thinking of you and keeping up with your progress!

All right, that is it for now!  I am off to see Pete who is finally back in town.  I know I promised some video updates from our NT scan, but in trying to upload them, I realized there are 15 of them (!), and I need to figure out how to clear out the background noise as I don't think our doc would appreciate me publishing that. :)  I hope to get one or two up here soon. :)

Second trimester kickoff

Due to travels and a defunct internet connection back at home (resolved for now, at least!) I am way behind in sharing updates like Christmas and approaching 2010 without our triplets.  I figured the happiest thing to share right now might be the update from our perinatologist appointment today, so here it is.

Just in time to celebrate our entrance into the second trimester, we had our NT (nuchal translucency) scan, which meant we got an extra-long appointment with lots of ultrasound time and plenty of adorable baby shots.  We also got an excellent prognosis for our little baby on board.  He/she has a 1/5000 chance of having Down's Syndrome and a 1/10,000 chance of having trisomy 13 or 18.  Our doc says you can't get better than that, and while we would not have changed our course whatever the news, we are very happy to hear such a strong outlook.  It is really exciting and encouraging to hear all looks so good with the little guy (or girl... but I am still thinking guy :)).  Not that it was needed, but we did turn down the amniocentesis option as the slight associated risk of miscarriage certainly is not worth it in our eyes - and our doctor agreed.

Pete took some really fun video of our very active baby, but as I want to get this quick post up today while it is still 2009, I will share the video later.  The little squirt was moving nearly nonstop - opening and closing the little mouth, waving the hands around the little head, stretching, and swallowing.  We saw a full tummy for the first time, so apparently the little one has been doing a great job with the swallowing over the past two weeks.

Without further ado, here are a few shots.  First, our full-length baby:

It's not the best profile shot, but I love the legs stretched out - so cute!  Both the hands were by the face for this shot, but you only see the left fist by the mouth.

We saw a couple of cute profile shots...

the first one with the tummy, head, and hands (always by the head)...

and another after we counted ten fingers - looks like we are getting a reassuring thumbs-up. 

Finally, we got to see our little babe in 3D a couple of times.  The hands were covering the face, so no shot of the features, but we did get a good shot of body, arms, and legs.  

The left hand is just under the right fist, and the placenta is on the right.  (The stuff on the left partially obscuring the baby is uterus.)  You can see a hint of the right eye and the little nose along with the legs outstretched under the tummy.

So that is all the pics for now.  As I mentioned, the video is adorable, so  I will try to get that up by this weekend. 

I just took a peek back to the post from the triplets' nuchal scan, and it was fun to compare shots.  It was also interesting to realize that by this point with the triplets, I had been on bed rest for four weeks already.  Reading that sure makes me grateful to be on my feet and relatively healthy this time around!  It is a treat to be pregnant and not hemorrhaging or worrying each week if we would see all the heartbeats we should.  (The Doppler I bought off Amazon also helps with that - it is SO nice to hear that galloping heartbeat if I am feeling antsy!)  Whenever I am getting sick of unending morning sickness (as I have been all day) and being utterly wiped out, it is easy to reflect on our 2009 and remember all we have to appreciate!

More baby shots

I know I promised more ultrasound shots from last week - here they are!

Last Thursday was the first of two appointments for my nuchal translucency screening.  This first appointment really only consists of blood work while the second (on New Year's Eve day) involves the ultrasound measurements of the baby's neck, limbs, etc.  Because we have an awesome perinatologist, however, he was kind enough to do an ultrasound along with the blood work to check on things this past week.  Even without the minor complication that arose a week and a half ago, I was very relieved that our doc would do an ultrasound as waiting four weeks for another to know the baby was okay seemed stressfully long.

The first thing we saw when the ultrasound probe was placed on my belly was... legs!!

