Meet the monkeys!

I gots pictures!  I'll only post one because it's the best one and why force a bunch of mediocre blobbies in your faces.

Today I'm 8w6d and everything is looking good.  I graduate from the fertility clinic and move on to the high risk ob with an appointment one week from today.

While we can't say for sure that the bleeding is over, she couldn't find any clots that we could predict bleeding.  Does that make sense?  It still might happen, but we didn't see anything today showing that it will happen.  Ok, that sentence makes more sense.

Both babies are measuring just about right, the heart rates are between 155-160bpm which is perfect.  And the doctor saw them each wiggle (I didn't notice it).  While there are obviously no guarantees, things are looking as good as they can look at the moment.

On the symptom front, damn I'm a lucky bitch.  Pretty much done feeling queasy.  I sometimes feel a little bit of stretching in the abdomen which I love because it means they're growing, and I'm having some lower back ache from time to time, and I'm waking up constantly during the night.  But for the most part, yeah, I'm really lucky.

Ok, I partially wanted to get all this out so that people who don't want ultrasound pictures in their faces might have some text before the pictures show up on screen and I think that's enough.  So here we go!

Baby B is on the left and Baby A is on the right, and both are pretty much hanging upside down.  So we're back to calling them monkeys.

Still standing

Not much to report but you've all shown so much concern (thank you!) that I feel I should give everyone an update.

For the last 24 hours or so, I would describe any discharge or blood when I wipe to be of the "residue" category.  Brown, not much there, but it's consistently there.

I'm still doing the endometrin so I CONSTANTLY feel like I'm leaking.  I'm trying to limit myself to 1 wiping check per hour because any more than that and I'm going to wipe myself raw and that's a whole other category of discomfort.

Told one of my bosses today that I'm not going to be working for a while.  The doctors said it was fine to do pottery, but I also noticed that on the days I did nothing, no bleeding.  On the days I spent a lot of time at the wheel, bleeding.  So doctors be damned, I'm not doing it until I feel somewhat secure again.

However, my video work is picking up.  I currently have 2 video shoots scheduled for this week and the company that I get the gigs through called me to see if they could book another one on Thursday for me.  That's fine, but they need to call the clients and make the schedules work, I don't want to deal with that.  I know that sounds like work, but really, it's not that strenuous.  I interview someone on camera for a half hour and then I film them doing what they do for 45 minutes or so.  The rest is spent sitting at my computer putting it together.  I'm kind of looking forward to the one on Friday, it's a go-kart racing place.  So there should actually be some fun stuff to shoot.

In pregnancy symptom news, most of it has faded away.  Currently 7 weeks 4 days.

• My digestion always has a general "not right" feeling to it.  A little on the hungry side, a little on the full side, a little on the queasy side, it can't really decide what side it wants to be on so it's on all of them at once.  But only a little.  
• When I get hungry, I become starving all of a sudden.  
• Oh!  Spent about 5 minutes last night sitting in front of the toilet wondering if I was going to have a repeat performance of Thanksgiving morning.  We really need to sweep the bathroom floor.  
• I don't really get cramps anymore, but rather the occasional odd gurgle.  
• Shoulders and upper back burn most of the time.  Don't know if that's a pregnancy thing or not.  
• I seem to be low grade tired all the time, but never solidly sleep.  I seem to be up peeing all the time, or just on the verge of being awake at any given moment.  I don't feel like I'm really soundly sleeping.
• It still has no dawned on me that there's a chance I'll make it past 10 weeks.  I'm not sure why.  On the other hand, I can't fully picture going through a miscarriage either.  So I have no hunches as to what's going to happen with this pregnancy.  For once, I simply can't figure out the future.

For the most part, I sit here, just kind of holding still because I'm afraid to jostle anything loose, playing cards on the computer, feeling like I'm leaking, and waiting until the hour goes by so I can see if it's endometrin goo or blood flowing into my underwear.  Real exciting life I've got going on here.

Question about bleeding while pregnant - if the cervix is closed, how does the blood escape?  Isn't that like trying to pour water out of a bottle with the lid screwed on?

Ultrasound tomorrow.

More random things

My lists on the Day of a Dozen Things got long so I cut it off there and figured I'd do my pregnancy updates and interactive stuff in a new post.

KM gave us 2 really awesome shelving unit thingies.  This is one of them -

I love shelving things like this that kind of work as functional wall art.  We have some smaller versions of this kind of thing over our bed replacing the need for a headboard.  While this picture doesn't so it, part of it is painted in the same yellow as the nursery.  I'm thinking that they would actually go really well in the nursery, especially if we have 2 kids in there.  One to store each kids individual things.  Of course, we can't put them up until we know what furniture is going to go in there and how it's going to be arranged, so it looks like we have more things to generally pile in that room for the time being.

Random pregnancy notes:

Waking up starving every day.  Who am I kidding, I'm starving all the friggin time.  In fact, I'm gonna go make me a sammitch before finishing this!

Endometrin is evil.  It just is.  Every day I feel like I'm having my period a few hours after putting this stuff in because it just kind of melts back out of you.  And that of course hits my panic button sending me to the bathroom to double check that it is in fact endometrin goo and not something with color to it.  This also means I'm going through packages of pantyliners like crazy.  I insist on changing them every time I pee (every hour or two) because the only thing we can figure from the miscarriage is that perhaps the pads that I was wearing due to incontinence weren't getting changed often enough and that lead to bad things.

