Bedrest Blues

The verdict was handed down yesterday after a pre-term labor scare that landed me in labor and delivery for 5 hours.  I'm on a week of "practice" bedrest and they'll check my cervix Friday to see if there are any changes.  We're not sure yet if bedrest will be permanent or just temporary.  The OB said, depending on how my cervix and I handle bedrest, I *might* get to do a little getting up here and there.  For now its laying, in my bed, on my side, for 24 hours a day...except to go to the bathroom.

I had a lot of contractions while being monitored yesterday and my OB said my cervix was soft, but long.  No one seems to know if thats good or bad.  They keep telling me that labor is unpredictable.  I did have a negative FFN (fetal fibronectin test), which tests the cervix to see if certain proteins (present when a woman is about to give birth) are there.  They weren't there, so the likelihood of me going into full blown labor in the next two weeks is very low.  I hope.  They say they can't give any result definitively, but at this point, its not likely.  Ok.  I guess if thats all they'll give me, I'll take it.

The l&d nurses are fabulous.  They made this scary experience as great as it could be.  They were all so sweet and reassuring.  They even gave us babies first hats!  They have a volunteer who makes knit hats for all the newborns and she gave us pink and blue itty bitty hats.  So sweet :)  They told me that  they see a lot of twin moms in all the time.  Twin pregnancy is no walk in the park (I could have told you that!) and complications are common, especially at this point.  My uterus is measuring 40 (ish) weeks and I have between 5.5 and 6.5 lbs of baby in me.  My poor worn out body thinks its time to give birth.  NOT YET BODY!

They did a bio-physical profile on the twins and so we got to watch them on ultrasound for about 2 hours.  They got a perfect score!  They were hiccuping and sucking their thumbs.  They were putting on quite the show for everyone.  At one point, Little Boy was kicking the monitors they had strapped to me and we watched on u/s as he delivered one blow after the other trying to get the monitors off him.  He succeeded.

I was strapped with a toco-monitor, to monitor contractions and two fetal doppler monitors to monitor their heartrates and movement.  I was loaded down!  The babies did great and are healthy and perfect.  Now we just need to buy at least 4-6 more weeks of them INSIDE so we can bring them into this world healthy.

If you're the praying type, can you pray for M, me and our sweet little ones?  If you're not the praying type, we accept any and all good thoughts :)  We appreciate all our readers and hope you have a wonderful week!

Crib assembly: Not for the faint of heart

Today its snowing like a beast, so we thought hey, what a great day to clean out the guest room, nursery and assemble the cribs.  Sounds like a decent idea for a Sunday afternoon, right?  I'll start by saying, we had NO idea what we were in for.  None.  They just say "assembly required"...they forget to tell you that you might need IV fluids and a 8 hour nap after you've completed said task.  If you're about to build your baby's crib, drink heavily prior to attempting this task...unless you are the expectant mother (of course).  Liquor up your husbands ladies, trust me, they'll thank you for it.  

From the get go M was dreading this task.  He's about as un-skilled as it gets when it comes to assembling things.  This proved to be no exception.  We got all the pieces out and made sure we had everything, then the fun began!  We quickly realized we were in over our heads.  Between M's impatience, the lack of labeled parts and my big belly not letting me do much, crib #1 was a JOB.  We fumbled through the first several parts and eventually finally got the hang of things.  It took us three hours to assemble this poor bed!  

Here's M working on one of the sections I couldn't reach.  I love this pic because it totally looks like he gave up, I swear he's just finishing up the screws on that side :)

At this point it was do or die.  Crib-2 M&A-0

Crib one COMPLETE!!!

We did it!  Crib one was finally fully assembled!  Now did we move on to crib two or call it good?  Even though we had been through hades and back, we decided to tough it out and move onto crib two.  I mean, if we didn't at least start crib two, who knows when we would have attempted it again. We couldn't give up.  We just wanted it DONE.  Much to our surprise, crib two's assembly went MUCH smoother!  We had crib two together in less than an hour and a half.  Woop woop!  We're now available for hire if anyone you know is assembling a crib anytime soon ;)

Here's M zooming through crib two's construction as Nellie supervises

Would you look at that?!?!  M tightening the screw on crib two.  DONE!!!  Two assembled cribs right down the hall from my bedroom.  OMG.

Charlie couldn't stand that we kept him out all day.  As soon as we let him in, he started exploring.  Apparently cribs are at the top of his "love" list too.  

So we got to check off one of the most difficult parent-to-be tasks, EVER.  As difficult a task as it was, after it was done we laid on the floor, in between our babies cribs and just smiled.  In just a few short months this room will hold our sweet twins.  This room will see lots of sleep deprivation, lots of poopy diapers and most importantly, lots of love and laughter.  Despite the pain in the ass that it was, it was a right of passage you never forget :)  We are hoping to get the changing table and glider in soon...I believe both require assembly.  Oh the joys of parenthood!