Seriously - how cute is that?  Our triplets all had long legs - especially Hope and Charlie - and so it was fun to see we might have another long-limbed little one.  After scanning around a bit, we got to see the first shots of the baby's little profile:

One thing that was fun to see when we had triplets was that each baby's profile was unique on the ultrasound photos.  Seeing this shot of our new baby and - even more so - all the scans that were not turned into photos - made me realize this little baby's profile looked a lot like Charlie.  Perhaps later when I am on my own PC I will put up some comparison photos.  We never got a good profile shot of Adam, but we had enough of Hope and Charlie to see this baby looks like one of his/her big brothers but not like his/her big sister. :)

The best part of the ultrasound was seeing how much our baby was moving around.  Even before we got this shot above, we saw the baby kicking the legs - both together, which made the little bottom pop off the sac floor.  Too cute. :)  The baby also did some hiccupping motions, although I am not sure that is what they were.  He/she is swallowing now - we saw the teeny bladder and that the amnion had filled nearly to the outer chorion, which is what the doc in the video I attached earlier was discussing.

Here are a couple more shots, just for fun:

And here is the other 3D sono we got that day.  (I showed one earlier.) So lots of pics, which of course makes me elated.  These semi-frequent appointments with compassionate doctors and awesome ultrasounds definitely is making this journey easier, more exciting, and less stressful.  Don't get me wrong, you could still find a teary-eyed me waiting in the dark room once the ultrasound technician leaves and before the perinatologist comes in to repeat (!) the ultrasound - this was especially true last week when I had seen the profile resemblance to Charlie - but I fully recognize that having such a supportive cast of doctors really helps this experience.  

This Saturday - three days away - marks twelve weeks for us!  I am pretty excited about this milestone, although of course I know it guarantees us nothing.  Just the same, to know all the organs have formed and our little baby will soon be landing palpable kicks makes me very happy.

On our way to Richmond...

... For Christmas amidst a crazy winter storm pummelling the East coast. Pete is doing a great job driving, and we're looking forward to wrapping up our very slow trip by 5 or 6a.

Edited to add: we arrived safely at 830a.  Pete did an incredible job, driving for twelve and a half hours straight through the night.  Way to keep your family safe, Pete!  Thanks to the record-breaking snow, we averaged an incredibly slow 31 miles per hour for the 390-mile trip.

Happy baby, happy me

 I only have a minute but wanted to post a pic from today's perinatologist appointment.  We are 10 weeks and 5 days and couldn't have had a better appointment.  I will share more details soon but wanted to make sure to to post the good news about our growing baby.  Our little one was very active the entire ultrasound, so this still-image 3D shot is a little blurry... but you should be able to make out head, arms, legs, feet, and hands - hands that kept finding their way to the little mouth. :)

Lately

First of all, kudos to Kelly for guessing the right answer to the question closing the last post - our baby does indeed have a billion cells now.  Nice work, smartie!  Isn't it just amazing to go from one cell to 1,000,000,000 in just sixty days?  I say, wow.

I have mentioned I have some catching up to do as late hours at the office and a nauseous, tired me arriving home around 9p have resulted in fewer words shared here than usual.  Despite the relative silence, our triplets have been on my mind a lot lately.  I want to be overt in stating this fact, as having a new little brother or sister growing away in my belly in no way fixes the fact that Hope, Charlie, and Adam are not here for this Christmas, as we'd hoped and expected they would be.  Walking into Restoration Hardware last weekend and seeing these three stockings hanging on the mantle felt more like my mental image of home than our tree-less living room does.  That's right, there will be no Christmas tree in our house this year, despite the fact that I love Christmas and usually am one of the first to decorate for it.  And despite the fact that Pete and I historically have put a lot of effort into sending out the perfect Christmas cards, we won't be sending any out this year as the three little Santa hats we purchased in March for the kiddos's star moment will go unused.  (Sorry to all friends and family!  We promise to send good cards next year.)  We aren’t even giving any gifts to each other, other than gifting a family we adopted in lieu of gifting each other.