My upper back hurts just about every evening.  Probably because I've been doing a lot of pottery for my boss.  But also possibly because I can't seem to get comfortable at night.  That's probably not a pregnancy thing since I'm waaaaayyyyyy too early for comfort issues, but I sometimes just go through a few weeks where I can't seem to get comfortable at night.

Getting the occasional pinch the abdomen.  Usually when I stand up after sitting for a while and it gets mad at me for not stretching it slowly.

The taste buds are starting to change.  This is both a good thing, and a frustrating thing.  Last time, it forced me to eat really healthy.  But it also means that I have no idea what to grab from the fridge because I don't know if it's going to taste the way I expect it to taste.  My usual grande 3-pump white chocolate mocha has been changed to a 2-pump (in other words, half the amount of syrup that's supposed to be in it) because otherwise it's way too sweet and oily.

My flabby fat tummy has a firmness, like a firm bag underneath a layer of floppy fat.

My two younger kitties have been sitting on my belly like it's their responsibility to try to hatch this egg for me.  And just for the hell of it, and because I think they're so damned cute, here's a reminder of who those particular kitties are.

Jipsee, the mini kitty, and her tongue

Mayday in one of his favorite poses

In general, I'm in a better mood than usual.  I'm still tired and kind of unmotivated to do stuff, but when a good song comes on the radio, I'm starting to dance a bit while lip syncing.  This is not normal Alex behavior by the way.

I just really want time to go by a lot quicker.  So many people on the miscarriage boards talk about how they lost their baby in the 5th and 6th weeks, I just really want to get passed those already.  Especially since I'll be seeing just how many heartbeats I've got beating in here the day before week 7.

And now for the interactive part of this blog post.  2 things.

First - does anyone have any use for mini dv tapes?  I have probably about 100 of them that I've used once but because clients really prefer that you pull out a brand new one when filming them, I'll probably not have the chance to use them again.  I've blacked them so there's no actual footage on them.  If anyone out there has a camera that takes mini-dv tapes, I'll sell you as many as you want for 50 cents a piece plus shipping.

Second - I'm thinking of redoing how I do pottery.  In the past, I've just made whatever I felt like making and sold the results.  I'm thinking now of narrowing it down to about 4 shapes, offer each shape in 2 sizes.  Making a gross of them, leaving them unglazed and then people can request whatever glaze combinations they want when they order them.  It would take 4-6 weeks for delivery.

I'm thinking of setting up my own website for this kind of ordering and then all the random stuff I make, the one off items, I'll throw into my Artfire store as kind of my destash.  That would allow me to make things as I experiment with different glazes and new shapes but leaving my own website store nice and clean with the consistent product lines.

What do you guys think of this idea?  It would allow me to do a ton of throwing right now so that when I implemented it (around the time the baby(ies) born), a lot of the time consuming work would be done.  And please, tell me about your favorite coffee mug.  What's the glaze like, what's the shape, what's the size?  What makes that mug the one you reach for every morning?

Swapping roles

I'm usually pretty guarded.  So many times I've gotten my hopes up and had them dashes so I practically live by the philosophy of don't get your hopes up, don't get disappointed.  I assume disaster until proven otherwise.

K is the opposite.  He's the one who assumes the best outcome until he's proven wrong.

And for the whole period of time between losing the girls and gaining whoever I've got cooking in there, I've been prepared to keep myself completely cold and distant until the age of viability.  Don't get attached, don't get hurt.

Wow, that is so not happening.  Ok, it is, but it's happening to K instead of me.  I'm bouncing off of walls.  I know intellectually that I might get to that ultrasound and see either no heartbeats, or just one.  But everything in me believes that I'm going to see 2 strong little babies in there.  And K is the one who almost seems upset that things are starting off so well.  He's the one who's acutely aware of how this is mirroring the last pregnancy and he's terrified that history will repeat itself.

We had a talk about it last night.  I want this pregnancy to mirror the last one.  Why?  Because up until that last day, it was an extremely healthy pregnancy.  Growth was perfect, nice and strong, everything wonderful.  And what ended it was a complete fluke, very unlikely to happen again.

When I lost the girls, I felt like I had robbed myself of the months I was pregnant.  I kept myself pretty guarded until we fully crossed over into the second trimester.  I didn't indulge in anything baby related because I kept in the back of my mind "it's too early, don't go overboard".  And when the pregnancy ended, I felt like I had prevented myself from enjoying what I had while I had it.

I'm very aware that this pregnancy might end any minute.  That every trip to the bathroom has the potential of showing me the signs of miscarriage.  And yet, somehow, I'm just not feeling it.  I'm completely unprepared for anything to go wrong because everything feels so right.

I'm being obnoxious.  I'm not even 5 weeks along and I'm signing up for pregnancy forums and stuff.  For all I know, I'm only going to get to enjoy this for days, weeks, hours even, so I'm going to enjoy each and every minute as if I'm ignorant of the risks.  For the moment, I have every reason to believe that I'm going to be a mom to twins, so that's the premise I'm working under until I'm proven wrong.

K said he's going to try to join me.  I really hope he succeeds because this new dynamic of us switching personalities is really discombobulating.