Follow-up to the Follow-up

Yesterday I had my follow-up to the follow-up appointment. While waiting for the doctor to arrive, the ultrasound tech got lots of shots of the girls (they were finally cooperating!) and took their measurements. That was nice – it wasn’t scheduled for that day, but she had time to kill and figured she’d “play” while we waited. Although the doctor has a more precise way to tell, the way we’ve been able to tell the girls apart throughout the pregnancy was based on their size. Since our initial ultrasound at 8 weeks, baby A has been about 2 days behind baby B in size. I guess baby A had a growth spurt since the previous week because both girls were measuring at exactly the same size this time. They’re up to approximately 1 lb 4 oz. Although the 2 day difference wasn’t significant, I was pretty pleased to hear they’re now exactly the same given how paranoid we’ve been about the risk of twin-twin transfusion.

Here are some pictures from the appointment. The first set is baby A and the second set is baby B.

The doctor was pleased that the medication worked, but still wasn’t real happy with the way my cervix was looking. She doesn’t want to do surgery at this point because she thinks it would likely cause more serious contractions and could send me into labor. She said that if I delivered at this point (at 23 weeks) the babies would have a 90% chance of having cerebral palsy, but that every week going forward that percentage would go down. So she wants me on strict bed rest until 28 weeks when the odds go down to 10%. Although it sounds nice to be off of bed rest in 5 weeks, I think the joke is on me because at that point I’ll be so large that I won’t be able to be on my feet much anyway.

I go back in next week Friday (9/2) for my normal bi-weekly appointment. In the meantime (and likely through the remainder of my pregnancy), the doctor wants me to monitor for contractions twice a day. A nurse came out to the house today to drop off a monitor and show me how to use it. Basically I have to be hooked up to the machine for an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening and then for an additional hour if I start feeling contractions in between the normal monitoring times. After the hour, I hook up the machine to a super high tech 56K modem and dial in to send them the results. A nurse then calls within half an hour to discuss the results and make sure I’m doing okay. Although it’s a pain, it is kinda nice to have a nurse checking in a couple times a day. It gives me the opportunity to discuss anything unusual and determine what to do from there.