Last Christmas we were bursting with joy and excitement at the news we were finally pregnant for the first time - and likely with more than one baby, if my intuition was correct.  We so anticipated celebrating this Christmas season with our three incredible babies, and the Christmas traditions and images were so closely tied in our hearts to our babies that we are just going to let some of it pass us by this year.  Christmas really is my very favorite time and holiday, and I know next year with a six-month old, it will offer new excitement... but I also know that every Christmas to come will also ache with who is not there and what we are not celebrating.  That is okay.  As I will always say, I am joyful and grateful for having had the triplets for the time we did and would never want to trade that for avoiding the sadness of living without them.  I am grateful for every moment that calls them to my mind, allowing me time to spend thinking about our first three children.  Of course I think of them often – many times a day, probably an hour – but here are a few instances that have called them to mind recently.

Like when on December 1st I was packing for soldiers at our OB's house.  I was taping boxes filled with full stockings when in walked one of our OB's partners.  Dr. E (who insists I call her Bonnie at her house) turned to me and asked if I had met her colleague, Dr. McG.  I said hello and mentioned we'd met briefly on her birthday.  The day of our 16-week check-up, "Happy 50th" posters adorned the hallways.  That day our OB opened the door during our appointment to ask Dr. McG if she "wanted to meet the triplets."  Despite recognizing we were marginalized by that comment, I loved it - I felt so proud to hear that meeting us was akin to meeting our three special babies. :) 

As I paused from taping boxes, Dr. McG said hello and that I looked familiar before disappearing around the corner.  Not five minutes later, she came rushing back as I knelt on the floor, tape in hand.  She threw her arms tightly around my neck, kissed my cheek, and said, "Congratulations!  I could not be more excited about this life growing within you.  Bonnie told me."  As I hugged back and listened to what else she shared, I realized that this Dr. McG knew the story of our babies before she walked in the door and just now connected face to name.  It warmed my heart to know that the story of our three little children and their saving their mom by coming early was well remembered in their practice and still touched people's hearts there beyond just Pete's and mine.

Or the following Sunday at church, the day we were greeted at the doors with, “The tall couple!”  With Pete at 6’2” and me at 6 feet, we are tall enough to stand out a bit in a crowd (especially when I wear my cowboy boots, as I was that day.  I love wearing cowboy boots in New York.))  As we found our seats in church, I spent a while teary-eyed, wondering about how tall our kiddos would have been if they had grown up.  Would the boys be a similar height as kiddos?  Would Hope have outpaced them?  (She did have the longest limbs.)  Other than the one dream of a 6’5”, young-man Charlie bending over to give me a hug, I have had no dreams of them grown up.  In fact, the only other dream I have remembered of them is the one with the nurse informing me that Hope was born screaming.  (I used to worry about her having been in pain since she was born first with her mouth open and head cocked while her brothers looked like they had been peacefully sleeping.  Adam even had his thumb in his mouth as he was born undisturbed in his sac, unlike his brother and sister who were a little bit bruised as their waters had broken before birth.)   It is interesting that I think of our babies all day long but don’t get to remember dreams of them at night, which would be really fun.  Maybe some day.

Another opportunity to think about our children recently came last week at my team’s annual year-end offsite.  A colleague had asked me about my three-peas-in-a-pod necklace, so I went about telling the story of Margaret, my triplet-mom friend who helped me through the bed-rest months and taught me helpful stuff about mothering triplets.  I shared how when I came home from the hospital, this precious necklace was awaiting me at home, and I have worn it ever since.  As I was wrapping up the story, we sat down to lunch and a nearby colleague who was new to our group asked if I was a new mother.  Immediately conflicting emotions descended upon me – I loved being asked the question and given the chance to mention my babies, but felt badly that this poor guy was about to get a sad answer he never would want to hear.  So I shared that we had triplets earlier in the year but that they were born sick and did not make it.  In his enthusiasm, he did not hear the latter half of the sentence and excitedly went on about how amazing that was and wow, what a handful they must be, and his brother had twins, but that doesn’t compare.  Poor guy.  I said I wish they were a handful and repeated the line about them being sick and not getting to come home with us.  I told him, too, not to feel badly for asking and that they were amazing, two boys and a girl.  The training session kicked off on that note, a thing for which he was probably most grateful.  And I was grateful for the question – I spent the next half hour with a smile on my soul, feeling the joy of being able to speak of our babies openly. 

It was a much better place to be than the day before when the members of our group had to practice a new communication style by giving a short speech on either something about which they were passionate or a project on which they were working.  The presenter before me spoke of his passion – his children and what he has learned through his experiences of raising multiple kids together.  The closing line was if you don’t have kids, he strongly recommends you get some soon.  Needless to say, my speech which came on his heels was very likely the single worst I have ever given.  I sat down, having no idea what I had just shared but knowing it had been a total mess.  “Unstructured” and “distracted” captured most of the feedback that was given.

Looking forward, the moments to remember our triplets will be many.  Tomorrow is the day last year that we learned we were pregnant.  That means we are about to embark on the emotional trifecta of remembering our experiences “this time last year” with our triplets while aching with the absence of what we’d hoped and expected this Christmas season would be while also feeling the joy and hope of this blessed new life growing within.  For example, this Friday Pete’s company hosts their annual children’s holiday party.  Last year I avoided wine at the party for the first time knowing there was a great reason to do so.  This year’s event is one that I had imagined in those months on bed rest.  Had our babies been born late enough that the RSV season would not be a problem for them, this would have been a big event for them, dressed adorably in matching Christmas outfits and making the rounds of strangers’ arms, all happy to hold such a special trio.  Sigh.  While I answer questions about how I am feeling and how this baby is doing, holding them in our hearts this Friday is all we can do.

Sorry for the unstructured and distracted update.  I will try to be better about waiting so long to write, then having so much to share.  Once I get a break from work this Friday (I hope!) I should have some time to spend writing.  Oh, and the day after Christmas marks the second trimester for us.  I expect that to be the best present we will get this Christmas.

Billionaire baby

I found a new favorite webiste recently, the Endowment for Human Development at EHD.org.  There are lots of cool laparoscopic pictures of actual babies in utero from as early as 4 weeks after conception and, even better, the site also has movies!  Here are some pics of what our new babe might have looked like this past week (weeks and days below are from fertilization date and are not using traditional pregnancy-dating method which adds two weeks):

That last one is for anyone else who loves baby butts. :)  You seriously won't find a smaller one that this one!  FYI, this babe may not necessarily be a boy - the part numbered "3" is the genital tubercle, which all babies have until about 12-14 weeks when it differentiates into a gender-specific part.  In the two weeks before this point, you can make a guess on the "angle of the dangle."  We haven't decided if we are going to learn gender or not, but if we decide to, I will share more on that fun field in a couple of weeks. :)

So aren't these pics cool?!  If you agree, you probably would like checking out the videos on the site.  

Any guesses what makes our baby a billionaire as of tomorrow when we turn ten weeks?

Quick catchup

It has been a marathon lapse from me here, so I wanted to pop in to day hello and alleviate any concerns my silence may cause. All is well here for the most part. Long hours at work balanced with exhaustion and nausea has made for a bad blogger on my end, though - sorry for that! Of course, I have no complaints - other than wishing I had written sooner (and that this post would be more exciting than an iPhone-emailed note just before bed will be).

We saw our little solo baby at the perinatologist (my favorite place) last Friday, and the little squirt was looking great with a heart pumping away at 176 beats per minute and a crown-rump length right on track. Pete took lots of video, so once I can cut some down, I'll post one on here.

We have had a very minor hiccup this week that felt too similar to how all the "complications" began with our triplets, so I went back on progesterone just to be cautious and make sure we don't have hemhorraging like last time. I am already eager for next Friday's ultrasound to see our baby again and expect to hear nothing but great news.

I want to write more about our triplets and some related stuff from the past week, but it will need to wait as my alarm is set for a half past too early. For now, please know all is okay, and I will be back with hopefully more captivating words soon!

On this pregnancy

Every morning when I wake up, my very first thought is a simple prayer.  "Thank you, Father, so much for our babies.  All our babies."  I have a hand on my belly and a sleepy smile on my face when I pray those words, as I am thinking both of our three little ones in Heaven and this teeny one growing inside right now.  It makes me happy to imagine that tiny baby in there, feeling the love under my hand.  Then I add, "All our babies," because I like to think about how God gave us this new little one inside and how he or she is all of ours - Pete's, mine, and God's.  It is such a comforting thought, and it warms me right up inside with happiness and peace.  I am so grateful to be filled with hope and not fear or worry about this pregnancy.  I so appreciate that both Pete and I are expecting to bring a little baby home to join our family next summer and are not afraid to hope for, plan for, and expect that.  

Of course, we do not have the innocence of first-time parents who don't know loss.  Seeing all your babies born if not too sick then too young to be saved by NICU doctors and nurses could easily rob the joy and excitement of another pregnancy.  I have had my moments in this pregnancy when I was fearful and uncertain if the next ultrasound would bring a still heart that would crumble our world. Most of those moments came in week six, and I expect they may surface again from time to time.  I am grateful, however, it is not a constant struggle to push those fears out of my heart.  

The truth is, I want to enjoy every moment of this pregnancy, and I am determined to do so.  (Currently many of those moments present an exhausted, barfy-feeling me, and I am loving that, too. :))  One thing I treasure is due to the bed rest and scares with our triplets, I focused on those little babies nonstop for every month, day, and hour I had them.  If you've read the early pages of this blog, you know I was obsessed with my belly and with how big they were and what exciting things they were doing that week.  I loved every minute of loving them and carrying them and growing them inside; and now that I know that was the only time I was given with them, I couldn't be more grateful that I spent my time loving them the way I did.  

It is because of our triplets that I want to love this baby so much now and enjoy every moment with him or her inside - because I know that may be all the time we have.  I am not as focused on whether or not we will take this baby home because - despite the well-meaning comments about it being fine or good or real this time - we just never know.  We hope fervently that we will take this little baby home, and I do have a confidence about that, but I also have a peace that God will take care of us even if we don't bring this little one home.  And if that is the case, then I will be happy I spent all the time I had loving this baby.

I love you, little baby.  And I love your big brothers and big sister, too.

I am off to head home and pick up the package on my doorstep that has the cutest onsie inside. :)  While I do that, maybe you will enjoy this - the video from my last appointment with our reproductive endocrinologist.  (We graduated to the OB and perinatologist!)  If you can make it past the horrible camera control (I was paying more attention to the ultrasound screen than the iPhone screen) and don't laugh too hard at the doc-patient discussion in the background, you will make it to a nice, strong heart beat at the end. 

4 parents, 6 balloons

I have been so bad about updating my blog the last week and a half that I have lots to share.  I think I will start with the most overdue update...

I have written before that when you go through something like we did this year - and to be clear, by that I mean losing our triplets, of course, and not the IVF stuff and everything that followed or even the me-almost-dying bit - you develop a deeper appreciation of what a sustaining force the love and support from friends and family can be.  You learn that some of your closest friends aren't as close as you thought they were, and you realize how bad nothing can hurt - like when someone close says nothing at all.  Far more important to experience, however, has been feeling so touched and amazed to see distant friends become like family and strangers become dear.  I have been amazed at how incredibly committed and compassionate some now-dear friends have been to us.  It takes my breath away and teaches me that I could be, should be so much more to the people in my life.  My trying to do that can be a legacy of our little trips.  Sometimes I think about how I would not be living if our babies did not come on their own... and of course coming on their own when they did meant they would not live past their birthday.  I don't think they consciously made the decision to be born, knowing that they would die, but it is still a powerful realization that I hope will inspire me throughout my life to it meaningful and stand for the things it should.

Oh, goodness, I am rambling already.  Now I know what happens when I am a bad blogger and get behind on sharing stuff!  Anyhow, all that to somehow introduce the fact that Pete and I got to meet some important people while we were in Philly for Thanksgiving.  Living just a town over from his mom was a new but dear friend, someone who has walked along in this journey with me.  I can't even remember for sure how I met Nancy, although I suspect I might have found her via a forum for triplet mamas.  After three years trying to have a baby and two tries at IVF, Nan and Mike were pregnant with triplet girls early this year.  As the calendar rolled into March, Nan passed the twenty-week mark in her pregnancy.  That week she was to find out if she was having girls or boys, but instead she went into labor and delivered her sweet little girls, Lynne, Shelby, and Megan.  Parents losing a child at birth or in the back half of pregnancy is an occurance that is sadly far more common than it seems it should be.  Losing three babies all at once - a whole family, perhaps - is rarer because triplets are so unusual.  So special. :)  It is also a special kind of grief, I think, when you lose triplets… heartbreak multiplied, devastated by the shattered hopes and expectations that another pregnancy - even three - could never fulfill.  I have "met" a couple wonderful women through this little blog who also walked this path of losing triplets.  Brenna (now 31 weeks pregnant!) is one - she lost her three little boys (Adam, Joey, and Paul) a year ago.  Nan is another, and it was so nice to finally meet her and give her a big hug last week.

On a very windy Friday afternoon, Mike, Nan, Pete, and I sent six balloons to the heavens in memory of our six little babies we miss so very much - four pink and two blue (I am taking the fact that both pictures only show one blue to mean Adam was still hiding from us - just like in the ultrasounds. :))  I think of my babies in Heaven all the time and sometimes wonder (hope) if maybe they have become friends with the children of other moms I have "met" who lost their babies.  While I know it is silly, it made me happy that we sent all six of the balloons off together with their strings knotted.  Despite the wind blowing through our jackets and, it seemed, our souls, thesix balloons cleared the grass and trees and everything else until they disappeared into the distant air, leaving stars in our eyes as we stared after them. 

All is well!

I have been MIA for a bit due to returning to work last week and then heading to Philly for Thanksgiving with Pete's family... but I did want to pop in to say all is well with our newest little one!  We saw the doc again today (actually my last visit with the IVF doc - we've now officially graduated to the Ob and perinatologist) and saw the little heart beat pounding away at 171 beats per minute  Fantastic news, as a heart beat at 8 weeks means the loss rate has dropped below 2%.  Our little one is growing right along, as well, now measuring 8 weeks and 4 days - 2 days older than he/she is!

I have lots more to share than that and hopefully will have time late tonight to do so.  In the meantime, I did want to at least share that update with anyone nice enough to check this site after an entire week of radio silence!  Happy belated Thanksgiving to everyone (even those of you outside the US!) and more to come...

So spoiled!

Pete and I had a great appointment with our perinatologist where we again saw our newest little baby on Friday.  The last time we saw our perinatologist was a month or so after having the babies.  He said he'd want to see us in a future pregnancy (which we were happy to hear), so at nearly seven weeks we went back for our first appointment with this new baby.

We were so spoiled!! It comforting to see our old doctor who took such good care of our triplets and me, and he seemed so genuinely happy to see us back in his office, pregnant again.  I also got a big hug from our ultrasound technician who did over twenty hours of ultrasounds for our triplets (and gave us a hundred take-home photos of our babies).  She was always excited every week to see our kiddos, which I thought was so cute because she takes a peek into babies' worlds every day for her job.  

The biggest way in which we were spoiled, though, came in seeing our little one on the big screen.  As I'd not felt sick the prior two days and even lost some other pregnancy signs earlier on Friday, I was thrilled and so relieved to see that little heart pounding away on the screen!!  We had an ultrasound for over thirty minutes and got to see lots of baby's little heart beating and other fun stuff like a 4cm cervix. (Okay, maybe that is only fun for me to see.)  We even got some very cool 3D pics of the little bean, which were pretty amazing.  The only still shot was this one Pete took of the flat screen on the wall, so sorry for the blur!

If that doesn't look much like a baby to you, that is because at 6 weeks 6 days, babies have nubs for arms and legs, a little tail still, and a heart that is starting to grow inside of the chest but is still mostly a bulge above the abdomen.  Knowing that, I think the 3D photo (left pic above) is pretty exciting. You can see an arm and leg nub on the left of the body, and the heart is the circle in the middle of the body.  Neat, huh?  At this stage, the baby is the size of a blueberry and grows a millimeter a day.  Our little guys/girl was 9.1 mm on Friday and a week from now will be nearly twice as big!  Next week he/she grows itty bitty fingers and toes - amazing.

The last two times we went to our peri with our triplets, we wanted to shoot video of the ultrasound but didn't bring the flipcam along.  This visit we had my iPhone, so Pete got acquainted with it and gave the video option a try.  I am having computer issues but will upload a video here once I get the silly technology sorted out.  In the video, you can see the heart beat (you can't hear it in this ultrasound), and I have watched the little movies several times already!  Tomorrow I go back to our Reproductive Endocrinologist and should get another ultrasound (again, spoiled!)  I should get to hear the heart beat again and will try to record it so you can hear how cute it is. :) 

The sweetest sound

And we heard it yesterday morning!  Just after my doc shared the obligatory words about how we may not see a heart beat that day and that plenty of healthy pregnancies don't have a heart beat by 6 weeks and 2 days, we saw a nice, fat black sac on the screen that made our doc say "Oooh, this looks really good."  The yolk sac we saw last week was three times as big yesterday, and as our doc zoomed in a bit, there it was - a sweet little flicker-flicker-flicker on the gray-tone screen.  I was so excited!!  

I asked Pete if he could see it, too, and was happy to hear he could.  In this week of our triplets' pregnancy, we saw two of our three little ones' heart beats.  (Adam was a late implanter and so took another few days to show off his heart flickering.)  The week after this one - in week 7 - we actually got to hear their heart beats (versus just seeing the flicker), which was fantastic!  I didn't expect we'd get to listen in on the little pumping today, but Dr. K. then said we had a good enough view to try to hear it. He turned on the sound while focused on the little pulsing heart, and the room was filled with the most precious whoosh-whoosh-whooshing you could imagine.  The heartbeat was fast!  I think with our triplets, their heart rates were about 80 in week 6, but if my ears were accurate on this one (I was focused on the heart flickering and so did not look to see the BPM), then I would guess he/she had a heart rate over 120.  It appears this little one has mom's sprinter genes!  Or, as  my mom pointed out, my earlier inklings that this one may be a boy could be incorrect. :)  Either way, it is a great heart beat as faster is generally better at this stage, and we definitely have a fast one. 

I so wish that I had recorded the screen so you could actually hear the cute tiny little heart beating.  The best I have to share are the ultrasound pics I excitedly carried home.  They are not the best for showing the baby, but here they are:

So all in all, the appointment yesterday was a great one.  Seeing a heart beat at this point is really good, and while it does not preclude the possibility of a miscarriage (or, of course, a stillborn), it is a great start.  If we make it to eight weeks with this little heart still beating, our chance of losing the little one drops below 2%.  While that still promises nothing, I am eager for that day.  

Finally, the appointment also confirmed... we are pregnant with just one baby.  A singleton - no triplets, no fraternal twins nor even identicals.  Just one little baby to soak up all our love for the next 7.5 months and then come home with us. :)